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Speaker 1: It's not exciting when guns go off. I mean, you know, exciting.

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Speaker 1: It is like, you know, like an action movie. The

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Speaker 1: definition of the word exciting, the feeling of excitement. It's

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Speaker 1: usually associated with good things. Right, It's like fantastic is

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Speaker 1: now associated with feeling good or something being awesome but

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Speaker 1: actually fantastic, but actually actually fantastic and used to be

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Speaker 1: used just to me and something that was hard to believe.

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Speaker 1: Fantastic made a fantasy. I think that's fantastic. It is

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Speaker 1: kind of cool sometimes to dig into etymology. Yeah, oh wait, no,

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Speaker 1: I guess I don't think it's fantastic because I find

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Speaker 1: it easy to believe. I just think it's great. So

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Speaker 1: I think that it's the new version of fantastic, but

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Speaker 1: not the original version of fantastic. Thank you, Thank you

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Speaker 1: for all the pedants out there like us. That was

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Speaker 1: for you, for you, that was for you, that's for you,

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Speaker 1: fantastic people, So fantastic every way. Oh now that's sarcastic fantastic. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's my spectacular spectacular sarcastic. If show it'll be sarcastic fantastic.

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Speaker 1: I feel like sarcastic fantastic could be your autobiography. Alright, Oh,

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Speaker 1: it's so unbelievable. Uh, he said, I have a fake

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Speaker 1: sounding laugh. I know, forced giggles, forcing your giggles, And

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Speaker 1: people have said that for a long time. Because I'll

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Speaker 1: tell you, I'll tell you why I changed my laugh

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Speaker 1: in maybe middle school or high school. I did put

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Speaker 1: some work into it because I laughed differently before. How

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Speaker 1: did you laugh? Let me see if I can conjure

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Speaker 1: it up. What if you revert? You did that? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I did like the donkey laugh, okay, and you didn't

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Speaker 1: care for it. I didn't, Okay, I didn't. And um,

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Speaker 1: look I don't feel things. Uh. I don't react very regularly.

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Speaker 1: If I wanted to, I could just have a very

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Speaker 1: blank expression all the time. I believe that. Yeah, what's

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Speaker 1: that supposed to mean? I think you just do like

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Speaker 1: Queen's Gambit, but like black Back or something, you're just

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Speaker 1: like up in your head envisioning game, just yourself from

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Speaker 1: any situation and just play craps in your mind. And

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Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't laugh like that. I laughed

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Speaker 1: like I laugh now and it's just how it comes out.

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Speaker 1: So I don't know. Maybe it sounds fake. Maybe everyone

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Speaker 1: I've ever laughed at. Was like, Wow, he clearly doesn't

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Speaker 1: think I'm very funny, but actually kind of think I'm

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Speaker 1: like very easy to to think something's funny, Like I'm

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Speaker 1: I'm very forgiving in comedy. I'm not going to say

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Speaker 1: I have a low bar because I'm regularly insulted by

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Speaker 1: people trying to be funny and it's bad. But you know,

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Speaker 1: earnestness and effort goes a long way in comedy for me.

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Speaker 1: I agree, I agree, definitely. Sometimes I am maybe even

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Speaker 1: often I am the only one laughing because he got me,

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Speaker 1: you got me. I'm a good audience. I think. I

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Speaker 1: don't think there's anything wrong with going around being ready

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Speaker 1: to be pleased, you know what I mean. That's just

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Speaker 1: that's what I try. I'm trying, I'm striving for every day.

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Speaker 1: Is just like, I don't want to be in a

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Speaker 1: position where I'm just ready to complain all the time.

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Speaker 1: I want to be ready to be pleased. I'm okay,

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Speaker 1: you know, you know, unless something agreed just really happens,

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Speaker 1: you know, there's really not much to get upset about.

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Speaker 1: I think in some ways it makes me a harsher

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Speaker 1: critic because I want to like things. I want to

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Speaker 1: laugh at things. I would so much rather enjoy something

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Speaker 1: than not enjoy it. Like right, we talked about before.

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Speaker 1: It was like movies and stuff of the time. I

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Speaker 1: am trying to have a good time. So if I

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Speaker 1: don't like something, I'm a little insulted, Like it's not

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Speaker 1: hard to please me. You really fucked up? Yeah, come on,

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Speaker 1: So I don't know. I don't know if that makes

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Speaker 1: me a good person or more of an asshole. But

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Speaker 1: it depends. Yeah, it depends on how hard you sucked

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Speaker 1: up and how ad you fucked up? How hard did

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Speaker 1: I sunk up today? Yeah? Did Eli like it? Damn?

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Speaker 1: I couldn't get Eli on board. Woof, we should make

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Speaker 1: this whole obi Wan Kenobi series over again, I guess.

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Speaker 1: I mean you know what I think several people. I

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Speaker 1: was ready to see a new effort. I was ready.

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Speaker 1: But enough of that. Well, but you know what, obi

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Speaker 1: Wan was the product of a lot of labor. Yes,

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Speaker 1: Oh that's so good. Oh that's a transition. Oh it

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Speaker 1: was like somebody just scratched the right spot on my

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Speaker 1: back that I couldn't reach that transition. M hmm. Keep

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Speaker 1: it going by, they give me the medium books. Keep

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Speaker 1: it going and today we are going to be telling

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Speaker 1: a story right in time for Labor Day about how

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Speaker 1: it came about that we have our eight hour work

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Speaker 1: days and our you know, forty hour work weeks, and

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Speaker 1: we have our certain wages and all these these workers

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Speaker 1: rights that were for health and safety, that's right, that

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Speaker 1: were fought for by actual people having to do a

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Speaker 1: lot of crazy shit and and dead in the center

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Speaker 1: of it. A very bizarre romance. Yes, we don't even

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Speaker 1: know a lot about, but it does sort of the

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Speaker 1: story sort of radiates out from there. Yeah. So sid

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Speaker 1: Hatfield was the police chief of mat Juan, West, Virginia

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Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty when coal miners were striking a lot

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Speaker 1: for better hours and better wages and safer conditions, and

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Speaker 1: private detectives acting for the coal companies responded by forcibly

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Speaker 1: a big strikers from their homes and all of this

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Speaker 1: culminated in a shootout that left seven of the detectives. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: as the miners and their allies maintained that the detectives

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Speaker 1: had shot first. They killed the mayor, who was a

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Speaker 1: union man named Testerman, but the detective said that Sid

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Speaker 1: Hatfield shot Testerman because he was hot for his wife.

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Speaker 1: Oh so yes, let's celebrate Labor Day by talking about

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Speaker 1: the American Coal Wars and what really happened during the

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Speaker 1: Battle of Maitlox Hey their French. Come listen, Well, Elia

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Speaker 1: and Diana got some stories to tell. There's no matchmaking

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Speaker 1: a romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships, a lover.

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Speaker 1: It might be any type of person at all, and

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Speaker 1: abstract cons a from a concrete wall. But if there's

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Speaker 1: a story, were the second Glance ridiculous romans? A production

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Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio? Well, listen, how much do you

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Speaker 1: know about Cole Cole? Just off the top of your head,

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Speaker 1: top of my head? It is, uh, you get that

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Speaker 1: for Christmas every year? Right? It shows up and you're

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Speaker 1: talking right, Cole every year? Yeah, that's that's normal, right,

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Speaker 1: That's that's just what bad boys and girls get. Well,

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Speaker 1: I am something of a bad boy, so I think

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Speaker 1: that works out pretty well. Something of a bad girl too,

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Speaker 1: and that I'm bad at being one. So overall I'm

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Speaker 1: a I'm a bad boy and I'm a I'm a

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Speaker 1: poor girl. I guess I am kind of a poor

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Speaker 1: girl too. Anyway, enough about me, Well, basically, nothing I

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Speaker 1: know nothing, but I know we get them for the

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Speaker 1: grill sometimes when you have a charcoal girl. Sure, yeah, right,

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Speaker 1: and there's somewhere out there cole eventually makes things work, right,

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Speaker 1: Like my laptop is being charged. Maybe because there's coal

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Speaker 1: somewhere somewhere doing something. Somebody can fact check us on that.

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Speaker 1: I don't know. Well, yeah, I just didn't know much

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Speaker 1: about particularly more specifically the getting of coal and getting

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Speaker 1: it to me the consumer. Okay, how does it end

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Speaker 1: up in my stocking? Yeah? What is this? Is Santa episode? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: This is the Christmas time year round? No, it's not.

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Speaker 1: It is a story about workers, damn it. And so

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Speaker 1: I say we start off with a quick filling with history.

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Speaker 1: You're fire. So coal was a big business in the

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Speaker 1: late eighteen hundred's and early nineteen hundreds because it was

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Speaker 1: the main energy source for the country. I mean everything,

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Speaker 1: everything runs on coal. Yeah, but getting it was extremely

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Speaker 1: hard work and still is. You gotta blow up mountains,

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Speaker 1: and you've got to break rocks until you find a

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Speaker 1: steam of coal, and then you got to break that up,

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Speaker 1: and then you gotta get it above ground and sorted

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Speaker 1: and loaded into railroad cards, and then they carried around

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Speaker 1: all the country. That's one of those things. We've talked

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Speaker 1: about this before with like chocolate and stuff, and I'm

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Speaker 1: like the first person to go down there and find coal.

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Speaker 1: It was so hard. Why didn't they just say, no,

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Speaker 1: let's go a different direction on looking for fuel? This

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Speaker 1: isn't this isn't it? Where is it? Just a couple

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Speaker 1: of guys like, let's just see wish Rocksburg, move it

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Speaker 1: over to throw it away. How about this rock this

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Speaker 1: rock bird? Nope, Like it's just that board, Like, holy

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Speaker 1: sh it, this one burns really well. Hard to get though.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, besides being just an incredibly hard job, it

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Speaker 1: was also very dangerous. Between eighteen eight, more than seventy

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Speaker 1: thousand coal miners died on the job. They were crushed

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Speaker 1: to death, they were killed and gas explosions or by machinery.

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Speaker 1: Yale University notes that many many more workers died from

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Speaker 1: occupational diseases from inhaling methane and cold dust for hours

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Speaker 1: on end, and those are not included in official death tallies.

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Speaker 1: So we're talking about probably hundreds and thousands of people

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Speaker 1: dying to get us the coal, and the work stepped

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Speaker 1: so bad that coal companies went around recruiting workers from

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Speaker 1: all over. They would pay poor whites who were struggling

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Speaker 1: in small towns in South and eastern Europe to relocate,

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Speaker 1: and they would also learn black people from former plantation areas,

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Speaker 1: and they were looking to kind of get the funk

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Speaker 1: out after the collapse of reconstruction led to a wave

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Speaker 1: of white violence. Oh wow, okay, because they were like, come,

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Speaker 1: it's safe over here. Crushed by a mountain. So by

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Speaker 1: nearly half a million people labored in coal mines, mostly

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Speaker 1: in Appalachia on the East coast, but the reality of

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Speaker 1: the coal camp was like pretty dismal. You can imagine,

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Speaker 1: most coal fields were located in small company towns, and

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Speaker 1: this is where all the property was owned by the company,

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Speaker 1: and they were also the main employed. Like the coal companies,

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Speaker 1: steel mills, factories, et cetera. They would just own everything.

