Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we're coming to the Pacific Northwest. So if
Speaker 1: you live in that area or can get on a
Speaker 1: plane to go to that area, or a boat or
Speaker 1: snowshoe whatever, we'll see you at the end of January.
Speaker 2: That's right, brand new show, brand new topic. We don't
Speaker 2: even know what it is yet, but we'll be in Seattle,
Speaker 2: Washington on January twenty fourth, Portland on January twenty fifth,
Speaker 2: and then our annual trip to San Francisco's Sketch Fest
Speaker 2: on January twenty sixth in Seattle. We're counting on you.
Speaker 2: We're at the Paramount this year and that's a lot
Speaker 2: of seats, so we need a lot of your lovely
Speaker 2: faces in the audience.
Speaker 1: Yes, So get THEE two stuff youshould Know dot com
Speaker 1: and click on the tour button to get all your facts.
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Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and Chuck's
Speaker 1: two and Jerry's here too, and we're here in solidarity
Speaker 1: together the trio of us ready to put up our dukes.
Speaker 1: In this episode of stuff you should know the trie
Speaker 1: ipis sure, I said, trio right, yeah, okay, you were
Speaker 1: just messing around, your horsing around.
Speaker 3: I was running with it.
Speaker 1: How are you doing?
Speaker 3: I'm good.
Speaker 2: Quick shout out to the city of Mexico City, by
Speaker 2: the way. I meant to mention it the other day
Speaker 2: when we recorded, but I know there's someplace you've been,
Speaker 2: and Jerry's been. I finally, Emily and I made our
Speaker 2: first trip, and as you know, I can verify Mexico
Speaker 2: City is amazing.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty cool town. For sure.
Speaker 3: Boy.
Speaker 2: I feel really at home there, you do, I do.
Speaker 2: I feel very at ease. I was just like, this
Speaker 2: is I don't know, I don't know if it's a
Speaker 2: past life thing or what. That's what I was going
Speaker 2: to be, but I was like, this is like a
Speaker 2: New York in a tropical forest. I loved every bit
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: Asked Life, you were Diego Rivera, but not the famous one,
Speaker 1: just another Diego.
Speaker 3: Rivera, another big, old fat guy.
Speaker 2: We did go to Frida's house, which was a lifelong
Speaker 2: dream for both of us, but really for Emily so
Speaker 2: that was amazing, and that's great, just all kinds of
Speaker 2: great stuff. So that and that's it. I can't wait
Speaker 2: to go back.
Speaker 1: Way to shout out a city right out of the gate.
Speaker 3: That's right. And this was my idea. And I don't know.
Speaker 2: It may have been at the Bonnie Prince Billy shows
Speaker 2: that I went to in Arizona. We may have been
Speaker 2: talking about the fact that Will Oldham as a teenager
Speaker 2: was in the John Sales movie Mate Wan. And I
Speaker 2: think that's where it came to me because I saw
Speaker 2: that movie back then and have not seen it since then.
Speaker 2: But I was like, hey, that sounds a good, good
Speaker 2: topic to chew one man.
Speaker 1: He was all over the place John Sales. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: wrote and directed Mate Wan. He wrote and directed Brother
Speaker 1: from Another Planet. Like he whatever interested him, he just did.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He was also a writer for hire, like he wrote
Speaker 2: as great at Indie Genius as John Sales is. He
Speaker 2: wrote the Piranha movie. Oh yeah, I think I knew that,
Speaker 2: and a couple of other like writer for Higher Things.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I always been a big John Sales guy.
Speaker 2: And mate one is awesome. I kind of want to
Speaker 2: check it out after I know more about it now.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He wrote a lot of episodes of Spencer for
Speaker 1: Hire two.
Speaker 3: And BJ and the Verar yep.
Speaker 1: So, uh yeah, that's I'm glad you said mate one
Speaker 1: because I had never heard that word out loud before,
Speaker 1: and I looked it up and I heard one. Yes,
Speaker 1: I heard a residence say mate wan, and I immediately
Speaker 1: came up with a great mnemonic device for it.
Speaker 3: You ready, oh boy, if.
Speaker 1: You want to remember how to pronounce mate wan, it's
Speaker 1: a small small town in southern West Virginia.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: You just say, hey, who's that guy from West Virginia
Speaker 1: over there? You say, who him? That's my mate? Twan
Speaker 1: works like a charm. I am here to tell you Twan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could say wan, but I think Twan has a
Speaker 1: greater ring to it to really drive home how to remember.
Speaker 3: It, mate Twan?
Speaker 1: Okay, sure, although you would say mate one.
Speaker 3: Is that Josh Clark's fin maybe one? That's it. I
Speaker 3: love it.
Speaker 1: I want to see how quickly I could derail things
Speaker 1: this early in the episode.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean I talked about Mexico City forgetting us sakes.
Speaker 1: So we are talking about Maye Wan and I didn't
Speaker 1: know much about it. Again, I saw the word before
Speaker 1: I knew it was kind of a thing, But specifically
Speaker 1: the Battle of maye Wan is what we're kind of
Speaker 1: talking about, although that's just one kind of island in
Speaker 1: the archipelago of incidents that took place in southern Appalachia,
Speaker 1: southern West Virginia, and coal mining country just across the
Speaker 1: river from Kentucky and right near its border with Virginia
Speaker 1: as well. And all the events were about to talk
Speaker 1: about took place in the early twentieth century. And I
Speaker 1: knew nothing about any of this until we started researching
Speaker 1: this episode. So kudos to you because this is a
Speaker 1: pretty interesting chapter in not just American history or even
Speaker 1: West Virginia history, but labor Union history as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And this was Olivia jam and she
Speaker 2: did a great job. One thing I'm sure you knew
Speaker 2: before we started this is that West Virginia and coal
Speaker 2: have always been linked. And as Cole went, the history
Speaker 2: of America has gone because of that robust by two
Speaker 2: minus coal industry that has been around there since geez,
Speaker 2: probably like the mid nineteenth century. You know, it allowed
Speaker 2: America to grow not only you know, with their factories
Speaker 2: and railroads and things, but just people and heating homes
Speaker 2: and businesses and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you can get some hot hot heat from coal,
Speaker 1: hot hot heat, and you don't get quite as much
Speaker 1: from wood from what I understand, So just right there,
Speaker 1: you have more energy at your fingertips. Plus also I
Speaker 1: didn't realize this, but I saw it somewhere that it
Speaker 1: also kept cities from having to cut down all of
Speaker 1: the forests around them and rely on that wood. Right,
Speaker 1: It just makes it. It was just a better way
Speaker 1: to grow as an industrializing country. And so because America
Speaker 1: was you know, booming thanks to coal, I think people
Speaker 1: just kind of assumed, like, the coal miners are probably
Speaker 1: doing great. They must be richer than astronauts for mining
Speaker 1: this stuff that's become so valuable. Coal companies were, Yes,
Speaker 1: And the problem is all of these events came from
Speaker 1: would have been totally avoided probably had the coal companies
Speaker 1: shared in the wealth less sentially. Yeah, but that's the
Speaker 1: continuing story of you know, the world right Sadly. Yes,
Speaker 1: I don't know how long that's going to go on for.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's it has to be the way,
Speaker 1: but yes, that is so far the story of capitalism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, it was it was a pretty
Speaker 2: brutal existence as a miner back then. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: still a very very tough job. There are still dangers
Speaker 2: to be had, even though they've you know, cleaned it
Speaker 2: up quite a bit, but it's nothing like it was
Speaker 2: back then. It was dozens of miners died every year.
