Mayor Testerman meanwhile had issued warrant for the arrest of the Baldwin men on the grounds that they were violating a town ordinance in carrying weapons. Hatfield proceeded to serve the warrant as soon as the “detectives” returned to the Matewan streets. There were two of the Felts brothers in the group and they informed Hatfield that they had a warrant for HIS arrest, although they refused to show it. Hatfield evidently did not feel inclined to argue with a dozen men who were notoriously trigger-happy, so he obeyed when they stated that he had to go with them to Bluefield. The group, including the Matewan police chief, headed toward the railroad station.
12/19/52 (Twenty-third)
Many eyes, however, had witnessed this scene, and the miners valued Sid Hatfield very highly. Word of his arrest spread quickly, and the miners were in no mood to let the Baldwin men kill Hatfield, as they were convinced was not only possible but probable. Among those who learned of the new development was Mayor Testerman. In the words of Sid Hatfield:
“Someone went and told the mayor that the detectives had me arrested, and the mayor came out to see what the charges were, and he told Felts that he would give bond for me, that he could not afford to let me go to Bluefield. Felts told him that he could not take any bond, and the mayor asked him for the warrant, and he gave the warrant to the mayor, and the mayor read the warrant and said it was bogus, it was not legal, and then he shot the mayor. Then the shooting started in general.”
It seems that many of Hatfield’s coal miner friends were hanging around, just to see that he wouldn’t come up short if any trouble started. He didn’t. When the shooting stopped and the smoke cleared, seven Baldwin-Felts men lay dead. Six others escaped. Two Matewan citizens, Tot Tinsley and Robert Mullens, in addition to Mayor Testerman, were also dead. Later, the remaining guards through their coal company lawyers said that their guns were cased and that they were unarmed, so the conclusion must reluctantly be drawn that the mayor and the two other men dropped dead from the excitement. The coal companies also accused Sid Hatfield of killing Testerman so that he could marry his wife, basing this slander upon the fact that the chief of police did very soon marry the mayor’s widow.
Baldwin Men Murderous
This may be safely classified as another coal operator lie. The Baldwin men have too long a record of brutality and deceit for any part of their testimony to receive a place in this work. Lest this seem unduly biased, we shall attempt to prove our point. The utter worthlessness and murderous sadism of these hired strikebreakers was exemplified in their chief, T. L. Felts, two of whose brothers, Albert C. and Lee C. Felts, were killed in the Matewan battle.
The journalist Winthrop Lane, author of Civil War in West Virginia, spoke of meeting T. L. Felts in the following words: “Well, the first part of our conversation was in the office of the Pocahontas Coal Operator’s Association. During that time there were six or eight men there in the audience in the office to whom Mr. Felts told stories of his various activities in labor disputes, particularly in West Virginia. Then we went to his office and there we spent a half or three-quarters of an hour going through his so-called chamber of horrors in his office there, a room which he has fitted up with the mementos and souvenirs of men whom his men have killed, and some of his men who have been killed – a bloodstained dollar bill taken off the body of a victim, the black hood of a man who was hanged…a great collection of firearms… a necktie framed, which had been worn by a Negro rapist when caught.”
These were the knickknacks with which T. L. Felts surrounded himself. We are reminded of the more modern Nazi Beast of Buchenwald who had lampshades fashioned of human skin. The bloody mentality is the same.
C. E. Lively Career Cited
It will be interesting, we believe, to give a sketch of the career of a Baldwin-Felts detective, for just such vermin still infest Labor today, although they do not have the same name. They are labor spies, paid to snoop and pry and report to bosses, while all the time protesting friendship to Labor. Take the case of Baldwin-Felts employee C. E. Lively. Lively was born in the Kanawha coal fields of West Virginia about 1888. He began work in the coal mines when he was only 13 years old and joined the UMW in 1902, when he was a mere boy, while working at Blackband, W. Va. About 1912, when he was 24 years old, he was approached by a recruiter for the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency. He joined the Baldwin men while a member of the UMW Local Union at Gatewood, Fayette County, W. VA.
