If the operators stamp out the effort to restore unionism on Paint and Cabin Creeks and prevent its going further than it has already gone on Coal River it will mean the checkmating of unionism in the coal fields of the state. Fights will be made, one after another, in places where the United Mine Workers have organizations and they will be broken up as they were broken up on Cabin Creek ten years ago. Once broken, they will not be permitted to be formed again.

If, on the other hand, the miners win, their organization will be pushed first into one field, then into another, until the whole state shall have been unionized. It will take them years 10 do this. This explains the extreme bitterness of the present fight, each side practically staking its all on this one throw. Of course, the operators do not admit that they are battling to crush out unionism in the state and the officials of the mine workers' organization do not talk much about extending the fight to other fields if they win in this. That is their purpose, nevertheless.

The miners are receiving assistance from other operators in non-union parts of the state. All the resources of the United Mine Workers of America are being thrown behind the min

ers.

As explained to me by perhaps the most prominent man in the organization a few days ago, there is now no big fight on hand anywhere else in the country, and there has been none for a year. This has enabled the mine workers to collect a big fund and they are still collecting. The organization's war chest is kept in good shape by contributions from every mining district in the nation and all this will be poured into the Kanawha field if necessary. In addition to this, the miners again have the sympathy, if not the active co-operation, of the operators in the Pennsylvannia, Illinois and Ohio fields. where the union scale is paid.

In fact, the operators in the fields which are organized look upon their brothers. who have been able to prevent the union getting a hold in their operations very much as the union laborer looks upon the non-union laborer, although the operator is not so frank in expressing his opinion. He is perfectly willing to upset the labor conditions in his competitors' operations and aid the laborers in making their fights. And the operator in the unorganized field is perfectly willing to see his competitors' fields organized to the limit.

The country in which this war between the miners and the coal companies is taking place is as wild as any that lies out of doors. Cabin Creek Junction is sixteen miles east of Charleston and Paint Creek Junction is seven miles further east. On Cabin Creek the railroad runs south along the bed of the creek sixteen miles

MOTHER JONES

to Kayford while on Paint Creek the road extends for twenty-two miles. These creeks are little streams, ordinarily, which sometimes reach the proportions of torrents, flowing along the bases of the mountains. The elevation of the creek beds above tide ranges from 800 to 1,000 feet, while the tops of the hills which rise abruptly on both sides of each creek are from 1,000 to 1,500 feet higher. The sides of these hills are so steep that only an experienced mountaineer can climb them, yet here and there near the creek beds the miners have raised little patches of corn and vegetables.

The workable veins of coal lie high up on the sides of these hills, and from each mine mouth a track leads to the coal tipple below from which the coal is dumped from the mine cars to the cars of the railroad which runs beneath the tipple. Here and there at the base of either of these ravines is a narrow strip of flat land, and on these flats, the mining villages are located. At places the bottom of the ravine is so narrow that there is not room for the railroad track, the creek bed and the county road, so the road runs along the bed of the creek and is impassable at times of high water and oftentimes in the winter.

It is estimated that before the strike began, there were approximately 10,000 men, women and children living along Cabin Creek and somewhat more than half that number along Paint Creek. A train runs up each creek in the morn

ing and there is another in the afternoon and if you happen to miss the afternoon train out there is no way out except to walk, and walking is very difficult in that country.

For that reason little real news of the exact condition of affairs has reached the outside world. Newspaper men are decidedly unwelcome along the creeks; that is, their presence is distasteful to the mine owners. Few strangers had been allowed to enter the creeks for a long time prior to the entry of the militia last summer, without explaining their business to some man, and usually a man with a gun. Ordinarily a stranger would not get beyond the junction of the main line and the branch road. If the explanation of his business did not happen to be satisfactory, he was told to get out. If he demurred or showed a disposition to argue he was frequently beaten up. If he got up the line, his chances of getting beaten up were largely increased. One labor organizer told me that a couple of years ago he was pulled off a train and kicked into insensibility by the mine guards and when he recovered was made to "walk the creek" in water up to his waist because he had gone up Cabin Creek to see what the labor conditions were.

