When Miners March

by William C. Blizzard

  Gets No Redress

  “When the noise of the cars was out of my hearing I raised my head from the ground, and saw my blood in pools on the ground where I had lain. I sat there for about three minutes, struggled to my feet and staggered out to the railroad, as my hands were still tied and I was weak and very sore. I walked to a coaling station which was a very short distance away, finding there an engineer and fireman who saw my condition and asked me what the trouble was. I told them I had been in the hands of a mob. They wished to know what the mob had me for. I told them I was a member of the United Mine Workers of America. They said that this is a shame, and asked me where I was going. I told them I wanted to go to Williamson. They said you cannot catch a train going that way and for me to wait there until we back up to Wilcoe and get our train and we will pick you up as we come down and take you to Williamson. This they did, I arrived in Williamson on the morning of August the 11th, 1920, about eight o’clock and left on train No. 15 the same day for Charleston, W. Va., to see Governor Cornwell, who promised to investigate. A week later I received a letter from the Governor, saying, ‘That each county in the state had its own local government, and the law only made it possible for the Governor to cooperate with the county authorities in preserving law and order and there were many things that he would do different from what he was then doing if the law made it possible for him to act.’

  “To this date I’ve never gotten any redress.”

  12/30/1952 (Twenty-ninth)

  The date Frank Ingham is referring to is 1921, but it is just as true that he has yet received no redress in the waning days of the year 1952. Somehow the legal flunkies of the coal operators in Mingo and McDowell Counties seemed immune to legal action. This may well have been because there were legal flunkies higher up in the governmental scale in West Virginia.

  Which brings us to a consideration of John J. Cornwell, who was governor of the Mountain State in 1920, and is now publisher of the weekly newspaper, The Hampshire Review. This will be brief, as Cornwell’s anti-union bias has already been shown earlier in this work in reference to a miners’ march in 1919. Evidence that he has not changed has been seen in his cooperation in publicity matters with J.G. Bradley, president of the Elk River Coal & Lumber Company at Widen, an operation currently (December, 1952) on strike. Bradley is importing strikebreakers and hiring armed mine guards and “deputy sheriffs” in the traditional West Virginia manner. Cornwell is abetting him editorially. When Cornwell left the governorship he became an attorney for the B. & O. Railroad, and in 1923 and 1924 aided the presidential candidacy of notorious union-hater John W. Davis, once of Clarksburg, W. Va., Davis at this time is arguing before the United States Supreme Court to maintain Negro segregation in the nation’s schools.

  Perhaps two incidents of Cornwell’s career as 15th governor of West Virginia will bear repeating. He tells of them in his autobiography, A Mountain Trail, published in 1939. There was a rumor, according to Cornwell that the miners were going to march again, and that they were getting guns from a New York dealer for $1 apiece.

  Cornwell Hires Detective

  So the governor hired a detective to watch the trains coming from the East. The man reported that guns were going to the secretary of a UMW local Union in Boone County. So Cornwell prepared a warrant, citing the Red Man Act, ordering seizure of the guns as evidence. Deputy Sheriff Given of Kanawha County served the warrant and returned to Charleston with a boy and two truckloads of guns and ammunition. This boy, Cornwell says, is the only person ever arrested in West Virginia on a Governor’s Warrant, and the former chief executive seems rather proud of his distinguished “first.” However, it developed that the boy was the wrong person, and he was released.

  The other incident bearing on Union affairs involved an election, probably about 1919, of the president of UMW District 17. C.F. Keeney was running for reelection. About 11 p.m. one night, Governor Cornwell received a telephone call from a man who said he wanted to see him at the rear of the gubernatorial mansion. With what might seem a lack of caution the Governor agreed to meet this perfect stranger, and so did. The man explained that he was opposing Keeney for the District 17 presidency and feared that he would be shot. So he wanted a permit to carry a gun. He had come to the Governor because the statute required a notice in the newspapers. The man wished to have the statutory requirement waived; that is, he wanted a pistol right that minute. Cornwell said that he couldn’t do that, but, “if you do carry a gun and use it only in self-defense, and you should be convicted, I could and would pardon you.” The unidentified aspirant to Union office, who would certainly have been a willing operator tool, judging by this evidence, then demonstrated that he considered his friendship with the Governor to have reached a really fraternal basis: He asked for $45 with which to buy a gun!

  Cornwell apparently did not feel that their friendship had reached this stage, for he refused the money. But by a happy coincidence there was a pistol concealed behind a picture above the mantel on which his visitor was leaning. The Governor agreed to lend him this weapon. The man then glanced to see that it was loaded, stuck it into his pocked and let him out through the back door….

  “The only explanation of this indiscreet performance of mine,” says Cornwell, “is that I thought the man was honest and square.”

