When Miners March

by William C. Blizzard

  To accomplish this latter purpose they hired a bright young man named Phil M. Conley, who worked with what was called the West Virginia Publicity Commission but what was actually the publisher of a blurb sheet for the coal operators. We are going to quote a few of Mr. Conley’s remarks from a release of the West Virginia Publicity Commission of Jan. 26, 1923. In this release Conley speaks of Mingo County, “bloody Mingo” the miners called it, and we hope that in this work we have shown the reasons for the appellation. It will be recalled that Williamson, the county seat, was the headquarters for Major Tom Davis and his numerous regular and “volunteer” state police who enforced martial law in 1920-21. The Lick Creek incident will be remembered, as will the killings at Matewan in which Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers were involved.

  Mingo the Mild

  It was Conley’s simple task to eradicate these memories from the minds of his readers by the process of counter-propaganda. Like this 1923 release: “The term Mingo County conveys to the mind of the average person in West Virginia as well as to the average person in other states, a picture of industrial trouble, warfare, lawlessness and factors that make for uncivilized conditions…. Like most pictures described by people who are interested in only one angle, it is untrue….

  “I was astonished at the report made by Mr. A.C. Davis, superintendent of schools and Mr. McCarty, principal of the high schools. Six years ago Mr. Davis started an innovation in West Virginia by introducing a course in Bible in his high school. The YMCA secretary taught the course the first year, and after that the three ministers in town were drafted as teachers….Here in a city that has been heralded throughout the United States as a place where civilization is at a low ebb is to be found a progressive up to date school system that compares favorable with the best….

  “While Williamson has had a trade organization only six months, it is one of the best known commercial bodies in the State. Rarely a day passes but some report is made of what the Williamson Chamber of Commerce has done or is doing. Dr. W.W. Rosenheim, secretary, is a live wire man who believes in getting things done on a big scale…. The industrial controversy is apparently a closed chapter in the history of the County. Everyone regrets the publicity given the circumstances surrounding the efforts to unionize the field that have occurred in Mingo during the past few years…. Captain Brockus of the State Police (he of the Sharples raid – Ed.) said: ‘Mingo is quiet except for the disturbances connected with the bootlegging industry. The lawlessness occasioned by the industrial troubles has been entirely settled.’

  A Special Detail

  “I left Williamson feeling that here is a city of wonderful possibilities for development. With the progressive ideas possessed by her young business and professional men, there is no reason why in the near future this city located midway between Huntington and Bluefield on the Norfolk and Western Railroad should not become a real power in the State.”

  Thus did Mr. Conley perform his function of describing the beauties of peaceful, operator-owned, nonunion Mingo County in 1923. But the American Constitutional Association had a special work for him to do. Before we go into detail on this matter we may as well list the names of the officers of the Association in 1923:

  President, Edwin M. Keatly, Vice-president, Earl W. Oglebay, Treasurer, Robert L. Archer, Managing Director, Phil M. Conley, Directors, Gov. E.F. Morgan, Howard M. Gore (who, as 17th governor of W. Va., succeeded Morgan – Ed.), John W. Romine, Bernard McClaugherty, Dr. I.C. White, Milton Rouss, and W.M. Wiley.

  In addition to attempting to hang the mine Union leaders and keeping the miners in servitude the above distinguished citizens felt that they should further explain their work to all concerned. Ordinarily they cared little about publicity one way or another but, as we have observed, the thickest of skins might have been penetrated by out-of-state criticism of high-handed operators methods in West Virginia. Under the editing of Phil Conley a special booklet was issued by the Association. It was called Life in a West Virginia Coal Field:

  2/19/1953 (Sixty-fifth)

  Life in a West Virginia Coal Field was printed with the blessing of Governor Ephraim F. Morgan, who, in a forward, said:

  “An unbiased study of life in the coal fields of West Virginia by a gentleman of high standing and character of Mr. Conley merits the confidence of all persons who desire to know the facts relative to this subject, and is a refutation of many misstatements of propagandists sent into the coal fields by radical and irresponsible organizations.”

  The “radical and irresponsible” organization foremost in Morgan’s mind was, obviously, the United Mine Workers of America. Surely Mother Jones never saw this pamphlet and its endorsement by Morgan, or she could not have lauded the Governor in her autobiography. Phil Conley does the best he can with the material he has to work with, but the publicity attempt does not seem wholly successful. The coal district covered seems to be the Kanawha Field, although the reader is not told that this area has been at least partially Unionized for many years.

  Unionized or not, it may be a surprise to some to learn that in 18 coal towns studied there were 24 tennis courts. The public in 1923 had hardly been taught to think of coal miners as playfully scooting about in white trousers, burning up the tremendous amounts of energy left to them after loading 20 to 30 tons of coal in an atmosphere of powder smoke, coal dust, mule stench and constant danger. This writer’s grandfather, for instance, who in his last years wheezed like a wrecked old locomotive as his coal-filled lungs fought for enough air to sustain life, who left a black splotch of coal dust on the ground when he spat, never told stories of his prowess with a tennis racquet.

  Why Be Discontent?