The Mine Guards

These mine guards are an institution all along the creeks in the non-union sections of the state. They are as a rule supplied by the BaldwinFelts Detective Agency of Roanoke and Bluefield. It is said the total number in the mining regions of West Virginia reaches well up to 2,500. Ordinarily they are recruited from the country towns of Virginia and West Virginia, preferably the towns in the hill country, and frequently have been the "bad men" of the towns from which they came. And these towns have produced some pretty hard characters. The ruffian of the West Virginia town would not take off his hat to the desperado of the wildest town of the wildest west.

These Baldwin guards who are engaged by the mining companies to do their "rough work" take the place of the Pinkertons who formerly were used for such work by the coal companies. Since the Homestead strike in the steel mills years ago when the Pinkertons fired into the strikers and killed a number of them, this class of business has gradually drifted away from the Pinkertons and much of it has been acquired by the Baldwin-Felts agency.

In explanation of the employment of these guards, the operators say that their property must be guarded, that the state does not give them sufficient protection. Men who do service as mine guards cannot be expected to be "ladylike." They deal with desperate characters and are constantly in peril. The guards act on the April 5, 1913.

principle that they must strike first if they are to strike at all, and evidence shows that they have not the slightest hesitancy about striking first. The operators also say that it is necessary to require explanations of strangers in order to keep out labor agitators and to prevent the miners from being annoyed and threatened by them.

No class of men on earth are more cordially hated by the miners than these same mine guards who are engaged to "protect" them from annoyance by outsiders. Before the state troops went into the region and took their rifles away from them, the mine guards went about everywhere, gun in hand, searching trains, halting strangers, ejecting undesirables, turning miners out of their houses and doing whatever "rough work" the companies felt they needed to have done. Stories of their brutality are told on every hand along the creeks. Some are unquestionably exaggerated, but the truth of many can. be proved and has been proved.

In spite of the work they do some of these Baldwin men seem to be decent enough chaps to those who are not "undesirable," and they are, for the most part, intelligent. But they are in the mines for a definite purpose. They understand what that purpose is and they have no hesitancy about "delivering the goods." They seem to have no illusions about their work. It pays well and if brutality is required, why, brutality "goes." Whenever possible they are clothed with some semblance of the authority of the law, either by being sworn in as railroad detectives, as constables or deputy sheriffs.

But for all that a number have been indicted for offenses ranging from common assault to murder. In every case, however, bail has been ready and it is rare that charges against them have been brought to trial. Some of the assault cases in which they have figured have been of great brutality, yet rarely has any serious trouble resulted for the guards. They go about their work in a purely impersonal way. If a worker becomes too inquisitive, if he shows. too much independence, or complains too much. about his condition, he is beaten up some night as he passes under a coal tipple, but the man who does the beating has no feeling against him personally; it is simply a matter of business to him.

Just what the services of the guards cost the coal companies is difficult to learn. The companies contract with the Baldwin-Felts agency for them and the sum they pay is kept a secret. It is generally understood that the guards get about $5 a day, or between $100 and $125 a month. A man in the mines who knows one of them intimately told me he "picked up his gun" for $105 a month. When a man joins the Baldwins he "picks up his gun," and that stamps

him forevermore with his former associates if they were of the laboring class as an enemy and a man who has turned his back on his class and his kind.

Unless the miners are beaten in this fight, and utterly and completely beaten, there will never be a settlement of the difficulty here until the mine guards are driven from the region. "The mine guards must go," is the slogan of the striking miner everywhere. His going is of more importance than an increase in pay. There will be no lasting peace in the region until they are gone. All over the state when the situation in the Kanawha valley comes up for discussion you are told that the mine guards are at the bottom of the trouble. They are the Ishmaelites of the coal regions for their hands are supposed to be against every miner, and every miner's hand is raised against them. They go about in constant peril-they are paid to face danger and they face it all the time. But they are afraid, for they never know when they may get a charge of buckshot or a bullet from an old Springfield army rifle that will make a hole in a man's body big enough for you to put your fist in.

A number of guards have been killed since the trouble began, and it is generally understood that some of these were buried by their fellows and nothing said about it, there being a disposition down in the mines not to let the other side know when either side scores and gets a man.