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Speaker 1: These developed in the eighteen seventies, with the companies then

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Speaker 1: paying their workers not in dollars but in company currency.

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Speaker 1: This would be either fouchers or tokens or what they

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Speaker 1: called coal script or they would like give credit at

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Speaker 1: the company stores, so it'd be like it'd be like

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Speaker 1: working for Amazon gift cards at Amazon, right it's like,

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Speaker 1: we're instead of paying you a wage, you can just

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Speaker 1: buy everything from us. Here's an Amazon gift card. I'm

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Speaker 1: sure they're thinking, don't say that too loud. You just

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Speaker 1: told Alexa. Now. The company would set everyone's wages, they

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Speaker 1: would set their rents, they would set the price of goods,

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Speaker 1: and they also managed the churches and the schools in town.

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Speaker 1: Historian Linda Carlson wrote in an article called Company Towns

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Speaker 1: in the Pacific Northwest that most people thought company towns

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Speaker 1: have the right idea. Right, it sounds like a decent plan.

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Speaker 1: They provided, quote, a good quality of life, providing decent housing,

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Speaker 1: good schools, and a morally uplifting society. In return, they

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Speaker 1: expected stable, hard working employees who would eschew the evils

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Speaker 1: of drink and most importantly, not fall prey to the

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Speaker 1: blandishments of union organizers. S union organizers the skirt. Let's

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Speaker 1: sounds so lovely and generous on the part of these

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Speaker 1: companies to run all this wonderful services. Nice of you.

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Speaker 1: Why would I need money of my own when everything

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Speaker 1: is provided for here. It's like working at the cracker

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Speaker 1: barrel and you can shop at the Cracker Barrel store

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Speaker 1: and eat a cracker barrel and cracker barrel. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: mean it sounds like a very minimalized version of federal capitalism,

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Speaker 1: right Like, instead of working for credits which I then

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Speaker 1: spend at businesses the federal dollar, I'm working for a

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Speaker 1: credit directly within my town. Everything is provided for based

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Speaker 1: on how much labor I provide. Sounds great, sounds very well.

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Speaker 1: Have you spotted the problem? Guess not? Because the companies,

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Speaker 1: would you know, set the wages, that the rents at

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Speaker 1: the prices of goods and food and the stores, and

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Speaker 1: they owned all the lands. So you're a hundred percent

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Speaker 1: beholden to the whims of the company in everything. And

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Speaker 1: since you're not paid in real money, it's not like

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Speaker 1: you could take your business elsewhere or you know, just

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Speaker 1: the American dream of getting a deal on things. True,

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Speaker 1: but surely the companies are in charge of like my

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Speaker 1: wages and the rent and everything. Sure but I work

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Speaker 1: for them. Surely they want to take good care of me.

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Speaker 1: Right well, they're not going to screw me over. That's

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Speaker 1: so sweet and fantastic of you to think. Because there's

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Speaker 1: this big economic panic and it led this company called

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Speaker 1: Pullman located in Illinois, to decrease their workers hours and

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Speaker 1: wages because they had a decrease in demand, so they

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Speaker 1: were decreasing supply in perfect economic sense, right, that's why

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Speaker 1: to do. But they refused to simultaneously decrease the cost

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Speaker 1: of living in their company town, so rent, food and

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Speaker 1: goods were just as expensive as before. This led to

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Speaker 1: the Pullman Strike of eighteen nine four. The town ended

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Speaker 1: up being annexed to Chicago in eight because that's how

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Speaker 1: bad it was, you know, they were like, we can't

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Speaker 1: we're starving, you know, like they could not afford any

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Speaker 1: But this is a common problem that the companies would

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Speaker 1: often pay poorly and then they would turn around and

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Speaker 1: take their money right back for overpriced goods and services

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Speaker 1: and squalid housing like not nice stuff. And they also

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Speaker 1: restricted basic human rights like the freedom of speech, freedom

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Speaker 1: of assembly, and freedom of movements that we value so highly.

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Speaker 1: They also employed mine guards and company paid sheriffs, so

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Speaker 1: that they kind of had a private force on to

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Speaker 1: police your behavior. And on top of all that, minors

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Speaker 1: were paid by the ton, and the process of weighing

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Speaker 1: the coal often resulted in conflicts with the and he

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Speaker 1: is of course finding plenty of ways to short, the workers,

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Speaker 1: and I didn't quite get a ton so not today Jr.

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Speaker 1: And most politicians of course sided with the wealthy company

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Speaker 1: owners over the workers. So nobody is looking out for

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Speaker 1: the little guy. See, you're telling me that the people

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Speaker 1: with all the money and power in this situation, we're

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Speaker 1: not fairly treating the people without any money your power. Right.

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Speaker 1: I don't buy it for a second. I know it

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Speaker 1: seems surely you could just go to your boss and say, hey,

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Speaker 1: my housing is squalid, could you, uh maybe show out

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Speaker 1: a lot of that extra cash you got lying around

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Speaker 1: to kind of make my living conditions better? And they

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Speaker 1: would say, oh, you're fired for asking. So as a

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Speaker 1: result of all this, the coal miners started to organize unions.

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Speaker 1: The three big ones at the time where the United

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Speaker 1: Mine Workers of America, the Progressive Miners Union, and the

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Speaker 1: National Union of Mine Workers. Which I would just get

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Speaker 1: those confused so many times to be like, which place

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Speaker 1: are we having a meeting tonight? The Mine Workers Union

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Speaker 1: of Workers or the Workers Union of Mine Working union ers?

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Speaker 1: Like that's why teams have mascots, right, they should just

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Speaker 1: be like where the falcons and we're the dodos, Jags

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Speaker 1: and the jag. Now together, these guys could band together

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Speaker 1: and they could agree to stop working, which would cost

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Speaker 1: the company untold profits, and then they would make their

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Speaker 1: demands to come back to work. Usually it was just

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Speaker 1: for like shorter hours, because these people were working insane hours.

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Speaker 1: They would ask for better wages so they could pay

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Speaker 1: for their housing and things and lives. Um. They would

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Speaker 1: ask for safer conditions because you know, people kept dying

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Speaker 1: and getting horribly injured. They were like, hello, so can

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Speaker 1: I please and not get crushed to death at work today?

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Speaker 1: And the companies were like, well, that's not my problems.

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Speaker 1: Sounds like are you problems getting down them? Or they'd

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Speaker 1: say you're fired for asking. I'll ask this other poor

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Speaker 1: desperate person who's more desperate than you are, and they'll

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Speaker 1: come and do it. And pretty soon everyone is so

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Speaker 1: desperate that they will work for practically nothing just to

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Speaker 1: be given a scrap of bread and a tin roof

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Speaker 1: over their head, you know, And that's why you need

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Speaker 1: the unions. But the companies, of course, did not take

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Speaker 1: unionization lying down. They would bring in armed private detectives

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Speaker 1: essentially their own little private army, and they would beat

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Speaker 1: up and intimidate union representatives until they forced them to

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Speaker 1: leave town, or they would do the same to workers

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Speaker 1: to keep them from joining. If the workers decided to strike,

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Speaker 1: the detectives would come in and forcibly evict them and

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Speaker 1: their families from their homes. They would cut off their

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Speaker 1: credit at the company stores, so these families couldn't get

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Speaker 1: any food or clothing. See, the companies hope that people

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Speaker 1: watching their children's starve would force the miners to come

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Speaker 1: back to work under any conditions they had. The unions

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Speaker 1: would try and counter that at supporting strikes by providing

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Speaker 1: a small amount of money and little sacks of flower

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Speaker 1: and things to keep the union workers from starving, but

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Speaker 1: they weren't as well funded as the companies. Obviously, plenty

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Speaker 1: of workers did starve, and the constant clashes between the

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Speaker 1: coal companies and their private armies against the workers and

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Speaker 1: unions became known as the Coal Wars, which a journalist

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Speaker 1: named Winthrop Lane likened to another civil war. Crazy to

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Speaker 1: think about basically another civil war being five and I've

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Speaker 1: never heard about it. They didn't cover this war, so

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Speaker 1: all right, that is kind of the overall coal industry.

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Speaker 1: But our story takes place in West Virginia, which is

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Speaker 1: still coal country to this day. And it's here where

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Speaker 1: the West Virginia mine wars began in nineteen twelve, specifically

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Speaker 1: in Paint Creek and Cabin Creek. More than seventy people

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Speaker 1: were employed in those creeks in nineties six coal mines,

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Speaker 1: and half of those mines reunionized. But the union minds

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Speaker 1: made slightly less per ton for coal than the non

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Speaker 1: union minds. This was just another way to de incentivize

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Speaker 1: joining a union. You got like, you know, fraction of

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Speaker 1: a penny less for your mind. But you know it,

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Speaker 1: all that's up in the end right now. Cabin and

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Speaker 1: Paint Creeks decided they would join forces and strike for

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Speaker 1: higher pay and also for concessions like freedom of speech

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Speaker 1: and assembly, ending compulsory trading at all company stores, and

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Speaker 1: the blacklisting of fired workers. And they also wanted to

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Speaker 1: be able to employ their own check waymen, who determined

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Speaker 1: how much coal each miner had brought up at the

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Speaker 1: end of the ship. They were paid by the ton,

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Speaker 1: and the companies were doing a lot of fuckory to

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Speaker 1: make sure they weren't getting their full day's wage. Hold

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Speaker 1: on there. Fellow Now before I weigh your coal. Let

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Speaker 1: me just do a quick repair on the scale here,

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Speaker 1: just gotta twist a little nuts. And oh, it looks

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Speaker 1: like you didn't bring up any cold today, young man.

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Speaker 1: But that's like a half a ton of cold right there. Oh,

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Speaker 1: I don't see any myself on with you. You don't

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Speaker 1: want to get fired, do you? So? Yeah, they wanted

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Speaker 1: their own guys to do the counting, or at least

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Speaker 1: maybe do a double check of accounting or something or something. Well,

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Speaker 1: the companies immediately brought in private detectives from the Baldwin

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Speaker 1: Felts Agency. This agency got its start by bringing in

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Speaker 1: bad guys who robbed railroads just James Ship, okay, But

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Speaker 1: by the eighteen nineties their main job was breaking strikes

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Speaker 1: and bullying workers, and they were incredibly violent about it.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen thirteen, they would reinforce a railroad car called

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Speaker 1: the bull Moose Special with iron plating and machine guns,

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Speaker 1: and they would drive through a miner's camp just shooting

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Speaker 1: indiscriminately into tents, and they killed several people. In nineteen fourteen,

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Speaker 1: they attacked a tent colony of twelve hundred striking miners

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Speaker 1: and their families in Colorado and they murdered twenty one people,

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Speaker 1: and this included women and children. This became known as

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Speaker 1: the Ludlow massacre. So when these assholes showed up in

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Speaker 1: paint and cabin creeks, armed and dangerous, miners knew what

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Speaker 1: was coming, and they also armed themselves, and they marched

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Speaker 1: to the state capital to read a declaration of war.

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Speaker 1: Through the summer, more than fifty people were killed directly

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Speaker 1: and many more died from malnutrition and star nation. Eventually,

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Speaker 1: the governor had to declare martial law just to restore order.