He attended several Union conventions and in 1913 was a delegate at a convention of the newly-formed UMW District 29. The Baldwin pay at first was $75 a month and expenses. His job for the most part was to report any men who were active in Union organization, and he continued to mine coal and pretend to be a good Union man.
A little later the Colorado strike began and Lively went west. He joined the Western Federation of Miners and became a paid organizer for that Union, at the same time, or course, drawing his pay as a Baldwin detective. He worked in Missouri, Oklahoma, Illinois, Kansas, and Colorado, creating trouble for the miners wherever he went. In the latter state he even became the president of the local Union at La Veta! It seems that he left there after seeing that the secretary of this local was sent to jail on a charge of being an accomplice in a murder.
McKeller Is Shocked
It is well to interrupt at this point with the observation that Senator McKeller, of the Senate Investigating Committee, was much shocked at this behavior of Lively. But the coal company attorney calmly told him that exactly the same methods had been used by the United States Government to break up and hang the Molly Maguires. It is not our purpose to speak here of the Molly Maguires (an invented name, by the way, for a group of Irish miners in Pennsylvania), but the attorney for the operators in this case spoke the truth. The Pinkerton Detective Agency was used instead of the Baldwin-Felts.
To return to Lively, all this while he had posed successfully as a simple coal miner, and he came back to West Virginia about the time the miners began to ask for Union organization in Mingo County. Lively had as a boy known Fred Mooney, who in 1920 was secretary-treasurer of UMW District 17, and was also well acquainted with Frank Keeney, the District president, so he had an easy entree into Union affairs. He visited the UMW headquarters frequently and even helped to organize local unions at the coal camps of War Eagle, Glen Alum, and Mohawk. All the while, of course, he was a spy for the coal companies, constantly sending in reports to T. L. Felts at Bluefield.
It happened that Lively at this time had gone to Matewan and had entrenched himself strongly with the Union in that Mingo County town. But on May 19, 1920, when the Baldwin-Felts men were killed in their tangle with Sid Hatfield, he was in Charleston at the UMW District office when the news of the killings arrived. It was natural that the UMW officials shed few tears over the deaths of the Baldwin men – one Charley Batley is supposed to have danced for joy – and the feelings of Lively, if he had any feelings left, can be imagined.
Chapter Five: Sid Hatfield Indicted
12/20/52 (Twenty-fourth)
Lively was assigned to investigate the killings at Matewan, still, of course, posing as a miner and Union man. He moved to Matewan with his family and actually had the temerity to rent quarters for a restaurant from the Union. That is, the UMW local headquarters was upstairs and Lively, the Baldwin spy, was living just beneath! The restaurant was Lively’s blind for operations, and Union men told him of their plans with great freedom. He in turn relayed this information to the coal companies via T.L. Felts. His salary was supposed to be $225 a month.
When a grand jury indicted Sid Hatfield and several others for the killing of the detectives at Matewan, Lively was forced to tip his hand by testifying against Hatfield and other UMW sympathizers.
Anse Hatfield, son of “Devil Anse” of feuding fame and a cousin of Sid’s, did likewise and was later shot and killed in front of his hotel at Matewan. But Lively continued in good health, although he was expelled from the UMW for 99 years. The fact that Lively was never injured in
any way is evidence that the Union coal miner is not especially vindictive. For if ever a man deserved the hate of the miners, that man was C.E. Lively.
Lively continued his shadowing of Sid Hatfield. He thought he had a real scandal when he discovered that Sid and Mayor Testerman’s relict were friendly. On June 2, 1920, he trailed them to Huntington and triumphantly pounced upon the pair in a room of the Florentine Hotel, where Huntington police arrested them for vagrancy. But Sid produced a marriage license to the keen disappointment, no doubt, of Lively.
Newspapers Splash Story
The incident was played up by the newspapers and Lively helped to circulate the story, as has been before related, that Hatfield killed Testerman in order to marry his wife. That Hatfield would kill the mayor before dozens of witnesses strains to the breaking point the laws of probability. And who could believe Lively? It is plain that the coal operators had assigned him the task of getting rid of Sid Hatfield, a Mingo County official who liked the coal miners.