Beginning of Hostilities

Preparations for the warfare, which began in April of last year, had been going on for months before the actual opening of hostilities. The miners on Paint Creek began buying old Springfield rifles which the government had discarded and which were offered in quantities by junk 44

dealers and department stores in Charleston. There had been rumors of trouble, and the Paint Creek miners who were organized had received intimations that Cabin Creek conditions would be established in their operations. There had been no mine guards on Paint Creek for they are seldom seen in union operations. The miners had received imformation that the operators would not sign the scale for the new year but would repudiate the union and bring in the guards.

Their information proved correct. When the Kanawha Operators' Association met to consider the scale, the Paint Creek operators declined to sign it and withdrew from the association. The miners struck and the guards appeared over night. A big fight took place at Mucklow when the first blood was spilled in the trouble. It has been spilled in quantities since with more or less regularity.

The companies immediately prepared for a long fight. Miners were evicted from their homes and many of them have since been living in tents furnished by the United Mine Workers. Machine guns were imported and mounted in concrete fortifications that were hurriedly built on the roofs of the company stores and mounted in positions of vantage in the hills. Whisky, cartridges, rifles and machine gun ammunition were brought in in large quantities.

The strike spread at once to Cabin Creek and from the beginning the warfare has been more serious on Cabin Creek than it has been on Paint Creek. More machine guns were established on Cabin Creek than had been planted in Paint Creek. The situation grew so threatening that Governor Glasscock ordered out the militia early last August at the solicitation of the mine owners. By that time almost every man on Cabin Creek had his rifle and ammuni

April 5, 1913,

tion, hidden but where he could get at it without trouble. For the most part the arms were smuggled in over the hills. The mine owners informed Governor Glasscock that the miners were armed and were threatening to wipe out the mine guards, one of the guards, William Stringer, having been slain in a most brutal manner. The miners did not ask for protection, saying they could protect themselves. It is generally believed that they were waiting for some particularly bad move on the part of the guards, when they proposed to exterminate them if possible. The mine owners expected thať when the troops came they would disarm the miners but allow the guards to retain their rifles, in other words, and to put it very plainly, they expected that the militia would be used as an additional force against the miners. But when the troops began disarming the guards as well as the miners they protested most vigorously. But for every rifle taken away from a guard in the early days of the trouble, dozens of new ones were brought in.

Martial Law

Governor Glasscock's attitude pleased neither the operators nor the strikers. The miners at the outset wanted him to proclaim martial law, to search the whole place, run out the guards, take their arms away from them and take the machine guns out of the improvised forts. They received the soldiers with open arms-no set of soldiers ever went into a strike region and received a heartier welcome. In the presence of the troops, the guards had no terrors for the miners, and even the children were unafraid.

When martial law was really proclaimed, however, the strikers did not like it. The law was enforced with vigor and a number of the strikers were put in prison for violating the law April 5, 1913.

against unlawful assemblages. The shoe had begun to pinch and it pinched pretty hard before the soldiers were withdrawn. It was a mistake to take away the troops before the strike had been definitely settled. It would have cost the state a good deal to have retained them after things quieted down, but if a comparatively small force had been kept, it is hardly likely that the recent trouble would have occurred, and it would not have been necessary to send the soldiers back and proclaim martial law a second time. Then many lives would have been saved.

The trouble that followed the withdrawal of the troops could have been, it seems, foreseen by almost anyone. One of the miners said when I was in the mines:

"Hell is going to break loose here as soon as the troops are recalled unless the mine guards go out at the same time. They have it in for us and we have it in for them. As soon as the troops go out, we fellows who have been working to unionize this region are going to catch it. But when they start something the fun will begin.

"If you want to see some hot doings just wait around until the troops go. Conditions such as prevail here are a disgrace. The like of them does not prevail in any civilized country on the globe. And we are not going to stand them any longer. I have never had to kill a man and hope never to be compelled to kill one, but I would kill a dozen of these guards as I would kill so many rats if they should attempt to lord it over us as they have been accustomed to do. And I would do it with a perfectly clear conscience."

The man who made this statement was killed in one of the recent fights in the valley. I saw his name in the list of the dead.

One of the things that give the coal operators such complete control of the men who work for

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