The Coal Wars 1902-1922

Chocolate Coal

 

Dangers of Working in a Mine

After a mine at Red Ash blew up in 1900 and snuffed out the lives of 46 men and boys, the state’s Republican governor declared, “It is but the natural course of mining events that men should be killed and injured by accidents.”

In 1902, 216 miners were killed in the Fraterville Mine disaster in Fraterville, Tennessee.

In 1904, 179 miners and two aid workers were killed in the Harwick mine disaster.

In 1907: Monongah Mining disaster in Monongah, West Virginia. Official death toll is 362, but due to inadequate record keeping, the true death toll could be around 500. Victims were mostly Italian immigrant workers, including children. The disaster is considered the worst coal mining accident in American history.

1907: Darr Mine disaster in Rostraver Township, Pennsylvania. 239 workers died, including children.

1908: Marianna mine explosion near Marianna, Pennsylvania. 154 men killed, one survivor.

1909: Cherry Mine disaster in Cherry, Illinois. 259 workers, some as young as eleven, died in this mine fire, which had the most fatalities of any mine fire in the United States.

1911 Banner Mine disaster near Littleton, Alabama. Of the 128 men killed

The government did very little because their economy, biggest tax contributors, and coal was the most important ingredient in the industrial revolution.

Mother Jones

The Harris-Jones Family moved to America when Mary was 10 years old. They were escaping the famine in Ireland. They were discriminated because they were Irish and because they were catholic. People didn’t trust them and saw them as outsiders and changing the culture of America.

She became a teacher. she married George E. Jones, a member and organizer of the National Union of Iron Moulders, which later became the International Molders and Foundry Workers Union of North America, which represented workers who specialized in building and repairing steam engines, mills, and other manufactured good.

The loss of her husband and their four children, three girls and a boy (all under the age of five) in 1867, during a yellow fever epidemic in Memphis marked a turning point in her life. 

After that tragedy, she returned to Chicago to begin another dressmaking business. She did work for those of the upper class of Chicago in the 1870s and 1880s. Then, four years later, she lost her home, shop, and possessions in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. This huge fire destroyed many homes and shops. Jones, like many others, helped rebuild the city. This got her into social programs and improving lives. She was inspired by her former husband and the events of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and the Haymarket protest of 1886. She started organizing strikes for better conditions for workers. At first, the strikes and protests failed, sometimes ending with police shooting at and killing protesters. 

Definition of Union

A club for people who have the same interests or needs. Representation for workers to organize and negotiate with employers in order to avoid exploitation.

Strikes Start

Mother Jones encouraged the wives of the workers to organize into a group that would wield brooms, beat on tin pans, and shout "join the union!" She felt that wives had an important role to play as the nurturers and motivators of the striking men, but not as fellow workers. She claimed that the young girls working in the mills were being robbed and demoralized. The rich were denying these children the right to go to school in order to be able to pay for their own children's college tuitions.

Mary Jones became involved mainly with the United Mine Workers. She was termed "the most dangerous woman in America" by a West Virginian district attorney, Reese Blizzard, in 1902, at her trial for ignoring an injunction banning meetings by striking miners. Around this time, strikes were getting better organized and started to produce greater results, such as better pay for the workers.

By age 60, she had assumed the persona of "Mother Jones" by claiming to be older than she was, wearing outdated black dresses and referring to the male workers that she helped as "her boys". 

Although she agreed to a settlement that sent the young girls back to the mills, she continued to fight child labor for the rest of her life.

In 1903, Jones organized children who were working in mills and mines to participate in a "Children's Crusade", a march from Kensington, Philadelphia to Oyster Bay, New York, the hometown of President Theodore Roosevelt with banners demanding "We want to go to school and not the mines!"

As Mother Jones noted, many of the children at union headquarters were missing fingers and had other disabilities, and she attempted to get newspaper publicity for the bad conditions experienced by children working in Pennsylvania. However, the mill owners held stock in most newspapers. When the newspapermen informed her that they could not publish the facts about child labor because of this, she remarked "Well, I've got stock in these little children and I'll arrange a little publicity."

