Cornwell promised the miners an investigation and asked them to turn back. The Governor in his autobiography indicates that he was very blunt: “I reminded them they had broken the Union’s agreement with the coal operators by quitting their jobs without reason when the country was crying for coal.” He told the miners that their assemblage was unlawful and that he wouldn’t let them go. He was asked how he was going to stop them, but rather discreetly made no answer. It was not likely that he was in any real danger, but it is evident that he thought he was, for he makes this comment:
“Should I have replied that a regiment of federal soldiers was under arms at the camp at Chillicothe, Ohio, with orders to move when I passed the word they were needed, the crack of a high-powered rifle might have been the rejoinder, for in the crowd were more than 500 ex-service men in uniform fresh from the bloody battlefields of France.”
According to Keeney, one of the miners spoke to the Governor in the following manner:
“Governor, you have made a good speech, and one that would be alright provided it was carried out. There is a group of men in this audience, who have been overseas fighting to save the world for democracy, but we found the conditions here more hellish then they ever were over there.”
12/16/1952 (Twentieth)
The governor did not accomplish much, so he headed back toward Charleston. The next day the miners began to march and about 1,500 had gotten 32 miles to the town of Danville when Cornwell again sent Keeney to stop them. This time the district president succeeded, and the men went home. Not however, without stating that they wanted to pass a resolution allowing the governor a certain number of days to start his promised investigation. Keeney opposed this, the march stopped, and, apparently, Cornwell never did investigate Logan County. If he did, no changes were made.
This 1919 march was an exceedingly bulky straw in the wind as to what was to occur later in the West Virginia struggle.
On March 20, 1920, Woodrow Wilson’s three-man commission awarded the 34 per cent increase to the Union tonnage men and the 20 per cent increase to the day men. In the nonunion fields in the West Virginia counties before noted, this increase was not granted. There had been previously a 5 to 10 per cent increase in these fields, but a rise in company store rates had helped to offset it. The miners in the Mingo, Logan and other nonunion fields were quite aware that their wages were not up to the Union scale. In addition, they had many other complaints.
They had no checkweighman, hired by themselves to see that they got credit for all the coal they loaded, despite the fact that West Virginia law required this, as it had in 1912 when coal companies openly flouted this statutory requirement. Not only this, they didn’t even have scales in most places. Instead of being paid by weight, they were paid by the coal car. The amount the coal car held varied according to the operator’s whim and what he thought he could get by with. Generally it held from two and a half to five tons, and for loading this car the miner was paid from 65 cents to a dollar.
Operators Flout Law
The state law required these cars be stamped with the number of tons or pounds they held, but this law also was ignored by the coal operator. In many mines the foreman made the miner load the car with a “hump,” so that any stamped weight, if it were on the car at all, would be far exceeded. Income, under these conditions, was far from plush. At the nonunion coal comp of Burnwell, for instance, a miner would draw from $5 to $22 for a two-week period.
The nine-hour day prevailed in the Mingo field, as opposed to eight hours in the Union districts. And the nine hours limit was none too carefully observed, as hours never are under nonunion conditions. For instance, if a man were working on the tipple he had to stay until everything was cleaned up, even when it meant non-paid overtime.
At the mouth of Pond Creek was located the Pond Creek By-Products Company. The company used a coal car which held about three tons. On March 15, 1920, the men were receiving 80 cents for loading this car, on March 16 the wage jumped to 90 cents a car, then on April 1, it went back to 80 cents. Naturally, the men had nothing to say in these fluctuations, they were merely the result of company caprice. Fear of unionization caused this company to raise its pay to $1.25 a car late in June, just before the strike started.
Contract System Explained
The “contract system” of mining was prevalent in the unorganized field. This was a system whereby one miner exploited a group of fellow miners who worked for him under contract. This practice probably got its start when docile southern Negroes were imported by coal companies and worked after this fashion, the native white miner being the “boss.”
Both white and Negro did contract work in Mingo. A man who was a good boss, that is, one who could get the last ounce of effort out of those under him, would be assigned to a section of the mine with a crew under him. The company would agree to pay the boss, say $2 or more for every loaded coal car delivered to the tipple. The boss would pay the men the prevalent scale, anywhere from 80 cents to $1.25, pay the expenses involved in getting the coal out of his section, and pocket the difference.
A good slave driver could make from $400 to $1,000 a month as a contract boss. But he had ceased to be a wage earner and had become a small businessman, one who was living off the labor of miners. The company liked the system because it generally assured the delivery of more coal to the surface per man involved and in the end reduced operating costs to a minimum. What “kickbacks” were involved in the system, from contract boss to superintendent, are not revealed in the historical record, but the possibilities are obvious. It is not to be doubted that many a coal operator in the old days got his start as a contract boss.
Operators Employed ‘Check-Off
Docking from the miner’s pay for coal company services was thorough and detailed. The miner did not have to pay for the air he breathed on company property – or if he did it was disguised in another form – but his pay statement showed deductions for almost everything else. And no miner in Mingo Count argued about his statement. There were plenty of “deputy sheriffs” hanging around the company store to crack his skull if he did.