Speaker 2: There were all kinds of accidents all the time, big
Speaker 2: big events where hundreds of people die, and a single
Speaker 2: disaster or just you know, the daily work of dying
Speaker 2: on the job or dying you know because you just
Speaker 2: do that job and you breathe in that air, that.
Speaker 3: Kind of thing.
Speaker 2: And to add insult to injury, and a lot of
Speaker 2: these owns, the coal companies sort of ran everything, you know.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they owned the houses that the people that worked
Speaker 2: there lived in. Sometimes they owned all the businesses in town.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they ran the law offices there legal offices, but
Speaker 2: you know, the cherff's department and police and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: So it was a sort of a monopolistic control in
Speaker 2: a lot of these towns.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and even when they whether or not they had
Speaker 1: the local sheriff for constable in their pocket, they also
Speaker 1: found out that they could really supplement their hold their
Speaker 1: grip over their workers by hiring private police forces, as
Speaker 1: we'll see. Yeah, and they.
Speaker 2: Were really always a great idea, the private police force,
Speaker 2: that's exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, and they were really deliberate about keeping
Speaker 1: their workers from unionizing. A good example of that that
Speaker 1: Olivia turned up there was a mine owner named Justice Collins,
Speaker 1: and he I don't want to say caught, because I'm
Speaker 1: sure he really didn't care whether you heard this or not,
Speaker 1: but he was basically saying, you want to keep a
Speaker 1: quote judicious mixture of men as workers from groups like
Speaker 1: European immigrants, the Appalachian folk that have lived here for generations,
Speaker 1: and then black Southerners, I guess, deasperating from the Jim
Speaker 1: Crow South in search of better lives who are showing
Speaker 1: up in the area. You want some of each, because
Speaker 1: these people don't naturally necessarily get along, and you can
Speaker 1: make it, you can ensure it even further that they're
Speaker 1: not going to get along by paying some better than
Speaker 1: others for the same exact work. That really keeps people
Speaker 1: from getting along very well. And so if you've got
Speaker 1: groups of workers who aren't really interacting because they don't
Speaker 1: really mix well together, they're probably not going to be
Speaker 1: able to successfully form a labor union.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but as we will see in many cases, the union,
Speaker 2: in fact, it worked the opposite way, and they brought
Speaker 2: together people of different ethnicities in a way that was
Speaker 2: not common at all at the time as a whole.
Speaker 1: You know, no, it's true. And I saw there's a
Speaker 1: great Smithsonian article about all this, and the historian they
Speaker 1: talked to was saying, I don't want to paint the
Speaker 1: picture like I think. He said everyone was just holding
Speaker 1: hands around the campfire. But they came together in ways
Speaker 1: that were just unseen outside of this area, outside of
Speaker 1: the mining industry, outside of the mining unions, and they
Speaker 1: did probably get along better than people and other unions,
Speaker 1: black and white workers and other unions, just because they integrated.
Speaker 1: There's a really great scene that happened at one of
Speaker 1: the mine cafeterias during one of these strikes. Black and
Speaker 1: white workers held the cafeteria workers at gunpoint until they
Speaker 1: were seated together eating in an integrated cafeteria room, like
Speaker 1: they integrated themselves at gunpoint, essentially.
Speaker 3: Amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was pretty cool.
Speaker 2: So the union did get going, although you know, as
Speaker 2: we'll see as this story goes not quite yet in
Speaker 2: mate Wan in what county was that again, Mingo County?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have a great mnemonic device for that, do
Speaker 1: you really, oh man.
Speaker 2: So the union did get going in other parts of
Speaker 2: the country sort of late in the nineteenth century. The
Speaker 2: United Mine Workers of America was founded in eighteen ninety,
Speaker 2: and it was a real as far as unions go
Speaker 2: at the time. It was a real all encompassing union
Speaker 2: in that there were other unions around that sort of
Speaker 2: you know, if you're like a smithy or you had
Speaker 2: some really skilled specific craft, you might be represented, but
Speaker 2: they may not represent you know, black workers, Chinese immigrants,
Speaker 2: stuff like that. But the Miners Union kind of from
Speaker 2: the beginning was like, you know what, we're stronger with
Speaker 2: more people. We're going to represent all the miners who
Speaker 2: wanted to jump on board. And they realized that, you know,
Speaker 2: strikes were early on a real and you know still
Speaker 2: today a real big way that you can make change.
Speaker 2: But they were bloody affairs back then.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Like people would get shot and killed on
Speaker 1: both sides. The government forces would show up and sometimes
Speaker 1: shoot people like it was a really really violent era
Speaker 1: in labor history for sure. Murder it was murder, yeah
Speaker 1: for sure, killing people Yeah for wanting to organize for
Speaker 1: better working conditions and better pay. Yeah, like you could
Speaker 1: get you murdered back then. And so the United mind
Speaker 1: Workers of America they kept at it. I think they're
Speaker 1: founded in eighteen ninety. Did you say that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Can we call them mamwa?
Speaker 1: Sure? Sure you know how to remember that.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 1: So within seven years they held a strike, a major
Speaker 1: strike in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and it resulted
Speaker 1: in an eight hour workday for union miners. The thing
Speaker 1: is is that didn't necessarily spread across across the country,
Speaker 1: especially in southern West Virginia, which was almost entirely non
Speaker 1: unionized as far as coal miners went, and they, I think,
Speaker 1: from what I understand, is like the biggest pocket of
Speaker 1: non union miners in the entire country. So UMWA said,
Speaker 1: we need to start trying to make some inroads in
Speaker 1: there because there's a lot of people who could use
Speaker 1: our help. And one of the I think the first
Speaker 1: big confrontations that came to be known as the West
Speaker 1: Virginia Mine Wars took place in nineteen twelve, and UMWAH
Speaker 1: didn't actually bless it I guess is the way to
Speaker 1: say it. So it was considered a wildcat strike. But
Speaker 1: as soon as the strike began and it grew very quickly,
Speaker 1: umwah said we're behind you guys, one hundred percent whatever
Speaker 1: you need.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: This was the the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek coal
Speaker 2: mines in Kanawa County, and they struck. And these people
Speaker 2: will really factor in here in a second to the
Speaker 2: mate Wan affair. But the Baldwin Feltz Detective Agency, which
Speaker 2: will tell you all about here in a sec They
Speaker 2: were hired to come in, these sort of hired quote
Speaker 2: unquote guards also known as thugs if you were one
Speaker 2: of the unionists. They came in and had literal machine
Speaker 2: guns and shot up the homes of miners when their
Speaker 2: family was were there. These miners, I mean they called
Speaker 2: them wars for a reason. These miners were heavily armed.
