The Mine Wars: 1912 to 1922
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Sheriff Sid Hatfield |
The Mine Wars, which took place
in the southern West Virginia coalfields from 1912 to 1922, included the Paint
Creek-Cabin Creek Strike (1912–13), the Battle of Matewan (May 1920), the
Battle of the Tug (May 1920), and the Miners’ March on Logan (August 1921) and
the ensuing Battle of Blair Mountain.
Combatants included, on the miners’ side,
the legendary labor organizer Mary Harris ‘‘Mother’’ Jones; local United Mine
Workers leaders Frank Keeney, Fred Mooney, and Bill Blizzard; Matewan Police
Chief Sid Hatfield; and others. On the other side were Albert Felts, the head
of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency; Don Chafin, the high sheriff of Logan
County; and others.
By 1912, southern West
Virginia miners were placing their hopes for the
future in their union, the United Mine Workers of America. There had been early
attempts to organize the region’s miners, most importantly during the national
strikes of 1897 and 1902. They had only limited success, but the union did gain
an important foothold in eastern Kanawha
County.
In April 1912, miners along
Paint Creek and Cabin Creek in Kanawha
County walked off their jobs, and
the great Mine Wars began. Their basic demand, employer recognition of the
union, seemed simple enough, but they and the coal operators alike knew that
this would mean the end of company housing, company stores, company schools,
company guards, and company churches, as well as better pay for the miners and
control over their own lives and work.
The Paint Creek-Cabin Creek
strike lasted a year and a half. Miners were beaten, ambushed, and killed by
mine guards, machine-gunned by an armor plated train called the Bull Moose
Special, illegally court martialed, and deported from the state. The miners
responded in bloody ambushes of their own, including the Battle of Mucklow,
which left 16 men dead. Two labor newspapers were suppressed and their editors
incarcerated. Governor Henry D. Hatfield, working with local UMWAofficials and
coal officials to abort the strike, dictated settlement terms to the miners.
Led by the newly emerged rank-and-file leadership of Frank Keeney and Fred
Mooney, the miners renewed their struggle and remained on strike until the coal
companies agreed to their original demands.
In 1919, Keeney, then president
of UMWA District 17, launched a drive to unionize the rest of southern West
Virginia. Gunfights, explosions, and other forms of
conflict occurred in numerous coal towns, including Roderfield, Willis Branch,
Glen White, Mohawk, War Eagle, Borderland, Noland, Freeburn, and Merrimac. In
these battles miners fought the newly established state police as well as mine
guards and strikebreakers.
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Armored car used against miners |
In May 1920, the Battle
of the Tug erupted in Mingo County,
three days of unabated violence on a 10-mile front along the Tug Fork.
Determined to stop coal production, miners fought pitched battles with mine
guards, deputy sheriffs, and state police in the towns of Blackberry
City, Alden, Sprigg, New Howard,
and Rawl.
On May 19, 1920, 11 Baldwin-Felts agents, after evicting
striking miners in Red Jacket, tried to board a train in nearby Matewan to
return home. They were confronted by the mayor of Matewan and the chief of
police, Sid Hatfield, a formerUMWA miner. When the shooting stopped, three
townspeople, including the mayor, and seven of the Baldwin-Felts detectives
were dead. Mingo County
became known to the nation as ‘‘Bloody Mingo,’’ and Hatfield became a regional
folk hero. He was later tried and acquitted in a trial lasting through the
early months of 1921.
On August 1, 1921, Baldwin-Felts detectives had their
revenge for their losses at Matewan when they shot to death Hatfield and his
deputy, Ed Chambers, both unarmed, on the steps of the McDowell
County courthouse in Welch.
There followed the famous Miners’
March on Logan. In probably the
largest armed labor uprising in American history, perhaps as many as 20,000
miners marched 90 miles and engaged in a two-week battle with more than 5,000
Logan County deputy sheriffs, mine guards, and state police. The Battle of
Blair Mountain ended when President Warren G. Harding placed the region under
martial law, and ordered 2,500 federal soldiers and a bombing squadron into the
state.
The Miners’ March ended the Mine
Wars. Keeney fell into dispute with the national president of the UMWA, John L.
Lewis, who dismissed him and withdrew the autonomy of District 17,
precipitating a collapse of the UMWA in southern West
Virginia. As a result, the coal industry’s control of
the region would not be challenged again until the New Deal of the 1930s.
This Article was written by
David A. Corbin
Last Revised on October 20, 2010
RELATED ARTICLES
Battle
of Blair Mountain
Coal Industry
Matewan Massacre
The Miners’ March
Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike
United Mine Workers of America
Article Citations
Corbin, David A. Life, Work, and
Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia
Miners 1880-1922. Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 1981.
Savage, Lon. Thunder in the
Mountains. Pittsburgh: University
of Pittsburgh Press, 1990.
Lunt, Richard D. Law and Order
vs. the Miners: West Virginia, 1907-1933. Hamden,
CT: Archon Books, 1979.
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