When Miners March

by William C. Blizzard

  2/21/1952 (Sixty-seventh)

  On Jan. 15, 1923, Captain Percy Tetow was sent to West Virginia by UMW President John L. Lewis to assume charge of the executive and financial affairs of District 17. The reason given by Tetlow for this step was the fact that the district leadership was busy being tried on charges ranging from misdemeanors to treason and was therefore unable to function effectively. Whatever the measure of fact contained in this declaration, it is nevertheless also true that the arrival of Tetlow marked the beginning of the transfer of power from the district to the national level. This shift in authority did not come all at once. As late as May 15, 1924, Tetlow spoke at a District 17 convention in Charleston, giving a financial report, and explained his presence as follows: “I am only making this explanation because during the year 1923 I was in here and had charge of that particular work to assist the district, and my duties in that respect are over as your president has assumed the duties of the district immediately after he was acquitted at Fayetteville.

  “Consequently, I am only here in an advisory capacity to assist the district in whatever manner I can as a representative of the International Union.”

  New District Leader

  This is quite a modest statement in view of the fact that just one month and two days later Tetlow wrote a letter to Sub-district No. 2 head William Blizzard upon the letterhead of District 17, and on this letterhead Percy Tetlow’s name is typed in as president and C.F. Keeney’s name is X’d out. The letter follows:

  “Office of President

  “Charleston, W. Va.

  “June 17, 1924.

  “In view of the policy adopted by the International Executive Board, I deem it inadvisable to continue your Sub-district office after June 30, 1924. Will you kindly make arrangements to close all accounts of your office on that date and that no further obligations nor indebtedness (sic) will be granted after June 30th.

  “I will arrange to have an audit of Subdistrict accounts and such accounts will be taken over by the District Organization which will assume all obligation. (sic)”

  “Trusting this will meet with your approval, I beg to remain,

  “Fraternally yours,

  “/s/Percy Tetlow

  “President District No. 17.”

  In another letter Blizzard was informed that he was retained as a District organizer.

  It seems that the referendum vote on the abolition of the subdistricts was taken and their abolition approved, but this had not yet occurred on June 1, 1924, when sub-district and District 17 officers met again in Charleston and jointly signed a resolution which brought on a meeting of the International Executive Board June 12 to 14, 1924. At this meeting a decision was made to revoke the autonomy of District 17, effective June 17, 1924.

  The content of the West Virginia District-Sub-District resolution, which led to this drastic action, is not at this time known. But we have shown the desperate plight of the miners in the Mountain State, and the increasingly difficult position of District 17, and it is probable that the local leadership thought it best to retreat somewhat from the scale set by the Jacksonville Agreement: whereas the “no backward step” policy of President John L. Lewis was well known. At the conclusion of the Board meeting which deposed the elected District 17 officials, replacing them with provisional appointees, Lewis said:

  “The International Executive Board had given profound consideration to the menacing conditions existing in District No. 17, United Mine Workers of America, as revealed from the testimony of the members of the District Executive Board and the several sub district officers. It is apparent that the integrity of the district organization is threatened by marked differences of opinion existing within its councils and that the declared policies of the United Mine Workers of America are being applied with insufficient vigor in that territory.”

  Very Sad Days

  It appears that Lewis was alarmed over the loss of membership in the UMW, over the increasingly severe economic decline in the industry, and this centralizing step was an effort to wrestle with the terrible forces which were leading to the debacle of 1929, when bodies hurtling from skyscraper windows were an uncomfortably common sight. It was true that an era of seeming prosperity led the United States as a whole to the foolish optimism of “a chicken in every pot” philosophy. But the coal miner in West Virginia had not even the proverbial pot, let along the chicken. Not even the iron will and undoubted ability of John L. Lewis could cope with the forces of economic necessity.

