GUARDS AND GUNMEN
In the fall of 1912 I went to Eksdale, West Virginia. A strike had been
going on in that section of the coal country for some time. A weary
lull had come in the strike and I decided to do something to rouse the
strikers and the public.
I called six trusty American men to me, told them to go up along the
creeks on either side of which mining camps are located, and to notify
all the miners that I wanted them in Charleston at one o’clock Tuesday
afternoon; they must not bring any clubs or guns with them.
Tuesday afternoon, at a prearranged place, I met the boys in
Charleston. The camps had turned out in full. I told the lads to follow
me, and they did, through the streets of Charleston with a banner
that said, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” “Nero” was the governor
who fiddled with the moneyed interests while the state was going
to ruin. Another banner was addressed to a certain gunman whom the
workers particularly hated because of his excessive brutality. It said,
“If G---- is not out of town by six o’clock he will be hanging to a
telegraph pole!”
The reason that he did not hang was because he was out of town before
six.
We gathered on the state house grounds. I went into the governor’s
office and requested him politely to come out, as there were a lot of
Virginia’s first families giving a lawn party outside, and they wanted
him to talk to them. I could see that he wanted to come out but that he
was timid.
“Mother,” he said, “I can’t come with you but I am not as bad as you
may think.”
“Come,” I said, pulling him by his coattails.
He shook his head. He looked like a scared child and I felt sorry for
him; a man without the courage of his emotions; a good, weak man who
could not measure up to a position that took great strength of mind, a
character of granite.
From a platform on the statehouse steps I read a document that we had
drawn up, requesting the governor to do away with the murderous Baldwin
Felts guards and gunmen. We asked him to re-establish America and
American traditions in West Virginia. I called a committee to take the
document into the statehouse and place it reverently on the governor’s
table. I then spoke to the crowd and in conclusion said, “Go home now.
Keep away from the saloons. Save your money. You’re going to need it.”
“What will we need it for, Mother?” some one shouted.
“For guns,” said I. “Go home and read the immortal Washington’s words
to the colonists.”
He told those who were struggling for liberty against those who would
not heed or hear “to buy guns.”
They left the meeting peacefully and bought every gun in the hardware
stores of Charleston. They took down the old hammerlocks from their
cabin walls. Like the Minute Men of New England, they marched up
the creeks to their homes with the grimness of the soldiers of the
revolution.
The next morning alarms were ringing. The United States senate called
attention to the civil war that was taking place but 350 miles from the
capital. The sleepy eye of the national government looked upon West
Virginia. A senatorial investigation was immediately ordered to inquire
into the blight that was eating out the heart of the coal industry.
Once again the public was given a chance to hear the stifled cry of the
miners in their eternal struggle.