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Speaker 1: Although the militia that the governor put forward was on

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Speaker 1: the side of guess who, the coal companies workers Sorry,

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Speaker 1: coal companies faced zero consequences for their violence, while miners

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Speaker 1: were tried in military tribunals and imprisoned. Because of the

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Speaker 1: number of casualties, it's counted as one of the worst

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Speaker 1: conflicts in American labor history. And have you ever heard

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Speaker 1: of it? The Battle of have painting cabin creeks doesn't

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Speaker 1: sound familiar to me me neither. That's crazy. Oh, this

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Speaker 1: is this is turning into us stuff They don't want

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Speaker 1: you to know. Episode. We ought to get been in

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Speaker 1: here now in this whole chaotic environment, coal miners fighting

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Speaker 1: for their lives, detectives coming in Bang Bang Bang. Our

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Speaker 1: subject for today, Mr Sid Hatfield became police chief in

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Speaker 1: Cold Country and we're going to find out more about

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Speaker 1: him right after this and welcome back to the show.

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Speaker 1: So Sid Hatfield was born in Pike County, Kentucky in

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Speaker 1: eighteen or eighteen. You know, I'm going to write these

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Speaker 1: things has happened so often in our episodes, were like

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Speaker 1: they were born in either seventeen forty two or eighteen

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Speaker 1: sixty seven. Scholars aren't sure which. The records are not

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Speaker 1: clear like this he was born in but we know

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Speaker 1: for a goddamn fact he wasn't born in eighteen ninety two.

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Speaker 1: No chance in a hill I was. I know. I

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Speaker 1: do think that's really strange. Now. He first worked on

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Speaker 1: his family farm, and then he became a coal miner

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Speaker 1: as a teenager and then a blacksmith. So this guy's

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Speaker 1: hard labor his whole life. And he was called Smiling

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Speaker 1: Sid because he had a lot of gold caps on

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Speaker 1: his teeth. I'd smile a lot too, I do. He's

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Speaker 1: I got to show him off. I mean, if you're

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Speaker 1: going to put golden new teeth you may as well

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Speaker 1: get that little dink I know, like like home alone.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. And apparently he also like smiled a lot,

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Speaker 1: I guess in confrontation because he was known as the

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Speaker 1: kind of a hard living, hard fighting kind of guy.

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Speaker 1: So it was a surprise to many respectable citizens when

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Speaker 1: the mayor of Mate one, West Virginia, Cabal Cornelius Testament,

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Speaker 1: appointed Sid the police chief in nineteen nineteen. And he

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Speaker 1: was about twenty seven years old old smile and smiling.

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Speaker 1: Please chief in charge around here. That sounds crazy to me.

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Speaker 1: Come on in get you some path of all of

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Speaker 1: the South. But Testaman was a big supporter of the

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Speaker 1: United Mine Workers of America. It was pretty unusual for

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Speaker 1: a mayor, and so he wanted a police chief who

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Speaker 1: was also a union supporter. So Sid was his guy

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Speaker 1: is a big union guy too. Now. Also in the

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Speaker 1: year nineteen nineteen, according to Smithsonian Magazine, the United Mine

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Speaker 1: Workers held a nationwide strike of four hundred thousand workers,

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Speaker 1: and they succeeded in securing higher wayes in better working conditions.

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Speaker 1: They were also heavily active in mait wand then signed

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Speaker 1: up miners left and right. And it seemed like all

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00:24:50,240 --> 00:24:53,080
Speaker 1: this made the coal company in mait wand the Stone

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Speaker 1: Mountain Coal Company really nervous. Was firstly, they started making

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Speaker 1: workers sign what we're called yellow dog contracts, and those

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Speaker 1: said that when you were hired, if you joined a

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Speaker 1: union at any point, it was grounds for immediate termination

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Speaker 1: and therefore you would get evicted from your company home. Additionally,

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Speaker 1: that Baldwin Felts Detective agency that we talked about earlier,

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Speaker 1: they had operatives offer Testament and SID five hundred dollar bribes,

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Speaker 1: which is worth about it looks like seventies six hundred

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Speaker 1: dollars today, and they wanted to bribe them to let

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Speaker 1: them place machine guns on rooftops throughout the town so

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Speaker 1: they could suppress union activity. That machine bonkers to me.

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Speaker 1: It's like people might join unions, so let's militarize the rooftops.

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's crazy right that They were just like,

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Speaker 1: why didn't open fire on you? This is how much

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Speaker 1: money we're saving by oppressing our workers, and how dangerous

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Speaker 1: it would be for them to demand better conditions. Smiling

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Speaker 1: Sid and mayor test your man told the Baldwin Felts

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Speaker 1: agents that they could go suck rocks. Yeah, and they're

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Speaker 1: like we're here in the mountains. There be plenty of

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Speaker 1: rocks around, so stop sucking that one burns that one.

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Speaker 1: Don't take your pick well. Instead of sucking rocks, the

426
00:26:17,480 --> 00:26:24,800
Speaker 1: coal companies took more direct action. They fired three thousand workers,

427
00:26:24,920 --> 00:26:28,440
Speaker 1: and then they sent Baldwin Felts detectives to evict them

428
00:26:28,440 --> 00:26:32,000
Speaker 1: from their houses. So in May nine, nine twenty a

429
00:26:32,080 --> 00:26:36,280
Speaker 1: dozen Baldwin Felts detectives led by Albert Felts, showed up

430
00:26:36,320 --> 00:26:39,360
Speaker 1: to spend a busy day ejecting men, women and children

431
00:26:39,480 --> 00:26:45,160
Speaker 1: from their home. Not the knowable work that I undertake,

432
00:26:45,960 --> 00:26:48,639
Speaker 1: and hundreds of families ended up spending the spring of

433
00:26:48,720 --> 00:26:52,000
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty living in tents. According to a book called

434
00:26:52,080 --> 00:26:55,080
Speaker 1: Thunder in the Mountains the West Virginia Mine War by

435
00:26:55,200 --> 00:26:58,720
Speaker 1: Lawn Savage, the first family they evicted was a woman

436
00:26:58,760 --> 00:27:01,160
Speaker 1: and her children. Her husband, Bend, was not home at

437
00:27:01,160 --> 00:27:04,520
Speaker 1: the time, so the minor that would be striking that

438
00:27:04,640 --> 00:27:09,840
Speaker 1: they would be austin sensibly punishing, was not present, and

439
00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:12,159
Speaker 1: they forced this woman and her kids out of the

440
00:27:12,200 --> 00:27:15,560
Speaker 1: home at gunpoint and threw all their stuff into the

441
00:27:15,600 --> 00:27:18,919
Speaker 1: street in the middle of a steady rain. The National

442
00:27:18,960 --> 00:27:22,520
Speaker 1: Park Service estimates that in the Paint and Cabin Creek evictions,

443
00:27:22,800 --> 00:27:27,520
Speaker 1: Baldwin Felts agents destroyed forty dollars worth of personal property,

444
00:27:27,560 --> 00:27:31,480
Speaker 1: including furniture. So it's pretty safe to assume that the

445
00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:34,920
Speaker 1: miners here in Maitland got very similar treatment. All their

446
00:27:34,920 --> 00:27:38,399
Speaker 1: stuff was thrown out, just real crazy, over the top

447
00:27:38,600 --> 00:27:41,240
Speaker 1: actions to get them out of their homes. And so

448
00:27:41,400 --> 00:27:45,040
Speaker 1: words started spreading around town about these evictions and quickly

449
00:27:45,080 --> 00:27:47,960
Speaker 1: reached the ears of the police Chief, Sid had Field.

450
00:27:48,480 --> 00:27:52,560
Speaker 1: It's scary to me regularly whenever I think about this,

451
00:27:52,840 --> 00:27:57,119
Speaker 1: because it always feels so historical, like couldn't happen, But

452
00:27:57,160 --> 00:28:02,199
Speaker 1: it happens all the time. When you create h a

453
00:28:02,359 --> 00:28:06,800
Speaker 1: force of people, a little a little militia or military

454
00:28:06,880 --> 00:28:10,920
Speaker 1: and tell them, hey, you can treat those people however

455
00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:15,480
Speaker 1: you want they are, they turn into the most horrible

456
00:28:15,520 --> 00:28:18,840
Speaker 1: monsters you can imagine it. And it keeps happening. It

457
00:28:18,880 --> 00:28:22,199
Speaker 1: always happens. I mean, so many experiments have shown that

458
00:28:22,240 --> 00:28:24,480
Speaker 1: we kind of all of us have us have it

459
00:28:24,520 --> 00:28:28,000
Speaker 1: in us. It's just the circumstances we live in, right,

460
00:28:28,160 --> 00:28:30,960
Speaker 1: And whether or not, of course, you give into that impulse.

461
00:28:31,080 --> 00:28:33,760
Speaker 1: But they have seen I think they that was that

462
00:28:34,240 --> 00:28:37,280
Speaker 1: the Stanford Prison experiment. I think it is most often cited.

463
00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:44,040
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I'm all good. Oh, I just smiled at

464
00:28:44,160 --> 00:28:48,560
Speaker 1: the gold tooth sparkled, how fantastic, How fantastic. Wait a minute,

465
00:28:49,120 --> 00:28:52,400
Speaker 1: I know what that word really means. Earlier you said

466
00:28:52,520 --> 00:28:55,040
Speaker 1: I could let all kinds of things happen and just

467
00:28:55,080 --> 00:28:59,960
Speaker 1: have a totally blank emotion. I could do that if

468
00:29:00,040 --> 00:29:05,920
Speaker 1: I chose to. But I would yeah, I would never. Okay,

469
00:29:05,960 --> 00:29:09,160
Speaker 1: I'm all good. I'm glad to hear. I'm like a

470
00:29:09,160 --> 00:29:12,680
Speaker 1: good div a truffle, just sweet all the way through.

471
00:29:12,920 --> 00:29:15,520
Speaker 1: So the Baldwin Felts detectives were heading off to the

472
00:29:15,560 --> 00:29:18,440
Speaker 1: train station after a long day of evicting women and

473
00:29:18,520 --> 00:29:20,800
Speaker 1: children from their homes in the rain, got to catch

474
00:29:20,840 --> 00:29:25,400
Speaker 1: the five o'clock But Sid and his deputy and several

475
00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:28,920
Speaker 1: other miners intercepted these guys and on the porch of

476
00:29:28,960 --> 00:29:32,920
Speaker 1: the Chambers Hardware store on Mate Street, they confronted the

477
00:29:32,960 --> 00:29:37,800
Speaker 1: agents about all these evictions. Sid told Albert Felts that

478
00:29:37,880 --> 00:29:42,920
Speaker 1: he had a warrant to arrest him. Albert replied, then

479
00:29:43,160 --> 00:29:47,560
Speaker 1: he actually had a warrant to arrest Sid. Now, unbeknownst

480
00:29:47,560 --> 00:29:50,560
Speaker 1: to the detectives, there were a lot of miners in

481
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:53,760
Speaker 1: town that day that we're collecting their bags of flower

482
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:56,880
Speaker 1: and their small stipends from the union. And most of

483
00:29:56,880 --> 00:30:00,840
Speaker 1: these guys were armed. They were watching carefully out of

484
00:30:00,840 --> 00:30:04,400
Speaker 1: windows and doors as Sid and Albert shoved each other's

485
00:30:04,440 --> 00:30:08,000
Speaker 1: warrants in their faces. Now Mayor Testament showed up, ran

486
00:30:08,040 --> 00:30:10,160
Speaker 1: out of the streets, said, hold on, now, Albert Felts,

487
00:30:10,200 --> 00:30:13,080
Speaker 1: Now I want to see the warrant that you have

488
00:30:13,320 --> 00:30:17,200
Speaker 1: to arrest. Sid Felts. Handsome the warrants and he takes

489
00:30:17,240 --> 00:30:19,840
Speaker 1: a long look at it, and Mayor Testament looks up

490
00:30:19,840 --> 00:30:27,040
Speaker 1: an announced quote, well, this is a bogus warrant. Immediately,

491
00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:32,120
Speaker 1: gunshots rang out. Mayor Testament was shot first and he

492
00:30:32,200 --> 00:30:36,920
Speaker 1: fell to the ground wounded. Detective deputies and minors exchange

493
00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:41,080
Speaker 1: shots for a frantic fifteen minutes. Albert brother the Felts

494
00:30:41,200 --> 00:30:45,120
Speaker 1: was killed, firing indiscriminately. Albert took shelter in the mate

495
00:30:45,120 --> 00:30:49,480
Speaker 1: wand post office, but Sid, like an avenging angel, button

496
00:30:50,040 --> 00:30:54,120
Speaker 1: finds him, probably calls him a yellow bellied coward and shooting.