Speaker 2: They fought back, and the governor at the time, the
Speaker 2: Venerable William ME Glascock, came in, declared martial law and
Speaker 2: sent in the state militia to break this strike up,
Speaker 2: and a couple of hundred and it wasn't just you know,
Speaker 2: throwing all the union leaders in jail.
Speaker 3: They were I think some of the.
Speaker 2: Some of the Baldwin Feltz people went to jail, but
Speaker 2: it was mainly strikers and union leaders that were sort
Speaker 2: of under the thumb of Glasscock at the time. So
Speaker 2: Mother Jones, which by the way, I think Mother Jones
Speaker 2: should be a total topic that the person, not the magazine.
Speaker 1: Sure or both.
Speaker 3: We'll talk well, we'll talk about the magazine a little bit.
Speaker 2: You have to, right, because like you could do an
Speaker 2: episode on People of the World that you'd have to
Speaker 2: talk about the magazine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, or anytime we talk about us, we
Speaker 1: should probably active a nod to that magazine team.
Speaker 2: Mother Jones was arrested though, along with a lot of
Speaker 2: the leaders and strikers. They had military tribunals and this
Speaker 2: sort of closed that the first chapter of the West
Speaker 2: Virginia Wars because World War Two came along and distracted
Speaker 2: everybody for a while. But things would kind of kick
Speaker 2: back into action in nineteen twenty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the Paint Creek Cabin Creek Striker War followed
Speaker 1: a pattern that would would become pretty regular. The miners
Speaker 1: would stop working, go on strike. The company would send
Speaker 1: in goons to come evict them from their company homes
Speaker 1: without any kind of warrant or anything like that. The
Speaker 1: families of the people evicted from those company homes would
Speaker 1: set up a tent city. The goons that the mine
Speaker 1: operators employed would go attack the tent city that would
Speaker 1: be a site too far for the miners. They would
Speaker 1: rise up armed and a real bloody clash would begin,
Speaker 1: and then the state or federal government would send in
Speaker 1: essentially troops to quell this uprising, and then the organizers
Speaker 1: would be unfairly arrested, often again without warrants, and tried
Speaker 1: and held, and then eventually things would kind of subside
Speaker 1: for a little while. That was the pattern that was,
Speaker 1: if not established there, it certainly was followed by all
Speaker 1: of the wars after that one.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, we take a break, Yeah, I think we should.
Speaker 3: All right, we'll be right back.
Speaker 2: So we promised to talk a little bit more about
Speaker 2: this company that figures into the maeite Wan affair or
Speaker 2: the mate Wan I mean, there's a lot of different
Speaker 2: names the war, the Battle at mate wand stuff like that.
Speaker 2: The Baldwin Feltz Detective Agency, So this was eighteen ninety two.
Speaker 2: They were founded by a guy named William G. Baldwin
Speaker 2: in Roanoke, Virginia, and a year later he hired a
Speaker 2: guy named Thomas Feltz to run the place with him.
Speaker 2: So it was the Baldwin Felts Agency, and they were
Speaker 2: modeled very much after the Pinkerton Agency in that they
Speaker 2: they were hired as sort of at first before they
Speaker 2: were even though they had a feeling they were going
Speaker 2: to get into union busting like Binkerton did. At first,
Speaker 2: they were one of those private police forces you were
Speaker 2: talking about, and they were charged depending on where they
Speaker 2: were and what town they were in, with everything from
Speaker 2: kicking hoboes off trains or killing hoboes that were on trains,
Speaker 2: to sort of supplementing local police forces when they were
Speaker 2: small towns, to eradicating what they call black crime in
Speaker 2: the South, like really sort of casting an on black
Speaker 2: people in the South and going after them. And they were,
Speaker 2: you know, they were thugs. They were the guys that
Speaker 2: they hired were Their backgrounds were pretty rough and tumble,
Speaker 2: and they would use any means necessary to do what
Speaker 2: they wanted to do. They kind of had free reign
Speaker 2: to do what they wanted.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Part of the reason why is because again a
Speaker 1: lot of these towns were quite literally run by the
Speaker 1: mining company. So if the mining company brought in an
Speaker 1: outside police force, the actual police force would work with them.
Speaker 1: At the very least, the courts would turn a blind
Speaker 1: eye or they just couldn't get arrested. And there were
Speaker 1: a lot of murders, like in broad daylight that happened
Speaker 1: during this time, that these private police force detectives I
Speaker 1: guess carried out and just were not even arrested for.
Speaker 1: So it was really lopsided. If you were a minor.
Speaker 1: Not only did this company like basically own you, but
Speaker 1: if you got out the line, there was a chance
Speaker 1: that you or your family were going to be beaten
Speaker 1: in or killed. So as the as the Umwa also
Speaker 1: known as Umwah really started to try to make inroads
Speaker 1: into southern West Virginia to organize this largest pocket of
Speaker 1: non union miners, the coal mine operators pushed back by
Speaker 1: hiring more and more private police forces, especially the Baldwin
Speaker 1: Felts Detective Agency. They became not the only one, but
Speaker 1: probably the most prominent in southern West Virginia as far
Speaker 1: as the the amount of work they got and then
Speaker 1: the dirtiness that they got their hands into.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they, I mean they were called the Pinkerton
Speaker 2: in the South. They were very effective at least at
Speaker 2: first because I think between over like an eight year
Speaker 2: period at the turn of the century at the end
Speaker 2: of the last century, they prevented these unions from organizing
Speaker 2: in West Virginia, and you know, I think there were
Speaker 2: some strikes that happened and they kept West Virginia out
Speaker 2: of it. So they were successful for a while at least.
Speaker 2: Like you said, they would beat up organizers. If you're
Speaker 2: pro union, you know, you might get kicked out of
Speaker 2: your house. You might have your house burned down. They
Speaker 2: place moles, they play spies among the miners and also
Speaker 2: just in town. As we'll soon see, they had one
Speaker 2: guy open up a restaurant a spy in mate Wine,
Speaker 2: and we'll meet him later as well. But it was
Speaker 2: I think it was the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek
Speaker 2: strikes that we talked about a few minutes ago, where
Speaker 2: all of these guards came in hundreds of these dudes
Speaker 2: killed up a bunch of people. The same thing happened
Speaker 2: in Colorado in nineteen fourteen and what was called the
Speaker 2: Ludlow massacre, where eleven literal children were killed because sometimes
Speaker 2: these miners were kids, like you know, I don't know
Speaker 2: how young they got, but they were children.
Speaker 1: These kids that were killed weren't even miners, they were
Speaker 1: miners children. So they were really like not they were
Speaker 1: really out of bounds. And the fact that eleven of
Speaker 1: them were killed because the Baldwin Felts detectives came and
Speaker 1: burned the tent city down that they were living in,
Speaker 1: that was it that really caught the nation's attention as well,
Speaker 1: and it gave a really terrible name to the Baldwin
Speaker 1: Felts Detective Agency, which they managed to trade on very
Speaker 1: heavily in southern West Virginia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in tent city because they were kicked out of
Speaker 2: the homes that were owned by the mining companies exactly.