  Many of the enemies of Lewis have said that this revocation of autonomy led to the destruction of the UMW in West Virginia, prior to the great new days of 1933. But the welfare of trade Union members, willynilly, is tied to the economic well-being of the industry in which their members work. This is not to say that the owners of industry, though they were rolling in wealth, would permit more than a trickle of the profits to go to their workers. Their history proves that they will not, and that the grimmest sort of struggle is necessary before working people are able to obtain even elementary rights. But we are repeating the rather well known fact that it is impossible to get blood out of a turnip.

  Whether a different policy on the part of Lewis could have wrung from the turnip some sort of substitute for blood is now an academic question. That the appointing of officials in 1924 to head District 17 did not help matters is obvious from a casual glance at the West Virginia scene a few years later. Paid-up membership in 1920-22 in District 17 was 42,000. Under elected district leaders it shrank in mid-1924 to about half that number. Under appointed district leaders from 1924 to 1927, it further diminished to a probable 1,000 members. Just prior to the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt there were a few hundred members, at most, in all of West Virginia. The 1930 miners’ convention reported 512 UMW men out of a potential 100,000. The iron-studded club of economic depression was more merciless toward trade-union than toward the large capitalist. And many were the small business men who sold apples on the same corner with their former employees.

  Chapter Thirteen: An Era Ends

  2/27/1953 (Conclusion)

  The coal operators had won a complete victory in West Virginia. Through injunction, through supine and active government accomplices, through far-reaching court-action, through pistol and blackjack, the coal owners in the 1922-32 period virtually extirpated the United Mine Workers of America from West Virginia. Unionization in the coal fields of the Mountain State was thrown back to the 1897-1900 level. Percy Tetlow, District 17's newly appointed president, told yet another congressional investigating committee in 1928 that 50,000 people had been forced from their coal company shacks from 1922 through 1925, their crime being that the family breadwinner was a Union man.

  “The Chairman: Where are those people?

  “Mr. Tetlow: God knows.

  “The Chairman: Are they still about there?

  “Mr. Tetlow: Everywhere.

  “Senator Bruce: Of course many of them went back as nonunion laborers?

  “Mr. Tetlow: Yes, they have gone back to work on a nonunion basis.

  “Senator Wheeler: You mean they had to do that or starve?

  “Mr. Tetlow: Yes”

  Mr. Tetlow, with his repetitions of “Everywhere,” sounds somewhat like Poe’s Raven, and indeed America’s foremost tragic poet could have found inspiration for the most gloomy maunderings, had he been alive and in the neighborhood. The UMW membership in West Virginia shrank to nothing, the deposed District 17 leadership, or part of it, from time to time began rump organizations which had no real permanency, and the country as a whole skidded toward such poverty as it had never before seen. There is little need to detail political organizations which from time to time dipped an inquiring finger into the West Virginia pie. They were several and all had some sort of following, but not until the spring of 1933, with the National Industrial Recovery Act and its Section 7(a) which guaranteed the right of collective bargaining, did the United Mine Workers of America, like the mythical Phoenix, arise from
its own ashes in an all but miraculous rebirth of power. But these days of the twenties and the early thirties were the end of an era in the epic of Struggle and Win, Struggle and Lose. Few could then see the shining future when pressing all about was the bleak present, made more bitter by memories of a brilliant past.

  Postscript

  The historian finds convenient heading under which to block off and isolate for study certain segments of the human comedy, and this is a necessary process, for otherwise the vast panorama of man’s fighting, loving, struggling existence would be too complex for comprehension. The boiling inferno of the life of humankind, however, with its many-sided social relationships in continual flux, never ceases and this of course holds true in our little study of a small segment of humanity, the coal diggers of West Virginia.

  Because of the well-defined break, the temporary defeat of 1922-23, we end our story of Struggle and Lose, Struggle and Win, at that time. The story of the rebirth of the United Mine Workers of America, of roaring mass meetings in which the West Virginian reaffirmed his right of collective bargaining, of a Keynesian Federal Government under Franklin D. Roosevelt, of the horrible drift toward World War II, of all this and more, must be told at a later date. A great deal has been told, of course, in many thick volumes, but not so much from Labor’s point of view. And Labor must tell its own story.