497
00:30:55,520 --> 00:30:58,440
Speaker 1: When the shooting stopped, the townspeople came out of hiding

498
00:30:58,440 --> 00:31:02,880
Speaker 1: to assess the damage. And it was significant. Mayor Testaman

499
00:31:03,160 --> 00:31:06,360
Speaker 1: was dead, along with one miner who had been fired

500
00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:09,680
Speaker 1: the day before for joining the union, and another unarmed

501
00:31:09,680 --> 00:31:15,360
Speaker 1: bystander named Tot Tinsley. Not Tot Tinsley, Hot Tinsley. No, damn,

502
00:31:15,480 --> 00:31:21,120
Speaker 1: what a good name. Hats off to Tot. Yes for

503
00:31:21,200 --> 00:31:26,200
Speaker 1: top After Tot Tonight and four other towns spoke were wounded,

504
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:30,200
Speaker 1: but on the Baldwin Felt side, seven detectives had died,

505
00:31:30,280 --> 00:31:36,640
Speaker 1: including both Albert and Lee Felts. Now this was huge

506
00:31:36,720 --> 00:31:41,000
Speaker 1: for miners. This was the first time that the seemingly

507
00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:45,280
Speaker 1: invincible bullies of the Baldwin Felts Agency had been beaten,

508
00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:49,040
Speaker 1: and the gunfight became known as the mate Wan massacre,

509
00:31:49,400 --> 00:31:52,560
Speaker 1: and Sid Hatfield became a legend and a hero to

510
00:31:52,600 --> 00:31:55,880
Speaker 1: the union miners. He even started in a short film

511
00:31:55,920 --> 00:32:00,320
Speaker 1: for United Mine Workers called Smiling Said, and he was

512
00:32:00,360 --> 00:32:06,320
Speaker 1: photographed with other celebrated labor leaders, including Mary Harris Mother Jones.

513
00:32:07,120 --> 00:32:09,800
Speaker 1: Yes that one Jones from the magazine That's right, one

514
00:32:09,800 --> 00:32:13,760
Speaker 1: of the people who was arrested after painting cabin creeks. Actually, oh,

515
00:32:14,040 --> 00:32:16,920
Speaker 1: mother Jones. She got her military tribunal and went to

516
00:32:17,240 --> 00:32:19,160
Speaker 1: for a little while. Yeah, I want to I want

517
00:32:19,160 --> 00:32:22,720
Speaker 1: to see this movie. Okay, I will totally watch this movie.

518
00:32:23,000 --> 00:32:26,520
Speaker 1: I mean it's got to be the old timey silent film,

519
00:32:26,600 --> 00:32:30,800
Speaker 1: rights piano music and definitely right. And he's like he

520
00:32:31,040 --> 00:32:33,680
Speaker 1: comes out, smiles and the and the cards come up

521
00:32:33,680 --> 00:32:37,520
Speaker 1: and saying, hey the detective, I ain't taking no guff

522
00:32:37,640 --> 00:32:41,280
Speaker 1: from you, and it detected like a big piece of ship. Guys.

523
00:32:42,200 --> 00:32:44,720
Speaker 1: He's got like money coming out of his pocket, got

524
00:32:44,760 --> 00:32:47,440
Speaker 1: a dumb look on his face, beaver skin top hats.

525
00:32:47,800 --> 00:32:49,480
Speaker 1: And then the title card comes up and he's like

526
00:32:55,520 --> 00:32:58,200
Speaker 1: and said just pushes him over the edge. And they're like,

527
00:32:58,280 --> 00:33:01,280
Speaker 1: support the union, that's not what it is because that

528
00:33:01,360 --> 00:33:10,280
Speaker 1: doesn't sound very effective. Feels like would we're work, showing

529
00:33:10,440 --> 00:33:14,080
Speaker 1: no wrong ideas, storing brainstorming time. But even with this

530
00:33:14,160 --> 00:33:17,960
Speaker 1: big victory, the union was struggling. At this time. Most

531
00:33:18,000 --> 00:33:22,480
Speaker 1: of the mines reopened with imported replacements, likely these immigrants

532
00:33:22,520 --> 00:33:25,120
Speaker 1: who probably didn't even know they were strikebreakers, you know,

533
00:33:25,200 --> 00:33:29,080
Speaker 1: who had been heard in from Europe. And other strikers

534
00:33:29,240 --> 00:33:31,960
Speaker 1: signed the yellow Dog contracts so that they could get

535
00:33:31,960 --> 00:33:34,360
Speaker 1: back to work because they were done living in tents.

536
00:33:35,200 --> 00:33:38,360
Speaker 1: So in late June, a union miners camp colony was

537
00:33:38,520 --> 00:33:42,680
Speaker 1: raided and miners were shot and arrested. Their tents were shredded,

538
00:33:42,720 --> 00:33:46,840
Speaker 1: and their belongings scattered out into the wilderness. Another strike

539
00:33:46,920 --> 00:33:52,600
Speaker 1: was organized in response in July, and violence quickly erupted.

540
00:33:53,280 --> 00:33:57,000
Speaker 1: Railroad cars were blown up and miners were beaten and

541
00:33:57,080 --> 00:33:59,880
Speaker 1: left to die by the side of the road. So

542
00:34:00,160 --> 00:34:03,440
Speaker 1: just a lot of violence from both ends, and both

543
00:34:03,480 --> 00:34:06,320
Speaker 1: sides were getting their ammo together. You know, this is

544
00:34:06,320 --> 00:34:09,760
Speaker 1: a war after all, so their stockpile and stuff. Sid

545
00:34:09,840 --> 00:34:13,080
Speaker 1: even converted may Or Testament's jewelry store into a gun

546
00:34:13,160 --> 00:34:17,600
Speaker 1: shop so more miners could arm themselves. And throughout the fall,

547
00:34:17,719 --> 00:34:21,400
Speaker 1: more sporadic shootouts and violence occurred between the union and

548
00:34:21,440 --> 00:34:26,440
Speaker 1: the coal companies. Now, in January of ninety one, Sid

549
00:34:26,440 --> 00:34:29,000
Speaker 1: and the other miners involved in the massacre stood trial

550
00:34:29,120 --> 00:34:32,720
Speaker 1: for killing Albert Felts, and this was a national story.

551
00:34:33,000 --> 00:34:35,719
Speaker 1: Sid's legend only grew as he would go out and

552
00:34:36,040 --> 00:34:40,279
Speaker 1: he freely chatted up with reporters posed for pictures. He

553
00:34:40,920 --> 00:34:44,000
Speaker 1: absorbed the celebrity. It was like you, yes, everyone should

554
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:45,719
Speaker 1: know who I am and what I did. Well. I

555
00:34:45,760 --> 00:34:49,319
Speaker 1: think too that there maybe was a strategy involved with

556
00:34:49,400 --> 00:34:53,359
Speaker 1: a speculation station that maybe the union was like, all

557
00:34:53,400 --> 00:34:56,279
Speaker 1: eyes are showing you, So go out there and tell

558
00:34:56,360 --> 00:34:59,279
Speaker 1: people why they should be supporting us and not the

559
00:34:59,280 --> 00:35:03,439
Speaker 1: coal company. Reason. Be charismatic and get your message out,

560
00:35:03,480 --> 00:35:05,960
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Because these these battles between

561
00:35:06,040 --> 00:35:10,640
Speaker 1: unions and companies are so often well a wars of attrition,

562
00:35:10,760 --> 00:35:12,960
Speaker 1: right right, Let's see how we're going to starve you out,

563
00:35:13,520 --> 00:35:15,880
Speaker 1: Like you can strike, but you won't get paid, and

564
00:35:15,920 --> 00:35:18,000
Speaker 1: let's see how long that strike last. And the other

565
00:35:18,040 --> 00:35:21,080
Speaker 1: one is the war of of information because it's so

566
00:35:21,200 --> 00:35:24,799
Speaker 1: much about getting people who are totally uninvolved. But are

567
00:35:24,960 --> 00:35:27,400
Speaker 1: you know, we're affected way down the line by the

568
00:35:27,400 --> 00:35:30,680
Speaker 1: products and services we're getting from these workers. Um, so

569
00:35:30,719 --> 00:35:33,960
Speaker 1: if they have our support as consumers, that's a lot

570
00:35:34,040 --> 00:35:36,920
Speaker 1: more people pushing back against the company and vice versa. Right,

571
00:35:37,320 --> 00:35:39,840
Speaker 1: you know. Well, and they say every war is a

572
00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:42,080
Speaker 1: war on two fronts, the war itself and then the

573
00:35:42,080 --> 00:35:46,360
Speaker 1: war of propaganzas keep popular support, because once you lose

574
00:35:46,400 --> 00:35:49,960
Speaker 1: people's support for a war becomes very difficult to continue

575
00:35:49,960 --> 00:35:53,040
Speaker 1: doing it writing it. So so sids out here chatting

576
00:35:53,080 --> 00:35:57,239
Speaker 1: it up with the media, getting on camera or getting newspapers.

577
00:35:57,239 --> 00:36:01,200
Speaker 1: Probably not is not out there. You got intaking, but

578
00:36:01,239 --> 00:36:04,200
Speaker 1: I don't know that they were taken any But at

579
00:36:04,200 --> 00:36:08,239
Speaker 1: the trial sits the ridiculous romance at the center of

580
00:36:08,280 --> 00:36:13,080
Speaker 1: this story because lawyers for Baldwin Felts argued that Sid

581
00:36:13,120 --> 00:36:16,440
Speaker 1: Hatfield was the one who fired the first shot in

582
00:36:16,560 --> 00:36:20,719
Speaker 1: order to use the cover to kill Mayor Cavil Testman

583
00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:27,280
Speaker 1: because Sid was in love with Testerman's wife, jesse Lee Maynard.