Speaker 1: So not only did that whole process take place in
Speaker 1: southern West Virginia, it also happened in Colorado too. That's
Speaker 1: just what happened. You got kicked out of your home,
Speaker 1: you go set up a tent city, and then imagine
Speaker 1: setting up a tent city that's nowhere near the miner's
Speaker 1: land or the mine company's land, and yet the mine
Speaker 1: company still comes and burns your tent city down because
Speaker 1: you're still trying to organize. It's just some of the
Speaker 1: most important, almost unimaginable acts that just were carried out
Speaker 1: constantly between I guess probably basically the eighteen nineties until
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties when Franklin Roosevelt came into power. Like,
Speaker 1: that's just what happened. That's what people did. That was
Speaker 1: the risky ran if you didn't just keep your mouth
Speaker 1: shutting your head down and take whatever abuse they heaped
Speaker 1: on you in the mine as owners.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, this is only one hundred years ago,
Speaker 2: which one hundred years is a long time, but it's
Speaker 2: not that long.
Speaker 1: No, it's not. Which actually I mean, like there's still
Speaker 1: plenty of reasons to organized and unionize, and there's still
Speaker 1: plenty of grievances that need to be addressed, but just
Speaker 1: the actual process that happens, it's just we've come quite far,
Speaker 1: at the very least in removing generally violence from that
Speaker 1: kind of process.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So things are heating up in West Virginia.
Speaker 2: End of nineteen nineteen, there's a big Umwah launched a
Speaker 2: nationwide coal strike where they got a big fat raise.
Speaker 2: They got a twenty seven percent raise if you were
Speaker 2: a mine worker. But again, West Virginia was still almost
Speaker 2: completely non union at this point, so they didn't get
Speaker 2: the benefits from that, but I get the feeling that
Speaker 2: it really sort of rallied them to organize. At the
Speaker 2: same time, UMWAH was really mounting an effort in West Virginia,
Speaker 2: so they launched a campaign there in nineteen twenty in
Speaker 2: the southern part of the state and McDowell, Logan and
Speaker 2: Mingo County, where Mate one is to really get them
Speaker 2: together and say, hey, look, we got big fat raises
Speaker 2: for people all over the country. Here, you really need
Speaker 2: to unionize. And Mate wan was right there in the
Speaker 2: middle of Mingo County. I'm sure someone's going to say, actually,
Speaker 2: it's to the outside of Mingo County.
Speaker 1: I think it actually is.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's just a euphemism, like you know, smack dab
Speaker 3: in the middle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get you. I'm just saying I was being
Speaker 1: the lone or the masked emailer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the well actually person exactly, that's me. Uh no,
Speaker 2: it's not you at all, thank you, So mayite one.
Speaker 2: You know, we described these towns that were literally kind
Speaker 2: of run by the mining companies maye Wan was not
Speaker 2: one of them. The mining company did have their fingers
Speaker 2: in some operations, but there were like real legit local
Speaker 2: businesses owned by locals. There was a real independent sheriff there.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, police chief. His name was Smile and said
Speaker 2: hat Field. Of those hat Fields. I think his his
Speaker 2: grandfather the best. It always gets so confusing with me
Speaker 2: in genealogy.
Speaker 1: As you know, that was his grandfather devil Ance.
Speaker 2: No, his grandfather was half brother of the grandfather, half
Speaker 2: brother of devil Ance.
Speaker 1: Oh was that right? I saw he was the direct
Speaker 1: grandson of devil Ance. But okay, he's still he's still
Speaker 1: ken in folk as far as the.
Speaker 3: He was one of those Hatfields.
Speaker 2: And we did an episode on the Hatfield McCoys if
Speaker 2: you want to check that out.
Speaker 1: That was a good one. It was like Appalachian Romeo
Speaker 1: and Juliet story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it totally was. But that is to say Sid
Speaker 2: Hatfield was not in the pocket. He was a pro
Speaker 2: union guy and not in the pocket of the coal companies,
Speaker 2: which was kind of unusual.
Speaker 1: He was such a pro union guy he was. He
Speaker 1: stood trial once for blowing up a coal tipple, which
Speaker 1: is the structure that a freight train car drives under
Speaker 1: and gets filled with coal, and it's entirely possible he
Speaker 1: did that. That's how sympathetic he was to the coal
Speaker 1: miner's cause.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he was.
Speaker 1: He was the not the sheriff in town. There was
Speaker 1: a sheriff, and I get this the impression that the
Speaker 1: sheriff was a law and order kind of guy. Like
Speaker 1: his His allegiance was to law and order. So you know,
Speaker 1: no matter what side you're on, if you needed his
Speaker 1: protection or you know, the laws being broken, he took
Speaker 1: that seriously. He seemed a little more even keel and
Speaker 1: I can't remember his name. Sid Hatfield was one hundred
Speaker 1: percent in the miners camp. And the fact that this
Speaker 1: town existed and it wasn't in the pocket of the
Speaker 1: mine operators is I think the reason why these things
Speaker 1: happened because there was there was a power structure that
Speaker 1: could start to take on these Baldwin Felts detectives who
Speaker 1: were coming to town and causing trouble.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, I think you're totally right.
Speaker 1: Thanks to the law.
Speaker 2: The company Inmate one, the mining company was called the
Speaker 2: Stone Mountain Coal Company.
Speaker 3: Also where I was born.
Speaker 1: You were born at the Mate one.
Speaker 3: I was born in Stone Mountain, Georgia, different places.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. I knew you, like you worked there,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know you were born in Stone Mountain.
Speaker 1: Wyn't we well.
Speaker 2: I mean I was born. The hospital was the Cab
Speaker 2: General back then. Now it's the Cab Medical Center, which
Speaker 2: is Decatur. But I had a Stone Mountain address, even
Speaker 2: though it was not near, you know, kind of downtown
Speaker 2: Stowe Mountain, in Stowe Mountain Park.
Speaker 1: I understand that's fine. That still comes a Stone Mountain.
Speaker 1: I'm not questioning your bona fides.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, it was.
Speaker 2: It was just a little weird though, because if you
Speaker 2: if you're from around here and you say you grew
Speaker 2: up in Stone Mountain, people probably think like, oh, you
Speaker 2: grew up and went to Stow Mountain High School and
Speaker 2: live right near the park. But it was the dresses
Speaker 2: were just different back then.
Speaker 3: I get you.
Speaker 1: You sound a little defensive.
Speaker 3: No, no, no of it all proud Stone Mountain guy.
Speaker 2: I remember when I was a kid, Steve Martin referenced
Speaker 2: Stone Mountain and I think the man with two brains.
Speaker 2: You were like, it was a very big deal because
Speaker 2: Stone Mountain didn't get a lot of shouts and those.
Speaker 2: I remember there was one line where you said something
Speaker 2: about Stone Mountain, Georgia during like a rant, and it
Speaker 2: was just like what Steve Martin, why is his hair gray?