  What has become of many of the men mentioned in the foregoing pages? Death has overtaken many, oppressed and oppressor alike. One of the UMW attorneys in the Charles Town treason trials died a Republican and near-millionaire. Another died a comparatively poor man and a Communist. Fred Mooney recently put a bullet through his head, after having been a small businessman for years. Other District 17 officials of the Armed March days are beaten old men, working as flagmen on State Road Commission jobs or as clerks in West Virginia liquor stores, or, apparently, at nothing at all.

  Of the top District 17 men of the twenties, William Blizzard alone has somehow lived to pull through to continued high-ranking position in the West Virginia UMW. He is currently District 17 president, a few years away from retirement.

  It is not necessary to tell anyone of the current power, numerical and financial, of the United Mine Workers of America. The name of John L. Lewis is as well known as that of any breakfast food, which, in our rather peculiar way of assessing recognition, is solid assurance of national fame. The UMW is seemingly impregnable.

  What Lies Ahead?

  What of the future? Unless the past is a key to the future the study of history is a profitless exercise. This writer pretends to be no seer. However, he wishes to advance certain opinions, which will be tested with the passage of time. Today the UMW stands on the verge of another era in unionism in the United States. The retirement of John L. Lewis from the Union scene, through death or otherwise, is bound to occur within a few short years. Due to the UMW structure, in large part, this will have a telling effect upon the Union, for men of the caliber of Lewis, with the years of prestige behind a name, are not easily found. A successor to Lewis, who could not walk several yards in the Iowan’s shoes without moving a foot, is not at the moment in sight.

  A People’s History

  Men of strong will and great ability are not so often likely to have others of equal strength as cohorts. It seems not to be of the nature of strength and ability to invite partners into the limelight. Witness Franklin D. Roosevelt, and witness the debacle of the Democratic Party since his death. This is not to say that with the death of Lewis a similar debacle will result for the UMW. It will likely not. Such historical parallelism is far too pat and simple to be convincing. But there is coming a period of crisis for the UMW, and the death of Lewis may be a part of that crisis. Our national economy at this time, while appearing strong, is much like the pre-1929 economy. The seeming flash of health is the unnatural rosiness of the tubercular patient’s anxious face.

  The UMW will be forced more and more into the political battles which are so obviously a part of the economic struggle. This may eventually take the form of a Labor Party.

  A final note. Some readers, some scholars, may protest this writer’s method of departing from academic “objectivity,” and rooting enthusiastically for the coal miners. That is too bad, but we have no apologies. We want our writing to be read, not grow musty in the library of any elite coterie. This is a people’s history, and if it brawls a little, and brags a little, and is angry more than a little, well, the people in this book were that way, and so are their descendants. The people in West Virginia haven’t had a chance to get their lively history between covers very often. “History” is ordinarily that dull subject which tells about who was governor, when, and what a fine fellow he was, and the great things all the great people did. Well, in this book we told about a lot of the little things the great people did, and a lot of the great things the little people did. We hope it hasn’t been as boring as the average historical tome. We have tried to give an idea as to the lusty history of the coal diggers of West Virginia. We hope that we have in part succeeded.

  Appendix 1 – Original Document Images

  All document images from the William C. Blizzard Collection archived at Appalachian Community Services, unless otherwise noted.

  From the William C. Blizzard Collection of the West Virginia Division of Archives and History

  Appendix 2 – A Biographic Sketch of Bill Blizzard

  In rebuttal of entries in both printings/editions of

  The West Virginia Encyclopedia.

