“We hope that you can bring the forces of the Federal Government to our assistance so that some action can be taken which can punish those guilty of breaking the laws of the state and menacing the lives and property of the citizens of Kanawha County, and that the preservation of law and order may once more obtain.
“Respectfully submitted,
“HENRY A. WALKER
“Sheriff, Kanawha County,
“West Virginia.
“FRANK C. BURDETTE,
“Prosecuting Attorney,
“Kanawha County, West Virginia.
“S.E. CHILDRESS,
“President, County Court of
“Kanawha County, West Virginia.
“H.K. Black.
“Judge of the Intermediate Court,
“Kanawha County, West Virginia.”
The last paragraph of the above letter should be reread. It will be noted that it sounds the usual cry for “law and order,” which in itself is no bad thing. However, nothing exists in itself, but only in relation to the concrete circumstances surrounding a given situation. We hope that we have shown that the miners of West Virginia had by this time exhausted every possible avenue of “law and order” in their appeals to the governor, to the legislature, to county officials and to federal investigators.
Such conscientious appeals through usual legal channels had brought the miners a period of unemployment of more than a year’s duration; they had seen their wives and children shiver with cold in inadequate garments; they and their families had been deprived of food through the arbitrary action of military dictator Tom Davis acting in the name of Governor Morgan; they had been beaten, jailed, shot and murdered.
Operators Real Culprits
Such were the blessings of the observance of law and order, by the coal miners in the State of West Virginia. For coal company law and coal company order were not made for the benefit of coal miners, and such was the harsh legal situation in the Mountain State.
We accuse the coal operators of West Virginia of being the real violators of law and order. For therein lies the truth. Such statutes as those requiring the hiring of checkweighmen and prohibiting the employment of gunmen mine guards had been openly and contemptuously flouted. Murder had been committed by men hired by the coal operators, and the murderers had gone unpunished. Fundamental rights of speech and assembly as guaranteed in both state and federal constitutions had been denied the coal miners through the institution of martial law by a servile state administration.
We hope that we have documented the above statements sufficiently to allow of no doubt as to their accuracy. By late August, 1921, the miners had exhausted every legal means of redress. They were now faced with a choice of two alternatives: the meek acceptance of slavery or action which was in violation of coal company “law and order.” The inevitability of the latter course is obvious to anyone familiar with the traditions of the miners.
Before we continue to follow the progress of the Union miners who had become so incensed over the fate of their brothers in Mingo and Logan counties that they had seized arms to redress their wrongs, we wish to discuss two other matters. One is a further analysis of the economic forces at work in West Virginia. The other is a discussion of Logan County, which has not yet received treatment in this work. We hope that we have furnished enough evidence to prove the coal company autocracy in Mingo County. The reader may not believe this, but the situation in Logan County was even worse.
Story of a Giant
We shall speak further of Logan after we give brief mention to a giant which lived and still lives, in the United States. Its name is the United States Steel Corporation. It is a powerful giant before which rulers bow and governments tremble. It has a peculiarity in that it is hard to see, even though it may be present everywhere. This is because it has learned very well how to hide itself through the tutelage of erudite gentlemen called corporation lawyers. Teaching a giant how to disguise itself so that it does not seem present is a neat legal trick, and corporation lawyers are sometimes rewarded by being appointed either as Federal, District or Supreme Court judges.
By 1921 this giant named U.S. Steel had at least one scaly foot in West Virginia. It was exceedingly powerful, although, as before noted, mostly invisible. And it must be reported, in 1953, that its power has not decreased with the years.
Although it was never visible in the forefront of the battle, it should be emphasized that U.S. Steel in 1920 was the most powerful enemy of the coal miners of West Virginia. Elsewhere in this work we have pointed out that the Norfolk & Western Railroad became the owner of 300,000 acres of coal lands in the Pocahontas field in 1901. U.S. Steel bought the land and simply turned it over to the railroad. That this was not an act of charity may be deduced from the fact that the Norfolk & Western was a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which had a close tie with the Girard Trust Company, which was in turn dominated by the banking house of J.P. Morgan. And the financial control of U.S. Steel centered in the House of Morgan, which meant that the steel company was all this while doing business with itself.