584
00:36:28,400 --> 00:36:31,560
Speaker 1: Why did they think this. That's an outrageous claim, right,

585
00:36:31,600 --> 00:36:34,120
Speaker 1: because why would this guy goes to go shoot the

586
00:36:34,120 --> 00:36:36,040
Speaker 1: man who hired him, the guy who he was supporting,

587
00:36:36,120 --> 00:36:38,719
Speaker 1: the guy who was protecting him by saying this is

588
00:36:38,719 --> 00:36:41,840
Speaker 1: not a real warrant, like he's protecting Sid from getting arrested,

589
00:36:41,840 --> 00:36:46,040
Speaker 1: and Sid thanks, and it was what he's in love

590
00:36:46,080 --> 00:36:51,080
Speaker 1: with his wife. Well, only eleven days after Mayor Testerman

591
00:36:51,160 --> 00:36:55,080
Speaker 1: was shot and killed, Sid was discovered by a Baldwin

592
00:36:55,239 --> 00:37:01,200
Speaker 1: Felts agency spy named Charles Lively quote have a improper

593
00:37:01,320 --> 00:37:07,239
Speaker 1: relations with Testament's nineteen year old widow, and the very

594
00:37:07,280 --> 00:37:11,680
Speaker 1: next day the two of them got married. Man less

595
00:37:11,680 --> 00:37:17,120
Speaker 1: than two weeks ed okay, adds a little bit of

596
00:37:17,520 --> 00:37:25,080
Speaker 1: suspiciosity to this whole thing. What was that speciosity. I

597
00:37:25,160 --> 00:37:30,560
Speaker 1: like that. Now. Newspapers said, quote she married the man

598
00:37:30,680 --> 00:37:35,719
Speaker 1: who killed her husbands, the speed at which they got

599
00:37:35,760 --> 00:37:39,760
Speaker 1: married after Testament died. It was definitely some compelling evidence.

600
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:45,160
Speaker 1: But Jesse herself claimed that her husband knew that they

601
00:37:45,160 --> 00:37:48,560
Speaker 1: were in a very dangerous situation, and he asked Sid

602
00:37:48,600 --> 00:37:51,520
Speaker 1: to take care of her and their young son if

603
00:37:51,560 --> 00:37:55,359
Speaker 1: anything ever happened to him. Do you believe it? I mean,

604
00:37:56,200 --> 00:37:58,239
Speaker 1: I don't know. It makes sense to me if she's

605
00:37:58,239 --> 00:38:01,200
Speaker 1: the one saying that she was only nine, mean, you know,

606
00:38:01,440 --> 00:38:06,280
Speaker 1: and this guy's like sure, she might just say that, maybe,

607
00:38:06,480 --> 00:38:09,720
Speaker 1: but that would mean the two of them conspired together

608
00:38:09,800 --> 00:38:13,520
Speaker 1: to kill her husband, the father of her sons. Seems hard,

609
00:38:13,719 --> 00:38:16,279
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, unless they unless he was

610
00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:19,840
Speaker 1: an abusive husband, which she might have been. She was nineteen,

611
00:38:20,239 --> 00:38:24,040
Speaker 1: He was, you know, a mayor of some renown and

612
00:38:24,600 --> 00:38:27,520
Speaker 1: probably could get whatever he wanted and wasn't used to

613
00:38:27,520 --> 00:38:30,200
Speaker 1: being told no. So maybe he was a piece of

614
00:38:30,280 --> 00:38:32,920
Speaker 1: ship and she was just looking for Was Sid better?

615
00:38:33,520 --> 00:38:36,120
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, none of that. Unfortunately, it

616
00:38:36,200 --> 00:38:39,759
Speaker 1: is nothing personal from anyone about this, so that we

617
00:38:39,840 --> 00:38:43,440
Speaker 1: can only speculate. Yeah, oh, it's entirely in speculation station

618
00:38:43,880 --> 00:38:47,040
Speaker 1: run by a cold powered locomotive. This episode brought to

619
00:38:47,080 --> 00:38:55,320
Speaker 1: you by Cole King Charcoal, so we don't know, we

620
00:38:55,360 --> 00:38:58,799
Speaker 1: don't know. This is very suspicious, but also was also

621
00:38:58,920 --> 00:39:02,960
Speaker 1: described as the prettiest girl on the mountain. Well, so

622
00:39:03,560 --> 00:39:06,880
Speaker 1: you couldn't do better than Jesse. I suppose maybe somebody

623
00:39:06,880 --> 00:39:09,399
Speaker 1: else was about to shoot the mayor, you know, like

624
00:39:10,120 --> 00:39:12,840
Speaker 1: his day was coming. But it seems like why would

625
00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:16,440
Speaker 1: not the detectives, who are we already know like to

626
00:39:16,480 --> 00:39:19,120
Speaker 1: shoot people, Not that the miners don't like to shoot

627
00:39:19,120 --> 00:39:22,040
Speaker 1: people too, Like I mean, come on, I don't know.

628
00:39:22,280 --> 00:39:24,680
Speaker 1: It feels like you'll do be shooting first a lot,

629
00:39:25,600 --> 00:39:28,319
Speaker 1: That's all I'm saying. So she's if this, If that

630
00:39:28,440 --> 00:39:31,000
Speaker 1: is the case, then she's like, she's our own little

631
00:39:31,040 --> 00:39:35,120
Speaker 1: Helen of Troy, right, she's so pretty. This war broke

632
00:39:35,160 --> 00:39:39,480
Speaker 1: out the whole the entire labor union movement. It was

633
00:39:39,520 --> 00:39:42,520
Speaker 1: just to cover up for these two guys fighting over

634
00:39:42,560 --> 00:39:45,319
Speaker 1: this pretty girl. Where's the Helen of Troy? But it's

635
00:39:45,360 --> 00:39:52,320
Speaker 1: said in the Battle of mate Wan, somebody call um Zenda.

636
00:39:52,400 --> 00:39:55,839
Speaker 1: I couldn't think of another young actors ain't nineteen. She's

637
00:39:55,840 --> 00:40:02,399
Speaker 1: well into her twenties. Now, where's the somebody call I'm

638
00:40:02,440 --> 00:40:06,680
Speaker 1: not out of touch, I'm with it. I'm cool, I'm hipped,

639
00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:13,000
Speaker 1: I know all the young stars rowing. Somebody calls one

640
00:40:13,040 --> 00:40:16,359
Speaker 1: of those kids from Euphoria. Probably I don't know. All right, Well,

641
00:40:16,400 --> 00:40:20,080
Speaker 1: whatever happened. By the end of the trial in March,

642
00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:25,080
Speaker 1: every mate one miner had been acquitted. But this really

643
00:40:25,200 --> 00:40:29,320
Speaker 1: piste off Thomas Felts. He was Albert and Lee's brother

644
00:40:29,800 --> 00:40:32,360
Speaker 1: and of course the co owner and operator of the

645
00:40:32,400 --> 00:40:35,759
Speaker 1: Baldwin Felts Agency. I guess he just stayed back at

646
00:40:35,800 --> 00:40:38,160
Speaker 1: home all they went into the dangerous situation. He's got

647
00:40:38,160 --> 00:40:42,200
Speaker 1: a desk job, but there's still field agent, and so

648
00:40:42,320 --> 00:40:46,640
Speaker 1: he waited patiently for his own little opportunity to get

649
00:40:46,760 --> 00:40:54,080
Speaker 1: rid of sid. That's his kill bill. Somebody call, who

650
00:40:54,120 --> 00:40:58,799
Speaker 1: would play Thomas Felts. Somebody call who plays an asshole? Oh?

651
00:40:58,840 --> 00:41:02,560
Speaker 1: Who's that guy who played Arlyne Cooper on Madman? Oh? Yeah, totally,

652
00:41:02,640 --> 00:41:05,360
Speaker 1: I don't know. Dead. Yeah, he's going to be a

653
00:41:05,360 --> 00:41:08,520
Speaker 1: good choice. He's there, you go. And as Thomas waited

654
00:41:08,560 --> 00:41:13,680
Speaker 1: for his moment, the Baldwin faults by Charles Lively. That's sniveling, creep.

655
00:41:13,680 --> 00:41:17,399
Speaker 1: Who caught Sid and Jesse together would eventually give him

656
00:41:17,480 --> 00:41:21,600
Speaker 1: his chance. And let's find out how right after this

657
00:41:21,640 --> 00:41:27,000
Speaker 1: commercial break from Cole America's Cole America Runs on Coal.

658
00:41:32,760 --> 00:41:35,000
Speaker 1: I hope everybody ran out and brought some cold during

659
00:41:35,000 --> 00:41:38,920
Speaker 1: that short make them back, my little coal lovers. I

660
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:43,000
Speaker 1: don't like we're supposed to be moving away from coal. Overall,

661
00:41:43,520 --> 00:41:47,920
Speaker 1: this is a story about labor, not about Cole. The

662
00:41:48,000 --> 00:41:51,359
Speaker 1: opinions expressed in this episode did not reflect our own

663
00:41:51,360 --> 00:41:58,600
Speaker 1: opinions necessarily. Now, in mid May, union workers launched a

664
00:41:58,800 --> 00:42:02,520
Speaker 1: full scale a salt of non union minds in what

665
00:42:02,640 --> 00:42:07,239
Speaker 1: became known as the Three Days Battle. Martial law had

666
00:42:07,280 --> 00:42:09,360
Speaker 1: to be declared to end the violence. A lot of

667
00:42:09,400 --> 00:42:14,239
Speaker 1: martial law going around. Miners, of course, were disproportionately arrested,

668
00:42:14,840 --> 00:42:19,760
Speaker 1: and Charles Lively testified in secret that one night Sid

669
00:42:19,840 --> 00:42:23,360
Speaker 1: had Field, his deputy Ed Chambers, and a number of

670
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:27,640
Speaker 1: other union miners were hanging out and Lively persuaded them

671
00:42:27,680 --> 00:42:32,040
Speaker 1: to shoot up a non union coal tipple in Mohawk, West, Virginia.

672
00:42:33,160 --> 00:42:36,080
Speaker 1: Cold tipples are what they used to load coal into

673
00:42:36,200 --> 00:42:39,800
Speaker 1: railroad cars. Um so it would have been full coal

674
00:42:39,920 --> 00:42:42,120
Speaker 1: and they would blow it up. So that the coal

675
00:42:42,239 --> 00:42:46,400
Speaker 1: couldn't be sold. Now, when the Union miners arrived to

676
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:49,200
Speaker 1: blow up this coal tipple, the mine guards were ready

677
00:42:49,239 --> 00:42:53,080
Speaker 1: for them with machine guns and bloodhounds. So I'm not

678
00:42:53,120 --> 00:42:54,879
Speaker 1: sure if they ever actually got to blow up blow

679
00:42:54,960 --> 00:42:58,040
Speaker 1: up this cold tiple or hat um. They had gotten

680
00:42:58,040 --> 00:43:01,160
Speaker 1: a nice heads up from Charles Live. Now, with this

681
00:43:01,280 --> 00:43:04,640
Speaker 1: testimony from Charles Thomas, Felts was able to bring a

682
00:43:04,800 --> 00:43:09,640
Speaker 1: charge of conspiracy against Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers. So

683
00:43:09,760 --> 00:43:13,480
Speaker 1: Sid would have to go to trial. And he knew

684
00:43:13,480 --> 00:43:16,160
Speaker 1: that the Baldwin Felts agency was out for his blood

685
00:43:16,320 --> 00:43:19,319
Speaker 1: and going out just out in the open somewhere was

686
00:43:19,440 --> 00:43:22,200
Speaker 1: not safe for him. So Sid reached out to the

687
00:43:22,239 --> 00:43:25,440
Speaker 1: sheriff of McDowell County, where the trial would take place.