For his company house the miner in Mingo in 1920 paid about $2 per room per month. His electricity cost him 40 cents a bulb a month. The doctor fee for a single man was $1 a month, for a married man $2 a month. There was a deduction for the blacksmith as well, whether his services were used or not, and the miner paid for his own blasting powder, dynamite, shotpaper for his powder, and his varied tools.
There was also involved the historic right of the Union miner to his “turn.” That is, in Union mines the men were pledged not to compete with one another, no one man hogging everything while another got very little. If a driver hauling cars in a mine (as of 1920, and it was true for years later) finds that one man has not filled his car as fast as the others, he waits till the man does fill it. Or the driver keeps record to see that the man gets an equal number of cars with the others. In the nonunion fields this was not done. The savage jungle-law of the coal operator was brought underground and the men pitted one against the other. The weak, of course, suffered. The strong grew stronger.
Certainly the economic condition of the nonunion miner was deplorable, but his living under constant domination, from work habits to personal habits, was also a bitter source of complaint. The coal operator held the position of the feudal lord, and he kept plenty of armed men in his demesne to enforce his mandates.
12/17/1952 (Twenty-first)
When the miners in Mingo and other unorganized areas began to talk Union the coal operators proved themselves to be the most unimaginative of men, for they used exactly the same tactics which had been practiced by coal operators in West Virginia and elsewhere since before the turn of the century. The “old reliable” Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, with headquarters in Bluefield, was called into service, with its snooping and beating and shooting. Miners were fired on short notice and then evicted from their homes. And strikebreakers were employed.
There was no difference in the story at all, except that the operators were by this time more brutal, and had learned better than ever how to capture city and county governments and turn them to their use. As before, the state government was also an operator tool.
But let us return to the story of how the UMW began organization in Mingo, Logan and the other nonunion counties. The miners in the southern fields were not satisfied for the reasons before given and when they were awarded no increase to compare with the governmental award made to the Union miners the grumbling increased. In point of fact, the terms of the government award were a subject of bitter feeling among all miners throughout the nation.
The feeling can be understood when one remembers the number of millionaires created by World War 1 and knows that living costs in 1920 were 143% above the same costs in 1913!
Men Ask for Union
C.F. (Frank) Keeney had been elected president of District 17 on Jan. 1, 1917, and was still president in 1920. About May 1 of that year, according to his testimony, a three-man committee from Mingo visited his Summers Street office. The men said that a number of the miners in their county were on strike and they wanted help from the UMW. Keeney advised that it was not in line with the general policy of the organization to take in men on strike, that they should go back and tell the men to return to work. Then he would deal with them. The men did this and returned and Keeney authorized them to swear men into the UMW.
These men quickly formed locals at the towns of Matewan and Sprigg, and by May 16 twenty-five locals had been organized in the Mingo field. By June, Mingo was almost completely organized. And just as fast as the miners “took the obligation” they were fired from their jobs and evicted form their homes. This happened to 2,700 or 2,800 men. In other words, the trouble in Mingo did not start as a strike but as a “lock-out.” If you joined the UMW, you were “locked-out” of your job.
At this point it seems logical to give the Union oath in full. Just what terrible things did a miner swear to do, that he should be treated as an undesirable and, with his pitifully few belongings crowded about his ears, thrown unceremoniously into the company street. This is the UMW “obligation,” along with a bit of the Union procedure in administering same:
“President: Mr. Doorkeeper, are there any candidates in waiting who have been accepted by this union?
“Doorkeeper: Mr. President, I find Brothers ——–, mine workers, who were elected to become members of this body.
“President: Admit the brothers.
“The doorkeeper will admit the candidates and place them in line opposite the president.”
Obligation of Fidelity
“President: Fellow workmen, the United Mine Workers of America requires perfect freedom of inclination in every candidate for membership to its body. An obligation of fidelity is required: let me assure you that in this obligation there is nothing contrary to your civil or religious duties, with this understanding are you willing to take an obligation which binds you upon your honor as a man to keep the same as long as life remains?
“Each candidate answers: ‘I am.’
“President: Raise your right hand.
“I do sincerely promise, of my own free will, to abide by the laws of the union, to bear true allegiance to and keep inviolate the principles of the United Mine Workers of America: never to discriminate against a fellow worker on account of creed or color, or nationality, to defend on all occasions and to the extent of my ability the members of our organization.
“That I will not reveal to any employer or boss the name of anyone a member of our union. (This provision has been eliminated from the present oath.) That I will assist all members of our organization to obtain the highest wages possible for their work: that I will not accept a brother’s job who is idle for advancing the interests of the Union or seeking better remuneration for his labor: and, as the mine workers of the entire country are competitors in the labor world, I promise to cease work at any time I am called upon by the organization to do so. And I further promise to help and assist all brothers in adversity, and to have all mine workers join our Union that we may be able to enjoy the fruits of our labor: that I will never knowingly wrong a brother or see him wronged if I can prevent it.
“To all of this I pledge my honor to observe and keep as long as life remains, or until I am absolved by the United Mine Workers of America.
