Speaker 1: M. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the podcast where
Speaker 1: bad people are talked about, and in this case, the
Speaker 1: bad people are coal mining company executives in specific and
Speaker 1: capitalists in general. And my guest for part two, as
Speaker 1: with part one, is Spencer Crittenton. Spencer, the inventor of
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons more or less essentially um and uh
Speaker 1: the the show runner for Harmon Quest. Um, even though
Speaker 1: your name is not Harmon. But we'll just we'll just
Speaker 1: skip right past that. It's all marketing, you know, it's
Speaker 1: all marketing. Yeah, Spencer, are you a how do you?
Speaker 1: Are you a big fan of the First World War? You?
Speaker 1: Are you a World War One stand? Yeah, I'm a
Speaker 1: I'm a big World War One stand. You love trenches,
Speaker 1: trench foot, oh my god, and like mustard gas. Oh
Speaker 1: hell yeah, mustard gas, Oh my god, child soldiers being
Speaker 1: massacred by the thousand, just pumping people into a meeting exactly.
Speaker 1: World War One was awesome for everybody, but it was
Speaker 1: a particularly good thing for coal miners and for unions
Speaker 1: in general. Um, because the United States, right, we we
Speaker 1: got involved in World War One. Spoilers, um and uh
Speaker 1: it uh it it wouldn't. Um, we had to go
Speaker 1: to like the the whole country had to get on
Speaker 1: a war footing because the US military and on once
Speaker 1: upon a time actually was weird the idea that we
Speaker 1: would have a standing military that was bigger than just
Speaker 1: a couple of thousand guys um. And so we had
Speaker 1: to like really quickly make an army because we just
Speaker 1: kind of didn't have one when World War One kicked off.
Speaker 1: We had like a few thousand guys on horses who
Speaker 1: were used to like shooting it out with Poncho Villa,
Speaker 1: but that was about it. So we like had to
Speaker 1: build this army up suddenly. And that's like that that
Speaker 1: takes a lot of fucking coal, right, Like at this point,
Speaker 1: all of your fucking industry bullshit is fueled by coal.
Speaker 1: So we had to get a lot of coal real
Speaker 1: fucking fast. Um. And the president also had to institute
Speaker 1: a draft because we didn't have a whole lot of soldiers,
Speaker 1: and this constricted the labor supply. So US suddenly needs
Speaker 1: a shipload more coal. And also there's a lot less
Speaker 1: uh labor age men that you can hire to do it.
Speaker 1: And this means, I don't know, if you understand if
Speaker 1: you know much about economics. I do not, but I
Speaker 1: know that when you have less of something, it gets
Speaker 1: more valuable. So suddenly coal miners, which had kind of
Speaker 1: just been treated like trash before this, as you might
Speaker 1: have guessed from the fact that they machine gun them
Speaker 1: from an armored train, Um, they're valuable. Now you can't
Speaker 1: just machine gun them. Um. And so the federal government
Speaker 1: actually kicks in some protections from miners and starts treating
Speaker 1: them really well. Uh. The National War Labor Board, which
Speaker 1: President Wilson instituted to help manage American industry, pushed for
Speaker 1: the eight hour work day, granted raises to laborers, and
Speaker 1: supported equal pay for women doing what was then still
Speaker 1: considered to be men's work. Equal pay for equal work
Speaker 1: was the idea, and where we are still not there. Uh,
Speaker 1: but they start talking about it now right like it
Speaker 1: stops being prior to World War One. Like if you're
Speaker 1: kind of on the fringe, if you're saying emen should
Speaker 1: get paid for doing the same job that a man
Speaker 1: is doing, like that's a loony kind of like how
Speaker 1: as soon as the fucking like everybody's laughing about basic
Speaker 1: income being like a fringe position And then a plague
Speaker 1: hits and everybody's like, oh, maybe this is actually a
Speaker 1: normal thing that should exist. Yeah. Yeah, So all of
Speaker 1: that ship starts to happen because of this whole, this
Speaker 1: whole war thing, And I don't want to make it
Speaker 1: out to like Wilson was like super pro labor because
Speaker 1: the i w W, the Wobblies, the group who, like
Speaker 1: one of their members wrote the song that been in
Speaker 1: the last episode with Wilson brutally cracks down on them
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of them are like fucking anarchists, right, Um,
Speaker 1: they're very interesting group because like the the the guy
Speaker 1: who wrote Solidarity Forever fucking hated the communist like governments
Speaker 1: um that that came out of like the end of
Speaker 1: World War One, and also hated capitalists. Interesting group, interesting
Speaker 1: person worth reading about. But President Wilson fucking cracked the
Speaker 1: ship down on those guys because, um, they were seen
Speaker 1: as being like two politically radical and it's easy to
Speaker 1: punish radicals during a wartime. But the actual union men working,
Speaker 1: like the the UMW, like these coal miners, these were
Speaker 1: seen as being like fundamentally pretty American and they were
Speaker 1: also necessary. So Wilson did support miners war, and things
Speaker 1: got more and things got a lot better for particularly
Speaker 1: mine workers during this war. Um so yeah. President Wilson
Speaker 1: declared at the outset of US involvement that a lack
Speaker 1: of coal was quote the most serious danger facing the
Speaker 1: United States in this current crisis. He declared coal miners
Speaker 1: immune to the draft. And for the first time, these
Speaker 1: rough and tumble rednecks who were used to being treated
Speaker 1: like disposable assets, started to realize that they were actually
Speaker 1: really valuable and kind of critical to the nation working.
Speaker 1: Uh And they had to promise not to strike during
Speaker 1: the war, but in exchange for this promise, they received
Speaker 1: a substantial raise. Now, the result of all this was
Speaker 1: that by the time the war ended and the troops
Speaker 1: started to return home, coal miners had started to get
Speaker 1: used to the idea that they were valuable, skilled workers
Speaker 1: performing a critical task. Now, if you're at Dusk Capital, Spencer, no,
Speaker 1: that's fine, it's it's it's it's super boring, um and
Speaker 1: and a real snooze fest. Uh So. Dust Capital is
Speaker 1: a book written way back in eighteen sixty seven by
Speaker 1: Karl Marx who Karl Marks was the founder of the
Speaker 1: Marx Brothers. He invented uh comedy. Um, but he also
Speaker 1: had some theories about labor. Yeah, and the big mustache
Speaker 1: and had some theories about labor to um. Lennon read
Speaker 1: a book on him in the song American Pie Uh
Speaker 1: anyway uh so um yeah, Karl Marks in Dust Capital
Speaker 1: landed on something that's generally referred to as immiseration theory
Speaker 1: and Admiseration theory is the idea that, um, because cutting
Speaker 1: wages and benefits to workers is the easiest way to
Speaker 1: increase profits. Right, So, like, if you operate a coal mine,
Speaker 1: the cost of building um, you know, mine carts, the
Speaker 1: cost of donkeys to like toe mine carts, the cost
Speaker 1: of you know, electricity to light the minds. These are
Speaker 1: all fixed costs, right, These things cost what they cost.
Speaker 1: But you can cut what you pay the workers, you
Speaker 1: can cut their benefits, and that will increase your profits.
Speaker 1: So because doing this is the easiest way to increase profits,
Speaker 1: Mars was like workers in capitalist societies are going to
Speaker 1: be victims of a gradual chiseling away of their quality
Speaker 1: of life. Um, so pay will get cut, you know,
Speaker 1: and you know you you might you might say that
Speaker 1: things in the modern day that would be an example,
Speaker 1: this would be like monitored bathroom breaks, robotic trackers to
Speaker 1: inform your boss when you're not loading Amazon packages. Enough
Speaker 1: things that, in Marks's words quote, destroy the actual content
Speaker 1: of his labor by turning it into a torment. Uh,
Speaker 1: they transform his life into working time and drag his
Speaker 1: wife and child beneath the wheels of the juggernaut of capital.
Speaker 1: But all in production of surplus value or at the
Speaker 1: same time methods of accumulation, and every extension of accumulation
Speaker 1: becomes conversely a means for the development of these methods.
Speaker 1: It follows therefore, that in proportion as capital accumulates, the
Speaker 1: situation of the worker be his payment higher low must
Speaker 1: grow worse. So this is this is This is a
Speaker 1: big part of Marxist theory, and it suggests Marx kind
Speaker 1: of suggested that amiseration is what helped tends to produce revolutions.
