Gun Thugs, Rednecks, and Radicals by Corbin David Alan

Author:Corbin, David Alan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PM Press
Published: 2011-04-09T04:00:00+00:00

The West Virginia state motto struck an ironic note among union miners. This 1921 cartoon from the United Mine Workers Journal suggested mountaineers were anything but free. DRAWN BY BUSHNELL, COURTESY UMW.

Fighting Unionism with Martial Law

By Arthur Warner

Arthur Warner’s account, also from the Nation (October 12, 1921), is interesting for its remarks and opinions that bear hauntingly upon current state and world conditions. Warner points out, for example, how the “home folks” in West Virginia resented outsiders’ characterization of the industrial warfare in the state, a possible indication of historical misinformation, even at that time. He describes Mingo County as “West Virginia’s Ireland.”

“A fine native population, goaded by many abuses and injustices … was driven … to mass violence in retaliation.”

Warner also writes of the “system of terrorization” used to keep the miners subdued.

In writing of the visit of United States Senators Kenyon and Short-ridge to Mingo and Logan Counties, West Virginia, the correspondent of a Huntington newspaper referred to the two men as a committee to inquire into “the industrial controversy said to exist in some coal fields.” This phraseology sounds unduly cautious even for a newspaper which aims not to annoy the home folks with unpleasant truths. The home folks resent the words “civil war” as describing the situation, but they seem to forget that the phrase is that of their own Governor, who in proclaiming martial law in Mingo County on May 19, last, said that “a state of war, insurrection, and riot is and has been for some time, in existence” and “many lives and much property have been destroyed as a result thereof and riot and bloodshed is still rampant and pending.” Since that time there has been a sympathetic march of several thousand more or less armed miners and others in the nearby county of Kanawha, which is still occupied by Federal Troops in consequence. The home folks would do well to worry less about the language applied to their State and more about the conditions that have occasioned it.

Mingo County is West Virginia’s Ireland. A fine native population, goaded by many abuses and injustices and apparently hopeless of any other solution, was driven somewhere over a year ago to mass violence in retaliation. As in Ireland, mass violence was met with still greater force on the part of government but with no effort nor wish to remove the cause of trouble. The cause in Mingo is the objection of the coal operators to the unionization of their fields and the lengths to which they have gone to prevent it. For many years they have employed guards, authorized by the county to carry arms, who have manhandled and driven out of the coal fields union representatives or sympathizers found in or about the mines. These mine guards are commonly reputed to be Baldwin-Felts private detectives. This is an exaggeration of the fact. Most of the armed men about the mines are bona-fide workers in various capacities. The Baldwin-Felts men of whom there are probably

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