After it gave, or “sold” the properly to the Norfolk & Western, the steel corporation then leased 50,000 acres of this same coal property for its own exclusive use. It continued this same method of self-dealing and, with further financial pressures of a time-honored nature, it apparently became the actual ruling head of the whole coal network in the southern part of West Virginia. The explanation of all of this maneuvering would be so complex, even if it were all known, as to preclude presentation in these pages. But we shall amplify a little further.
1/20/1953 (Forty-third)
The following quotation will not be especially easy reading. It is full of facts and figures. But it is clear and it presents a complicated picture in as simple a manner as possible. It gives something of the ramifications of U.S. Steel in West Virginia, and for this reason is valuable. The document from which this was taken was submitted in 1921 to the investigation Subcommittee of the Committee on Education of Labor.
It begins by citing a Report to Congress by the Interstate Commerce Commission on Discrimination and Monopolies in Coal and Oil, made Jan. 25, 1907:
“ ‘As to the Norfolk & Western Railway Co., we desire to report that prior to the year 1901 there were 300,000 acres more or less of coal lands in what is known as the Pocahontas Flat Top Coal Field, in the states of Virginia and West Virginia which were owned by the Flat Top Coal Land Association.
‘In the year 1901 the Flat Top Coal Land Association gave an option thereon to certain persons, to wit: Messrs. E.H. Gary, William Edenborn, and Isaac T. Mann, known as syndicate managers…. So at present the situation is that the Pocahontas Coal & Coke Co. owns the fee simple title or mineral rights upon about 300,000 acres of Pocahontas coal in the states of Virginia and West Virginia….
‘The Norfolk & Western Railway Co. purchased the entire stock of the Pocahontas Coal & Coke Co., and thus acquired control of the coal lands aforesaid, with the idea that the acquisition of these coal lands by any other person or corporation than itself would be detrimental to the interests of that company, and in the sale of the coal fields aforesaid to the Pocahontas Coal & Coke Co. it was arranged, through Mr. E.H. Gary, one of the syndicate managers who was connected with the United Steel Corporation, that said corporation should have a lease upon 50,000 acres of said land for the purpose of furnishing it with a fuel supply.
‘The lease for the benefit of the United States Steel Corporation is operated under the name of the United States Coal & Coke Co., which is a subsidiary company of the Steel Corporation…'”
Interlocking Directorates
The Pocahontas Coal & Coke Co. is closely allied to the Pocahontas Railroad, both through the Norfolk & Western Railway Co. and through their several directorates. Three directors and one vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad are directors of the Norfolk & Western Railway, and three of the same men are directors of the coal company. The Norfolk & Western Railwa
y Co., is closely allied with the Pennsylvania Railroad and The Pennsylvania Co., having four directors in common. The Girard Trust Co. of Philadelphia – one of the Morgan & Co. group of banks – (and) the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. have five directors in common. Both the United States Steel Corporation and the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. are dominated by Morgan & Co. interests.
“The Norfolk & Western Railway, while already owning the large Pocahontas Coal & Coke Co. tract in the Pocahontas Field, as previously described, in 1917 extended its interests into Mingo County and Pike County, Ky., as shown by the following extract from its annual report of Dec. 31, 1917.
“ ‘Owing to the high prices of fuel coal, your company decided to acquire leasehold interests in coal mining properties in order to mine a substantial portion of its supply. Accordingly leasehold interests in mines in Mingo County, W. Va., and Pike County, Ky., known as the Howard and Vulcan operations, have been acquired. These operations include about 3,800 acres, and it is estimated that they will furnish one-sixth of your company’s present fuel coal requirements.’