Speaker 1: People get so fed up with being abused and chiseled
Speaker 1: away at that they revolt. Um. Now, this is definitely
Speaker 1: true in a number of cases, and you can point
Speaker 1: to certain specific cases where like, this is what happened
Speaker 1: to workers and it caused a revolt. But I think
Speaker 1: one of the issues that kind of people who are
Speaker 1: really in the market Marxist theory have is that they
Speaker 1: kind of over apply it. And it is a fact
Speaker 1: that that a miseration theory actually doesn't always hold true,
Speaker 1: and in fact often does not hold true. More than
Speaker 1: a century of scholarly analysis has actually shown that living
Speaker 1: standards for workers often raising time in various capitalist countries,
Speaker 1: and yet those workers still engage in revolts. And so
Speaker 1: the question is if if standards don't necessarily get chiseled
Speaker 1: away at, but those workers still revolt, what is causing revolts?
Speaker 1: And so there's alternate theories that have been proposed to
Speaker 1: to explain this. James C. Davies, an American scholar, theorizes
Speaker 1: that social revolutions often occur after what he calls needs satisfaction,
Speaker 1: which is generally measured by income, has risen for a
Speaker 1: period of time and then sharply drops. So this causes
Speaker 1: a sudden and massive gap between expected and obtained satisfaction,
Speaker 1: which provokes action on behalf of the aggrieved. So Marx
Speaker 1: is saying that, like workers, things just get worse and
Speaker 1: worse and worse and worse until they're forced into action.
Speaker 1: Um and Davies is suggesting that social revolutions occur after
Speaker 1: things actually get better for a while and then suddenly
Speaker 1: get worse and people just are furious, and you can see,
Speaker 1: like the strikes that we talked about in the last episode,
Speaker 1: we're kind of the result of miners just getting chiseled
Speaker 1: away at for so long that they got really piste um.
Speaker 1: And what we're going to talk about today is more
Speaker 1: an example of what Davies is talking about, is things
Speaker 1: getting better, like during World War One, things get a
Speaker 1: lot better for miners, and then after World War One
Speaker 1: that changes sharply and people get really fucking piste off,
Speaker 1: and everything that we're about to to talk about today happens.
Speaker 1: So things were all sunshine and roses for labor during
Speaker 1: the war. Woodrow Wilson crackdown, like I said on the
Speaker 1: I w w UM, but the government was willing to
Speaker 1: work with unions to express the proper amount of patriotism. Um.
Speaker 1: That said, they were still terrified of anything that smelled
Speaker 1: even a little bit like communism. And this fear only
Speaker 1: increased is the Russian Revolution heated up and the Bolsheviks
Speaker 1: got down to some serious Bolsheviking as soon as the
Speaker 1: war I mean, it wasn't even a joke. As soon
Speaker 1: as World War One was over and more young men
Speaker 1: returned home, that opened up the labor market, and so
Speaker 1: bosses began to correspondingly cut wages and benefits to their
Speaker 1: workers again to try to claw back more control, power
Speaker 1: and profit, and this led to immediate strikes. Obviously, m yeah,
Speaker 1: the strikes started among the nation's steel workers, but in
Speaker 1: over the course of like the fall of nineteen nineteen
Speaker 1: early nineteen twenty, there were like several thousand strikes in
Speaker 1: the United States from all sorts of different works, including
Speaker 1: police officers. Cops have unions and they strike to they
Speaker 1: just also break up strikes by other unions. UM so again,
Speaker 1: maybe something to think about. So in September nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: half of America's steel workers go on strikes and Woodrow
Speaker 1: Wilson uses federal troops to violently break the strike, and
Speaker 1: this for shadows how labor would be treated over the
Speaker 1: coming years. But while the steel workers could be crushed
Speaker 1: rather simply, mine workers were in a much better position
Speaker 1: to resist. For one thing, they had more institutional support
Speaker 1: within the government because of like systems that had been
Speaker 1: set up during World War One, to support miners um
Speaker 1: so they were also the best organized chunk of laborers
Speaker 1: within the country. By this point, United Mine Workers was
Speaker 1: more than half a million men strong, and the union
Speaker 1: then possessed the ability to shut down almost the entire
Speaker 1: coal industry. And if you shut down the coal industry,
Speaker 1: you basically shut down the United States. Now, by September
Speaker 1: of nineteen nineteen, when the u m W held their
Speaker 1: annual convention, workers were pissed. Wages had been slashed and
Speaker 1: workers had been laid off as soon as the fighting stopped,
Speaker 1: and demand felt this made miners eel as if they'd
Speaker 1: been bait and switched, which they sort of had been,
Speaker 1: and they Yeah, this particular chant was common among miners
Speaker 1: at the time, and I think it gets across the
Speaker 1: general feeling of many. We mind the cold of transport soldiers,
Speaker 1: we kept the home fires all aglow, we put old
Speaker 1: Kaiser out of business. What's our reward? We want to know.
Speaker 1: So they're a little bit pissed. Yeah, So the union
Speaker 1: calls a strike. Uh, and this was still illegal under
Speaker 1: wartime laws which had not been lifted yet. In President
Speaker 1: Wilson promised that the law will be enforced, which was
Speaker 1: generally taken to mean that federal troops would be used
Speaker 1: to shut down any strike, and a tedious game of
Speaker 1: political back and forth followed, with the government issuing court
Speaker 1: injunctions against the strike that rendered the union unable to
Speaker 1: call for a walk off. So the unions like, we're
Speaker 1: gonna strike. The government says, actually, that's fucking illegal, and
Speaker 1: the union says, okay, we're not going to call for
Speaker 1: a strike. But then four hundred thousand coal industry workers
Speaker 1: just walk off the job anyway, But it's not a
Speaker 1: union strike. It's just four hundred thousand Americans being like
Speaker 1: fuck you. Then like, what are you gonna do. You're
Speaker 1: gonna come to our houses and kill us all, Like, all,
Speaker 1: we gotta deliberate the coal mines. Yeah, reopened the economy,
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. Yeah, you can go in there and liberate them.
Speaker 1: Do the job if you think it's so fucking easy.
Speaker 1: So the problem with this was that winter had started
Speaker 1: a hit by the point that all these guys come
Speaker 1: off the job, and co shortages during the fall and
Speaker 1: winter mean that a lot of Americans start suffering right
Speaker 1: because they can't heat their homes um and this pisss
Speaker 1: off a lot of normal American citizens who might otherwise
Speaker 1: have sympathized with the union because like they're freezing in
Speaker 1: their houses. Um. So, the union was ultimately stymied in
Speaker 1: this nationwide strike by a mix of public disapproval and
Speaker 1: the fact that there were still a lot of non
Speaker 1: union mines in West Virginia, in Mingo County to be specific.
Speaker 1: And these were very productive minds that put out enough
Speaker 1: coal to keep critical US industry afloat. So normally Americans
Speaker 1: are suffering, but the things that are necessary to maintain,
Speaker 1: like the nation's existence, that ship keeps going because of
Speaker 1: these non union mines in West Virginia. And eventually the
Speaker 1: UMW is forced to cave and the miners have to
Speaker 1: go back to work. And yeah, the bosses buy in
Speaker 1: large one this round, and their victory made it clear
Speaker 1: to the union men that they could not successfully execute
Speaker 1: a nationwide strike without unionizing the minds of West Virginia.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Yeah. So that's good and valuable lesson, a
Speaker 1: valuable lesson. So to us, all, to us all, um,
Speaker 1: As I have often said, Mingo County is the enemy.
Speaker 1: Um still true to this day. So Mingo County was
Speaker 1: the mine operators stronghold in West Virginia, and they fought
Speaker 1: like devils to keep union organizers out and to clamp
Speaker 1: down on any individual miners who might try to change
Speaker 1: the status quo. They were aided in this by the
Speaker 1: Logan County Sheriff's Department, which was wholly owned corporate interests
Speaker 1: and dedicated to crushing worker organization. The cause of the
Speaker 1: union was made all the more difficult by cultural factors
Speaker 1: in Mingo County. Most of the miners there were farmers first,
Speaker 1: men who saw coal mining as a temporary placeholder gig
Speaker 1: when prices were lower crop yields were poor. They didn't
Speaker 1: truly identify as miners, and so it was hard to
Speaker 1: organize them. Mingo County remained resistant to the cause of
Speaker 1: organized labor until early nineteen twenty. Now, in the wake
Speaker 1: of that strike, the union goes to the table with
Speaker 1: the bosses and you know, they basically try to iron
Speaker 1: out what differences they can so that there won't be
Speaker 1: another strike because it still hurts the mine company's profits.
Speaker 1: And this arbitration commission like concludes by recommending a significant
Speaker 1: raise for union miners twenty seven to avert future strikes.