“Answer: I promise.
“President: You are now members of Local Union No. —– and are entitled to all rights and privileges of the United Mine Workers of America.”
Miners Fired and Evicted
In 1919-20 over 2,700 miners in southern West Virginia took the above oath. They took it in churches, in school buildings, and under the open sky. For so doing they knew that they would be deprived of income, evicted from their homes, oppressed by coal company guards and forced to live in tents. But they took this oath, determined to rid themselves of economic autocracy.
Neill Burkinshaw, attorney for the UMW, graphically described the situation to the Senate Investigating Committee:
“As those men joined the United Mine Workers they were out of a job for taking advantage of their rights as citizens to join any organization they saw fit; they were fired, and not only fired but they were evicted from their homes. These people were driven like cattle from their homes, and their goods were thrown out into the roads, and some lived in tents and railroad stations and temporary shelters and others even without shelter until the United Mine Workers’ organization at Charleston sent them tents and to this day (a year later) those people are living in tents. They lived there during the winter. I was down there last November and saw barefoot children, women with a single garment, and men barefooted with nothing but overalls, living in that cold. It is a high mountain country and it’s very cold. They suffered tortures that I have never seen before in this or any country.”
12/18/1952 (Twenty-second)
The reasons men and women were willing to endure such hardship have been given in this work. Sometimes, as before related they even seized arms and sought to correct that which no one else would correct for them. It is interesting to note the reasons for this assigned by “respectable” people and institutions. The great New York Times called it “corn likker and young blood.” West Virginia’s Ephraim Morgan, who became governor in 1921, said it was “moonshining, pistoltoting and automobiles.” The New Republic came much closer by blaming the “mine guard system” and Walter Clark, publisher of the Charleston Daily Mail, an ultra-reactionary rag, said that it was just one of those hillbilly mountain feuds.
It remained for Fred Mooney, then secretary-treasurer of UMW District 17, to hit the nail on the head: – “The struggle now going on in Mingo County is not a feud, and any insinuation by Mr. Clark to that effect is not true and is subject to proof by anyone investigating the facts that he did not investigate himself, and one that is not biased. For this struggle in Mingo County is an economic one. In fact, it is the continuance of a struggle begun in West Virginia 23 years ago and extending through this period.”
Mooney was talking sound sense. The same basic factors at the bottom of the West Virginia organizing drive of the UMW in 1897, and the coal operator resistance thereto were present in 1920. It was still a part of the tussle over the wealth in the West Virginia hills, so little of which came into the hands of the men who actually brought it to the surface.
Sid Hatfield the Brave
As the men in the nonunion field were evicted from their homes, resentment against the coal companies, and the Baldwin-Felts men who did their dirty work, quite naturally mounted. The Operator’s Association of the Williamson field was very busy, with Harry Olmstead as its chairman, in seeing that advertisements were prepared to attract new men to the mines to replace the locked-out miners, and in seeing the judges, law enforcement officers and other key political figures were “friendly.”
Olmstead found to his disgust that some few officials in Mingo County were on
good terms with the miners. One of these was the Chief of Police at Matewan, in the aforementioned county. This was a young man, 28 years old, by the name of Sid Hatfield. Sid liked the miners and the compliment was returned, though he himself was not a member of the UMW. He saw to it that the Baldwin-Felts detectives toed the legal line when doing eviction work for the coal operators. Evictions were carried out on the basis of opinions of coal operator attorneys that no employee - employer relationship existed between coal miner and coal operator. The relationship, the operators contended, was that of “master and servant,” and the short-notice evictions were thus legally justifiable.
It should be emphasized that Sid Hatfield was never the “tough gunman” or “feuding mountaineer,” as he was described by a sensation-hunting press. He was simply a man of courage who had grown up with the miners he now saw striking. He was on their side in an industrial battle, and that was all there was to it. Hatfield’s personal appearance is given as follows in the May 25, 1921, issue of the New York Evening World:
Hatfield is Described
“The ‘Terror of the Tug’ does not look the part he has played in the strike disturbances. He is five feet seven or eight inches in height and weighs about 160 pounds. He has firey brown eyes, protruding ears, high cheekbones and a complexion naturally sallow. He wore a cheap, snuff-colored suit, white shirt and collar, and a necktie that looked neater than any other part of his apparel.”
Let the memory of this simple, courageous man of the hills be revered by the coal miners. He fought their fight, and gave his life in the struggle.
At 11:47 a.m. on the morning of May 19, 1920, train No. 29 puffed into Matewan with something more than a dozen Baldwin-Felts men as passengers. Their errand was to evict six miners from homes belonging to the Stone Mountain Coal Corporation. The armed thugs were met by Sid Hatfield and Matewan Mayor C.C. Testerman, who inquired if they had legal authority to execute the evictions. According to Hatfield’s later testimony the detectives said that they had authority from Circuit Judge James Damron (later an attorney for the Mingo operators). “They said two hours notice was all they wanted.” The company hirelings proceeded to evict the miners without resistance, and returned to Matewan about 3:30 in the afternoon.
When Miners March Page 9