“The Steel Corporation’s subsidiary company in the Pocahontas field, the United States Coal & Coke Co., is the largest producer in the State of West Virginia, putting out in 1918 nearly 5,000,000 tons, or more than one-fourth of the aggregate of the seven companies producing above a million tons per annum. (Annual Report Director of Mines, West Virginia, 1918.) This company in 1918 operated 11 plants at different places in McDowell County and employed 3,888 men, or nearly twice as many as the next largest company in that field.
“The second largest producer in the Pocahontas field is the Pocahontas Fuel Co., producing in 1918 nearly 3,000,000 tons and employing over 2,000 men. The president of this company is Mr. Isaac T. Mann, who was associated with Messrs. Gary and Edenborn of the United States Steel Corporation in the syndicate purchase in 1901 of the larger portion of the Pocahontas field to which we have previously referred.
Absentee Owners Get Rich
“Since that transaction Mr. Mann has become the head of a coterie of men living in and near Bramwell, W. Va., who control a group of banks and operating coal companies, which, including the Pocahontas Fuel Co., employed in 1918 nearly 7,000 men and produced almost 5,500,000 tons of coal. Included among these companies is the Red Jacket Consolidated Coal & Coke Co., of which, according to the Pujo report of 1913 on the money trust, Mr. E.T. Stotesbury is a member of the firm of Morgan & Co. Mr. Stotesbury also was director of the Girard Trust Co., and of the Penn Mutual Life Insurance Co., of Philadelphia, and at that time each of these companies held $100,000 of the bonds of the Red Jacket Co.
“The third largest producer in the Pocahontas Field is the New River and Pocahontas Consolidated Coal Co., producing in 1918 over a million and a half tons and employing about 600 men in McDowell County. The controlling director and president of this company is Mr. E.J. Berwind. Mr. Berwind is a director of more than 40 industrial and financial corporations. He is a director of the Girard Trust Co., of Philadelphia, and of the Guaranty Trust Co., of New York, both of these institutions belonging to the recognized Morgan group. In 1905 Mr. Berwind was one of the large shareholders of a syndicate formed to acquire the property of the Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Co. to be turned over to the United States Steel Corporation. This property included over 240,000 acres of coal land located in the Birmingham district…
“The Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Co. operates mines in Logan County, whose output in 1913 was nearly 300,000 tons and employed about 300 men. One of the directors of this company is a director of the United States Steel Corporation.”
We hope that the above documentation is enough to show the domination of the West Virginia scene in 1921 by United States Steel – that is, by absentee ownership, which simply means that the wealth of the largest bituminous coal producing area in the world was siphoned away, leaving West Virginia a comparatively poor, backward “hillbilly” state, without the fine roads and schools which its miners had so richly earned.
1/21/1953 (Forty-fourth)
We shall linger with a discussion of the United States Steel Corporation for just a little longer. For fear that there may be someone in 1953 who does not yet know the anti-union attitude of this financial giant we quote the missive conveyed to all subsidiaries of the corporation by its executive committee six weeks after it was organized in 1901.
“That we are unalterably opposed to an extension of Union labor and advise subsidiary companies to take firm position when these questions come up and say that they are not going to recognize it; that is, any extension of unions in mills where they do not now exist; that great care should be used to prevent trouble, and they promptly report and confer with this corporation.”
The West Virginia coal companies in Logan and Mingo demonstrated in 1920-21 that the order “to take firm position” was not ignored. The chain of command was like this: coal company, then railroad, then U.S. Steel, then Girard Trust Co. of Philadelphia, then Morgan & Co. of New York. It is not too strong a statement to aver that the State of West Virginia in 1921 was a sponge in the hands of J.P. Morgan, to be squeezed dry of wealth, and woe to him who opposed that squeeze!