Speaker 1: So union miners get a raise. Non union miners, the
Speaker 1: miners in Mingo County who had allowed the bosses to
Speaker 1: in the strike, they don't get a raise because they're
Speaker 1: not part of the union. So these guys just fucked
Speaker 1: over the union and a strike, and then they immediately see, oh,
Speaker 1: this is why we have a union, because it increases
Speaker 1: the amount of money that we make. Um. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: over on the other side of the holler, their union
Speaker 1: neighbors were suddenly getting paid as shipload more Mingo County
Speaker 1: miners started demanding raises from their bosses, pointing out that
Speaker 1: they loyally kept working during the strike and this surely
Speaker 1: meant that they deserved the increased pay. And this did
Speaker 1: not convince the people who were their bosses. Shocking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm shocked. As Robert Shogun writes, quote the response of
Speaker 1: the Howard Colliery at Chadowroy typify and management's attitude. The
Speaker 1: Howard manager offered a modest increase, but then boosted prices
Speaker 1: in the company store when some miners complained they were
Speaker 1: pistol whipped by mine guards. Yeah. Not. This is actually
Speaker 1: probably going to surprise a lot of people, but most
Speaker 1: folks don't like to be pistol whipped. It's not great.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I take some controversial takes, and
Speaker 1: that's going to be one of them. But I'm generally
Speaker 1: anti pistol whipping. I'm not gonna say there's a time
Speaker 1: in a place for pistol whipping, but it's a bad
Speaker 1: thing to receive. You know, you'd rather be the giver
Speaker 1: of a pistol whipping than the receiver. Yeah, mm hmm.
Speaker 1: So at Burnwell colon Coke, one impatient miner posted a
Speaker 1: notice at the entrance to the miners of Burnwell Coal Company,
Speaker 1: we shall have this raise. We want this raise which
Speaker 1: the government had granted us. The response from the president
Speaker 1: of Burnwell was not long in coming. He said, as
Speaker 1: one of his employees recalled, he would let his mind
Speaker 1: go until moss grows over it, until it falls in
Speaker 1: the Huckleberry ridge before he would ever work a union man.
Speaker 1: Eighty of the ninety two Burnwell miners walked off their
Speaker 1: jobs and sent two of their number to Charleston to
Speaker 1: ask District seventeen for a charter. Hundreds of other miners
Speaker 1: elsewhere in Mingo did much the same thing. In accordance
Speaker 1: with union policy. They were extructed by the head of
Speaker 1: the union to return home, reclaim their jobs, and reopen
Speaker 1: the minds. Then the union promise they would be welcomed
Speaker 1: into the union. The discontents did as they were bidden.
Speaker 1: As the last week of April began, the organizing drives
Speaker 1: swept like wildfire through Mingo County. The union counted three
Speaker 1: hundred new members in one day, and hundreds more than next,
Speaker 1: And of course, true to form, the bosses fired every
Speaker 1: single man who came into work with a union card,
Speaker 1: and they then sent armed goons in to force these
Speaker 1: men out of their company homes. So hundreds of workers unionized.
Speaker 1: They wind up homeless, their families wind up homeless, and
Speaker 1: the union has to set up and pay for miners
Speaker 1: camps to put these guys up and keep them in
Speaker 1: their families alive while they begin to unionize the minds
Speaker 1: of Mingo County and start to strike. So, how how late?
Speaker 1: How much later was this than the last episodes? This
Speaker 1: is eight years later? This is nineteen nineteen twenty one
Speaker 1: is when all this happens. So it's like enough time
Speaker 1: to forget, but not like for the people who lived it.
Speaker 1: They're like, oh ship not again. Yeah, yeah, and a
Speaker 1: lot of the people, the people organizing this strike on
Speaker 1: behalf of the union had also in large part taken
Speaker 1: part in the ship that happened in the last episode.
Speaker 1: And also all of the folks cracking down on them,
Speaker 1: like the people in charge of Baldwin Felts and everything.
Speaker 1: All of these folks are a lot of these folks
Speaker 1: are still around, so both sides have more experience and
Speaker 1: are bringing what they experienced at the last set of
Speaker 1: strikes into this one. So um yeah. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that's interesting to me about this is that
Speaker 1: these workers had refused to unionize and it kind of
Speaker 1: sucked over the union, but then the union basically spends
Speaker 1: a shipload of money buying them tents and food and
Speaker 1: helping to like take care of them as they begin
Speaker 1: their strike, because that's just the way the ship works.
Speaker 1: So the whole situation infuriated larger and larger sections of
Speaker 1: the minor Mingo County minor population as they see their
Speaker 1: friends and family members kicked out and made homeless. And
Speaker 1: by May nineteen twenty three thousand of Mingo Counties four
Speaker 1: thousand miners had been unionized. Now they were aided in
Speaker 1: this by the fact that much of the local government
Speaker 1: in Mingo County was pro union. The town of Mattawuan,
Speaker 1: which is like one of the big towns in the area.
Speaker 1: The town of Mattawuan's mayor, cable Testerman had been elected
Speaker 1: by miners and he was loyal to them rather than
Speaker 1: the mind bosses. Yeah, it's a funny name, that's all.
Speaker 1: It's a funny name. Yeah, a lot of great names
Speaker 1: in this people didn't know how silly their names were.
Speaker 1: Back in the day when the county sheriff's so so
Speaker 1: not the county sheriff's the state police in West Virginia
Speaker 1: were in the pay of the mind bosses. And like
Speaker 1: the boss of the state police was a captain named Bracus,
Speaker 1: and he was totally pro mine like corporate mind company.
Speaker 1: But like a lot of the county sheriffs were very
Speaker 1: pro minor. Some of them were pro like. It kind
Speaker 1: of depended on the county a lot like Logan County
Speaker 1: was really shitty and pro mine company. Um, but Mingo County,
Speaker 1: you know, things were a little bit more you you
Speaker 1: had a lot more sympathy for the miners. And the
Speaker 1: police chief of the town of mattawan was profoundly pro minor,
Speaker 1: and his name was Sid Hatfield. Like the old governor
Speaker 1: Doc Hatfield, Sid came from a family that was infamous
Speaker 1: for fighting and feuding, and at twenty seven years old,
Speaker 1: Sid was one of the best gunmen in the eight
Speaker 1: Then as now, the redneck farmers of West Virginia were
Speaker 1: all quick to brag about their handiness with a gun,
Speaker 1: but even among a crowd of marksmen, Sid Hatfield stood out.
Speaker 1: He always carried two pistols. He was known in duels
Speaker 1: for shooting them through his pockets, sometimes just to kill
Speaker 1: people faster he was. He was kind of a badass, um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He always carried two long pistols, and he was said
Speaker 1: to be equally accurate using either hand. He had a
Speaker 1: habit of showing off his skill by tossing a potato
Speaker 1: into the air and splitting it open with a shot
Speaker 1: from his gun. In nineteen fifteen, he had a semi
Speaker 1: famous duel with a mine foreman that left the foreman dead.
Speaker 1: Hatfield had claimed self defense and been cleared of all charges. Now,
Speaker 1: in general, local law enforcement around Mingo County was unwilling
Speaker 1: to help the mind companies evict union men from their
Speaker 1: homes uh. The sheriff's department would only assist when proper
Speaker 1: notice was given, and when that and that interfered with
Speaker 1: the desire of mine operators to throw out unionized workers
Speaker 1: on the same day they were fired. So again the
Speaker 1: bosses called on the services of the Baldwin Felts Detective Agency.
Speaker 1: Many of these men were deputized by friendly West Virginia sheriffs,
Speaker 1: which gave them official license to enforce laws in the
Speaker 1: mining camps and to carry guns. The bosses use them
Speaker 1: to collect rent, to guard payroll, and to suppress union organizing.
Speaker 1: So that's good. I'm in favor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You
Speaker 1: might compare them in Shadow Under like nightA rant or whatever,
Speaker 1: which is why Shadow Run has so many, like four
Speaker 1: pay police departments. That's a thing that happened, like that's
Speaker 1: not like a like yeah, so like the Pinkerton's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are another and they do. They do a lot
Speaker 1: of union crushing. It's just it's mainly Baldwin Felts here
Speaker 1: in West Virginia. So the Baldwin Felts men were particularly
Speaker 1: despised for their undercover work. The agency regularly deployed men
Speaker 1: to hide among the miners and pretend to be union sympathizers.