688
00:43:25,719 --> 00:43:27,840
Speaker 1: And this was a distant relative of his name to

689
00:43:27,880 --> 00:43:31,480
Speaker 1: Bill Hatfield. And Bill's like, no problem, I got the

690
00:43:31,480 --> 00:43:34,920
Speaker 1: whole Sheriff's office, just gonna have your backs. We'll all

691
00:43:34,960 --> 00:43:39,040
Speaker 1: be at red alert, ready for anything and everything, and

692
00:43:39,080 --> 00:43:42,839
Speaker 1: we've got you, brother. But according to Howard Lee's book

693
00:43:42,920 --> 00:43:46,200
Speaker 1: Blood Letting in Appalachia, the day before the trial, Bill

694
00:43:46,280 --> 00:43:49,640
Speaker 1: took himself out of town for some self care at

695
00:43:49,640 --> 00:43:54,200
Speaker 1: the Craig Healing Springs resort. So sure enough, when Sid

696
00:43:54,239 --> 00:43:57,640
Speaker 1: and Ed arrived at the courthouse on August first, nine

697
00:43:58,400 --> 00:44:02,919
Speaker 1: one unarmed at accompanied by their wives, there were no

698
00:44:03,080 --> 00:44:07,640
Speaker 1: officers they're looking out for them. Several Baldwin Felts agents

699
00:44:07,920 --> 00:44:11,000
Speaker 1: were lying in wait, and they opened fire on the

700
00:44:11,040 --> 00:44:15,120
Speaker 1: steps of the McDowell County Courthouse. Ed Chambers was shot

701
00:44:15,200 --> 00:44:17,800
Speaker 1: several times and rolled down the steps of the courthouse,

702
00:44:18,120 --> 00:44:22,120
Speaker 1: and while his wife screamed in protest, Charles Lively walked

703
00:44:22,160 --> 00:44:26,080
Speaker 1: over and shot him point blank in the head. Sid

704
00:44:26,160 --> 00:44:28,880
Speaker 1: himself was shot several times in the chest and he

705
00:44:29,000 --> 00:44:34,959
Speaker 1: died instantly, with Jesse barely escaping unharmed. Now this made

706
00:44:34,960 --> 00:44:39,239
Speaker 1: the Union argue that the entire Cold Tipple sabotage had

707
00:44:39,239 --> 00:44:43,240
Speaker 1: been orchestrated by Baldwin Felts just to ambush and assassinate Sid.

708
00:44:43,640 --> 00:44:47,239
Speaker 1: So the real conspiracy. They're bringing a charge of conspiracy.

709
00:44:47,280 --> 00:44:50,080
Speaker 1: But they were conspiring, like you guys set up the

710
00:44:50,120 --> 00:44:53,440
Speaker 1: whole thing to begin with, right, right, that's what they thought. Yeah,

711
00:44:53,520 --> 00:44:57,040
Speaker 1: that's what they think. But the Baldwin Felts agents bizarrely

712
00:44:57,160 --> 00:45:00,520
Speaker 1: claimed that they had been acting in self defense, even

713
00:45:00,560 --> 00:45:03,680
Speaker 1: though these two guys were both unarmed. They said they'd

714
00:45:03,719 --> 00:45:10,080
Speaker 1: seen Sid reach into his pocket. Classic detective defense heard

715
00:45:10,120 --> 00:45:12,680
Speaker 1: this before, and I guess they could claim that they

716
00:45:12,680 --> 00:45:15,359
Speaker 1: didn't know he was unarmed until they had already shot him.

717
00:45:16,520 --> 00:45:18,680
Speaker 1: Oh that's the best claim in the world. Yeah, a

718
00:45:18,719 --> 00:45:23,080
Speaker 1: great claim. Now, not a single detective was convicted, and

719
00:45:23,160 --> 00:45:26,560
Speaker 1: to this day there are bullet marks visible on the

720
00:45:26,640 --> 00:45:31,160
Speaker 1: stairs of the courthouse. The assassination of their hero Sid

721
00:45:31,160 --> 00:45:36,640
Speaker 1: Hatfield royally piste off the union and the workers. After

722
00:45:36,760 --> 00:45:39,319
Speaker 1: more than three thousands showed up to mourn him at

723
00:45:39,320 --> 00:45:43,400
Speaker 1: his funeral, they became more determined than ever to organize.

724
00:45:43,800 --> 00:45:46,680
Speaker 1: Armed miners started to gather and within four days they

725
00:45:46,680 --> 00:45:50,160
Speaker 1: were a four thirteen thousand strong and they started to

726
00:45:50,239 --> 00:45:54,480
Speaker 1: march to Logan County, West Virginia to forcibly unionize the

727
00:45:54,560 --> 00:45:58,320
Speaker 1: mines there. But the anti union sheriff there, Don Chafin,

728
00:45:58,719 --> 00:46:01,520
Speaker 1: thanks to an influx of cash from the coal companies,

729
00:46:01,760 --> 00:46:04,719
Speaker 1: managed to put together his own force of nearly two

730
00:46:04,840 --> 00:46:09,400
Speaker 1: thousands that was the largest private armed force in the nation.

731
00:46:10,480 --> 00:46:14,759
Speaker 1: He also had better weapons and better defenses in higher positions.

732
00:46:15,719 --> 00:46:18,560
Speaker 1: I have the high ground, Annie, What are you doing?

733
00:46:20,480 --> 00:46:23,160
Speaker 1: How do you do? How do you and McGregor, Yeah,

734
00:46:24,680 --> 00:46:27,399
Speaker 1: what are you doing? I can talk? Is now over

735
00:46:27,560 --> 00:46:35,040
Speaker 1: Anakin high? I loved you, like, oh my god. Can

736
00:46:35,080 --> 00:46:42,360
Speaker 1: we make the nineteen twenties Phantom Menace? Please? Yes, please?

737
00:46:42,480 --> 00:46:47,200
Speaker 1: In silent film version of Star Wars. On August there

738
00:46:47,239 --> 00:46:51,759
Speaker 1: were a few skirmishes where Chaffin's forces dropped bleach and

739
00:46:51,920 --> 00:46:56,399
Speaker 1: shrapnel bombs on the United Mine Workers headquarters while most

740
00:46:56,400 --> 00:46:58,880
Speaker 1: of the miners were still miles away from Logan County.

741
00:46:59,719 --> 00:47:02,719
Speaker 1: The next day, President Warren G. Harding threatened to send

742
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:06,520
Speaker 1: in the Feds and even deploy army bombers, and after

743
00:47:06,560 --> 00:47:10,120
Speaker 1: a long meeting, the miners were convinced to turn around

744
00:47:10,360 --> 00:47:16,000
Speaker 1: and head home. Peace restored. But Chaffin had put together

745
00:47:16,000 --> 00:47:19,280
Speaker 1: this whole private army and he wasn't ready to stand down.

746
00:47:19,840 --> 00:47:23,880
Speaker 1: He wanted to end union organization once and for all,

747
00:47:24,440 --> 00:47:27,799
Speaker 1: so within hours of the miners deciding to leave, there

748
00:47:27,800 --> 00:47:31,839
Speaker 1: were rumors of Chaffin's men shooting Union sympathizers just north

749
00:47:31,840 --> 00:47:34,560
Speaker 1: of Blair Mountain in West Virginia, and their families got

750
00:47:34,560 --> 00:47:38,279
Speaker 1: caught in the crossfire. Union miners were enraged, and they

751
00:47:38,320 --> 00:47:41,160
Speaker 1: turned right back around to go back to Blair Mountain,

752
00:47:41,280 --> 00:47:45,520
Speaker 1: even commandeering trains to get there again. Even though they

753
00:47:45,520 --> 00:47:49,160
Speaker 1: were outnumbered, Chaffin's private army had way better weapons, they

754
00:47:49,160 --> 00:47:53,160
Speaker 1: had higher positions, they were ready, and private planes dropped

755
00:47:53,200 --> 00:47:56,880
Speaker 1: homemade bombs on the miners. Several towns were inundated with

756
00:47:57,040 --> 00:48:01,400
Speaker 1: poisoned gas and explosives left over from World War One.

757
00:48:02,480 --> 00:48:05,080
Speaker 1: The West Virginia National Guard was brought in to command

758
00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:08,160
Speaker 1: the anti Union forces and gun battles broke out for

759
00:48:08,200 --> 00:48:12,319
Speaker 1: a week and in the end a million rounds of

760
00:48:12,360 --> 00:48:15,680
Speaker 1: ammunition had been fired and there were around thirty deaths

761
00:48:15,760 --> 00:48:19,239
Speaker 1: on Chaffin's side reported, while the miners suffered over a

762
00:48:19,360 --> 00:48:24,160
Speaker 1: hundred casualties and hundreds more miners were wounded. This five

763
00:48:24,280 --> 00:48:27,960
Speaker 1: day conflict became known as the Battle of Blair Mountain

764
00:48:28,200 --> 00:48:32,120
Speaker 1: and it is the largest labor uprising in US history

765
00:48:32,239 --> 00:48:38,080
Speaker 1: and the largest armed uprising since the Civil War. Can

766
00:48:38,120 --> 00:48:42,800
Speaker 1: you imagine, though, like your employers, like I work at Panera,

767
00:48:44,160 --> 00:48:49,920
Speaker 1: and Panera Bread is using weapons of war against me?

768
00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:56,759
Speaker 1: That we're just used, I said, not a sponsor, just

769
00:48:56,960 --> 00:48:59,440
Speaker 1: picked a name out of I would love some Panera

770
00:48:59,520 --> 00:49:07,960
Speaker 1: after that era. Please don't bombas bred bulls. Not bombs, yes,

771
00:49:08,800 --> 00:49:15,879
Speaker 1: Trump Bread not bombs. I always say love from yeah,

772
00:49:16,200 --> 00:49:17,840
Speaker 1: but yeah, it just would be so crazy to have

773
00:49:17,920 --> 00:49:20,560
Speaker 1: just come out of a war where you use those

774
00:49:20,560 --> 00:49:23,640
Speaker 1: weapons against enemies of your country and then had them

775
00:49:23,640 --> 00:49:26,000
Speaker 1: turned against you. Like that would just be I think,

776
00:49:26,120 --> 00:49:29,359
Speaker 1: very hard to see. Well, finally the FEDS stepped in

777
00:49:29,480 --> 00:49:32,759
Speaker 1: on September two, and because many of the miners were

778
00:49:32,840 --> 00:49:35,680
Speaker 1: veterans they fought in World War One, they were not

779
00:49:35,719 --> 00:49:39,480
Speaker 1: willing to shoot US troops, so they started to leave

780
00:49:39,520 --> 00:49:41,600
Speaker 1: Logan County the next day. A lot of them hid

781
00:49:41,640 --> 00:49:45,200
Speaker 1: their weapons in the woods, and nine and eighty five

782
00:49:45,360 --> 00:49:50,319
Speaker 1: miners were indicted for murder, conspiracy to commit murder, accessory

783
00:49:50,360 --> 00:49:53,880
Speaker 1: to murder, and treason against the state of West Virginia.