Coal Wars

"the culminating act of perhaps the most violent struggle between corporate power and laboring men in American history" – Historian Howard Zinn

Company Towns

Company towns indeed brought tangible improvements to the lives of many people, including larger houses, better medical care, and broader access to education.  But owning the towns gave companies considerable control over all aspects of workers' lives, and they did not always use this power to augment public welfare. 

The 'law' consisted of the company rules. Curfews were imposed. They could check mail and search your house. The miners were forced to vote for government bills that favor the mining companies or face beatings and evictions. Non-citizens and even company mules were registered to vote. Miners got paid by the coal weight so the companies would tamper with the scales so they didn’t have to pay them as much. Miners got paid in “script” which was money you could only spend at the company store, this way the money would come back to the company. When the employees got a pay rise, the prices at the store would go up. If you wanted regular US dollars you could trade your “script” at a 75% reduction, losing a quarter of your earnings.

The company could throw you out of your house if you lost your job, were suspected of being a union sympathizer or your husband died in the mine. Your only options were to move out or quickly marry another miner. They could do all of this because the land was considered private property.

When people got kicked out of housing they moved to the tent village at Holly Grove.

Paint-Creek-Cabin-Creek Protests

In 1912, the Paint-Creek- Cabin-Creek protests were just starting. Mine workers were asking for fair treatment, safer conditions and representation to voice their future concerns. The mine owners hired 300 mine guards to defend against the protesters and intimidate them back into obedience.

When the Paint Creek union negotiated a new contract with the operators in 1912, they demanded that operators raise the compensation rate to the same level as the surrounding area. This increase would have cost operators approximately fifteen cents per miner per day, but the operators refused. The union called a strike for April 18, 1912. Their demands were:

1. That the operators accept and recognize the union.

2. That the miners' right to free speech and peaceable assembly be restored.

3. 3. That black-listing discharged workers be stopped.

4. That compulsory trading at company stores be ended.

5. That cribbing be discontinued and that 2,000 pounds of mined coal constitute a ton. That scales be installed at mines to weigh the tonnage of the miners.

6. That miners be allowed to employ their own check-weighmen to check against the weights found by company check-weighmen, as provided by law.

7. That the two check-weighmen determine all docking penalties.

The Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency

When the protests started the Mine owners hired security. These weren’t any security but brutal thugs armed with machine guns and Winchester rifles. They would not admit any 'suspicious' stranger into the camp and would not permit any miner to leave." Miners who came into conflict with the company were often evicted from their homes.

Escalation

The security forces had their headquarters in Mucklow and the striking miners in another town. The miners got upset by the military style security to keep them in line and unwillingness to negotiate on their terms. A few men hid in the hills outside Mucklow and took a few shots at the city. Nobody was hurt but the security agents were angered.

Activist Mother Jones arrived in June, as mine owners began evicting workers from their rented houses, and brought in replacement workers. On September 1, a force of over 5,000 miners from the north side of the Kanawha River joined the strikers' tent city, leading Governor Glasscock to establish martial law in the region the following day. The 1,200 state troops confiscating arms and ammunition from both sides lessened tensions to some degree, but the strikers were forbidden to congregate, and were subject to fast, unfair trials in military court. Meanwhile, strikers' families began to suffer from hunger, cold, and the unsanitary conditions in their temporary tent colony at Holly Grove. Mother Jones and Ma Blizzard organized an “umbrella march” when pro-union women marched through the valley with umbrellas.

On October 15, martial law was lifted, only to be re-imposed on November 15 and lifted on January 10 by Governor Glasscock, with less than two months left in office. On February 7 Mucklow was again attacked by miners with at least one casualty. Beatings, sniper attacks, and sabotage became daily occurrences.

Through July, Jones rallied the workers, made her way through armed guards to persuade another group of miners in Eskdale, West Virginia to join the strike, and organized a secret march of three thousand armed miners to the steps of the state capitol in Charleston to read a declaration of war to Governor William E. Glasscock. On July 26, miners attacked Mucklow, leaving at least twelve strikers and four guards dead. On February 7 Mucklow was again attacked by miners with at least one casualty.