  Whatever the explanation the above is as Cornwell gives it in his book, and it must be pronounced as most unusual behavior for the Chief Executive of a state – or at least as most unusual RECORDED behavior. Nothing further concerning Cornwell need be mentioned except that he employed a “work-or-fight” law before the federal draft of civilians went into effect in 1917, using as a pretext a “shortage of labor.” Under the provisions of this act a census form was prepared which, in the words of the Governor, “was a thing of beauty, for there was no part of a man’s life neglected in it.” These census forms were given to mayors of all towns who then gave them to police who had the job of tracking down men not gainfully employed. The idea apparently was to force into the Army all men not then employed!

  Same Old Team

  How this law could be used in a strike situation is obvious. That it was so used is not at this time known. The federal draft started in July and very soon there was a real labor shortage as men were swallowed up into the AEF. It should be noted that Cornwell’s draft officer was Col. George S. Wallace, who was the military equivalent of prosecuting attorney of the Paint Creek secret military trials of coal miners during the 1912-13 strike.

  Likewise to be recorded is the fact that his adjutant general was Maj. Tom Davis. It will be recalled that Davis had also formerly served the coal operators on Cabin and Paint creeks by being, in effect, a strikebreaker. He was the man who arrested the editor of the labor paper at Huntington, wrecking his print shop in the process. And, in this Mingo strike, Tom Davis was again a military aide of the coal operators.

  As has been related, the miners of Mingo County, in late June, 1920, made a final attempt to face the coal operators over the bargaining table. Their approach was rejected, and, as scheduled, a strike was declared effective on July 1. This made little or no difference in the actual situation, as coal production, except for that of imported “transportation men” had already ceased in Mingo County.

  Chapter Six: Coal Operators Defy U.S.

  12/31/1952 (Thirtieth)

  The Federal Government interceded in July by sending two mediators from the Labor Department to West Virginia. These men met C.F. Keeney at the Virginia Hotel in Williamson, but the Mingo operators refused to consult with the federal officials. The following proposition was submitted to the mine owners through the Department of Labor.

  “THE WILLIAMSON OPERATORS’ ASSOCIATION

  “GENTLEMEN: During the last few weeks trouble has existed between the operators and the miners of the district which has reached a stage wherein certain coal mines have been closed down by a strike of the miners: efforts were made to adjust the difficulties, but neither side would waive from
their original stand in order that the matter might be settled in a fair and equitable manner and in the interest of the public.

  “The government had data and information that serious trouble is probable, constant agitation is on which might result in further loss of life and possible damage to property. The coal situation is such that the government demands immediate settlement of this controversy in order to allow production to continue. The government, desiring to always deal justly with problems of this character, has given this matter fair consideration from the standpoint of both employer and employee, therefore, as representatives of the government, we submit to you the following proposition:

  “1 – The government is in favor of the policy of collective bargaining and advises that the policy be put in effect. There are two types of collective bargaining as thus defined: one in which the employees act as a group through the trade union. The other in which a group of employees are represented by committees to confer with employers regarding conditions of employment.

  “2 – There shall be no discrimination against employees in the exercise of their constitutional right to belong to any organization.

  “3 – All employees evicted from homes shall be restored immediately and no discrimination whatsoever as to eligibility to employment shall be made against any one of said workmen on account of said strike or their participation therein.

  “4 – We recommend the removal of the private agencies now employed and that the regular constituted authority of county and state being invoked in the preservation of law and order in this district, provided such becomes necessary.

  “Subscribed and agreed to this — day of July, 1920.”

  The coal operators of Mingo County did not, of course, agree to any such thing, and the strike continued. The Labor Department men went back to Washington and nothing was done by the coal operators to implement the expressed wishes of the United States Government. The government rather pointedly refrained from taking action to enforce its demands upon the operators, and on July 31, 1920, President Woodrow Wilson wrote the UMW that

  “It is with a feeling of profound regret and horror that I have learned that many of the members of your organization, particularly in the State of Illinois, have engaged in a strike in violation of the terms of the award of the Bituminous Coal Commission and your agreement with the government that the findings of the commission would be accepted by you as final and binding.”

  The truth was that the last Wilson administration, despite the reputation of the President in some liberal circles, was a very long distance from being sympathetic with the aims of Labor. This has been demonstrated in the account of the breaking of the national coal strike of 1919 through a forced interpretation of the applicability of the unconstitutional Lever Act.

  This was also the time of the great steel strike, when nearly 400,000 steel workers walked off their jobs only to be beaten in early 1920. The post World War I era, it may readily be seen, was a time of great social unrest. In Russia there had been a revolution, and many were the large industrialists who feared that the same thing would occur here. They took steps to see that it did not. A great “Red Scare” was started, with the aid of the press and legislative business sycophants. The bearded Bolshevik with his bomb was a familiar cartoon subject. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, before mentioned in his connection with breaking the 1919 coal strike, was making raids on all sides.