  The truth was that these tennis courts, which Mr. Conley pointed to with so much pride, belonged like everything else in the coal fields, to the coal companies. They were for the use of coal company officials, mine-guards, company guests, and others who pledged allegiance to the men who sat at the right hand of King Coal. Baseball, as the booklet truthfully states, was the principal sport of the coal miner.

  It is not necessary to go over the contents of the association pamphlet in detail, except to show that it does not succeed, despite the intent, in picturing the West Virginia coal fields as some kind of sooty Eden, ante Eve and the apple. In 58 towns, Mr. Conley says, 386 miners owned their own homes. There was a great turnover in teaching personnel, and school buildings did triple duty as churches and lodge halls. There was no hospital in the entire field surveyed, the miners being served by the six in Charleston and Huntington, if they happened to still be alive when they reached these populous centers.

  This meant, among other things, that it was a rare miner’s child who was born in a hospital. According to the survey there were 62 miles of “paved” road in the entire area, and 14 of the 58 towns included were inaccessible in winter. Four mining towns, with a population of 5,000, had one doctor and one nurse, and it should be remembered that the towns were scattered over mountainous rugged terrain. But this was nothing to be alarmed about, said Mr. Conley, but rather a point of pride. For, says he, “the fact that one doctor and one nurse could adequately serve so many people proves that a great deal of attention has been paid to the protection of the health of the citizens in the towns affected."!!

  The terrible death toll, when the influenza epidemic of 1916 struck the coal fields, will probably never be entirely known, but it may without doubt be in some degree attributable to this rather odd medical situation.

  Absentee Landlords Hit

  Late in the same year in which Life in a West Virginia Coal Field was issued, there was held a special constitutional convention of District 17 which also had something to say about who was responsible for the reputation of West Virginia in 1923. “It is the absentee landlords who do not live in West Virginia but reside in Athens, Ohio, ‘Millionaires’ Circle in Cincinnati, the Bronx in New York, Boston, Mass., and elsewhere that are both directly and indirectly responsible for the blackened name of West Virginia. There
is only one way to clear the name of West Virginia. That is to break the political stranglehold of John L. Dickinson. Wm. McKell, Isaac T. Mann, Edward Houston, Samuel Coolidge, Elbert H. Gary, John Laing, and others who are throttling civil liberties in this state while they strut from place to place with a Bible under one arm and a list of contributions to the foreign mission fund under the other, and believe me this is going to be some job to educate the masses sufficiently to break up the political corruption which has burned itself into the vitals of government in our little mountain state.”

  In the same year was launched in West Virginia, primarily by District 17 officials, a Farmer – Labor Party. It was doomed to a short life, largely for the reason that the entire body of labor in the state was unable to work together effectively. But the remarks on this subject of Secretary-Treasurer Fred Mooney at this 1923 convention are worth recording in any labor history.

  Labor Party Launched

  “You have seen fit to inaugurate a political party known as the Farmer – Labor Party. This is a step in the right direction, but remember that Labor parties can become corrupt just the same as other political parties. Keep it clean. Select men and women to put into effect your policies whose integrity cannot be doubted, whose willingness to sacrifice reaches beyond their own personal ambitions, for the history of break-aways from established political parties are polluted with lynchings, tar and feather episodes, midnight rides, kidnappings, deportations, and even murder for those who dare to organize the workers and farmers for effective political action. You must not expect any immediate relief for if you do you will be disillusioned. It will take years of education and organization to accomplish effective political cooperative cohesion between the industrial laborer and the farmer because both have been taught by the ‘Goose Step Universities,’ colleges and schools to regard the other with suspicion. It has been hammered into both the industrial worker and the farmer by the subsidized press, church and Sunday School that one is the enemy of the other and that their interests are diametrically opposed. This situation can only be remedied by a slow and tedious process of education which will take years, but there is no better time to begin than now. Today is the day to begin, not tomorrow.”

  Many tomorrows have crept in their petty pace from day to day and a Farmer – Labor Party in America yet remains in the dream stage of 1923.

  Rumblings of great portent were taking place in District 17 at this time, International Representative Percy Tetlaw had been sent into West Virginia by President John L. Lewis, and it is evident that in late 1923 Tetlow had assumed a number of administrative tasks in District 17. That this was a forewarning of a major change in the conduct of the affairs of the United Mine Workers of America is now apparent. That is, it was the beginning of the transfer of power from the hands of the district to the hands of the man from Luca, Iowa who had been elected UMW president in 1920.

  This is not to say that this process began in District 17, but was rather part of a general UMW policy which became confirmed and final as the years passed. In District 17 it marked the end of an era.

  Chapter Twelve: W. Va. Operators Stall

  2/20/1953 (Sixty-sixth)

  The period from 1920 through 1924 was an extremely difficult one for District 17, aside from the famous treason and murder trials which so drained the district treasury. During this period there was not a time when the entire membership was at work simultaneously. Thousands of miners in West Virginia were forced to apply for exoneration from dues payments in order to maintain their membership. West Virginia was a battleground, as we have said before, and there was hardly a miner in the state who had not been battered physically or financially or both. When the great depression of 1929 struck America it was not a new thing to the miners in West Virginia. They had faced depression conditions since shortly after the first world war.