Death Train

In retaliation that evening, the Kanawha County Sheriff Bonner Hill and a group of detectives attacked the Holly Grove miners' settlement with an armored train, called the "Bull Moose Special". As the train approached Holly Grove in the darkness, machine guns and rifles were fired into the tents of the sleeping miners and their families. Several people were wounded, and one striker, Cesco Estep, was killed while trying to escort his son and pregnant wife to safety. 

Retaliation

A group of women went to damage the railroad tracks used by the train to prevent a second attack. Another miners' raid on Mucklow killed at least two people a few days later, and on February 10 martial law was imposed for the third and final time.

Arrest

Mother Jones was arrested on February 13 in Pratt and charged in military court for inciting riot (reportedly for attempting to read the Declaration of Independence), and, later, conspiracy to commit murder. She refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the military court, and refused to enter a plea. At 75 years old, Jones was sentenced to twenty years in the state penitentiary and acquired a case of pneumonia.

"I can raise just as much hell in jail as anywhere." - mother jones

Compromise

In 1913, New governor Dr. Henry D. Hatfield was sworn in on March 4 and immediately traveled to the area as his first priority. He released some thirty individuals held under martial law, transferred Mother Jones to Charleston for medical treatment, and reduced her sentence to 85 days. Miners had the choice to accept Hatfield's somewhat favorable terms, or be deported from the state. The Paint Creek miners accepted and signed the "Hatfield Contract" on May 1.

1. a nine-hour workday

2. the right to select checkweighman

3. semimonthly pay

4. no discrimination against union miners

He gave the miners 36 hours to accept the “Hatfield Contract” and get back to work or face prison.

The United States Senate's Committee on Education and Labor opened an investigation into conditions in West Virginia coal mines. Congress almost immediately authorized two similar investigations the copper mining industry in Michigan, and mining conditions in Colorado.

Colorado Coalfield War

The Colorado Coalfield War was a major labor uprising in the southern and central Colorado Front Range between September 1913 and December 1914. Striking began in late summer 1913, organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) against the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron (CF&I) after years of deadly working conditions and low pay. 

Up until this point, Miners had very little power to influence their employers. Jobs were in short supply and Miners were at the mercy of the businessmen who ran the mines. When the great war in Europe broke out in 1914, American industry had a high demand and miners were needed to produce the goods to make the businessmen rich. At this time, American Miners held power to negotiate because if they didn’t work, the businessmen would get their fortune. The US government also became concerned that the war time efforts wouldn’t be met.

In December 1912, the UMWA had sent 21 "recruiting teams" to the southern Colorado coalfields. These recruiting teams generally consisted of two union men: one who would embed himself among the miners and another who would find employment with the local management. Working in tandem, each pairing would locate miners who were opposed to unionization and report them to the company as union sympathizers–an offense that generally resulted in contract termination–in order to covertly replace them with genuine union members.

Strike

On September 23, 1913, the great strike in Ludlow began, with the participation of 13,000 miners. The strikers demanded the following.

·         To shop from any store of their preference.

·         Go to any doctor they wish and not exclusively to the doctors of the company.

·         Recognition of their union

·         Establishment of an eight-hour work day

·         Law enforcement of the State of Colorado regarding mining safety

In 1913, A mine in Dawson, New Mexico collapsed on 22 October, killing 263 miners. The disaster was at the time the worst mining disaster in the Western United States. It served to further raise ire amongst the miners and added perceived legitimacy to the UMWA strike.

As was common in mine strikes of the time, the company also brought in strikebreakers and Baldwin-Felts detectives. These detectives had experience from West Virginia strikes in which they had defended themselves from violent strikers. The mining companies had spent $20,000 annually on private detectives and security to monitor and infiltrate unions. Balwin-Felts detectives George Belcher and Walker Belk had killed UMWA organizer Gerald Liappiat in Trinidad on 16 August 1913, five weeks before the strikes began. The widely-reported public killing of Liappiat in what was deemed by a coroner's jury a "justifiable homicide" during a two-sided gunfight had helped inflame tensions in the region.

The Baldwin-Felts and CF&I had an armored car nicknamed the Death Special, which was equipped with a machine gun, as well as eight machine guns purchased by CF&I from the Coal Operators' Association of West Virginia–a mining company association. Three additional machine guns reached the strike zone by the end of the conflict, though how these weapons were sourced is uncertain. The strikers also armed themselves through private sales, primarily through local private dealers. 