Samuel Untermyer, a nationally known lawyer and industrialist of liberal tendencies, did not hesitate to point out the role of U.S. Steel on the West Virginia scene. In reply to a coal operator testifying before the Kenyon subcommittee he retorted: “I would like to say in reply, with all due respect, that when you have seen as much of the subterranean operations of the company as I have, and the agencies through which it deals, and know as much as I do about the effect of its interlocking directorates and its indirect control of industries, you understand, you will change your mind as to whether or not the United States Steel Co. under cover has anything to do with the labor situation in West Virginia. Its fingerprints, in my judgment, are all over.”
An Analogous Case
Untermyer brings out an interesting illustration of the power of the steel company which had an almost exact parallel recently in President Truman’s decision to change a government action against an oil cartel from a criminal to a civil suit. The reasons given were that such a criminal suit would endanger our national security.
The same thing came about in regard to U.S. Steel. Under the Sherman Act, President Theodore Roosevelt brought a civil suit in the first place, however, against the huge corporation, rather than instituting a criminal action. The case was postponed for a long time until finally we found ourselves involved in World War I, with the case still pending before the Supreme Court. The court, needless to say, did not dissolve United States Steel when it finally made a decision. Untermyer explains the matter thusly:
“And then after it had postponed the case, finally the situation was acute along at that time and they granted a reargument and I presume – I am not criticizing the court, because we were in a terrible situation and the Steel Co., with its power, had grown more and more, and it was supplying the Allies and supplying us, and we were in a terrible condition, under financial stress, and if the court had enforced what I believe to be the law against the Steel Co., it would have brought on a financial cataclysm.
“The thing had been allowed to grow and grow until it had gotten so big that it was bigger than the law; that it was bigger than the nation, until it had such a monopoly that they did not dare to touch it.”
The recent governmental tenderness with the oil cartel is an analogous situation.
So much for the tremendous financial forces which were opposing the miners in their organizational drive. The enemy, it must be conceded, was sufficiently powerful to give any man or group of men pause; but the miners of Mingo held on grimly. And the miners of the Kanawha field mobilized with their rifles at the mouth of Lens Creek.
Most of this account has been concerned, understandably, with Mingo County, for this was the strike field in 1920-21. We have stated, however, that neighboring Logan County was even worse than Mingo, insofar as coal company autocracy was concern
ed. This is true. Miners in Mingo County had managed to organize UMW local unions and had set up sufficient organization to maintain a strike for longer than a year. In Logan County this was not possible.
Most everyone had heard of a company town. Logan County in 1921 was a company county, manned by coal company police, governed by coal company authorities, and taught by coal company teachers. A coal company doctor brought you into the world and a coal company undertaker – especially if you mistakenly talked like a Union man – ushered you out of it. The undertaker, perhaps, was given much of his business by one or another of the many “deputy sheriffs” of High Sheriff Don Chafin.
Chafin was first elected sheriff of Logan County in 1912. He was the son of an ex-sheriff from whom he was supposed to have inherited about $15,000 and a small business. But he was a long distance from being a wealthy man before he found profit in becoming the head of the armed forces who kept a good-sized chunk of southern West Virginia a police-patrolled private domain. He let his brother-in-law, Frank P. Hearst, have the sheriff’s job in 1916, but Chafin was once again a mighty champion of “law and order” in January 1921.
Being sheriff of Logan County was lucrative, although the salary was only $3,500 a year at that time. Chafin, as a matter of fact, paid only a little less than that in taxes, exclusive of income taxes, every year. He had been presented with stock in coal companies worth from fifty thousand to sixty thousand dollars.
Chafin was commander of the deputy sheriffs in Logan, and he fixed the amount of money which each received. The county of Logan did not pretend to pay these men in the usual way, as is stated by the Kenyan subcommittee: “The operators of that county (Logan) contributed in 1920 $46,630 to the payment of deputy sheriffs. The year 1921 it was $61,517…. We have the astounding situation of deputy sheriffs performing duties of deputy sheriffs in the county, and not merely defending property of their employers, paid by contributions from the operators. It is amazing that anyone would seek to defend such a condition.”
When Miners March Page 17