And that is not all the story. A year went by, and Lively continued his career as a detective. While he may have left West Virginia for a time, he was back in Mingo and McDowell counties in the summer of 1921, still working on anything which would hurt a Union miner, or any other decent person, for that matter.
Sid Hatfield, meanwhile, had been indicted on a charge of taking part in the “shooting up” of the town of Mohawk. And why was he indicted? On the testimony, secret of course, of C.E. Lively. It seems that Lively had been very loud in demands that the miners do something drastic while he who was their pretended friend owned the restaurant under Union headquarters at Matewan. On one occasion he encouraged the miners to arm themselves and shoot up the nonunion tipple at Mohawk. When the miners arrived at the tipple, they had a reception committee of bloodhounds and deputy sheriffs armed with the machine guns. Lively had been busy on the telephone, and the miners had fallen into his trap.
Sid Goes to Welch
Sid Hatfield, indicted for the Mohawk shooting, was ordered to appear at the courthouse at Welch, in neighboring McDowell County, in order to stand trial on Aug. 1, 1921. There were probably many who advised Sid not to make the trip, as McDowell, like Mingo, was a stronghold of coal operators who refused to recognize the Union. But Sid, in company with his wife and a friend named Ed Chambers, also accompanied by his wife, nevertheless caught a train from Matewan to Welch about 5:15 a.m. on the morning of Aug. 1. The party was accompanied by a deputy sheriff named James Kirkpatrick, and they had been promised full protection by the McDowell County authorities.
When the train stopped at the McDowell County town of Iaeger, it took on a new passenger. Everyone in the Hatfield group recognized the man at once. It was none other than C.E. Lively. Lively spoke and even sat beside Kirkpatrick and carried on a conversation. Sid Hatfield and the others arrived at Welch between 8 and 9 o’clock and breakfasted in a restaurant. As they sipped their coffee they saw C.E. Lively enter the same restaurant and calmly order something to eat.
Lively Sticks Close
They then met Charles W. Van Fleet, Sid’s lawyer. Van Fleet informed them that he was applying for a change of venue which meant that Sid would be tried in a county somewhat removed from the heated industrial conflict. Back in May, the six Baldwin men who escaped alive from the Matewan battle in which Sid was involved, had received such a change of venue to Lewisburg, in Greenbrier County. They had, incidentally, been acquitted of the murders of three men – aside from the seven Baldwin agents – who had been slain on May 19, 1920.
Sid Hatfield took it for granted that his request for change of venue would be granted. Van Fleet permitted the Hatfield party to use his hotel room until it was time for Sid to appear in court. The lawyer said that when they heard the whistle of the 10:30 train, which was to bring Hatfield’s witnesses to Welch, they were to leave the hotel and come to the Welch courthouse. Van Fleet then left and the party relaxed, Sid stretching out on the bed. Kirkpatrick, the deputy sheriff, happened to look out the window and there, loafing on the courthouse lawn, he again saw C.E. Lively. He commented to Sid that the Baldwin man was staying pretty close, and Sid sat up and looked out the window. His remarks, if he made any, have not been recorded.
12/23/1952 (Twenty-fifth)
Both Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers were armed when they came to Welch. But according to Sally Chambers, wife of Ed, both men removed their guns in the hotel room, and, when they heard the train whistle, went to the Welch courthouse unarmed. The Baldwin men had a different version of course, in later testimony, but they naturally would. That two men would pick a gun battle with a dozen others – unless the two happened to be carrying .50 caliber machine guns, which, certainly, Hatfield and Chambers were not, is a bit far-fetched.
In any case the Hatfield couple, the Chambers couple, and Deputy Sheriff Kirkpatrick approached the courthouse steps. Perhaps one hundred men were gathered on the lawn and around the steps. And among them could be seen their sinister shadow, C.E. Lively.