Speaker 2: I guess the good thing about that is Steve Martin
Speaker 2: looks about the same he does much forty years ago.
Speaker 2: All right, So workers did they even though they weren't
Speaker 2: under the thumb necessarily as a town of the Stowe
Speaker 2: Mountain Coal Company. A lot of the workers did live
Speaker 2: in company housing, and sometimes they were paid in dividends
Speaker 2: instead of you know money, like real American money. And
Speaker 2: they did use they employed the Baldwin Feltz Company to
Speaker 2: kind of, you know, come in and keep things quelled.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That they had a spy too, Who was I mean?
Speaker 1: In an episode full of really terrible people, this guy
Speaker 1: might be the most terrible of all. His name was C.
Speaker 1: Everett Lively see E. Lively, and he was involved in
Speaker 1: that Ludlow massacre in Colorado. He had killed at least
Speaker 1: one person for sure, and he moved to southern West
Speaker 1: Virginia and set up shop as a spy. Ostensibly he
Speaker 1: was a miner who or he had mining experience, but
Speaker 1: had gotten into the restaurant business and opened a cafe.
Speaker 1: And he opened the cafe and basically put out the
Speaker 1: welcome mat for the local miners union to come have
Speaker 1: their meetings at so he could keep tabs on what
Speaker 1: they were saying. And you know, he wanted to say, like, wow,
Speaker 1: they really fell for that. Yes, this guy, he befriended
Speaker 1: Sid Hatfield. He made the right kind of friends to
Speaker 1: make himself seem legitimate. So it was, you know, not
Speaker 1: hard for him to get to get some of these
Speaker 1: organizers leaders and otherwise to cough up like details because
Speaker 1: they trusted the guy. And they even very smartly the
Speaker 1: organizers for the like Mingo County area, they did not
Speaker 1: have an elected leader, and if they did, they kept
Speaker 1: it secret, so you didn't know who was actually running
Speaker 1: the show, which.
Speaker 3: No union, no local union had right.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, even behind the scenes, a lot of people
Speaker 1: didn't know who was actually calling the shots, which actually,
Speaker 1: from what I understand, led to a kind of a
Speaker 1: just a byproduct democratization of the whole process as well,
Speaker 1: which I think brought people in even further because they
Speaker 1: had a real stake in what happened and had a
Speaker 1: real say in what happened.
Speaker 3: Was they're a leader, Like, do we know who it was? Now?
Speaker 1: Yeah, his name was I think Frank Keeney. He was
Speaker 1: his one of his descendants as a local historian, who
Speaker 1: knows all about this stuff, but he was He was
Speaker 1: definitely the guy in charge of the Mingo County Area
Speaker 1: UMWAH chapter. He was the one who was organizing it,
Speaker 1: and he was doing it at a time when no
Speaker 1: one else would do it. And actually they sent mother
Speaker 1: Jones to come in. Who would She would have been
Speaker 1: about eighty at the time. She'd been a labor organizer
Speaker 1: for at least fifty years since and she helped big
Speaker 1: time for sure. But it was Frank Keeney who was
Speaker 1: the guy who was in charge.
Speaker 2: I thought you were going to say they kept Keene's
Speaker 2: identity a secret, and they were like, could you know,
Speaker 2: he's just sweeping up around the restaurant, and they're like,
Speaker 2: old Keeney lost his tongue about thirty years ago and
Speaker 2: he can't even talk anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no one opened his mouth to check. They just
Speaker 1: took it out that he really had.
Speaker 3: That's right, And he literally kept his mouth shut.
Speaker 1: So remember ce Charles Everett Lively. Yeah, he's a terrible person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's the spy. So we mentioned that Tin City.
Speaker 2: That happened in other places, this did happen in mate Wan.
Speaker 2: A lot of the families were kicked out of their homes,
Speaker 2: relocated to live together on land in tents, and in
Speaker 2: the spring of nineteen twenty, Mingo County the mate Wan
Speaker 2: workers finally said we're going to go on strike, mainly
Speaker 2: to protest the fact that these thugs, these Baldwin Feltz
Speaker 2: thugs as they were called, came in to bust up
Speaker 2: their organizing efforts, which culminated in I guess what we'll
Speaker 2: call round one of three rounds of events on May nineteenth,
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty, when about a dozen of these guards from
Speaker 2: Baldwin Felts came in to mate Wan. They went to
Speaker 2: a victim from tent City. A lot of people say
Speaker 2: that they were just kicked out of their homes, but
Speaker 2: the National Park Services on record saying that, you know,
Speaker 2: like you said earlier, they actually went to a place
Speaker 2: that they didn't even have jurisdiction and said you got
Speaker 2: to get out of your tent city as well, even
Speaker 2: though we have no power here. And those did we
Speaker 2: already mentioned Lee Felts, right, or did we.
Speaker 1: No, we've only mentioned his brother.
Speaker 2: Okay, so a couple of the guards or Albert and
Speaker 2: Lee Felts, and they're brothers of the co owner of
Speaker 2: the company, Tom Feltz, So he has literal family members
Speaker 2: sort of on the ground as one of these local thugs.
Speaker 2: And Albert his brother, and another one of the guards
Speaker 2: named Cebe Cunningham, and this was a guy that was
Speaker 2: in that Colorado massacre. Another one of the guys in
Speaker 2: the Colorado massacre. In addition to see E.
Speaker 3: Lively. I hope this isn't getting too confusing with all
Speaker 3: the names.
Speaker 1: Just map it out everybody.
Speaker 2: They had a shootout in town, like just a sort
Speaker 2: of a good old fashioned you know, meet in the
Speaker 2: middle of town and had had guns drawn.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of variations on exactly what happened,
Speaker 1: and we'll give you two of them. One, according to
Speaker 1: the West Virginia Department of Culture, said that after they
Speaker 1: evicted people from the tent city or the company homes,
Speaker 1: those Baldwin Felts detectives actually went into town and had dinner,
Speaker 1: and they were on their way to the train station
Speaker 1: and they were going to catch the five o'clock train
Speaker 1: out of town when they were approached by smiling City Hatfield,
Speaker 1: and Hatfield said, hey, you didn't have any right whatsoever?
Speaker 1: Do e vict those people? I have a warrant for
Speaker 1: your arrest? And Albert Felt said, you know what, I've
Speaker 1: got a warrant for your arrest. He might have even said,
Speaker 1: uh uh first right. It just so happened that the
Speaker 1: mayor of Maate, one Cabell Cornelius Testament CC Testament again
Speaker 1: with the double C initials. Yeah, he was on the scene.
Speaker 1: He was a good friend of Sid Hatfield's, and he said,
Speaker 1: let me see that. He said, this is a fake,
Speaker 1: This isn't actually a warrant for Sid Hatfield's arrest. And
Speaker 1: by the way, you can't arrest the chief of police here,
Speaker 1: so get out here. And while this was happening, a
Speaker 1: bunch of miners who were armed had taken notice of
Speaker 1: this confrontation that was taking place in the middle of
Speaker 1: the street between a bunch of Baldwin Felts detectives, their
Speaker 1: mayor and their police of chief of police, and so
Speaker 1: they kind of armed themselves to see what happened. Somebody
Speaker 1: fired a shot in all heck pro procluse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's from the mouth of JM Clark legendary podcast.
