MEDIEVAL WEST VIRGINIA
I have been in West Virginia more or less for the past twenty-three
years, taking part in the interminable conflicts that arose between the
industrial slaves and their masters. The conflicts were always bitter.
Mining is cruel work. Men are down in utter darkness hours on end. They
have no life in the sun. They come up from the silence of the earth
utterly wearied. Sleep and work, work and sleep. No time or strength
for education, no money for books. No leisure for thought.
With the primitive tools of pick and shovel they gut out the insides
of the old earth. Their shoulders are stooped from bending. Their eyes
are narrowed to the tiny crevises through which they crawl. Evolution,
development, is turned backward. Miners become less erect, less
wide-eyed.
Like all things that live under ground, away from the sun, they become
waxen. Their light is the tiny lamp in their caps. It lights up only
work. It lights but a few steps ahead. Their children will follow them
down into these strange chambers after they have gone down into the
earth forever. Cruel is the life of the miners with the weight of
the world upon their backs. And cruel are their strikes. Miners are
accustomed to cruelty. They know no other law. They are like primitive
men struggling in his ferocious jungle--for himself, for his children,
for the race of men.
The miners of Logan County were again on strike in 1923. I was with
them. The jails were full of strikers, with innocent men who protested
the conditions of their lives. Many of them had been months in jails.
Their wives and little children were in dire want.
“Can’t you do something for us, Mother,” they pleaded.
A delegation of their wretched wives and half-starved children came to
me. “For God’s sake, Mother, can’t you do something for us!”
I took the train for Charleston and went to see Governor Morgan. He
received me courteously.
“Governor,” I said, “listen--do you hear anything?”
He listened a moment. “No, Mother Jones, I do not.”
“I do,” said I. “I hear women and little boys and girls sobbing at
night. Their fathers are in jail. The wives and children are crying for
food.”
“I will investigate,” said he. He looked me straight in the eye and I
knew he would keep his promise.
Shortly afterward I received a letter from the Governor, telling me
that all the prisoners were released but three.
For myself I always found Governor Morgan most approachable. The human
appeal always reached him. I remember a poor woman coming to see me
one day. Her husband had been blacklisted in the mines and he dared
not return to his home. The woman was weak from lack of food, too weak
to work. I took her to the Governor. He gave her twenty dollars. He
arranged for her husband to return, promising him executive protection.
I was with the Governor’s secretary one day when a committee called to
see the Governor. The committee was composed of lick-spittles of the
mine owners. They requested that the Governor put “The Federationist,”
a labor weekly, out of business. The Governor said, “Gentlemen, the
constitution guarantees the right of free speech and free press. I
shall not go on record as interfering with either as long as the
constitution lives.”
The committee slunk out of the office.
I think that Governor Morgan is the only governor in the twenty-three
years I was in West Virginia who refused to comply with the requests of
the dominant money interests. To a man of that type I wish to pay my
respects.
There is never peace in West Virginia because there is never justice.
Injunctions and guns, like morphia, produce a temporary quiet. Then
the pain, agonizing and more severe, comes again. So it is with West
Virginia. The strike was broken. But the next year, the miners gathered
their breath for another struggle. Sometimes they lost their battle
through their own crooked leaders. And once it was my duty to go before
the rank and file and expose their leaders who would betray them. And
when my boys understood, West Virginia’s climate wasn’t healthy for
them.
Medieval West Virginia! With its tent colonies on the bleak hills! With
its grim men and women! When I get to the other side, I shall tell God
Almighty about West Virginia!