Tag: Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike

June 10, 1913: Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Hearings Begin

On June 10, 1913, a U.S. Senate subcommittee opened hearings on the bloody Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike in Kanawha County. This marked the first time a congressional committee had investigated the actions of a state government. The hearings were prompted by labor leader “Mother” Jones, who’d been held under house arrest in the Kanawha County town of Pratt. She’d secretly sent letters to the outside world through a trap door.

The letters reached the desk of U.S. Senator John Kern of Indiana. West Virginia Governor Henry Hatfield soon released “Mother” Jones from house arrest; however, by that time, Senator Kern had already launched his investigation into West Virginia. The committee’s findings came down hard on West Virginia politicians and coal operators. 

The final report condemned the living and working conditions along Paint and Cabin creeks and denounced coal industry methods for weighing coal and paying miners. Mostly, though, it criticized West Virginia government and military officials for continually violating the miners’ constitutional rights, court-martialing union activists while civil courts were still open, and denying strikers their right to due process of law.

May 1, 1930: Labor Leader Mother Jones Celebrates 100th Birthday

On May 1, 1930, labor leader “Mother” Jones celebrated her 100th birthday at a party in Maryland. The firebrand did what she did best: ruffle feathers. On this occasion, she denounced the nation’s prohibition on alcohol, saying it violated her right as an American to drink beer instead of water.

Mary Harris “Mother” Jones was beloved by the working class and reviled by the powerful for her colorful and often profane condemnations of coal operators and politicians. She visited West Virginia many times, describing conditions as being worse than in “Czarist Russia.” Jones was jailed in Parkersburg in 1902 for violating a court injunction. During the bloody Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike, she was held under house arrest in Kanawha County.

But her stock fell with miners in 1921. At Marmet, “Mother” Jones tried to stop the armed march on Logan County before it started. The miners felt betrayed when she held up an apparently fake telegram from President Warren Harding. Despite this setback, she kept fighting for the underdog, becoming an ardent critic of child labor in the 1920s. She died seven months after celebrating her 100th birthday.

February 13, 1913: Mother Jones Arrested in Charleston

On February 13, 1913, labor leader Mary Harris “Mother” Jones was arrested in Charleston for agitating striking miners during the deadly Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike.

Jones was no stranger to West Virginia’s labor movement, or its jails. Since the 1890s, she’d been active in union causes across the country but felt a special affinity for miners of the Mountain State. She once reported that conditions in West Virginia “were worse than those in Czarist Russia.” During a 1902 strike, she’d been jailed in Parkersburg for violating a court injunction.

Her arrest in 1913, though, was different. By this time, much of Kanawha County had been placed under martial law, meaning that the military was in charge of law enforcement. After being taken to Pratt, she was court-martialed and held under house arrest. New governor Henry Hatfield—a licensed physician—personally visited with Jones but did little at first to free her—even though the octogenarian labor leader was reportedly suffering from pneumonia. After she was finally released, “Mother” Jones testified before Congress on the poor living and working conditions in the West Virginia coalfields.

January 23, 1890: United Mine Workers of America Formed

On January 23, 1890, the United Mine Workers of America was formed in Columbus, Ohio. Three months later, UMWA District 17, encompassing most of West Virginia, held its first meeting in Wheeling.

District President M. F. Moran immediately launched what would become an extraordinary struggle to unionize the state’s coal mines over the next four decades.

Coal operators bitterly fought unionization, insisting that the costs of mining coal were greater in West Virginia. As such, they couldn’t afford to pay the higher union wages being negotiated in other parts of the country. To combat the UMWA, coal operators hired heavily armed mine guards, many of whom were also deputy sheriffs.

Beginning in the 1890s, West Virginia became a battlefield of the labor movement. Increasingly violent strikes culminated in two of the deadliest labor confrontations of the 20th century: the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike of 1912-13 and the armed miners’ march on Logan County, ending with the Battle of Blair Mountain, in 1921.

The tide didn’t really turn in the UMWA’s favor until New Deal legislation of the 1930s guaranteed workers the right to bargain collectively.

February 7, 1913: The Bull Moose Express Used to Attack Striking Miners

On February 7, 1913, striking miners from the Holly Grove tent encampment in Kanawha County fired on a coal company-owned ambulance and attacked a store at nearby Mucklow.

Their actions triggered one of the most notorious incidents of the bloody Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike.

That night, Kanawha County Sheriff Bonner Hill, Paint Creek coal operator Quinn Morton, and a number of deputies, mine guards, and Chesapeake & Ohio Railway police boarded an armored train to exact their revenge on the miners’ tent colony at Holly Grove. Coal operators had equipped the train, known as the Bull Moose Special, with iron plate and machine guns.

As the train approached Holly Grove in the darkness, machine guns and rifles were fired into the tents of the sleeping miners and their families. Several people were wounded, and one striker, Cesco Estep, was killed while trying to escort his son and pregnant wife to safety. The enraged strikers retaliated by attacking the mine guards’ camp at Mucklow two days later.

The Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike, which ended several months later, is the deadliest strike in West Virginia history.

Sept. 15, 1875 – Governor Henry Hatfield Born Near Matewan

Governor Henry Hatfield was born near Matewan on September 15, 1875.

While his Hatfield relatives were fighting their famous feud against the McCoys, Henry was away at college. He eventually became a coal-camp physician in McDowell County. Appalled by the lack of medical facilities, he fought to have three miners’ hospitals established in the state and served as director of the Welch hospital for 13 years.

Hatfield was elected to the state senate in 1908. Four years later, the 37-year-old Republican was elected governor. He pushed for progressive reforms, including the establishment of a Public Service Commission and a workers’ compensation program. He began his term in the middle of the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike, the deadliest conflict of the mine wars. He granted a pardon to labor activist “Mother” Jones and striking miners who had been convicted in military courts. He also chaired a board that essentially ended the strike.

After leaving office, he enlisted in the Army as a chief surgeon during World War I and later served one term as a U.S. senator.

Henry Hatfield died in Huntington in 1962 at age 87.

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