On 27 January, the National Guard reported discovering an unexploded bomb near their camp at Walsenburg, estimating that it could have killed many of the troops stationed there. The Guard used this incident, which resulted in new arrests, as evidence of striker aggression towards the military in the region.

On March 8, 1914 the body of a strikebreaker, Neil Smith, was found on the train tracks near the Forbes tent colony, located near the then-emptied Rocky Mountain Fuel Company town .

The National Guard claimed that the colony harbored the murderers and was "so established that no workmen [could] leave the camp at Forbes without passing along or through" the colony. In retaliation, the Guard destroyed the colony on 10 March, burning it to the ground while most inhabitants were away and arresting all 16 men living in the tents.

Strikebreaker Pedro Armijo was being escorted through a crowd of strike-supporters when he was shot in the head. The National Guard reported that on 18 November the Piedmont home of Domenik Peffello, a miner who had quit the strike, was dynamited. Baldwin-Felts detective George Belcher was killed by Italian striker Louis Zancanelli in Trinidad on 22 November in what the National Guard's official report deemed an assassination.

Mother Jones, who had already been arrested twice by the militia, again traveled south on 22 March in an effort to reach Trinidad. Arriving in Walsenburg by train, the militia arrested her and held her in a Huerfano County jail. At 76 years old, she was held for 26 days in the subterranean cell. Pro-union publications used this detention as a rallying call, exaggerating the squalid qualities of the cell and claiming she was an even older, more fragile woman than she was. She was held repeatedly over the next nine months. Strikers attempted to liberate Jones from her first detention on the 21st by marching on the hospital but failed to secure her release after being repulsed by mounted National Guardsmen.

Ludlow Massacre

The strikers and the Guardsmen sat opposite each other at Ludlow, with brown tents for the soldiers appearing on the opposite side of the track from the white ones belonging to the colonists starting in November 1913. Sensing the militia's intent to act that day after seeing machine guns placed above the colony and strikers took cover in hastily constructed fire positions.

Louis Tikas and the strikers were hiding a boy who recently caused the agents to crash their car into barbed wire. According to accounts, Tikas had been lured out to discuss a truce. He went to meet the head of the National Guard, Captain Karl Linderfeld, holding a white flag. The two met on the hill and talked for a while. Then eyewitnesses said that the officer hit Tikas in the head with the butt of his rifle. The guards were frustrated with the danger they had experiences and the difficulty of the striking miners.

The troops opened fire at the camp and a real battle ensued. As the strikers ran out of ammunition, they retreated from the camp into the surrounding countryside. Women and children, hiding from the bullets that strafed the camp, huddled in cellars that had been dug underneath their tents. The National Guard men soaked the tents in kerosene and set them on fire. National Guardsmen fired a machine gun from Water Tank Hill, an elevated position above the colony that had served as an observation post for much of strike. A twelve year old, Frank Snyder, left his shelter and was hit by a bullet, killing him instantly. National Guardsman Pvt. Martin was fatally shot in the neck.  M. G. Low, a pumpman for the Colorado & Southern train that passed through the town, witnessed the fighting and moved a train engine to protect some of those fleeing the battle and directed them towards cover.

In one cellar 11 children and 2 women were found burned and suffocated. In all, 25 people were killed during the Ludlow Massacre, 3 of whom were National Guard troops. When the miners returned to their burned camp a few days later, they found Louis Tikas’ body. His funeral took place on April 27, with thousands of workers following the procession.

Rockefeller reacts

Rockefeller had absolved himself of any responsibility for the strike in Colorado, stating, "My conscience will acquit me." Rockefeller’s words would haunt him when press reports were published about his refusal to intercede. Newspaper editorial writers, clergymen, and members of Congress chastised the young Rockefeller for being unsympathetic, uncaring and unpatriotic.  Rockefeller later found himself in an all-out effort to vindicate the family’s name and correct the labor problems that had led to the call for union representation.

10 Day War

The news of the massacre soon reached the other tent colonies. Popular opinion began to side with the miners. Newspapers that had previously sided with the company began to sympathize with the strikers.