At the first landing of the steps the Sid Hatfield group paused and Sid threw up his hand and said “Hello, boys.” These were his last words. He was answered by a fusillade of shots and rolled back down the steps, dead. Mrs. Hatfield ran into the office of High Sheriff Bill Hatfield, who had promised Sid protection just a few days before. She then attempted to come out of the courthouse but was grabbed by a detective. She was not permitted to see her dead husband until she returned to Matewan.
Ed Chambers Killed
Ed Chambers, a mere boy of 22, was not to be ignored, for he had been involved in the shooting of the Baldwin men at Matewan. In words of Mrs. Chambers, this is what happened to her young husband. She is replying to questions of Sen. David I. Walsh of the Kenyon Committee. “Lively put his arm across the front of me and shot my husband in the neck: right there in front of me shot…. That was the first time my husband was shot….
“Mr. Walsh: How many times was your husband shot?
“Mrs. Chambers: About 11 or 12 times….
“Mr. Walsh: You say Lively reached around your neck and fired a shot?
“Mrs. Chambers: No: he was up on the step in front of me and kind of on this side, you see, and my husband was on this side of me (indicating), and kind of reached his arm across in front and shot my husband that way, you see, in the neck. My husband, he rolled back down the steps and I looked down this way and I seen him rolling down and blood gushing from his neck, and I just went back down the steps after him, you see, and they kept on shooting him, and when he fell he kind of fell on his side leaving his back up, you know, toward the steps and they were shooting him in the back all the time after he fell.
“Mr. Walsh: how many shots entered his back?
“Mrs. Chambers: All the shots excepting these two: he was shot one time in the neck and the last shot that was fired. C.E. Lively shot him right behind the ear.”
Were Grudge Killings
Thus did C.E. Lively end his “investigation” of the killing of the Baldwin men at Matewan. He started as a spy, became a judge and jury, and finished as executioner! And it is not likely this was his only murder. This is the man that James Damron, erstwhile circuit judge of Mingo County, praised as a fine citizen before the Kenyon investigation committee. If judges in Mingo were like this, what must the “criminal element” have been? Several notches above the judges, without doubt.
All the evidence points to the conclusion that Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers were lured to Welch, with the connivance of C.E. Lively and the “legal” authorities of at least one county, in order that the Baldwin-Felts detectives might kill them and thus avenge the killing of their brother-rat at Matewan. For Sally Chambers, in wild grief on the courthouse steps at Welch, cried to one of the Baldwin men: “Oh, Mr. Salter, oh, what did you all do this for? We did not come up here for this.”
And the coal company gunman replied: “Well, that is all right, we didn’t come down to Matewan on the 19th day for this either.”
Lively St
ill Around
Thus, in a most final manner, was Sid Hatfield denied his change of venue. C.E. Lively was tried for the murder of Ed Chambers. Without a blush, he pled “self-defense.” The jury was stacked, the prosecution half-hearted, and Lively, to the surprise of no one in coal operators’ West Virginia, was acquitted. No one was ever brought to trial for the murder of Sid Hatfield.
And so we have a picture of the activities of the Baldwin-Felts detectives in West Virginia. The story is incomplete, and the many criminal actions of the organization will never be brought to light. But this portion of the life of C.E. Lively will help form an idea of just what the coal operator tactics were, and also show just why the miners hated the Baldwin men. Lively continued to give evidence against the UMW in later trials, and is reported to now be living in the coal fields around Lochgelly, W. Va. We trust that he continued the good work for the coal companies for a long time after he killed Ed Chambers and Sid Hatfield.
12/24/1952 (Twenty-sixth)
Before leaving the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency we should like to quote a letter in full, written by Operative 24 of that organization. It is not only good evidence of the thorough spying which the Baldwin men did for the operators, but it gives an excellent description of how the miners organized in Mingo in 1920. The letter is self-explanatory. Oh, yes, it happens that it was taken from the corpse of Albert Felts, when he was killed at Matewan:
“Mr. George Bausewine, Jr.
When Miners March Page 10