Speaker 3: You ever gone by JM?
Speaker 1: I tried to, you know, once or twice. It felt
Speaker 1: I felt wrong.
Speaker 3: I like that JM Clark, do you.
Speaker 1: I don't like those two letters together. They're not great.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think it's good. You don't. The guy's a ring.
Speaker 1: No, it's like it's like missing a vowel, like Jim
Speaker 1: JAM something like that. JM. It's not They're not cc CB, JB.
Speaker 1: All those are pretty good. JM is not good, and
Speaker 1: I'm sorry all the jm's out there.
Speaker 2: I think JM Clark sounds like a high end pantmaker,
Speaker 2: like a clothier or a habitasher.
Speaker 1: I make only tattersol vests.
Speaker 3: CW.
Speaker 2: I would think that doesn't sound great, but my dad
Speaker 2: called me CW, so it sort of has a ring
Speaker 2: in my mind.
Speaker 1: No, it does.
Speaker 3: I don't think they flow really c W does c W?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: JAM does not well at any rate. I'm gonna come
Speaker 3: over and have you fit me for some for a pant.
Speaker 1: Well, that's fine. I'm gonna start calling you C dubs
Speaker 1: from now on, S dubs.
Speaker 2: So they're surrounded by the miners. This is as far
Speaker 2: as the different accounts go, this sort of became a
Speaker 2: gredo shot first deal and that someone fired a gun,
Speaker 2: shootout happens. Seven of the detectives were killed, including Albert Feltz,
Speaker 2: the brother of the founder of the agency.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's and Lee, I think too.
Speaker 3: Oh do they both die? Yeah? Okay?
Speaker 2: And Mayor Testamon was killed and two miners. And again,
Speaker 2: depending on who you talk to, there's a historian that
Speaker 2: LVIA found named Rebecca Bailey that told the Smithsonian that
Speaker 2: Hatfield probably shot first or the miners. Other people say
Speaker 2: that contemporaneous accounts at the time, at least from the
Speaker 2: Willi News, is like the day after they said that
Speaker 2: detectives took sid Smile and said into custody, and that
Speaker 2: when Mayor Testerman came up and said, no, no, no, you've
Speaker 2: got to release him, that that's when things broke out,
Speaker 2: and that Testerman and Felts were shot first. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: then the Baldwin Feltz thugs kind of got out of there.
Speaker 2: Some of them tried to get across the river to Kentucky,
Speaker 2: some made it, some got shot there. Some supposedly were
Speaker 2: shot while they were running away, not across the river,
Speaker 2: and then some of those that did make it came
Speaker 2: back later, like under the cover of night to catch
Speaker 2: a train and secret. So who knows how it actually
Speaker 2: went down. We do know who died.
Speaker 1: Though, Yeah, and there's still bullet holes in some of
Speaker 1: the brick buildings on mate Street where the shootout happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think they preserved him by putting brass plugs in them.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, So however it happened, there was definitely
Speaker 1: a shootout and a bunch of people died, and we're
Speaker 1: left in the street until you know everybody. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've got like the dead mayor, the chief of police
Speaker 1: is involved. There's just so many dead people laying around
Speaker 1: that it took a little while to get everything cleaned
Speaker 1: up and orderly again. Apparently trains of people had started
Speaker 1: arriving and we're like okay, and we get back on
Speaker 1: the train. And that night actually they redirected trains through Matewan.
Speaker 1: They ordered the trains not to stop in Matewand as
Speaker 1: usual until the next day. So it was a really
Speaker 1: really big deal and rumors started flying very quickly, and
Speaker 1: probably the biggest one was that it was actually Sid
Speaker 1: Hatfield who shot Mayor Testament and that the reason he
Speaker 1: shot him was because Sid Hatfield had eyes for Testament's wife, Jesse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they traced this rumor to Baldwin Feltz detectives.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, And so apparently at Hatfield's trial for this, by
Speaker 1: the way, he was a quit by a very sympathetic jury,
Speaker 1: as was all of the miners involved. A lot of
Speaker 1: people stepped up and said, no, this is totally wrong.
Speaker 1: These guys were really close friends. Of course, he's not
Speaker 1: going to shoot him in retrospect, from my view, to
Speaker 1: execute your romantic rival in the broad daylight in the
Speaker 1: middle of the street anticipating a gunfight would be pretty
Speaker 1: brazen and just hoping for the best. So I think,
Speaker 1: just you know, the fact that there was no one
Speaker 1: who even said, yeah, he actually did this, I saw
Speaker 1: him do it. I think he probably didn't. But but
Speaker 1: there is a little bit of there's a strange PostScript
Speaker 1: to this story that does make you wonder a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Sid Hatfield married the mayor's wife, Jesse, less than.
Speaker 3: A month after this all went down.
Speaker 1: Yes, and it does good.
Speaker 3: It does make you wonder.
Speaker 1: And to make it even more interesting, Jesse was a
Speaker 1: direct descendant of Randolph McCoy No way, really, yeah, for real,
Speaker 1: I mean this a place like right across the river
Speaker 1: from where the Hatfields and the boys lived in Kentucky.
Speaker 2: Wow, smiling said he just he did. He didn't give
Speaker 2: a crud, did he.
Speaker 1: He didn't give a root and toot and crud.
Speaker 3: He didn't.
Speaker 2: I believe even after the wedding they were getting their
Speaker 2: marriage license and they were in Huntington staying at a hotel.
Speaker 2: So this is pre wedding staying in the same room.
Speaker 2: So you could get arrested for that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Back then it was called cohabitation, and the police arrested him,
Speaker 2: and of course it was Tom Feltz who had tipped
Speaker 2: them off. But apparently the judge said, no, don't worry
Speaker 2: about it. You guys are getting married today, and who
Speaker 2: wants to mess that up?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Then Tom felt said me right.
Speaker 1: The judge's famous quote was mazel tov, right, you want
Speaker 1: to take a break.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's take our other break and we'll we'll finish
Speaker 2: up what happens right after this.
Speaker 1: So, like I said, Hatfield was acquitted. His deputy Ed
Speaker 1: Chambers was there too. He was acquitted. Seventeen miners all
Speaker 1: acquitted because they were tried in Mingo County, which was
Speaker 1: again not run by the coal companies.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: That really didn't sit well with Baldwin Felts with the
Speaker 1: coal operators.
Speaker 3: Around one to the miners basically.
Speaker 1: For sure, that's a really great way to put it.