  By William C. Blizzard and Wess Harris

  William “Bill” Blizzard was born, appropriately enough, above Paint Creek in rough and tumble 1892 West Virginia. At the age of ten, when so many of his city counterparts were in school, he began working in the mines with his father, Timothy. As a young teenager, striking miners would often camp in his yard and more than once his mother, Ma Blizzard, would send him out to hunt game to feed the hungry strikers. Raised to be a miner’s miner, he detested men who smoked in the mine – not because of safety concerns, but out of a dislike for time wasted and coal not loaded. A Union man from a Union family, he would become a UMWA sub-district president while still in his 20s and would go on to orchestrate the massive Armed March of 1921. Leading the famed Red Neck Army of 10,000, he wore a coat and tie throughout those dangerous ten days. Bill Blizzard was a class act. Coal miners could be (can be) a hard drinking lot, but all knew not to offer Bill a drink. Organizing requires a clear head.

  Bill was blacklisted from the mines after the Armed March and would never again dig coal. Along with several hundred vets from the Red Neck Army, he was put on trial for his life after the Battle on Blair Mountain. Bill would continue to lead the men and designed a host of jury moving tactics that may well have saved his life and the lives of his men. The UMWA stood by Bill during the treason trial in Charles Town but afterwards John L. Lewis was bent on centralizing power and local heroes were not much in demand. The miner’s hero was told from above that he was no longer employed. Even so, he would advocate for the Union before the West Virginia Legislature throughout the 1920s and beyond. Bill spent much of the 1920s at a variety of jobs. Pulling fresh fish from the Kanawha River to serve with Rae’s highly regarded pies, the Blizzards ran Wright’s Restaurant at a time when Union support was not something oft found in public.

  In the early 1930s, his beloved Union needed capable organizers. Bill, champion for and hero to the men of the mines, was called back. He knew the creeks; he knew the hollers; he knew the hearts of the miners. For his dedication he consistently won grudging agreements from the coal companies and the admiration of Union families. Blizzard’s hero status from Blair Mountain and the Trials insured his success as an organizer but he received little credit for his efforts. John L. Lewis had need for such a talent but no liking for anyone who could emerge as a potential rival. While Bill and his cadre of leaders hardened on Blair Mountain did the heavy lifting (most notably Charley Payne, lifelong friend who would serve with Bill until
his retirement), Lewis installed Pennsylvanian Van Bittner as head of District 17. Lewis missed no opportunity to credit Bittner at the expense of Blizzard. In the August 1, 1933, UMW Journal, Bittner is mentioned no fewer than six times while Blizzard is ignored (see Corbin’s anthology, final entry). Yet Bill Blizzard was the chap who made the huge gathering of miners happen. Van Bittner was hardly the type to inspire the miners. He was from out of state, preferred to ride in a Cadillac (with a driver!), expected his staff to call him Boss or The Boss, and kept a mistress in a Charleston hotel. Bill drove his own Chevy.

  Bill would eventually move up to become President of Provisional District 17. Provisional meaning PROVIDED John L. Lewis wants it to be a district! Yet even heroes ultimately see their days move into twilight. Bill would retire in 1955. His final letter to John L. Lewis makes it clear that while they may have had private differences, Bill Blizzard was a man loyal to the Union: “Whether my life span be long or short, I will always say that I have worked for the greatest Union in the world and the greatest boss.” Much had been accomplished.

  Sadly, Bill Blizzard is given scant attention in the history books – and what is written is often grossly inaccurate. Many of his achievements were left to the great tradition of oral interpretation. Everyone seemed to have a Bill Blizzard story though they were careful to whom it was passed. The people of West Virginia choose their sides like someone picking out a coffin. Once committed, owners rarely change their minds. Perhaps that is the greatest testimony to his import. You either loved or hated Bill Blizzard, with a passion. In 1939, when L.U. 6113 complained of being lied to by a district rep, Bill Blizzard stood with the men and sent a letter supporting their position. He was also willing and able to communicate with his fists when the situation merited – such as an incessant heckler at one of his speeches. The phrase “knocking some sense into someone” was played out before a stunned but supportive crowd. Abraham Lincoln once said, “Everything for effect.” Bill was that kind of leader. Sometimes nonverbal communication helps to create a better environment for civil debate.