784
00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:57,960
Speaker 1: Some were acquitted by sympathetic juries, but most were imprisoned

785
00:49:57,960 --> 00:50:01,520
Speaker 1: for years. Not just looked like a huge victory for

786
00:50:01,560 --> 00:50:04,359
Speaker 1: the coal industry owners and management, right, Like, they won,

787
00:50:07,280 --> 00:50:10,719
Speaker 1: that's right, We've protected all of the money, could do

788
00:50:10,840 --> 00:50:14,160
Speaker 1: some pores and cash follows. So yeah, they won there

789
00:50:14,200 --> 00:50:17,839
Speaker 1: in jail, and after the battle, union membership plummeted from

790
00:50:17,920 --> 00:50:22,120
Speaker 1: fifty miners to tens. So the coal companies are like

791
00:50:22,320 --> 00:50:26,000
Speaker 1: really patent themselves on the back here. But their victory

792
00:50:26,080 --> 00:50:30,760
Speaker 1: did not last long because this battle also raised national

793
00:50:30,800 --> 00:50:35,200
Speaker 1: awareness about the appalling and dangerous conditions that these workers

794
00:50:35,239 --> 00:50:38,520
Speaker 1: were laboring under, and it led to important changes in

795
00:50:38,760 --> 00:50:42,799
Speaker 1: union text as well. The unions maybe said, put down

796
00:50:42,840 --> 00:50:48,680
Speaker 1: the gun, pick up the lobbying pencil. Wow, you really

797
00:50:48,960 --> 00:50:51,319
Speaker 1: you should really go out and start organizing, right if

798
00:50:51,400 --> 00:50:56,600
Speaker 1: everyone is like, who thrilling, I'm stirred by your speech,

799
00:50:57,960 --> 00:51:00,440
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was kind of like the first time

800
00:51:00,640 --> 00:51:04,239
Speaker 1: in the coal Wars that the government was openly acknowledging

801
00:51:04,280 --> 00:51:07,560
Speaker 1: that miners had the right to organize and they also

802
00:51:07,600 --> 00:51:12,160
Speaker 1: had the right to survive their work day, which is

803
00:51:12,160 --> 00:51:15,680
Speaker 1: a crazy thing to say out loud, but yeah, at

804
00:51:15,680 --> 00:51:18,560
Speaker 1: one point that was not a right you had. People

805
00:51:18,600 --> 00:51:21,560
Speaker 1: felt that if you had a dangerous jem, suck to

806
00:51:21,600 --> 00:51:24,880
Speaker 1: be you. So eventually the unions had a much larger

807
00:51:24,960 --> 00:51:29,200
Speaker 1: victory when the nineteen thirty three National Industrial Recovery Act

808
00:51:29,360 --> 00:51:33,480
Speaker 1: was passed that protected collective bargaining rights for workers, which

809
00:51:33,520 --> 00:51:36,480
Speaker 1: they immediately used to secure better wages and hours in

810
00:51:36,520 --> 00:51:38,719
Speaker 1: safer conditions and all of that good stuff that they

811
00:51:38,719 --> 00:51:42,120
Speaker 1: had been fighting for, and with less strike break and

812
00:51:42,120 --> 00:51:46,360
Speaker 1: work coming in the Baldwin Felt Agency was dissolved in

813
00:51:46,480 --> 00:51:53,400
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven. May But hey, whatever happened old Jesse

814
00:51:53,600 --> 00:51:58,680
Speaker 1: Lee Maynor or should I say young very young? Well,

815
00:51:59,480 --> 00:52:01,880
Speaker 1: just about a half a year after Sid was killed,

816
00:52:02,239 --> 00:52:06,120
Speaker 1: she accepted the third marriage proposal, again prettiest girl in

817
00:52:06,239 --> 00:52:12,200
Speaker 1: Town the Mountain. This time it was from Sylvester Petrie,

818
00:52:12,520 --> 00:52:16,719
Speaker 1: a state trooper, and within eighteen months, at only twenty

819
00:52:16,800 --> 00:52:21,680
Speaker 1: years old, Jesse had been married three times and widowed twice.

820
00:52:21,719 --> 00:52:24,360
Speaker 1: So of course newspapers had a field day with the

821
00:52:24,400 --> 00:52:27,680
Speaker 1: gun widow who first married the man who killed her husband,

822
00:52:28,080 --> 00:52:30,720
Speaker 1: and then after he himself was killed by a gun violence,

823
00:52:30,920 --> 00:52:33,200
Speaker 1: she went out and married one of the law and

824
00:52:33,280 --> 00:52:36,040
Speaker 1: order types who would probably a shot Sid himself if

825
00:52:36,040 --> 00:52:39,920
Speaker 1: he'd been there. So it's a big story. Yeah, they

826
00:52:39,920 --> 00:52:41,880
Speaker 1: were like, she killed the guy who killed her husband

827
00:52:41,880 --> 00:52:44,040
Speaker 1: and getting married a guy who would have killed her

828
00:52:44,080 --> 00:52:46,399
Speaker 1: husband have been there to do it, but he would

829
00:52:46,440 --> 00:52:50,160
Speaker 1: have he wasn't, but it would like a side Jessel.

830
00:52:51,600 --> 00:52:54,520
Speaker 1: But these two were only married for a year before

831
00:52:54,520 --> 00:52:57,719
Speaker 1: Sylvester passed away at the end of nine two, and

832
00:52:57,760 --> 00:53:00,600
Speaker 1: the Mingo County records show that Jesse got the hell

833
00:53:00,640 --> 00:53:03,480
Speaker 1: out of West Virginia and she married a fourth and

834
00:53:03,600 --> 00:53:07,640
Speaker 1: final time to some guy named W. R. Jennings in Ohio,

835
00:53:07,760 --> 00:53:12,280
Speaker 1: and you know, hopefully just settled down and was like, Okay,

836
00:53:12,320 --> 00:53:17,200
Speaker 1: I'm done with my husband's dying. Let's see if this last. Yeah,

837
00:53:17,840 --> 00:53:21,640
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't decide if. Like after Sylvester died,

838
00:53:21,719 --> 00:53:25,760
Speaker 1: people were like cruel, what is going on, speculation Station,

839
00:53:26,600 --> 00:53:32,840
Speaker 1: Why do Jesse's husbands keep dying? Well? Maybe wait, speculation Station,

840
00:53:33,719 --> 00:53:41,719
Speaker 1: Maybe she organized the entire labor movement just to take

841
00:53:41,760 --> 00:53:44,200
Speaker 1: out her first couple of husbands. That's what she did.

842
00:53:44,640 --> 00:53:47,240
Speaker 1: That's probably she was working with Baldwin felt the entire

843
00:53:47,360 --> 00:53:52,040
Speaker 1: time as like an inside job, giving him all the goods.

844
00:53:52,480 --> 00:53:57,720
Speaker 1: You hear me, Jimmy haff that's what happened. Some already

845
00:53:57,760 --> 00:54:02,080
Speaker 1: nineteen year old just wanted to switch boys. More than

846
00:54:02,160 --> 00:54:05,560
Speaker 1: likely he just had a dangerous job. Yeah, it's probably not.

847
00:54:05,960 --> 00:54:10,680
Speaker 1: It's probably the speculated stations had some our trains are

848
00:54:10,840 --> 00:54:14,800
Speaker 1: running right now, we've got a coal shortage. All the

849
00:54:14,880 --> 00:54:20,920
Speaker 1: union workers are on strike. Yeah we got nothing now.

850
00:54:20,960 --> 00:54:22,560
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know about you, but I was

851
00:54:22,560 --> 00:54:24,640
Speaker 1: definitely like, what in the world was up with these

852
00:54:24,640 --> 00:54:29,759
Speaker 1: cold companies? And and and Baldwin Felts detectives just being like,

853
00:54:29,920 --> 00:54:32,120
Speaker 1: I will happily shoot this guy in the face. Like

854
00:54:32,320 --> 00:54:36,800
Speaker 1: I just don't. I don't get that now. Historian Rebecca

855
00:54:36,880 --> 00:54:43,239
Speaker 1: Bailey and Smithsonian Magazine was like pressing for a little nuance, okay,

856
00:54:43,320 --> 00:54:46,160
Speaker 1: And she points out that the Baldwin Felts agents and

857
00:54:46,239 --> 00:54:50,359
Speaker 1: the other anti union folks really truly believed that they

858
00:54:50,360 --> 00:54:55,720
Speaker 1: were putting down a sincere threat of Bolshevik communism, because,

859
00:54:55,760 --> 00:55:00,160
Speaker 1: of course the Russian Revolution had just happened, Communism was

860
00:55:00,200 --> 00:55:02,600
Speaker 1: gaining a lot of popularity for a number of years

861
00:55:02,640 --> 00:55:05,759
Speaker 1: after that amongst the workers, and that did lead to

862
00:55:05,760 --> 00:55:08,600
Speaker 1: a lot of destabilization with the systems. That was the

863
00:55:08,680 --> 00:55:13,200
Speaker 1: point of conclution. Of course, things got messy and uncomfortable,

864
00:55:13,680 --> 00:55:15,400
Speaker 1: and so there were a lot of people who are

865
00:55:15,480 --> 00:55:18,280
Speaker 1: very very very very very worried about communism in eighteen

866
00:55:18,320 --> 00:55:21,120
Speaker 1: twenty and they were like, any sign of it is

867
00:55:21,880 --> 00:55:25,800
Speaker 1: too many signs. And they were like, there's two possibilities here.

868
00:55:25,880 --> 00:55:30,680
Speaker 1: Either we give you terrible wages, overcharge you for your rents,

869
00:55:30,719 --> 00:55:37,279
Speaker 1: and give you working conditions that you die in. Or communism.

870
00:55:38,200 --> 00:55:45,560
Speaker 1: The choice clear, folks, Come on, people suffer under communism, yeah,

871
00:55:45,680 --> 00:55:49,400
Speaker 1: but not under us, I know, right. She She also

872
00:55:49,560 --> 00:55:53,680
Speaker 1: was saying that like they companies really hated, of course,

873
00:55:54,000 --> 00:55:57,359
Speaker 1: the wage conversation, because the price of labor is kind

874
00:55:57,360 --> 00:56:01,240
Speaker 1: of the only thing they could a yes, I guess,

875
00:56:01,280 --> 00:56:05,880
Speaker 1: to their budgets, whereas like the cost of blowing up

876
00:56:05,880 --> 00:56:09,040
Speaker 1: the mountain and transporting things and all that stuff was

877
00:56:09,080 --> 00:56:11,480
Speaker 1: like hard costs they couldn't do anything about. And then

878
00:56:11,480 --> 00:56:13,799
Speaker 1: the amount they could sell it for, of course is

879
00:56:14,000 --> 00:56:17,440
Speaker 1: designated by the free market supposedly, and so that was

880
00:56:17,480 --> 00:56:20,480
Speaker 1: like kind of the one thing they could manipulate, which

881
00:56:21,640 --> 00:56:23,759
Speaker 1: is not a strong argument for them. It's just their

882
00:56:23,800 --> 00:56:26,240
Speaker 1: thought process. How am I supposed to make a million

883
00:56:26,280 --> 00:56:30,400
Speaker 1: dollars if all the workers have enough food to feed themselves.