Speaker 1: And like I said, uh, Sid Hatfield. And it turns
Speaker 1: out also Ed Chambers were tried for blowing up a
Speaker 1: coal tipple like I mentioned, and they were actually dealing
Speaker 1: with this case, and this one had had been set
Speaker 1: in McDowell County and they had petitioned Chambers in Hatfield
Speaker 1: too for a change of venue because they're like, we're
Speaker 1: gonna get the death sentence for this thing here, and
Speaker 1: it was actually granted. For it to be granted, they
Speaker 1: needed to show up to court in McDowell County one
Speaker 1: more time before it was transferred over to I think
Speaker 1: Mingo County. And on that day they went to court
Speaker 1: with both of their wives, came out, and they were
Speaker 1: gunned down in broad daylight by no less than ce Lively,
Speaker 1: the anti union spy who was supposedly Sid Hatfield's close friend.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and get this round one goes to the miners
Speaker 2: because they were in a like you said, the local
Speaker 2: jurors were more friendly to them. Round two goes to
Speaker 2: the other side because the assassins said it was self
Speaker 2: defense and they weren't convicted because it was a McDowell
Speaker 2: county and it was more friendly toward the coal company exactly.
Speaker 3: So these juries are just biased on both sides.
Speaker 2: Basically, as far as Jesse goes, she's now been widowed twice,
Speaker 2: and she remarried in January of twenty two.
Speaker 3: But not to a hat Field or a Pinkerton of
Speaker 3: the South.
Speaker 1: No, but he was a state constable, so she liked
Speaker 1: the I guess the elected official.
Speaker 3: Men in uniform. Sure she should have made a baker then.
Speaker 1: For sure, I'm going to do something different this time.
Speaker 2: So this all, you know, that's round two, which was
Speaker 2: pretty quick. This kind of instigated Round three, which was
Speaker 2: the big one, which were the march on Logan County
Speaker 2: and the Battle of Blair Mountain. Because of these murders,
Speaker 2: the Unionist and the miner sent some demands to the
Speaker 2: governor Ephraim Morgan at this point and said, hey, this
Speaker 2: Baldwin Felts group of thugs are violent and they're doing
Speaker 2: things that are illegal and this can't stand.
Speaker 3: But Morgan.
Speaker 2: Of course everyone was in the pocket of somebody, yeah,
Speaker 2: was an anti union Republican and said didn't even acknowledge it,
Speaker 2: didn't even make a comment on the assassination, and took
Speaker 2: no action on this list of demands at all.
Speaker 1: So two things about Governor Morgan. One, while he was governor,
Speaker 1: a US Senate Committee on Labor issued an opinion that
Speaker 1: West Virginia was nothing more than an industrial autocracy and
Speaker 1: that the governor was basically there strictly for the benefit
Speaker 1: of the coal operators. And then number two, when he
Speaker 1: was elected, the reason he won is because he ran
Speaker 1: against three other progressives who were pro labor, and they
Speaker 1: split that vote. He was the only anti labor guy,
Speaker 1: and if you put their votes together, he would have
Speaker 1: been beaten badly. But they split the vote, and that
Speaker 1: led this anti labor guy to become governor. And it
Speaker 1: reveals something really important that the people, the general voter
Speaker 1: out there in West Virginia was pro labor, was in
Speaker 1: favor of miners, was in favor of unions, was not
Speaker 1: in favor of anti union conservatives. And just put put
Speaker 1: that in your pocket for later, because it's a really
Speaker 1: important point.
Speaker 3: That's right front pocket even I think.
Speaker 1: Is the front pocket of your ted or sal vest.
Speaker 3: That's right right beside your pocket watch. Sure, all right.
Speaker 2: So, because of the non action by the governor on
Speaker 2: August of nineteen twenty one, ten thousand that's right, ten
Speaker 2: thousand miners came to town, to Marmott, which is eight
Speaker 2: miles south of Charleston, armed a lot, most of them armed.
Speaker 2: Imagine everyone who had a gun had their gun definitely,
Speaker 2: and they were trying to you know, avenge obviously the
Speaker 2: deaths of Hatfield and Chambers, and they wanted to confront
Speaker 2: this sheriff there in Logan County. His name was Don Schaffin,
Speaker 2: and they also wanted and he was a minor guy,
Speaker 2: so it was sort of all in the same bucket.
Speaker 2: And they wanted to free some miners that were jailed
Speaker 2: in Mingo County. So Governor Morgan finally steps in and Chaffin,
Speaker 2: that sheriff I was just talking about, from Logan County.
Speaker 2: He got a bunch of deputies together, got a bunch
Speaker 2: of anti union civilians together, got their guns, and got
Speaker 2: up on the ridge line at Blair Mountain because the marchers,
Speaker 2: you know, heading into town had to go through there.
Speaker 3: And this was a This was a war.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was several days of gunfire, gapland guns,
Speaker 2: machine guns, rifles. They had airplanes dropping shrapnel bombs and
Speaker 2: dropping gas bombs, like gases that would make you nauseous
Speaker 2: and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: There was a guy on a horse with a tri dent.
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna ask if that's for you, okay.
Speaker 2: But it was several days of like a legit real
Speaker 2: war such that the President of the United States, Warren Harding,
Speaker 2: had to come in and send it. Well, it didn't
Speaker 2: come in like literally, but sent in federal troops in
Speaker 2: his stead right, and the Union surrendered. They were obviously
Speaker 2: outgunned by that point, but a lot of them were veterans,
Speaker 2: like army veterans, and so when they called in the army,
Speaker 2: they were like, I'm not going to go to war
Speaker 2: against my army that I served.
Speaker 1: In, right. And so even though the miners didn't make
Speaker 1: it to hang Don Chaffin, and they didn't make it
Speaker 1: to free the miners in Mingo County, they still considered
Speaker 1: this a win. Apparently, on the way back from town
Speaker 1: or from the fight, one of the miners leaned out
Speaker 1: of a passing street car and said it was Uncle
Speaker 1: Sam did it. And they were saying, like, we surrendered
Speaker 1: only two federal troops who were sympathetic with we. We
Speaker 1: didn't surrender to Baldwin Felts detectives, we didn't surrender to Chaffin,
Speaker 1: we didn't surrender the mine operators. It was strictly because
Speaker 1: federal troops came that we we said, okay, because we're
Speaker 1: not gonna we have no beef with the federal government,
Speaker 1: so we're not going to fight them. So it was
Speaker 1: actually generally it was pre much a win for the
Speaker 1: miners for sure, and it definitely helped catalyze the organizing
Speaker 1: that went on. I saw that right after sid Haffield
Speaker 1: was gonned down. I think they reached like ninety percent
Speaker 1: of miners had signed on for the union in the area,
Speaker 1: and this just helped catalyze it even further. The thing
Speaker 1: is is that the coal mine operators didn't give up
Speaker 1: at all. They continued their tactics trying to break strikes
Speaker 1: and break up the unions, and they actually proved to
Speaker 1: be very successful. There was a drop in union membership
Speaker 1: from the United Mineworkers Association from five hundred thousand and
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty shortly after the events we've just described to
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand in nineteen twenty nine, not because people
Speaker 1: lost interest in unionizing or having better working conditions, but
Speaker 1: because the mine operators ratcheted up the heat, both politically
Speaker 1: and violently to make that happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, But while they while the unions sort of lost
Speaker 2: the battle in that nine year period, they won the
Speaker 2: overall war eventually because what it also did was just
Speaker 2: sort of draw more attention to this kind of stuff,
Speaker 2: and it was you know, national news and all of
Speaker 2: these sort of militant anti union ideas were I think
Speaker 2: as far as the American public goes were like, you know,
Speaker 2: this is no good. And FDR comes in and says like,
Speaker 2: hey guys, we need a new deal, and they're like, okay,
Speaker 2: what should we call it? And he went how about
Speaker 2: the new deal? And all of a sudden, you know,
Speaker 2: unions had a I mean, I guess you could say
Speaker 2: that had an easier time. They definitely weren't being intimidated.