Speaker 1: One of these men, Charlie Lively, went so far as
Speaker 1: to organize several Union local outposts in Mingo County during
Speaker 1: the spring of nineteen So Lively would like set up
Speaker 1: union groups and then he would provide names of all
Speaker 1: the people who were secretly meeting to the company, who
Speaker 1: would then like fire and and evict those people. Um
Speaker 1: Lively and his agents would also act as agent provocateurs,
Speaker 1: so when like miners would hold protests, they would create
Speaker 1: violence at those protests and able in order to justify
Speaker 1: violent crackdowns by mine guards. That happens today right well,
Speaker 1: all the time, dude, all the fucking time. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So the head of the Mingo County operation was a
Speaker 1: fellow named Albert Felts, one of the leaders of the
Speaker 1: Baldwin Felts Agency. He and his men had been tasked
Speaker 1: by their employer with serving a series of evictions on
Speaker 1: families who lived in Mattawan. Since the local police, led
Speaker 1: by Chief Hatfield, would not help, he asked his brother
Speaker 1: Tom Felts, who was directing the agency, to send him
Speaker 1: a bunch of reinforcements. Mattawan was the heart of unionist
Speaker 1: resistance in Mingo, and Albert knew that evicting families there
Speaker 1: would be dangerous work. Uh so he he's there were
Speaker 1: about six other men. He approached Mayor Testament and asked
Speaker 1: if it would be okay for uh he and his
Speaker 1: in to set machine guns up on the roofs of
Speaker 1: some local buildings in Manawan in case things got out
Speaker 1: of town. He's basically like, hey, we gotta evict a
Speaker 1: bunch of people might piss off the locals. Can I
Speaker 1: put machine guns up on your roof to murder your
Speaker 1: citizens if they get angry? Now, the mayor made a
Speaker 1: controversial call and said, no, you cannot set up machine
Speaker 1: gun nests on the roof of local buildings. Brave. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So he's he's the opposite of the Jaws mayor. Um
Speaker 1: kind of. I don't know the Jaws mayor doesn't really
Speaker 1: square with this, but he's everyone's cultural touchdowne for a
Speaker 1: bad mayor, so imagine him is not looking like that?
Speaker 1: Um so yeah. Albert offers next to bribe the mayor
Speaker 1: with a thousand dollars for the right to set up
Speaker 1: a killing field in the middle of town, and to
Speaker 1: his credit, the mayor says no, Well, can I at
Speaker 1: least set up a killing field? Yeah? What can? I
Speaker 1: just want to have the ability to machine gun every
Speaker 1: one of your voters. Why is this a problem. What
Speaker 1: about some sort of death bog? What about a deaf bog?
Speaker 1: What about I don't know, a murder forest, murder forest. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So on May nineteenth, nineteen twenty, Albert Felts his reinforcements
Speaker 1: arrived seven men, including his other brother, Lee Felts. This
Speaker 1: gave him a total of thirteen armed detectives. Uh. And
Speaker 1: detective at this point is a word that just means mercenary. Like,
Speaker 1: these guys are detecting ship, they're armed thugs. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: solve the mystery of why I beat that man to
Speaker 1: death with a blackjack. It's because it was Paul. I
Speaker 1: remember when I learned that, like, oh, private detectives are
Speaker 1: just people that you hire to uh monitor other people.
Speaker 1: They're just kind of like paid stalkers. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's it's a very different picture. You know, that's a
Speaker 1: broad generalization. But still and yeah, and here they're just paid.
Speaker 1: They just are are men with guns who do whatever
Speaker 1: the people hiring the mask and in this case it's
Speaker 1: throw people out of their homes. So Albert Felts gets
Speaker 1: thirteen detectives and when he gets his reinforcements, um so yeah.
Speaker 1: He was worried about the danger of doing this work
Speaker 1: without machine gun nests to back him up, but he
Speaker 1: and his men hopped into three cars and drove out
Speaker 1: to the edge of town to start evicting the ship
Speaker 1: out of some miners. Now the Baldwin feltsmen were all
Speaker 1: heavily armed, and the miners in the area could do
Speaker 1: nothing but stand by and watch as they tossed furniture
Speaker 1: and valuables out onto the street. This kind of work
Speaker 1: was routine for the Baldwin feltsman and they intended to
Speaker 1: destroy the lives of a number of families and then
Speaker 1: hop on the train to get back to their homes
Speaker 1: at the end of the day. Now, the Baldwin Felts
Speaker 1: detectives were interrupted in their task by Sid Hatfield, the
Speaker 1: police chief and Mayor Testament. Again, Albert tried bribery, this
Speaker 1: time offering Sid two or three hundred dollars a month
Speaker 1: for his allegiance. Hatfield turned him down and demanded to
Speaker 1: know what authority Felts had to evict people. Felts replied
Speaker 1: that he'd gotten a court order from the capital in Charleston,
Speaker 1: but he didn't have it on him. So Hatfield and
Speaker 1: Testament are like, that's unacceptable. You don't even have the
Speaker 1: fucking court order. You have no we have no way
Speaker 1: to know that you you have a right to evict
Speaker 1: these people, uh, and Felt just shrugged and said, basically, like,
Speaker 1: I have thirteen men with guns. What are the two
Speaker 1: of you going to do about this? So the mayor
Speaker 1: and the police chief go back downtown and they attempt
Speaker 1: to like get on the telegraph or whatever, and they
Speaker 1: call up warrants from the local court to try and
Speaker 1: arrest the Baldwin feltsman for unlawfully processing evictions. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't really work out. Things aren't very fast back then,
Speaker 1: and while they do this, an armed posse of locals,
Speaker 1: mostly miners, start to congregate in downtown Matajuan, which is
Speaker 1: why Albert felt what had some machine gun nests there. Um.
Speaker 1: So by the time the Baldwin feltsmen finished their work
Speaker 1: and return to the hotel they'd been staying at, there
Speaker 1: were an awful lot of angry men with guns in
Speaker 1: the middle of Mattawan ready to do violence. So the
Speaker 1: Baldwin Felds men get back and they're packing up to
Speaker 1: get to the train station, and there's another confrontation between
Speaker 1: Mayor Testament, sid Hatfield and the detectives. The two groups
Speaker 1: threatened to arrest each other, and then, as historian Robert
Speaker 1: Shogun writes, quote, there would be nearly as many versions
Speaker 1: of what happened next as there were witnesses to the scene.
Speaker 1: By some accounts, Albert felt shot the Mayor, then World
Speaker 1: and fired into the hardware store at sid Hatfield. Others
Speaker 1: said the first shots came from the store itself and
Speaker 1: from Hatfield's guns, striking both Felts and Testament. At any rate,
Speaker 1: everyone agreed that the first men to fall were Cable
Speaker 1: Testament and Albert Felts. Then all hell broke loose. Immediately,
Speaker 1: Hugh Combs's deputies and some of the other miners had
Speaker 1: been looking on raked the street with gunfire. Albert Felts,
Speaker 1: his brother, Lee, and Cunningham drew their pistols and returned fire,
Speaker 1: but they were badly outgunned. Most of their comrades, whose
Speaker 1: guns were packed away, scrambled for cover behind trees and fences.
Speaker 1: But Combs's men were relentless. One after the other, the
Speaker 1: Baldwin Felts agents fell, so at the end of the
Speaker 1: blood letting, three Mottawan locals, including Mayor Testament, were dead,
Speaker 1: along with seven Baldwin Felts detectives, including both Felts brothers,
Speaker 1: and most of the killing on this day was done
Speaker 1: by Sid Hatfield. Now, it was rare for cops to
Speaker 1: wind up on the side of union strikers, and this,
Speaker 1: plus Sid's well earned reputation is kind of a larger
Speaker 1: than life gun slinger made him an instant hero of
Speaker 1: union men nationwide. Like they fucking love Sid Hatfield because
Speaker 1: he shoots a bunch of detectives. Yeah yeah, he like,
Speaker 1: I mean those were and he got the two brothers.
Speaker 1: It's like he took out the ball almost, although yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's more bosses. There's more bosses. He took
Speaker 1: out a boss. And like every post, every like photo
Speaker 1: you see of Sid Hatfield from this period of time,
Speaker 1: he's pointing both of his guns directly at the cameraman,
Speaker 1: like smiling and posing like he's They weren't great on
Speaker 1: gun safety back then. A lot of pointing guns at
Speaker 1: people to get good photos. Yeah, So the United Mine
Speaker 1: Workers Union puts together a propaganda film called Smiling Sid,
Speaker 1: which they played in camps to help inspire in organized miners.
