Historical Background: Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike 1912-13

By 1912 much of coal mining regions in the United States had been unionized by the of America (UMWA). In April 1912, the UMWA negotiated a new contract for the northern coal fields, and they then tried to negotiate a new contract with a pay raise for the southern ones as well. When the union miners on Paint Creek in Kanawha County went out on strike for the wage increase, they reached out to miners on Cabin Creek next door who were non-unionized and encouraged them to go out too. Cabin Creek miners had been restless facing some of the toughest mine guards, and they seized the day, made a list of demands that focused on a union check-weighman and end to the mine guard system. They were quickly evicted from their homes and those evicted set up a tent colony at Holly Grove. When they moved there, they certainly had no idea some would be there living in tents through that winter and stayed out for over a year.

It was at this point that some miners, led by Frank Keeney and unable to get support from the UMWA for the miners on Cabin Creek, went to Charleston and got the support directly of Mary Harris, “.” A grandmotherly figure who could quote the Bible and curse like a sailor in the same sentence. The miners loved her and she loved them. She was unexpected by the gender and age norms of the time. In addition to Mother Jones, the miners also began to get support from the rapidly growing Socialist Party.

The companies held strong and refused any demands and instead brought in more detectives to evict striking or sympathetic miners. These evictions were rough affairs. Mothers screaming, children crying, and armed men rummaging through tiny coal camp houses, throwing all belongings out into the street. There is even more than one reported instance of the mine guards evicting pregnant women, and in one instance they evicted a group of miners while they attended a funeral, and when they came out of church, they were faced with their belongings piled in a heap and across the road mine guards had a machine gun trained at the door of the church expecting trouble.

The Paint Creek Cabin Creek strike eventually broke out into violence because the Holly Grove camp full of women and children that was on “free ground” was attacked one day. Used to their total power, some mine guards simply went up in the hills and wanted to terrorize the miners and their families and force them to leave so they fired down on the peaceful encampment, amazingly no one was killed.

But the miners had been getting ready, ordering in cheap rifles and smuggling them up the valleys with help from free citizens up and down the valleys. They launched their own attack on the fortified mine guard base at Mucklow. Remarkably, during that hour long battle, no one was killed, but the war had begun.

Over the next several months, more than fifty men met a violent end on Paint and Cabin Creek. The miners organized commando brigades like the “dirty eleven” led by men like Dan Chain, an African American miner with the nickname “Few Clothes Johnson.” They attacked mine guards, blew up coal tipples, tore up railway tracks and fought or spoke to strike breakers brought in by the company to convince them to join the strike. Many of these strike breakers were African Americans or recent immigrants, and miners who came from similar backgrounds (and often spoke the same languages). Rocco Spinelli and his wife, Nellie Bowles Spinelli, would meet incoming trains and convince dozens to join the strike.

Governor William Glasscock finally got involved and declared martial law because the story was getting attention in the national press. Many organizers like the Spinellis and Few Clothes were imprisoned along with Mother Jones. Because the pickets were so successful, the owners eventually commissioned a train in Huntington, called the Bull Moose Special (so named because the ones who paid for it were Progressive Republican supporters of Teddy Roosevelts independent Bull Moose Party). This train was armored and armed with machine guns to bring in loads of strike breakers. But it also had another use, described here in an expert from the Encyclopedia:

The attack was triggered on February 7 when strikers from Holly Grove fired on a company ambulance and attacked the store at nearby Mucklow. Later that night, Kanawha County Sheriff Bonner Hill, Paint Creek coal operator Quinn Morton, a number of deputies, mine guards, and C&O Railway police boarded the Bull Moose Special armed with arrest warrants for unnamed persons. As the darkened train approached Holly Grove, two blasts from the engine’s whistle apparently signaled the beginning of machine gun and rifle fire from the Bull Moose Special into the tents of sleeping miners and their families. Several people were wounded, but only one striker, Cesco Estep, was killed. Estep was trying to get his son and pregnant wife to safety. In revenge, the enraged strikers attacked the mine guards’ camp at Mucklow two days later.

By April the new governor of WV, Henry Hatfield, decided he would end the strike. He called the UMWA and owners to his office. Coal had only been trickling out the valley for a year at this point. The strike had claimed dozens of lives and millions of dollars’ worth of coal company property was destroyed. The owners were on their heels. But the miners, aided by solidarity strikers like the Italian anarchist miners from Boomer in Fayette county and the secret mountain gardens tended by miners’ wives and children, buoyed the resolve of a community living in fear, but also side by side in spite of their racial, ethnic, and linguistic differences.

Governor Hatfield got the owners to agree to what came to be called the “Hatfield Contract”. It met almost none of the original demands. It did not end the mine guard system, and most importantly it did not recognize the union. It simply offered miners a return to work and the only real concession was that union miners would not be discriminated against. The UMWA officials in Charleston were forced to agree to this contract as well, and the governor gave them 36 hours to get back to work or he’d declare martial law. However, since the contract was not any part of what the rank and file members wanted, they launched a series of wildcat strikes over the next three months. With continued pressure, by July, they won their central demand: union recognition of most mines on Paint and Cabin Creeks.