Speaker 2: I mean, their unions are still intimidated, but not in
Speaker 2: the ways they were in the you know, turn of
Speaker 2: the century through the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, remember when I said Governor Morgan was elected but
Speaker 1: not by any sort of popular vote, and that the
Speaker 1: will of the people actually was pro union. Thanks to
Speaker 1: the United Mind Workers Association and some of the other unions,
Speaker 1: that voice was elevated into national politics and it actually
Speaker 1: ended up taking over the show, getting FDR elected, and
Speaker 1: then working directly with FDR to get the new deal passed,
Speaker 1: to get the labor union strength and to get better
Speaker 1: benefits and working conditions for union members. And not just
Speaker 1: union members, the unions had a knock on effect for
Speaker 1: other workers who weren't even unionized because it it forced
Speaker 1: the mine operators to improve conditions across the board, so
Speaker 1: it benefited workers who hadn't even joined the union. And
Speaker 1: the wages had to get competitive all of a sudden too,
Speaker 1: so that benefited everyone as well. It's really difficult to
Speaker 1: overstate the effect that the United Mind Workers' Union had,
Speaker 1: like it was an enormously on the future of America. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not just in southern West Virginia, but yes, in America.
Speaker 1: They went on to form the CIO as an AFL CIO,
Speaker 1: which organized industrial workers like the people who put together
Speaker 1: stuff using the raw material that people like the miners
Speaker 1: dug out of the ground and that had a huge
Speaker 1: effect as well. So it was a really really big deal,
Speaker 1: these mine wars that took place in southern West Virginia
Speaker 1: and the effect that they had across the rest of
Speaker 1: the country.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely. They also went on to found the NFL
Speaker 3: and the NBA and the C. W.
Speaker 1: Bryant.
Speaker 3: That's right in the J. M.
Speaker 2: Clark as far as Baldwin felt, that company, that agency.
Speaker 2: They operated for about fifteen years after that, not nearly
Speaker 2: as sort of young in Busting.
Speaker 3: Public eye sort of spectacle, a little quieter.
Speaker 2: But when Baldwin and Felts both died within a year
Speaker 2: and a half of each other in nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 2: they folded for good. Rich dudes made a ton of money, obviously,
Speaker 2: And I suggest seeing mate one that the John Sales
Speaker 2: movie from nineteen eighty seven is really good. It's a
Speaker 2: fictionalized version. There are a few characters, believe test the
Speaker 2: Mayor is in it, and ce Lively is in it,
Speaker 2: and a couple of others, but like the main players,
Speaker 2: like Chris Cooper's is the lead, it's a fictionalized character.
Speaker 2: But this is a really good movie. John Sales is
Speaker 2: a great filmmaker.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it wrote and directed right in a nice
Speaker 1: little PostScript to all of this is found with ce Lively. Apparently,
Speaker 1: his usefulness ran its course after he was revealed to
Speaker 1: not be an actual friend to the miners, and he
Speaker 1: was no longer employed by Baldwin Feltz and by nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty seven he had gone back to mining and was destitute.
Speaker 1: That kind of thing makes you feel good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what about his restaurant?
Speaker 1: It was shut down for health code violations. Somebody found
Speaker 1: p in the suit. Oh my god, it was terrible.
Speaker 3: I'm that old bag.
Speaker 1: No, someone put their foot in the Brunswick Stew.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, you remember that.
Speaker 1: Well, I just listened to that. It's coming out as
Speaker 1: a select I think sometimes that's okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, our foot in Brunswicks Dow episode.
Speaker 1: Well, since Chuck referenced to our foot in Brunswicks Tew episode,
Speaker 1: I think everybody we can all agree that it's time
Speaker 1: for listener mail.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna call this Josh correction. Sorry.
Speaker 1: That seems to be like a good fifty percent of
Speaker 1: our listener mail these days.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't talk as much. I'm smart. I keep
Speaker 3: my trap shut.
Speaker 2: Okay, Hey, guys wanted to write in a clear up
Speaker 2: Josh's conception of Catalina Island. It was my home away
Speaker 2: from home for almost twenty years. My husband and I
Speaker 2: lived on our forty four foot sloop and of moored
Speaker 2: in that harbor many times, probably even the same morning
Speaker 2: where the splendor had more in nineteen eighty one. And
Speaker 2: of course this is referencing our Natalie Wood episode which time, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the show's so nice, they released it thrice. Josh depicted
Speaker 2: the location as a place where rich people go in
Speaker 2: their yachts to party yacht to yacht. In reality, it's
Speaker 2: more like camping at an RV park. Boats as small
Speaker 2: as twenty feet sail over to twin harbors on Catalina
Speaker 2: and the occupants all dine at Doug Harbor's Reef, which
Speaker 2: is the only restaurant there.
Speaker 3: The city of Avalon is the South.
Speaker 2: Of France type place, but the isthmus of Catalina is
Speaker 2: a boater's campground.
Speaker 3: A couple of things.
Speaker 2: I'll chime in about one and our experience. There's never
Speaker 2: been a power voter that thought twice about disturbing their
Speaker 2: anchorage neighbors with floodlights and generators and loud music.
Speaker 3: And two.
Speaker 2: As for the people who heard cries of help, I
Speaker 2: wonder if they were actually downwind or upwind of the splendor.
Speaker 2: Because sound travels very well across water, perhaps the dinghy
Speaker 2: was actually very far away when they heard these cries.
Speaker 2: Just curious part of the stuff you should know family.
Speaker 1: Kathy with a K, oh, I wonder if that's Kathy
Speaker 1: with the K who gave us lassos in Arizona.
Speaker 3: Oh, is that Kathy with a K? You know? I
Speaker 3: got my lasso hanging up at the camp still.
Speaker 1: And that tracks people who have lassos also might have
Speaker 1: spent a portion of their life living on the sailboat.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: So okay, if that's you, Kathy with the K, how
Speaker 1: are you? Good to hear from you? And if you're
Speaker 1: not the same Kathy with the K, good to hear
Speaker 1: from you as well. Thanks for that. I love being corrected.
Speaker 1: Even though you could make a case that partying from
Speaker 1: RV to RV at RV park is a very celebrity
Speaker 1: thing to do these days, that's fine, We'll go with
Speaker 1: your interpretation of it, all right. Well, if you want
Speaker 1: to get in touch with this, like Kathy with the K,
Speaker 1: did you can send us an email to stuff podcast
Speaker 1: at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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