Three mine guards were killed at Delagua, where four attempts were made by strikers to take the town, and another was killed at Tabasco. These events led the sheriff of Las Animas County to send a telegram to the governor, declaring that he had been militarily defeated by the miners and requested federal intervention.

John McLennan, the president of UMWA District 15 when the strike was declared, was arrested by militia at the Ludlow train stop on his way from Denver to Trinidad. Hawkins made a ceasefire conditional on McLennan's release, which was secured. Despite union anger at Hawkins for negotiating, they observed the truce along what had become a 175 miles.

At midnight on 22 April, 1914 a call went out for all National Guardsmen to head for the strike zone. They had claimed prior to Ludlow that he was able to muster 600 men to return to the field at a moment's notice, yet only 362 men reported for duty. Through the day on 25 April the Chandler Mine near Cañon City was fired upon, representing the first major breach of the truce declared days before. A force of an estimated one thousand armed strikers launched a coordinated assault on the town, culminating in its capture on 26 April.  A non-striking miner was killed and a mine guard seriously injured before National Guardsmen arrived.

The mine was owned by the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company, which had hired the Baldwin-Felts to help protect its property between Denver and Boulder. During the ten-hour battle, Several mine guards were seriously injured during the fighting.

Protest

At the Colorado Capitol Building, over a thousand members of the Women's Peace Association. A rally attended by five to six thousand agitated protesters and Colorado senator stood in front of the Capitol the next day. Despite the presence of dozens of police officers and a rainstorm, the crowds listened peacefully to speakers from the mines as well as the impassioned journalist, propagandist, and the former Denver Police Commissioner. Part-owner John D. Rockefeller, Jr. refused President Wilson's offer of mediation. Wilson sent in 1,000 federal troops and ordered everyone to disband and surrender. They did so.

Battle of Walsenburg – April, 1914

The Nation Guard attempted to retake the town of Walsenburg with just 60 men. They fought strikers in the Battle of Walsenburg for control of the town. Two strikers were killed by friendly fire and three national guards were injured. A medic was killed while tending to one of them.

With Verdeckberg's force moved to Walsenburg and negotiations for disarmament once again underway, a group of 100 strikers moved from Trinidad in the night of 29 April, linking up with additional armed anti-militia forces to create a roughly 300-strong force. At 5 AM on 30 April, they attacked the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company mine at Forbes, firing weapons into the company-aligned camp and setting buildings alight. The defenders were 18 non-union men who had with them an emplaced machine gun

Strikers were initially repulsed by machine gun fire, but the weapon quickly became jammed, encouraging the attackers to charge into the camp and set most of the structures alight. The attackers were accused of threatening to dynamite the mine entrance, as the unarmed men, women, and children took cover there. None in the cave were killed. The fighting had ceased by 10 AM, only hours before federal troops began arriving in the region. In total, nine of the Forbes camp were killed, including four Japanese strikebreakers. At least three strikers were killed by returning fire, including two by the machine gun.

End of the 10 Day War

The political views of the Labor Star and its harsh criticism of Governor Henry Hatfield led local officials to order the police to raid the newspaper office on the morning of May 9, 1913. Under the orders of governor Hatfield, editor W. H. Thompson was arrested and the Labor Star's printing press was destroyed by state militia.

The political views of the Labor Star and its harsh criticism of Governor Henry Hatfield led local officials to order the police to raid the newspaper office on the morning of May 9, 1913. Under the orders of governor Hatfield, editor W. H. Thompson was arrested and the Labor Star's printing press was destroyed by state militia."

A total of 1,590 enlisted soldiers and 61 officers of the Army would ultimately be deployed to Colorado. Garrison's stated goal for the federal troops was to "preserve [...] an impartial attitude." Only after this intervention to disarm did the war end.

The Associated Press estimated the financial cost of the strike at $18 million (equivalent to $465,069,767 in 2020). An estimated 69 to 199 people died during the strike, though the total dead counted in official local government records and contemporary news reports is far lower. Described as the "bloodiest labor dispute in American history" and "bloodiest civil insurrection in American history since the Civil War," the Colorado Coalfield War is notable for the number of company-aligned dead in a period when strikebreaking violence typically saw workers being the sole fatalities.