  Eugene Victor Debs was still in jail, and Wilson refused to release him. On Jan. 2, 1920 the Department of Justice arrested 2,758 men and women and held 556 aliens for deportation. By the beginning of February more than 10,000 persons had been arrested because of their real or supposed radicalism. The country seemed to have gone mad over the “Red Menace,” and federal and state governments ignored constitutional guarantees while private vigilantes committed acts of terror.

  Miners Called ‘Bolsheviks’

  Such was the atmosphere in which the miners of Mingo were conducting their strike. It may well be believed that they were the targets of many accusations of Bolshevik sympathies. These accusations the miners shrugged off, as they saw that they came from the camp of the enemy. For some years the Union miners in West Virginia who were on strike had worn red bandanas around their necks in order to be able to distinguish friend from foe. From this habit the Union men had come to be called “Rednecks,” and they accepted the title rather proudly. But there was not necessarily any political implication in the term. A strong Union man was a Redneck, no matter what his politics.

  The struggle in Mingo and the other nonunion counties in W. Va. was an economic, trade Union battle, not a political one. The political attitudes of the miners of West Virginia in 1920 should, however, be discussed. The coal operators had been red-baiting the UMW and the miners since at least 1912, as has been noted briefly in our discussion of the 1912-13 strike. The mine owners complained that the UMW was a socialist organization which had in mind the utter confiscation of their property. This they used as an excuse for their inexcusable unwillingness to participate in collective bargaining.

  It may have been that some of the miners in West Virginia, as well as some of their leaders, did in 1920 have some sympathy for the new-born Soviet Union, but this was not a factor in their strike. Certain it is that Mother Jones did, as in her autobiography she tells of a speech she made before the Pan-American Federation of Labor in 1921, when she was 91 years old. “Soviet Russia, I said, had dared to challenge the old order, had handed the earth over to those who toiled upon it, and the capitalists of the world were quaking in their scab-made shoes.” But Mother Jones was never a Communist, nor even a Socialist, though many of her remarks have a Marxist flavor.

  1/2/1953 (Thirty-first)

  But the general rule was that the leadership in the UMW, both nationally and on a state level, was more conservative politically than the membership. The coal operators based their “socialism” charges against the UMW on a change, made in 1912, in the preamble to the UMW national constitution. This was the year in which American Social Democracy, or Socialism, probably reached its zenith. Mighty Socialist orators, headed by Gene Debs, spread the new gospel of the workingman through opera houses and chautauguas; mighty Socialist writers, headed by the famous Jack London did likewise. No man who toiled for a living had not heard of Socialism in 1912. The miners of West Virginia had most emphatically heard of it, and many of them had seen the great Debs in person as he helped them in their strike struggles.

  It was natural that many should embrace the economic philosophy of a government owned and controlled by workingmen. It was all too painfully obvious that the miners were getting very little from a state government owned and controlled by the coal operators.

  But the Socialists in the UMW were a tiny minority, even in the peak year of 1912. The movement, however, was of such vigor that it came up for discussion in the UMW’s 23rd Annual Convention which assembled in that year. For some little time prior to 1912 there had been dissatisfaction in the ranks of Labor with the treatment given the worker by the Democratic and Republican parties. There were many indications that Labor wished to form its own political party.

  Resolution Introduced

  It was, therefore, very logical that the following resolution be introduced at the UMW Convention: “To the officers and delegates of the Twenty-third Annual Convention:

  “Whereas we believe that the emancipation of the workers can only be accompanied through the action of the workers as a class; and

  “Whereas in the class struggle between the capitalist class and the working class, the workers should avail themselves of every weapon at their command; and

  “Whereas the ballot is one of the most powerful weapons in the hands of the working class; and,

  “Whereas the workers should work in Union and harmony on both the industrial and political fields; and,

  “Whereas the Socialist Party has always and everywhere proved itself the champion of the working class; Therefore be it.
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  “RESOLVED. That we, the mine workers of the entire country, adopt and indorse the Socialist Party as the political party of the working class, and urge all workers to rally under the banner of universal brotherhood. And be it further

  “RESOLVED. That we request the officers and delegates of said convention of the United Mine Workers of America to adopt these or similar resolution,

  “David McKee, Secretary Local 1771

  “Anton Trotter.

  “S.A. Woodbury.”

  A Delegate Speaks

  It seems that most of the support for the resolution came from the Illinois delegation. A delegate from UMW District 12 had this to say:

  “I am in favor of an industrial organization for the purpose of educating the workers politically. It is the only school the workers of this country have got. The workers of this country have got to organize politically if we ever expect to get out of the old rut we are in. If we have been making a mistake for all these years, for heaven’s sake, let’s get wise. If we have not got a remedy, let’s get one, and if the Socialist Party is the remedy – and I believe it is – let’s get into it and vote right.”