Disappointment with the old UMWA officials meant that a grassroots membership made of folks like Frank Keeney and Bill Blizzard, who had played key leadership roles in the strike, took over the District 17 offices in union elections. These were the same people who were to lead the march on Blair Mountain several years later. All of the miners and their families who participated in the strike on Paint and Cabin Creeks, through their experiences of suffering, living in tents, and facing violence and sacrifice, developed a deep-seated sense of solidarity and allegiance to the union, one that would play a crucial role in their willingness to take up arms to support their union brothers and sisters in the still un- unionized regions a decade later. Although part of the coalfields had won union recognition, these areas were relatively calm during WWI. However, the claims that during the war the US was “making the world safe for democracy” rankled many in counties like Logan, Mingo, and McDowell where the old system of mine guards remained.

Questions: Historical Background: Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike 1912-13

1. Why might the unionized Paint Creek miners have encouraged the non-union Cabin Creek miners to strike with them?

2. Why was Mother Jones an unusual ally?

3. Answer in paragraph form: How did the coal companies react to the strike? Use examples to support your answer.

4. Answer in paragraph form: How did the miners fight back against the violence? Use examples to support your answer.

5.What was the Bull Moose Special?

6. What was the Hatfield Contract? Was it what the miners wanted?

Historical Background: and Blair Mountain

While the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike had won union recognition for miners in much of Kanawha County; Logan, Mingo, and McDowell counties were still un-unionized in spite of similar difficult working and living conditions. During WWI, things were relatively quiet in the coal fields, however, after the war ended Southern WV, like much of the country, saw dramatic increases in labor strife. This conflict was due largely to large numbers of soldiers returning from the war in search of work and fears that the economy was slowing following wartime production. In this context of heightened labor conflict, the UMWA tried to extend its reach into previously un-unionized counties like Mingo.

In response to this organizing drive, on May 19, 1920, a dozen heavily armed men from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency arrived in Matewan, WV to evict miners from company housing because they had joined the UMWA. The evictions included driving a woman and her children from home at gunpoint and throwing their belongings into the rain. The detectives who carried out this work probably assumed that their reign of “terror on the Tug” would continue much as it had during previous decades of company rule. However, they were unlike any other because on this day, while the detectives contentedly ate dinner, pro-union miners and chief of police organized to meet them. Matewan was unique, because unlike areas around it, it was an independent town that was not owned by a coal company. This meant it elected its own government and was at this time under a pro-reform, pro-union city government. When the detectives tried to arrest Hatfield with a bogus warrant, a shootout erupted that left seven Baldwin Felts detectives dead. One miner, Bob Mullins, and a bystander Tot Tinsley, as well as Mayor Cable Testerman were also killed.

Hatfield became a folk hero to miners who were tired of the iron fist of company rule. After a Mingo County jury refused to convict him of for the shootout at Matewan, Sid Hatfield was summoned to court in McDowell County on what many agree was a bogus charge of blowing up a coal tipple. Approaching the courthouse unarmed, Hatfield and his deputy Ed Chambers were gunned down by Baldwin Felts detectives. The murderers never faced justice.

To the miners, the murder of Hatfield symbolized the brutal use of violence and the law by the companies in Mingo county that had kept out the union. Soon, unionized miners from across the coal fields (many of whom had only recently won union recognition during the bloody Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike 1912-13), gathered near Marmet to march on Mingo county. Since the companies used force to keep the union out of those counties, the miners decided they needed to use force to bring the union and humanitarian aid in.

Union miners eventually formed an army of thousands of “” (named for the red bandanas they wore). In addition to a high number of returned WWI veterans, the Paint Creek- Cabin Creeks strike had given the miners significant organizational experience. The main leader of the miners was Bill Blizzard who had played a key role in the 1912-13 strike.

However, to reach Mingo, the army would have to pass through Logan County which was controlled by close friend of the coal operators: Sherriff . Chafin prepared an army of several thousand mine guards and company men who built a defensive line of trenches in the mountains above Logan. When the two armies met, the most intense fighting occurred at Blair Mountain. Chafin’s army held the advantage of defensive trenches and machine guns. They also had use of a private air force that dropped homemade bombs on the marching miners. The battle raged for several days and though no official account exists of casualties, at least several dozen were likely killed on both sides in the fighting.

Although the miners nearly won the day, a last-minute deployment of the US Army by President Harding averted a union victory. The miners gave up their arms peacefully to the army, hoping they would restore order and constitutional rights. However, they were mistaken and several hundred were arrested for murder and against the State of West Virginia. In trials held in the same courthouse where John Brown went on trial for his raid of Harpers Ferry, most of the miners including Bill Blizzard were acquitted. Following the trials and battle, the UMWA lost its influence, and it was not until the of the 1930s that the previously un-unionized areas were organized. However, the experiences of the 1910s and 20s were influential in creating a culture of sacrifice and solidarity that served the UMWA well in its later organizing drives as well as in its continued militancy in the interest of miners’ health, safety, and wages. Questions: Matewan and Blair Mountain

1. What led to much “labor strife” after WWI?

2. Why was Matewan unique from the coal camp towns around it?

3. Why was Sid Hatfield a hero to miners?

4. What event triggered union miners to march on Mingo County?

5. Where does the term “redneck” come from?

6. Who led the miners?

7. Who controlled Logan County?

8. In the trials of the miners involved in the , what was the outcome?