Rockefeller hired someone to help create a system by which miners could have internal representation within CF&I. Rockefeller also hired an early practitioner and pioneer of public relations, and met with Mother Jones. The meeting was partially responsible for Rockefeller's 1915 visit to the Colorado mines and introduction of long-sought reforms.

Congress responded to public outrage by directing the House Committee on Mines and Mining to investigate the events. Its report, published in 1915, was influential in promoting child labor laws and an eight-hour work day. 

Battle of Matewan – May, 1920

When the United Mine Workers (UMW) stepped up its campaign to organize Logan, Mingo, and McDowell counties, coal operators retaliated by hiring private detectives to quash all union activity. Miners who joined the UMW were fired and thrown out of their company-owned houses. Despite the risks, thousands defied the coal operators and joined the UMW. Tensions between the two sides exploded into violence on May 19, when 13 Baldwin-Felts detectives arrived in Matewan to evict union miners from houses owned by the Stone Mountain Coal Company. The first family they evicted was a woman and her children; the woman's husband was not home at the time. They forced them out at gunpoint and threw their belongings in the road under a light but steady rain. The miners who saw it were furious, and sent word to town.

Matewan chief of police Sid Hatfield intervened on behalf of the evicted families. A native of the Tug River Valley, Sid Hatfield supported the miners' attempts to organize. He was also known throughout Mingo County as a man who was not afraid of a fight. After carrying out several evictions, the detectives ate dinner at the Urias Hotel then walked to the depot to catch the five o'clock train back to Bluefield, Virginia. They were intercepted by Hatfield, who claimed to have arrest warrants from the county sheriff. Detective Albert Felts produced a warrant for Hatfield's arrest, which Matewan mayor C. C. Testerman claimed to be a fake. "This is a bogus warrant." The detectives didn't know they had been surrounded by armed miners, who watched intently from windows and doorways along Mate Street and, while Felts, Hatfield, and Testerman, faced off, a shot rang out. The ensuing gun battle left 7 detectives and 4 townspeople dead, including Felts and Testerman.

On January 26, 1921, the trial of Hatfield for killing Albert Felts began. It was in the national spotlight and brought much attention to the miners' cause. Hatfield's stature and mythical status grew as the trial proceeded. He posed and talked to reporters, fanning the flames of his own legend. It’s symbolic significance was enormous for the miners. The seemingly invincible detective agency Baldwin-Felts had been beaten. Chief Sid Hatfield became an immediate legend and hero to the union miners, and a symbol of hope that the oppression of coal operators and their hired guns could be overthrown.

Hundreds of miners were arrested; the smallest of infractions could mean imprisonment, while those on the side of "law and order" were seen as immune. The miners responded with guerrilla tactics and sabotage.  In the midst of this tense situation, Hatfield traveled to McDowell County on August 1, 1921 to stand trial on charges of dynamiting a coal tipple. Along with him traveled a good friend, Ed Chambers, and their wives. As they walked up the courthouse stairs, unarmed and flanked by their wives, a group of Baldwin-Felts agents standing at the top of the stairs opened fire. Hatfield was killed instantly. Chambers was bullet-riddled and rolled to the bottom of the stairs. Despite Sally Chambers' protests, one of the agents ran down the stairs and shot Chambers once more, point-blank in the back of the head. Hatfield's and Chambers' bodies were returned to Matewan, and word of the slayings spread through the mountains.

The miners, angry that Hatfield had been murdered and knowing the assassins would escape punishment, began to take up arms and pour out of their mountain settlements. Miners along the Little Coal River were among the first to organize, and began actions such as patrolling and guarding the area. Sheriff Don Chafin sent Logan County troopers to the Little Coal River area, where armed miners captured the troopers, disarmed them and sent them fleeing.

At a rally on August 7, Mary Harris "Mother" Jones called on the miners not to march into Logan and Mingo counties and set up the union by force. Accused by some of losing her nerve, she feared a bloodbath in a battle between lightly armed union forces and the more heavily armed Logan County deputies.