Speaker 1: Sid Hatfield becomes the focus of regular newspaper stories and
Speaker 1: photographs inevitably capture him pointing again both of his guns
Speaker 1: at the camera. There was a trial for Sid Hatfield,
Speaker 1: of course, but the Mingo County jury decided that Smiling
Speaker 1: Sid had done nothing wrong. It also happened that several
Speaker 1: witnesses hostile to Hatfield died mysteriously right before the trial. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the Baldwin Felts Detective Agency and the surviving Felts brother
Speaker 1: we're not about to take this lying down. They attempted
Speaker 1: to frame Hatfield and one of his deputies for the
Speaker 1: destruction of coal company property at a nearby county where
Speaker 1: the legal situation was friendlier. So Hatfield and his deputy
Speaker 1: had to travel to McDowell County, West Virginia to stand trial. Now,
Speaker 1: there was no real evidence against them, but the goal
Speaker 1: was never to convict them. In August of nine, Sid
Speaker 1: and his deputy arrived in town to go to their trial,
Speaker 1: and as they stepped up to the courthouse doors, a
Speaker 1: group of Baldwin Felt Mine guards, including that labor spy
Speaker 1: I was talking about earlier. Lively, drove up and just
Speaker 1: pumped them full of gunfire and kill both men. Now,
Speaker 1: the men who murdered, said Hatfield, were tried in turn,
Speaker 1: but McDow County Justice proved his unwilling to convict them,
Speaker 1: as Mingo County Justice was to convict their victims. So
Speaker 1: this happens. Um. Yeah, so that's cool and good. Do
Speaker 1: you know what else is cool and good? You know
Speaker 1: what won't murder? The only good cop in this story,
Speaker 1: the products and services that support this podcast. None of
Speaker 1: them killed, said Hatfield. That is a hard line we
Speaker 1: draw with our sponsors. I ask every one of them,
Speaker 1: did you murder, said Hatfield, and they all say no,
Speaker 1: except for the one that said yes, the Koch brothers,
Speaker 1: And I apologize for that getting through. Um here's the ads.
Speaker 1: We're back. Oh my Christ, sweet bleeding Jesus, we are back.
Speaker 1: What a good time. So yeah, that's the hat Field stuff.
Speaker 1: It's a bummer. Um. And while all this is happening,
Speaker 1: So this like occurs over the course of about a year,
Speaker 1: you know, you've got the Mattawan massacre as it's known
Speaker 1: um and then you've got Sid Hatfield's assassination. You know,
Speaker 1: there's two a little less than a year apart, but
Speaker 1: this happens like one. And while all this drama is progressing,
Speaker 1: and like there's a bunch of court cases and ship
Speaker 1: and hat Fields, you know, becoming a public figure. While
Speaker 1: all this is going down, the overall situation in Mingo
Speaker 1: County had continued to degenerate. Striking miners had formed into
Speaker 1: a series of heavily armed camps, and groups of them
Speaker 1: started regularly sallying out to carry out hyper attacks and
Speaker 1: acts of sabotage on mine company infrastructure, and also to
Speaker 1: assassinate mine guards. Now, West Virginia's governor at this time
Speaker 1: was fundamentally a coward, and his first instinct was to
Speaker 1: beg President Harding to send in federal troops to help
Speaker 1: calm the violence. Harding replied that he wouldn't send in
Speaker 1: federal troops until he was convinced the governor had actually
Speaker 1: taken some sort of action. So the governor enacted West
Speaker 1: Virginia's Public Safety Law, which enabled him to seize authority
Speaker 1: for Mingo County law enforcement from the local police, who
Speaker 1: sided with the miners and handed over to the head
Speaker 1: of the state police, a guy named Bracas who was
Speaker 1: in the pay of the mine owners and was a
Speaker 1: real piece of ship. So that's good. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: that must have happened in history before. But that seems
Speaker 1: to be drastic to be all like the police, they're
Speaker 1: not the police. Yeah, the police aren't policing the way
Speaker 1: we want him to police. They're not the police anymore.
Speaker 1: This other guy that we pay is now the police. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It is important to note that there is there is
Speaker 1: a history in in the labor movement of East sighting
Speaker 1: with workers and being very useful in that, but also
Speaker 1: there's a history of the state just being like when
Speaker 1: they do that, you're not the police anymore. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: Bracus gets to create new police because the police that
Speaker 1: were there didn't hate minors enough, and he immediately uses
Speaker 1: his powers to create a law and order community made
Speaker 1: up of two volunteers. And these were mostly wealthier men
Speaker 1: from Mingo County, business owners and landed gentry who would
Speaker 1: just be given rifles by the state and the legal
Speaker 1: authority to violently suppress their poor working class foes. So
Speaker 1: that's cool, yeah, but maynight, Yeah, it's awesome and good
Speaker 1: and cool. I I also love it. And what's even
Speaker 1: cooler is that today, if this happened, no one would
Speaker 1: even need to give them rifles because they already have them,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the people that would be shooting
Speaker 1: at don't, which is part of a anyway. On May nine,
Speaker 1: the governor declared a state of martial law in West Virginia.
Speaker 1: He put Major Thomas B. Davis of the of the
Speaker 1: of the of the state, you know, National Guard or
Speaker 1: whatever the militia in charge of finally suppressing the strikers.
Speaker 1: And Major Davis was a real piece of ship. So
Speaker 1: Davis had joined the U. S Military to fight in
Speaker 1: the Spanish American War, which is a bad war to
Speaker 1: have joined to fight in, um, but he also failed
Speaker 1: to see any action in it. Um. So, even though
Speaker 1: he never got any combat, he decided he really liked
Speaker 1: military life, and when his regiment was disbanded, he joined
Speaker 1: the West Virginia National Guard to stay in uniform. UH
Speaker 1: Davis had commanded a unit during the Paint Creek Strike
Speaker 1: of nineteen twelve, and the whole experience had revealed and
Speaker 1: Robert Shogun's words a nonchalance towards civil liberties on the
Speaker 1: part of Davis, which is not a thing you want
Speaker 1: to be nonchalant about. Um, be chalant about civil liberties?
Speaker 1: Is my ship out of those? Yeah, you want to
Speaker 1: chalant the hell out of him? Yeah, don't non the anyway.
Speaker 1: Here's Robert Shogen quote. This is talking about what he
Speaker 1: had done in uh uh, the nineteen twelve strike that
Speaker 1: we talked about last episode. It also talks about some
Speaker 1: shitty things that the governor, who was otherwise seemed pretty
Speaker 1: cool um Dr Hatfield got up to. So it's a
Speaker 1: useful paragraph. Quote. The military commission that had held sway
Speaker 1: over defendants charged with violating Governor Glasscox martial law decrees
Speaker 1: selected him as its Provost Marshal, him being Davis, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that the civil courts in the martial law
Speaker 1: district were open. The military Commission, sitting in the town
Speaker 1: of Pratt and Kenawa County, ruled on offenses ranging from larceny, adultery,
Speaker 1: and disorderly conduct to disobeying sentries and perjury. A nearby
Speaker 1: freight terminal served as a bullpen to hold prisoners, among
Speaker 1: whom was Mother Jones. On occasion, the commission tried as
Speaker 1: many as thirty prisoners at a time. Dispensing with such
Speaker 1: formalities his indictments or juries, Davis saw to it that
Speaker 1: those convicted were hustled off not to the county jail
Speaker 1: but to the Moundsville State Prison. With Davis's active assistance,
Speaker 1: the Commission rode rough shot over civil courts. When the
Speaker 1: County Circuit Court issued an order forbidding enforcement of the
Speaker 1: commissions sentences, Major Davis, acting on orders from Governor Hatfield,
Speaker 1: who had by now succeeded Glasscock, blocked the county sheriff
Speaker 1: from serving the writ on the National Guard officer who
Speaker 1: headed the Commission. In May of nineteen thirteen, after a
Speaker 1: pro labor newspaper, the Socialist and Labor Star editorially denounced
Speaker 1: the coal barons and attacked Governor Hatfield for arresting a
Speaker 1: union lawyer and suppressing the Labor Argus sister paper to
Speaker 1: the Star, Davis led a raid on the Stars offices,
Speaker 1: bearing warrants from Hatfield himself. Davis and his posse of
Speaker 1: guardsmen and sheriff's deputies forced their way into the paper's
Speaker 1: offices in Huntington's overpower to guard and wreaked havoc destroying
Speaker 1: type and printing equipment. From there, Davis and his commandos
Speaker 1: invaded the editor's home, season correspondents and books and rummaging
Speaker 1: through his files and searched for the paper subscription list.
Speaker 1: The editor and assistant editor were imprisoned for two weeks.
Speaker 1: So that's cool. So that's this guy's backstory. That's gonna
Speaker 1: be like his that very precedented in history. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you take out the press, but yeah, that
Speaker 1: just seems like such a I mean, you know, obviously
Speaker 1: it's like you cut them off at their communication. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, it seems like such bystanders. You know.
Speaker 1: Yet historically, uh, it's pretty dangerous to run a socialist
Speaker 1: newspaper in the United States of America. A lot of
Speaker 1: them got murdered, a lot of them got deported, a
Speaker 1: lot of them got cracked down on. There's a long,
Speaker 1: beautiful history of that. It's one of our proudest traditions
Speaker 1: in the United States. Um. Yeah, it's cool and good.
Speaker 1: So um yeah, So this is that's the backstory of
Speaker 1: this guy Major Davis, who winds up in charge of
Speaker 1: the state of West Virginia's efforts to suppress the Strikers.