  The 1922 strike had been won with the operators signing a contract incorporating a $7.50 daily wage for the men from the pits. But coal mining was an obviously sick industry, the major reasons being that the operators could produce more coal than was demanded by the market, and could do so with fewer men than were asking for work in the mines. For the UMW another serious matter was the fact that a large percentage of the mines in the country were yet nonunion. There were, in fact, enough nonunion mines to supply coal for the entire United States, an uncomfortable fact which had to be faced in the event of a national strike.

  In early 1922 President Harding appointed a Bituminous Coal Commission to make a thorough investigation and report on this troublesome problem of just what was wrong with an industry which produced a mint of wealth and forced its employees to live in poverty, which was so efficient at the business of getting coal on top of the ground that it had cut its own throat in the process. They submitted in 1924, a four-volume report which was a great jigsaw puzzle of facts, but no key to the mystery.

  The UMW had not been increasing its membership during these years, nor had it won major wage advances. The battle was one of survival, not growth, a fight on the negotiating level, to prevent wages from being cut. In an agreement at Jacksonville, Fla., signed Feb. 19, 1924, the operators of the Central Competitive Field agreed to extend the $7.50 daily wage scale for another three years. But getting coal operators to sign an agreement is one thing: forcing them to live up to it is another.

  When April 1, 1924 came in West Virginia the operators felt sufficiently strong, or rather, felt that the weakened District 17 was so feeble, that they refused to honor the Jacksonville Agreement. They asked for a reduction of about 16 cents on machine and pick mining, and $1.50 a day on day labor. The UMW insisted upon the Jacksonville terms, and the men were again forced to strike. A parallel situation occurred in seven other districts, so that there were in early 1924 about 60,000 miners on strike throughout the country. And these strikers could hope for little help from the international Union for the simple reason that the treasury was not what it had once been. In West Virginia the situation was rather desperate, and a delegate convention of District 17 was held at Charleston, May 14 through May 16, 1924, in order to find some answer to the pressing problems of the strike. The district itself had hardly any funds, so that one of the more urgent problems was just how to cut expenses. On this the convention had something of a battle, for the recommendation of President C.F. Keeney was the abolition of the four sub-districts in District 17, thus eliminating the salaries of the officials and clerical help.

  Terrible Hardships Told

  We shall understate the first reaction of the subdistrict officials by saying that they hardly welcomed this suggestion with enthusiasm. It should be explained that District 31, in northern West Virginia, had not yet been formed, and District 17 covered this territory through its Sub-district No. 4. District 29, in the southern area, was formed after the 1912 strike, but had virtually ceased to exist. Its first president, L.C. Rogers, had turned renegade and given testimony against the miners and their Union in certain of the trials during the twenties.

  It was not, however, the purpose of the convention, or within its power, to take action on the abolition of the sub-districts beyond declaring for a referendum vote of the membership. There was a big wrangle, the sub-districts declaring that the district itself could save money by cleaning up its own house and protesting that they had too little votes in the formulation of the Union policy they were called upon to implement.

  This was a highly serious convention, as the delegates well knew, one of them stating that their decisions might mean the life or death of District 17. This statement was correct, for it was not long after this that the district changed. It did not die, of course, for it is exceedingly lively today, but its nature underwent changes. That this was a time of crisis in shown by the remarks of the chairman of the convention. And these remarks also show the sort of sacrifice it took to build the union:

  “There have been circumstances in Cabin Creek and on Coal River where these men have been on strike for two years and more. The
men are naked. They have no clothes or shoes to wear. In some instances two heads of the family had to wear one pair of shoes….

  A Troubled Time

  “$3.50 and $4.50 per week has (sic) been paid to feed these people for two years, and they have gone naked, as they are not going to be able to take anything out of that amount to buy clothing with. That amounts to less than forty cents a week for each person. There is nobody here who would like to eat on forty cents a week. This money was for the assistance of our strikers and has been spent with discretion and has been paid in accordance with what we have in our treasury to pay out with….

  “…There are cases where two women have to wear one dress. One of them stays at home in order that the other may go out. She goes behind closed doors until the other comes back. That is the situation that is prevailing.

  “There are families on Cabin Creek and Coal River that are living under rock cliffs with not even a roof over their heads. They have only their household effects to protect them against the elements. Yet these men are standing pat and are refusing to break away from the miners’ union.”

  Such was the struggle which built the United Mine Workers of America. But it was nevertheless true that some miners were not so tenacious in their support of the union. District 17 at its peak period prior to 1924 had 42,000 dues-paying members. In 1924 there were only 29,000 members in the district, and only 20,000 of these were paying dues. It was true that an indebtedness of a quarter of a million dollars, largely incurred because of the Armed March and consequent litigation, had been very nearly liquidated, but almost all of the district income was being paid out in strike relief, the difference going for administrative expenses.

  The convention acted favorably on the submission to a referendum vote of the question of abolition of the sub-districts. When it adjourned, and the travel expenses of the delegation were paid, there was left a balance in the District 17 treasury of exactly $261.06.