Battle of Blair Mountain – August, 1921

Four days later an estimated 13,000 had gathered and began marching towards Logan County. Impatient to get to the fighting, miners near St. Albans, in Kanawha County, commandeered a Chesapeake and Ohio freight train. The first skirmishes occurred on the morning of August 25. The bulk of the miners were still 15 mi (24 km) away. The following day, President Warren Harding threatened to send in federal troops and Army Martin MB-1 bombers. After a long meeting in Madison, the seat of Boone County, the miners were convinced to return home. But the struggle was far from over. After spending days assembling his private army, Chafin would not be denied his battle to end union attempts at organizing Logan County coal mines. Within hours of the Madison decision, rumors abounded that Chafin's men had shot union sympathizers in the town of Sharples, just north of Blair Mountain – and that families had been caught in crossfire during the skirmishes. Infuriated, the miners turned back toward Blair Mountain, many traveling in other stolen and commandeered trains.

By August 29 battle was fully joined. Chafin's men, though outnumbered, had the advantage of higher positions and better weaponry. Private planes were hired to drop homemade bombs on the miners. A combination of poison gas and explosive bombs left over from World War I were dropped. One Martin bomber crashed on its return flight, killing the three crew members.

Sporadic gun battles continued for a week, with the miners at one time nearly breaking through to the town of Logan and their target destinations, the non-unionized counties to the south, Logan and Mingo. Up to 30 deaths were reported by Chafin's side and 50–100 on the union miners' side, with hundreds more injured or wounded.

Federal troops arrived by September 2. The miners, many of whom were veterans themselves, were unwilling to fire on U.S. troops. Bill Blizzard passed the word for the miners to start heading home the following day. Miners fearing jail and confiscation of their guns found clever ways to hide rifles and handguns in the woods before leaving Logan County. 

The week long battle had ended with 985 arrests, up to 100 dead miners and up to 30 dead Baldwin-Felts detectives.

1922 – Treason Trials

In court the prosecution tried to get as many of the miners charged with treason as possible. This was unsuccessful as they hadn’t aimed to overthrow the government but just a private company. They also tried to tie the miners to the Bolshevik Movement in Russia portraying them as dangerous radicals.

In the short term the battle was an overwhelming victory for coal industry owners and management. In the long term, the battle raised awareness of the appalling conditions miners faced in the dangerous West Virginia coalfields. This eventually resulted in a much larger organized labor victory a few years later during the New Deal in 1933. 

“... employees shall have the right to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and shall be free from the interference restraint, or coercion of employers of labor, or their agents [and] (2) that no employee and no one seeking employment shall be required as a condition of employment to join any company union or to refrain from joining.”

Miner unions negotiated for increased safety measures and between 1933 and 1939 mine deaths dropped by a third.

However, the Union and Miner strikes remained controversial for years and the Coal Wars were not taught in West Virginia schools for 40 more years. 

The End

Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt said this:

"Whenever trouble arose between the workingmen and the employers, whenever the miners began to organize to support or enforce demands for improved conditions, the State, whether in control of a Republican or a Democratic administration, thereupon surrendered its right and duty to enforce the law and maintain order. It turned over this right and duty to the mining companies, themselves, who thereupon imported into the State or organized within the State crews of gunmen and of private detectives and the like, organized them as guards around their property and prepared for open warfare which such actions inevitably precipitated. Many of these special deputies and detectives were excellent men; but this has no more to do with the case than has the fact that many of the riotous striker were also excellent men. The point is that the State recognized in the contestants the right of private war."

“Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.” – Mother Jones

Of Mother Jones, a historian said “Indeed her renown as a radical rests on a shaky historical foundation. A woman who publicly accused UMW officials of selling out their followers to the capitalist class, she negotiated amicably with John D Rockefeller. Jr., in the aftermath of the 1914 Ludlow massacre....Famous for enlisting workers' wives in the labor struggle, she opposed women's suffrage and insisted that woman's place was in the home....She was simply and essentially an individualist, one who chose to devote the last 30 years of a long life to the cause of the working-class. Her influence on the American labor movement was, however, largely symbolic: the image of a grandmotherly, staidly dressed, slightly built woman unfazed by hostile employers, their hired gunmen, or anti-labor public officials intensified the militancy workers who saw her or who heard of her deeds.”