Speaker 1: And end the violence UM, which they do by using
Speaker 1: more violence. So Davis's first task in charge was to
Speaker 1: vet the volunteers for the county's new vigilance committees. And
Speaker 1: these are like the rich guys who volunteered to shoot
Speaker 1: at poor people UM. And Davis ensured that no union men, farmers,
Speaker 1: or black men were allowed on the commission or given firearms.
Speaker 1: Citing his authority under martial law, Major Davis banned all
Speaker 1: union gatherings and only union gatherings. He also banned the
Speaker 1: distribution of pro union newspapers. He rescinded all gun permits
Speaker 1: for union men as well, effectively stripping them of their
Speaker 1: constitutional right to bear arms. So that's good. So Davis's
Speaker 1: first actions targeted union organizers, arresting them for trying to
Speaker 1: hold gatherings and having several of them brutally beaten by
Speaker 1: his own men. He also put it in order for
Speaker 1: a creative new Thompson submachine guns, which he hoped would
Speaker 1: aid the Mingo police and clearing out strikers and their families.
Speaker 1: The miners, however, did not wait for this to happen.
Speaker 1: On a group of snipers from one of the striking
Speaker 1: workers camps opened fire on camp guards. State police and
Speaker 1: National guardsmen from nearby Kentucky came in to provide backup,
Speaker 1: and two of them were killed by sniper fire. The
Speaker 1: snipers were eventually driven off, several was arrested and one
Speaker 1: was killed, and the whole encounter convinced the mine bosses
Speaker 1: that it was necessary to break up these striking camps,
Speaker 1: which had basically evolved into armed militia compounds. Now. Major
Speaker 1: Davis's first plan for how to handle this situation was
Speaker 1: to create concentration camps on US soil. He wanted to
Speaker 1: send soldiers into the strike camps and four out most
Speaker 1: of the committed union men and then reorganize the camps,
Speaker 1: which would then be filled with women and children and
Speaker 1: put them under semi permanent military guard. So yeah, he
Speaker 1: just was like, what have we just made some concentration
Speaker 1: camps out of this? That seems like a call. There's
Speaker 1: only the same ideas like that. Guys don't have new ideas.
Speaker 1: It's all the one idea really, which is, yeah, use
Speaker 1: weapons that you have and they don't, to lock them
Speaker 1: into prisons of one sort or another and make them
Speaker 1: do what you want or just die if that's what
Speaker 1: you're wanting to do. Yeah, that is the only plan. Ever,
Speaker 1: like when you get right down to it, which is
Speaker 1: cool and good, does not echo in history or into
Speaker 1: the modern day and anyway. So as a prelude to this, uh,
Speaker 1: this concentration camp policy, Major Davis began sending police and
Speaker 1: soldiers on a series of raids against camps in Lick Creek. Now,
Speaker 1: there were a series of gun fights involving hundreds of
Speaker 1: men sniping at each other and like milelong skirmish lines,
Speaker 1: and Davis ordering them to our machine guns into the
Speaker 1: campus press strikers. A bunch of different gunfights like this,
Speaker 1: multiple battles occur. So there's all these raids which kill
Speaker 1: a number of people, and you know, happen over the
Speaker 1: course of days and weeks um and you know, the
Speaker 1: death toll of all these raids, combined with the anger
Speaker 1: over the assassination of sid Hatfield, which happens in early
Speaker 1: August of nine, all of this eventually pushes the striking
Speaker 1: miners into massive retaliation. On October three, thousand of them
Speaker 1: gathered with all of the guns that they could carry. Now,
Speaker 1: since Davis's men had been rating their strongholds, they decided
Speaker 1: to target, a stronghold of the mine bosses Logan County.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna read a quote now from a writ
Speaker 1: up by a professor named Hoit Wheeler, a labor professor,
Speaker 1: talking about what was happening in Logan County at the time. Quote.
Speaker 1: Logan County in nineteen twenty one has been described as
Speaker 1: a leer in the face of liberty, a feudal barony
Speaker 1: defended by soldiers of fortune in the pay of mine owners.
Speaker 1: The ruler of this feudal barony was the Sheriff of
Speaker 1: Logan County, Don Chaffin. It is instead of Chafing that
Speaker 1: in his heyday, when clothed with official power, he was
Speaker 1: a hard drinking, swaggering, bragging, bullying gunman who ruled his
Speaker 1: kingdom of Logan with a mailed fist. In Logan County,
Speaker 1: it was the practice for coal companies to pay the
Speaker 1: salaries of deputy sheriffs. These deputies were used systematically by
Speaker 1: Chaffin to prevent union organizers from operating in Logan County.
Speaker 1: Organizers were beaten and jailed at will. So this army
Speaker 1: of miners from their camps organizes at Lynz Creek, which
Speaker 1: is about sixty five miles from the Logan County line,
Speaker 1: and they start marching. Two UMW officers who are terrified
Speaker 1: of the bloodshed that might ensue if these guys reach
Speaker 1: Logan County, they actually intercept the miners and they begged
Speaker 1: them to call off the march. There basically, we can
Speaker 1: negotiate this, we can work things out with the companies.
Speaker 1: There's no need for this attorney into a massive blood bath.
Speaker 1: Um and the miners agree, and the mining this army
Speaker 1: of miners starts to back away, and while they're backing away,
Speaker 1: Sheriff Chaffin of Logan County decides to launch an attack
Speaker 1: while they're retreating, and he kills two men. After a
Speaker 1: massive battle, um now pisces off the striking miners, and
Speaker 1: suddenly they stop retreating and backing away, and in fact,
Speaker 1: three thousand more men joined them, and like swell the
Speaker 1: force to six thousand, and this army of six thousand
Speaker 1: men starts advancing on Blair Mountain, a ridgeline that separates
Speaker 1: the Union chunk of Logan County, which is pretty tiny
Speaker 1: from the larger non Union chunk, and by the time
Speaker 1: they actually reach Logan County there's more than ten thousand
Speaker 1: miners in this army. Now, the soldiers in this massive
Speaker 1: Union army are dressed as the nightmares of every American capitalist.
Speaker 1: They wore red bandanas, and they tied red flags to
Speaker 1: the barrels of their guns. They had an organized medical
Speaker 1: corps to deal with casualties, and at least one machine gun.
Speaker 1: Their commander, their general, was a Union officer with the
Speaker 1: pretty awesome name of Bill Blizzard. Pretty fucking sick. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: One witness who was present described the scene of the
Speaker 1: army this way. One big redheaded fellow hopped off the
Speaker 1: tray a lot of them to trains to get up
Speaker 1: to the front, and got up on the platform and
Speaker 1: waived his high powered rifle and said, the Coal River
Speaker 1: hell cats have arrived. Now watch us work. He called
Speaker 1: for detailed number seventy four. He got up on some
Speaker 1: high ground and kept hollering for details seventy four, and
Speaker 1: there were about twenty men all armed. They had on
Speaker 1: the customary overalls and belt cartridges and a couple of
Speaker 1: big forty four stuck in their belt and high powered rifles.
Speaker 1: He called those men in and he called the roll
Speaker 1: and then started off up Coal River, and word was
Speaker 1: being passed around through the crowd. So on the opposite
Speaker 1: side of Blair Mountain, Sheriff Chaffin had about a thousand
Speaker 1: men at his command, amount about thousands like police and
Speaker 1: stuff wrong with another two thousand volunteers, mostly these vigilance countymen. UM.
Speaker 1: So he's got about three thousand fighters in total. But
Speaker 1: he also has several commercial pilots and he has three planes.
Speaker 1: So that's that's about to matter in a second. Now,
Speaker 1: the assault of the miners begins on August thirty one,
Speaker 1: and it is ugly from the jump. The miners had
Speaker 1: the advantage of numbers, but they were assaulting an entrenched enemy.
Speaker 1: They're trying to attack the top of this mountain. Um,
Speaker 1: So they're attacking an entrenched enemy with the high ground
Speaker 1: and access to a number of gatling guns and other
Speaker 1: automatic weapons. Battle was joined at a number of sections
Speaker 1: across the line, and the fighting was vicious. Sheriff Chafin
Speaker 1: eventually decided to send out his planes. Now, initially, the
Speaker 1: thing that he had like been legally authorized to do
Speaker 1: was to load them up with copies of a proclamation
Speaker 1: from President Harding basically saying like stop stop all this um.
Speaker 1: But instead of loading them up with proclamations. On Thursday,
Speaker 1: September one, he ordered them loaded with pipe bombs and
Speaker 1: tear gas bombs and just starts dropping them on crowds
Speaker 1: of miners. Now, this doesn't work very well. The Sheriff's
Speaker 1: air SATs air force was markedly ineffective, but it is
Speaker 1: part of what makes the Battle of Blair Mountains so historic.