884
00:56:30,440 --> 00:56:33,600
Speaker 1: If I let you have a fair share of your product,

885
00:56:33,880 --> 00:56:39,479
Speaker 1: I might only have to have dollars a poultry. How's

886
00:56:39,520 --> 00:56:41,800
Speaker 1: a man is supposed to live on that? She also

887
00:56:41,880 --> 00:56:47,680
Speaker 1: asserted that the miners would most often instigate violence because

888
00:56:48,080 --> 00:56:51,520
Speaker 1: she said most outsiders gave them the moral high grounds

889
00:56:52,640 --> 00:56:56,080
Speaker 1: no matter what happened, because they were the workers, I suppose,

890
00:56:56,200 --> 00:56:58,600
Speaker 1: and so it was like it seems like a David

891
00:56:58,640 --> 00:57:01,759
Speaker 1: and Goliath story, so you always side with David, even

892
00:57:01,800 --> 00:57:05,560
Speaker 1: if he through the first stone or whatever. But in

893
00:57:05,680 --> 00:57:08,960
Speaker 1: the Smithsonian magazine, a former West Virginia coal miner and

894
00:57:09,080 --> 00:57:12,160
Speaker 1: a member of the local United Mine Workers chapter, there

895
00:57:12,520 --> 00:57:16,400
Speaker 1: Terry Steele really pushes back on that. He says, the

896
00:57:16,520 --> 00:57:20,360
Speaker 1: narrative that most people heard where that mountain people and

897
00:57:20,920 --> 00:57:25,600
Speaker 1: mine workers were inherently violent and unreasonable, perpetually drunk, and

898
00:57:25,720 --> 00:57:28,800
Speaker 1: incapable of solving any problem without a gun. So most

899
00:57:28,920 --> 00:57:32,360
Speaker 1: people that's what they thought about the miners. So Terry

900
00:57:32,440 --> 00:57:36,040
Speaker 1: says that locals knew good and well. The local wisdom was, quote,

901
00:57:36,640 --> 00:57:39,000
Speaker 1: if you got a mule killed in the mines and

902
00:57:39,120 --> 00:57:41,400
Speaker 1: you were in charge, you could lose your job over it.

903
00:57:42,080 --> 00:57:44,720
Speaker 1: If you've got a man killed, he could be replaced.

904
00:57:45,680 --> 00:57:48,520
Speaker 1: And in conditions like that, he argues, what other options

905
00:57:48,560 --> 00:57:52,760
Speaker 1: do you have? But revolt? All right? And I kind

906
00:57:52,800 --> 00:57:56,920
Speaker 1: of feel that, and he was pointing out to that.

907
00:57:57,200 --> 00:58:00,160
Speaker 1: I guess I suppose the mind that he was working

908
00:58:00,240 --> 00:58:03,880
Speaker 1: at had declared bankruptcy, so he was losing its health

909
00:58:03,920 --> 00:58:07,880
Speaker 1: insurance and entirement plan. So he's like, everything is still

910
00:58:08,320 --> 00:58:11,400
Speaker 1: a company store to me, and to me, it's no different.

911
00:58:11,600 --> 00:58:13,200
Speaker 1: And a lot of things that we had fought for

912
00:58:13,320 --> 00:58:16,120
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty. We're still asking for now because of

913
00:58:16,200 --> 00:58:20,560
Speaker 1: the decline in union power of the last decades decades.

914
00:58:22,240 --> 00:58:25,760
Speaker 1: But I'm thinking about those Starbucks that are unionizing. Well,

915
00:58:26,720 --> 00:58:28,920
Speaker 1: you know, they shouldn't be getting fired, but at least

916
00:58:28,960 --> 00:58:32,640
Speaker 1: they're not getting fired upon with machine guns. Yeah, not yet,

917
00:58:33,080 --> 00:58:35,200
Speaker 1: not yet, I know, but but I mean, that's the

918
00:58:35,280 --> 00:58:39,520
Speaker 1: history of leaders in this country. It was very violent

919
00:58:40,480 --> 00:58:43,560
Speaker 1: fight for the rights that we enjoy today, and we

920
00:58:44,000 --> 00:58:46,280
Speaker 1: enjoy them. Were like, we want a four day working now,

921
00:58:47,320 --> 00:58:49,400
Speaker 1: just to get to where we are today, which is

922
00:58:49,440 --> 00:58:51,960
Speaker 1: still a lot of oppressive labor and low wages and

923
00:58:52,080 --> 00:58:55,400
Speaker 1: things like that too. I mean, you don't have to

924
00:58:55,880 --> 00:58:58,600
Speaker 1: you don't need me to tell you the comparison between

925
00:58:59,440 --> 00:59:02,480
Speaker 1: you know what, how wages have grown versus how companies

926
00:59:02,520 --> 00:59:04,720
Speaker 1: have profited over the last you know, x number of

927
00:59:04,760 --> 00:59:07,760
Speaker 1: decades is not proportionate. No, on the cost of living.

928
00:59:10,400 --> 00:59:13,760
Speaker 1: Still there's all there's always further to go, yeah, you know,

929
00:59:14,560 --> 00:59:19,840
Speaker 1: and it's rarely out of you know, this fabricated notion

930
00:59:19,920 --> 00:59:22,960
Speaker 1: of like people are lazy and you know, and don't

931
00:59:22,960 --> 00:59:26,160
Speaker 1: want to Who wants to work? My god, I want

932
00:59:26,200 --> 00:59:28,680
Speaker 1: to do anything but work, you know. But it's but

933
00:59:29,040 --> 00:59:32,040
Speaker 1: it was, but we want to do something. You know,

934
00:59:32,160 --> 00:59:34,480
Speaker 1: people don't want to just sit around on their butts

935
00:59:34,520 --> 00:59:38,440
Speaker 1: all day, Like look what, I think they'll be innovative

936
00:59:38,680 --> 00:59:42,400
Speaker 1: and they'll be creative and they'll be productive. But the

937
00:59:42,480 --> 00:59:45,000
Speaker 1: problem is they won't take out the trash and scrub

938
00:59:45,120 --> 00:59:48,040
Speaker 1: the toilet and clean the ship out of the car

939
00:59:48,320 --> 00:59:50,680
Speaker 1: and stuff like all the those jobs that no one

940
00:59:50,720 --> 00:59:55,760
Speaker 1: would do for free and which should be highly financially

941
00:59:55,840 --> 01:00:00,360
Speaker 1: rewarded because they're the grossest, nastiest jobs that nobody wants, right,

942
01:00:00,480 --> 01:00:02,320
Speaker 1: which I know we have to me that just just

943
01:00:02,480 --> 01:00:04,439
Speaker 1: real quick that to me that makes the most sense

944
01:00:04,800 --> 01:00:07,360
Speaker 1: is like the worst job that no one would want

945
01:00:07,880 --> 01:00:12,200
Speaker 1: should get a lot of the money. Yeah, I don't know.

946
01:00:12,280 --> 01:00:15,400
Speaker 1: I thought that. I think that I do have a

947
01:00:15,520 --> 01:00:20,760
Speaker 1: bit more of an education on labor, the labor history,

948
01:00:20,880 --> 01:00:23,440
Speaker 1: because he in my school, we were just very alternative

949
01:00:23,480 --> 01:00:25,080
Speaker 1: that way. We didn't you know, we talked about this

950
01:00:25,120 --> 01:00:28,320
Speaker 1: sort of thing, but I didn't know about this and

951
01:00:28,480 --> 01:00:32,120
Speaker 1: how many people died literally fully died. Yeah. I remember

952
01:00:32,200 --> 01:00:36,479
Speaker 1: hearing uh, very high ranking union officer on a film

953
01:00:36,560 --> 01:00:39,400
Speaker 1: set once on the cell phone and he just walked

954
01:00:39,480 --> 01:00:42,880
Speaker 1: past me and all I heard him say was I

955
01:00:43,080 --> 01:00:47,520
Speaker 1: will personally go dig up Jimmy Hoffa himself and get

956
01:00:47,680 --> 01:00:49,720
Speaker 1: him down here, don't blah blah, And he kind of

957
01:00:49,720 --> 01:00:51,520
Speaker 1: walked away and I didn't hear the rest. I was like, man,

958
01:00:52,040 --> 01:00:55,880
Speaker 1: union fights are awesome. So you know where Jimmy Hoffa is. Right,

959
01:00:56,320 --> 01:01:02,560
Speaker 1: everyone's been asking literally four years amazing speaking of, we've

960
01:01:02,600 --> 01:01:05,000
Speaker 1: already finished telling this story. So we're not getting paid

961
01:01:05,080 --> 01:01:08,440
Speaker 1: for all this banter ship. Yeah, so we're gonna strike

962
01:01:09,880 --> 01:01:14,120
Speaker 1: the end of this episode until we record the next one. Yeah,

963
01:01:15,480 --> 01:01:17,400
Speaker 1: I'm striking. I'm striking to get us the hell out

964
01:01:17,440 --> 01:01:21,640
Speaker 1: of here. Strike A Final thoughts, Final thoughts is I

965
01:01:21,760 --> 01:01:24,320
Speaker 1: just hope that you enjoyed this story. I really loved

966
01:01:24,360 --> 01:01:26,400
Speaker 1: looking into it. It was so fascinating to me to

967
01:01:26,480 --> 01:01:29,000
Speaker 1: learn about the Cold Wars and all this crazy ship

968
01:01:29,080 --> 01:01:32,000
Speaker 1: that we never get told and the true blood that

969
01:01:32,160 --> 01:01:35,240
Speaker 1: was spilled to get us the working conditions that we

970
01:01:35,360 --> 01:01:38,800
Speaker 1: have now. And uh, hopefully we won't have to spill

971
01:01:38,800 --> 01:01:42,040
Speaker 1: any more blood to get even better working conditions so

972
01:01:42,160 --> 01:01:48,840
Speaker 1: we can all get our beautiful, beautiful coal miracles, the

973
01:01:48,960 --> 01:01:51,920
Speaker 1: little nuggets of happiness. Yeah, come and you're talking if

974
01:01:51,960 --> 01:01:55,800
Speaker 1: you're good? Yeah? Oh yeah. Cole uh well, thank you

975
01:01:55,880 --> 01:01:57,480
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in today. I hope you enjoyed

976
01:01:57,520 --> 01:02:01,080
Speaker 1: this story. To um us an email and we'll shoot

977
01:02:01,080 --> 01:02:04,040
Speaker 1: you back a little lump of coal. Find us ever

978
01:02:04,160 --> 01:02:06,680
Speaker 1: dick Romance at gmail dot com right or on Twitter

979
01:02:06,760 --> 01:02:09,360
Speaker 1: and Instagram. I'm at Dynamite Boom and I'm at Oh great,

980
01:02:09,440 --> 01:02:12,160
Speaker 1: it's Eli. The show is that Ridick Romance. Thanks again

981
01:02:12,240 --> 01:02:14,240
Speaker 1: for tuning in everyone, and we will catch all our

982
01:02:14,280 --> 01:02:17,840
Speaker 1: next one love you bye, so long friends, It's time

983
01:02:17,920 --> 01:02:22,000
Speaker 1: to go. Thanks so listening to our show. Tell your

984
01:02:22,080 --> 01:02:25,720
Speaker 1: friends names Uncle Sindance to listen to our show, Ridiculous

985
01:02:25,920 --> 01:02:26,440
Speaker 1: roll Nance