Speaker 1: This was not just a strike or a riot. This
Speaker 1: was a full fledged military action, a war on American
Speaker 1: soil against American citizens, um, which included air power and
Speaker 1: machine guns. It's a wild but people don't here learn
Speaker 1: about this ship. Yeah, It's like people talk about like
Speaker 1: the Oklahoma bombing and stuff, and this seems like the
Speaker 1: same kind of level of escalation. Yeah, except an I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm I'm bann at history. You're good at history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like the Oklahoma City bombing people know about
Speaker 1: because it was just like one asshole with no good grievance,
Speaker 1: but like on the part of a bunch of right
Speaker 1: wing nutfox um murdering people. Um. But these guys were
Speaker 1: had a real grievance, and it was a grievance that
Speaker 1: kind of cuts to the heart of inequalities in the
Speaker 1: center of American society. So we never talked about the
Speaker 1: time that they got bombed and tear gassed and shot
Speaker 1: at with machine guns. Yeah, we just would you would
Speaker 1: you just leave that out of the history books. Um? No,
Speaker 1: The eight hour workday was entirely gained by polite people
Speaker 1: with signs protesting. That's why. That's why we have a weekend,
Speaker 1: not the men who charged machine gun nests and sniped
Speaker 1: it corporate guards. Yeah, it's cool, Like, this is cool history.
Speaker 1: This is what the industry should be. It's like, this
Speaker 1: is you You've got to imagine that if we told
Speaker 1: the stories like this, people would be would be a
Speaker 1: lot more interested in history, our history. Yeah, the reason
Speaker 1: we have these things like the weekend and the eight
Speaker 1: hour work day is that and this is not just
Speaker 1: you know what happened in West Virginia. All over the country,
Speaker 1: there were a number of actions like this. This is
Speaker 1: kind of like the biggest and most you know too,
Speaker 1: But like all of these things that we consider just
Speaker 1: a part of life, like the fact that you're supposed
Speaker 1: to get a weekend, all of these things were bought
Speaker 1: in blood by men who were willing to kill for
Speaker 1: these rights by men who are willing to die for
Speaker 1: these things, and we don't talk about that even though
Speaker 1: it's cool and interesting because it might give people ideas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, they sacrificed a lot, but I also like
Speaker 1: retweeted a petition, so you know that is the same thing. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: they were. These men were retweeting with their rifles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: every every way, every one of the hundred thousand bullets
Speaker 1: fired in that one battle was a tweet. It's all
Speaker 1: about the ratio, then, is now. Yeah. Yeah, they ratioed
Speaker 1: the mine bosses by strafing them with thirty six Yeah,
Speaker 1: but um, it's for an outbreak. You know what also
Speaker 1: supports the strafing of mine guards with high caliber hunting rifles.
Speaker 1: The products and services that support this podcast. We're back,
Speaker 1: We're back, and where we just left off, the sheriff
Speaker 1: of Logan County had ordered chemical weapons and bombs deployed
Speaker 1: by air against attacking workers. Um, so that's pretty cool. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: over the course of days, uh, this battle escalates and
Speaker 1: fighting continues again for days, and federal troops are finally
Speaker 1: sent in, which you know, it takes a while to
Speaker 1: get there, and the union men know that federal troops
Speaker 1: are coming. They also know that like they can't fight
Speaker 1: federal troops, right, you know, the army has cannons and
Speaker 1: better bombers and a whole lot of machine guns. Um.
Speaker 1: So they realized they only have like one last ditch
Speaker 1: chance to like win this fight before the army arrives,
Speaker 1: and they launched a desperate assault across the entire Blair
Speaker 1: Mountain line. And I'm gonna quote again from the Battle
Speaker 1: for Blair Mountain by Robert Shogen about this last assault quote.
Speaker 1: In preparation for their attack, the insurgents dispatched a patrol
Speaker 1: to destroy a railroad bridge on the Guyan Dot line
Speaker 1: of the Norfolk and Western, hoping to keep reinforcements from
Speaker 1: reaching the defender's positions. The bridge was set on fire,
Speaker 1: but a century who extinguished the blaze discovered a charge
Speaker 1: of dynamite and saved it from being blown up. But
Speaker 1: the miners went ahead with their planned assault anyway. That
Speaker 1: same morning, the attack began with a feint at the
Speaker 1: center of the defense lines at Blair Mountain. The miners
Speaker 1: opened up on an outpost manned by the Bluefield Boys,
Speaker 1: a volunteer contingent from the town with machine gun and
Speaker 1: rifle fire. Having gained the attention of the defenders, the
Speaker 1: miners sent their main force against the left and right
Speaker 1: flanks of the defenders. Attack was pushed desperately, reported one
Speaker 1: local journalist from his vantage point in a machine gun
Speaker 1: nest on the defense ramparts. The enemies seemed to have
Speaker 1: no sense of fear whatever and advanced over the crest
Speaker 1: of the hill and the face of machine gun and
Speaker 1: rifle fire. But in reality that the defenders gave as
Speaker 1: good as they got. We couldn't fire a shot, but
Speaker 1: what they would rake our line from top to bottom,
Speaker 1: one of the miners told reporters to this beleaguered insurgent.
Speaker 1: The offenders seemed to be able to volley back a
Speaker 1: hundred rounds for every shot fired at them, and when
Speaker 1: it came to devious tactics, the defenders were at least
Speaker 1: a match for their attackers. At one point, the defenders
Speaker 1: in the first line of trenches abandoned their posts, seemingly
Speaker 1: driven off by the force of the attack. The advancing
Speaker 1: miners promptly occupied the trench, exulting in the ground they
Speaker 1: had gained, but they had little time to celebrate. A
Speaker 1: hidden machine gun nest, located barely fifty yards away, raked
Speaker 1: the position and drove them back. Another machine gun nest,
Speaker 1: protected by a rock cliff and barricades of timber and stones,
Speaker 1: kept up a steady fire. Fortunately for the miners that
Speaker 1: could only fire in one direction, but it was enough
Speaker 1: to repel several assaults, so the attack fails. In the end,
Speaker 1: the miners cannot break the line at Blair Mountain and
Speaker 1: can't take the mountain, and federal troops arrive on September three,
Speaker 1: and the miners were forced to retreat to their lines
Speaker 1: and eventually to disband. In the end, fifty to a
Speaker 1: hundred miners were killed, along with ten to thirty of
Speaker 1: Sheriff Chaffin's men. Almost a thousand miners were arrested, but
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the army dispersed. Many miners hid
Speaker 1: their weapons and the hills and valleys around Blair Mountain
Speaker 1: and caches of arms are actually still discovered there today.
Speaker 1: Oh that's cool, yeah yeah, go arms hunting in Blair
Speaker 1: County and send me what you find. Just mail it,
Speaker 1: mail it. The US Post Office loves sending century old
Speaker 1: munitions and dynamite. Just go ahead, and it's fine, get
Speaker 1: They'll take what they can get. So yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: There were trials for treason and murder in the wake
Speaker 1: of all this. Bill Blizzard was acquitted, but some of
Speaker 1: the miners were convicted for a variety of crimes. The
Speaker 1: UMW paid for everyone legal defense, which nearly bankrupted the union,
Speaker 1: and the immediate wake of the battle was a huge
Speaker 1: victory for the forces of capitalism. This time, the bosses
Speaker 1: had won, but the United Mine Workers of America continue
Speaker 1: to organize, and the Senate Investigating Committee looked into the
Speaker 1: whole mess, which helped bring national attention to the plight
Speaker 1: of miners in West Virginia and elsewhere. The bosses had
Speaker 1: won on the battlefield, but they did not win in
Speaker 1: the long battle for public opinion. By nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 1: the new Deal brought new protections for workers and an
Speaker 1: end too many of the abuses that had long plagued
Speaker 1: the coal industry. The u m W succeeded finally in
Speaker 1: organizing the vast majority of miners in West Virginia. So
Speaker 1: that's good. Yeah. The ESU system, which we talked about
Speaker 1: in our first episode, whereby women were forced to pay
Speaker 1: for basic necessities by rape, Uh, is believed to have
Speaker 1: come to an end around nineteen thirty four as a
Speaker 1: consequence of the Union finally organizing West Virginia. While many
Speaker 1: aspects of this violent struggle have been studied and covered
Speaker 1: in detail by historians like Robert Shogun, THEESU system was
Speaker 1: allowed to fade from memory. Historian Michael Klein writes that
Speaker 1: the use of female flesh to extend credit to feed
Speaker 1: the family was never mentioned by our own regional historians.
Speaker 1: Now this has led many modern historians to doubt that
Speaker 1: such a system ever existed. The men who line up
Speaker 1: on this side, like West Virginia University professor Paul Rakes,
Speaker 1: will point to the aggression and powerful self defense instincts
Speaker 1: shown by the miners at Blair Mountain. Men who were
Speaker 1: willing to charge machine gun nests to fight for their
Speaker 1: rights surely would not have taken a system of bureaucratized
Speaker 1: rape of their wives and sisters lying down. Labor historian
Speaker 1: Wes Harris has a convincing argument though against this line
Speaker 1: of reasoning quote, my best guess is they didn't talk
Speaker 1: about it because if they had talked about it, they
Speaker 1: would have risked their husbands getting really irritated and going
Speaker 1: out and trying to get revenge. Your husband gets killed,
Speaker 1: you're a widow, you're on the street, you get kicked
Speaker 1: out of the company house, which is a point like
Speaker 1: a lot of miners died because they got angry and
Speaker 1: took up arms against the mine, and a lot of
Speaker 1: these women were just like, if I let them know
Speaker 1: what I'm doing to keep the family fed, they'll go
Speaker 1: get themselves. Was killed, and then we'll be in an
Speaker 1: even worse spot. Yeah, I mean, there's it seems like
Speaker 1: there's no shortage of reasons why you might not, you know,
Speaker 1: create a big thing of that that almost are you know,
Speaker 1: at least in modern perspectives, seemed very self evident and
Speaker 1: don't even need to be discussed. But its like it
Speaker 1: was a big deal to be able to feel like, no, actually,
Speaker 1: there's this logic to it. It's so strange. Yeah, Now
Speaker 1: it's further evidence for the idea that the East House
Speaker 1: system was real. Uh. Labor historian West Harris points to
Speaker 1: the extremely well documented history of child labor in the
Speaker 1: minds of West Virginia. Now, this was illegal even at
Speaker 1: the time that we're talking about, but it was not
Speaker 1: uncommon for ten year olds to be sent down to
Speaker 1: work um and authorities were almost never called. As a
Speaker 1: result of this, if a child were to complain to
Speaker 1: a social worker, his family would lose their company house,
Speaker 1: to be forced out onto the street. This is a
Speaker 1: little bit like how today more than a fifth of
Speaker 1: U S workers are regularly forced into uncompensated over time.
Speaker 1: You might also compare it to the fact that in
Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen, one study found that workers in tin
Speaker 1: U S States had lost a combine eight billion dollars
Speaker 1: per year to wage theft from their employees. Now that's
Speaker 1: just ten states eight billion dollars in wage theft per year. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the things that's interesting to me is that
Speaker 1: the total value of all property theft nationwide on an
Speaker 1: annual basis is about sixteen billion dollars. So if you're
Speaker 1: looking at these numbers, you might come to the conclusion
Speaker 1: that wage theft is almost certainly a larger problem than
Speaker 1: all other theft combined in the United States, but it's
Speaker 1: virtually never prosecuted. That's me, isn't that? It's yeah, one
Speaker 1: of the I uh, I worked in a place that
Speaker 1: had waged theft. I don't think I was ever deprived
Speaker 1: of paid overtime or anything. But there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people who just straight up didn't get paychecks and stuff,
Speaker 1: and then we all talked about it. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: it seems like there's nothing we can do. We can
Speaker 1: try and fight and lose and then get sucked over
Speaker 1: and then everyone gets sucked over or get fired, and yeah,
Speaker 1: we won't be able to pay rent, will be out
Speaker 1: of our houses now because of legal protections, will be
Speaker 1: out of our houses in thirty days as opposed to
Speaker 1: the same day. But like you know, um, things you
Speaker 1: might conclude that things aren't as much better as they
Speaker 1: should be, and some people might conclude that maybe some
Speaker 1: folks need to be putting red bandanas around the barrels
Speaker 1: of rifles today, but that's outside of my purview to
Speaker 1: advise as a podcast host. UM. So, the battle between
Speaker 1: labor and the bosses continues, and today it largely does
Speaker 1: so without unions on the side of labor. Um Unions
Speaker 1: are are a lot less common than they were back then,
Speaker 1: and they have a lot less power. Uh. Strikes are
Speaker 1: not a thing of the past entirely, um, but they
Speaker 1: aren't They don't have the teeth that they used to,
Speaker 1: although in two nineteen UM the threat of airline stewardess
Speaker 1: is striking uh An. Air traffic control is just not
Speaker 1: being able to handle working without pay. During the government shutdown,
Speaker 1: UM showed us that the mere threat of such things
Speaker 1: and the right industries can bring swift concessions to the
Speaker 1: capitalist class because that fucking that situation ended real quick
Speaker 1: once it looked like the planes weren't gonna be able
Speaker 1: to fly. Now, the overall situation for labor in America
Speaker 1: is not great today. Most of us have never known
Speaker 1: a United States in which labor was organized and capable
Speaker 1: of acting on a mass scale to achieve its goals.
Speaker 1: While the new labor rights that FDRs administration put in
Speaker 1: place helped to enshrine UM you know protections into law,
Speaker 1: and these were very important, the fact that unions basically
Speaker 1: bowed to the federal government and letting them set all
Speaker 1: this meant that successive generations of politicians have been able
Speaker 1: to steadily chisel away at labor rights while unions slowly
Speaker 1: declined in power and influence. The struggle of labor is
Speaker 1: the struggle of folks like you and me to live
Speaker 1: a decent life. Our predecessors fought and bled for a
Speaker 1: five day, forty hour work week. They picked up guns,
Speaker 1: and they braved machine gun fire for the right to
Speaker 1: organize themselves, to speak their mind, and to live independent lives.
Speaker 1: Is something more than slaves of the wealthy. Now the
Speaker 1: next chapter of this history, uh, the chapter that podcast
Speaker 1: hosts will be talking about in another hundred years. This
Speaker 1: is not yet and written. But everyone listening here now
Speaker 1: has a chance to be one of the authors of
Speaker 1: this history. Uh. And I'd like to end this episode
Speaker 1: once we once we plug our plug doubles with another song,
Speaker 1: another Union ballot by one of America's great folk musicians. Um,
Speaker 1: whose side are you one? This is also by by
Speaker 1: Mr Pete Seeker. As you sit in quarantine waiting for
Speaker 1: whatever the future has in store for us, I think
Speaker 1: it's it's good to ask yourself the same question that
Speaker 1: Pete asks everybody in this song. So we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna play ourselves up with that. But Spencer, do you
Speaker 1: first want to plug your plug doubles? Uh? Yeah, at
Speaker 1: the six sler on all the things it's spelled like
Speaker 1: it sounds. If you can't spell it, that's fine. You're
Speaker 1: probably better off. Um, and I did a podcast called
Speaker 1: Harmon Town. Um, you could listen to the ads. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty proud of those ads. I'm not super proud of
Speaker 1: my other output on the podcast. I mean it's fine.
Speaker 1: It's just like you know, I was just hanging out.
Speaker 1: It was just some bullshit. But yeah, that's some stuff.
Speaker 1: Harmon Quest is a show I did. It's ah, we
Speaker 1: played D and D and then animated. I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty accessible. If you love DN D and your friends
Speaker 1: just don't get it, you might want to show it
Speaker 1: to them. Um, I don't know. But but really it's
Speaker 1: about Robert. You know what is this is really about you?
Speaker 1: Not me? You? So this is this is about all
Speaker 1: of us. Uh. My only plugs are are our website
Speaker 1: behind the Bastards dot com, our podcast on Instagram at
Speaker 1: bastards Pod, and my podcast The Women's War, which has
Speaker 1: a lot to say about systems that might be set
Speaker 1: up that might work a little better than some that
Speaker 1: we have today. So maybe listen to that. Uh and
Speaker 1: right now listen to Mr Pete Seeger. Come all of you,
Speaker 1: good workers, good news do you. I'll tell of how
Speaker 1: the good old Union has come in here doo dwell,
Speaker 1: Which side are you all? Which side are you are?
Speaker 1: My daddy was a minor, and I'm a minor's son,
Speaker 1: and I'll stick with the Union till every battle's one.
Speaker 1: Which side are you all? Which side are you all?
Speaker 1: They say in Harlem County EI. There are no neutrals there.
Speaker 1: You'll either be a union man or a thug for
Speaker 1: j H. Player, Which side are you all on? Which
Speaker 1: side are you are? Or workers? Can you stand it?
Speaker 1: Or tell me how you can? Will you be a
Speaker 1: lousy scavel? Will you be, young man? Which side are
Speaker 1: you all? Which side are you are? Don't scab for
Speaker 1: the bosses, don't listen to their lives. Those poor folks
Speaker 1: haven't got a chance unless we organize. Which side are
Speaker 1: you are? Which side are you all? Which side are
Speaker 1: you are? Which side are you are?