The Paint Creek–Cabin Creek Strike, or the Paint Creek Mine War, was a confrontation between
striking coal miners and coal operators in
Kanawha County, West Virginia
Kanawha County ( ) is a county in the U.S. state of West Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 180,745, making it West Virginia's most populous county. The county seat is Charleston, which is also the state capital.
Kanawha Coun ...
, centered on the area enclosed by two streams,
Paint Creek and
Cabin Creek.
The strike lasted from April 18, 1912, through July 1913. After the confrontation, Fred Stanton, a banker, estimated that the strike and ensuing violence cost $100,000,000. The confrontation directly caused perhaps fifty violent deaths,
as well as many more deaths indirectly caused by
starvation
Starvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy intake, below the level needed to maintain an organism's life. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, dea ...
and
malnutrition
Malnutrition occurs when an organism gets too few or too many nutrients, resulting in health problems. Specifically, it is "a deficiency, excess, or imbalance of energy, protein and other nutrients" which adversely affects the body's tissues a ...
among the striking miners. In the number of casualties it counts among the worst conflicts in American labor union history.
The strike was a prelude to subsequent labor-related West Virginia conflicts in the following years, the
Battle of Matewan
The Battle of Matewan (also known as the Matewan massacre) was a shootout in the town of Matewan in Mingo County and the Pocahontas Coalfield mining district, in southern West Virginia. It occurred on May 19, 1920 between local coal miners and t ...
and the
Battle of Blair Mountain
The Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest labor uprising in United States history and the largest armed uprising since the American Civil War. The conflict occurred in Logan County, West Virginia, Logan County, West Virginia, as part of the Co ...
.
The demands
![Mother Jones rallying the miners at Eskdale](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Mother_Jones_rallying_the_miners_at_Eskdale.png)
The violence on Paint Creek and Cabin Creek began with a
United Mine Workers of America
The United Mine Workers of America (UMW or UMWA) is a North American Labor history of the United States, labor union best known for representing coal miners. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing worke ...
strike in April 1912.
Prior to the strike there were 96
coal mine
Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...
s in operation on Paint Creek and Cabin Creek, employing 7,500 miners. Of these mines, the forty-one on Paint Creek were all unionized, as was all of the rest of
Kanawha River
The Kanawha River ( ) is a tributary of the Ohio River, approximately 97 mi (156 km) long, in the U.S. state of West Virginia. The largest inland waterway in West Virginia, its valley has been a significant industrial region of the stat ...
coal field except for the 55 mines on Cabin Creek. However, miners on Paint Creek received compensation of 2¢ less per ton than other union miners in the area.
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.
[Lee, p. 18] Their demands were:
After little debate, the Cabin Creek miners decided to join the Paint Creek miners and declared their own strike.
[Shogan, p. 38]
The strike
![Residents of Holly Grove tent colony](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Residents_of_Holly_Grove_tent_colony.png)
After the strike began, the national
United Mine Workers
The United Mine Workers of America (UMW or UMWA) is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the Unit ...
pledged full support, hoping to spread the union into Southern West Virginia, a longtime goal of the union. The UMW promised full financing and any aid it could provide to support strikers.
Partly because of the influence of the UMW, the strike was conducted without violence for its first month. However, on May 10, 1912, the operators on Paint Creek and Cabin Creek hired the notorious
Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency
The Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency was a private detective agency in the United States from the early 1890s to 1937. Members of the agency were central actors in the events that led to the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921 and violent repression ...
to break the strike. Baldwin–Felts responded by sending more than 300 mine guards led by
Albert Felts,
Lee Felts, and
Tony Gaujot
![Mine Guards at Paint Creek WV](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Mine_Guards_at_Paint_Creek_WV.png)
Activist
Mother Jones
Mary G. Harris Jones (1837 (baptized) – November 30, 1930), known as Mother Jones from 1897 onwards, was an Irish-born American schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent union organizer, community organizer, and activist. She h ...
arrived in June, as mine owners began evicting workers from their rented houses, and brought in replacement workers. Beatings, sniper attacks, and sabotage were daily occurrences. Through July, Jones rallied the workers, made her way through armed guards to persuade another group of miners in
Eskdale, West Virginia
Eskdale is an unincorporated community and coal town in Kanawha County, West Virginia, United States. Eskdale is south of East Bank along Cabin Creek. Eskdale has a post office
A post office is a public facility and a retailer that pr ...
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, present-day
Gallagher Gallagher may refer to:
Places United States
* Gallagher Township, Pennsylvania
* Gallagher, West Virginia, an unincorporated place
People
* Gallagher (comedian) (1946–2022), American stand-up comedian
* Gallagher (surname)
Fictional characte ...
, leaving at least twelve strikers and four guards dead.
On September 1, a force of over 5,000 miners from the north side of the
Kanawha River
The Kanawha River ( ) is a tributary of the Ohio River, approximately 97 mi (156 km) long, in the U.S. state of West Virginia. The largest inland waterway in West Virginia, its valley has been a significant industrial region of the stat ...
joined the strikers' tent city, leading Governor Glasscock to establish
martial law
Martial law is the imposition of direct military control of normal civil functions or suspension of civil law by a government, especially in response to an emergency where civil forces are overwhelmed, or in an occupied territory.
Use
Marti ...
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.
![Mother Jones with the Miners' Children (NBY 1299)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Mother_Jones_with_the_Miners%27_Children_%28NBY_1299%29.jpg)
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. 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", attacking with machine guns and high-powered rifles, putting 100 machine-gun bullets through the frame house of striker
Cesco Estep and killing him.
Sarah Blizzard led a group of women 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,
[Smith, Robert Michael. ''From Blackjacks to Briefcases: A history of commercialized strikebreaking'', page 27] and on February 10 martial law was imposed for the third and final time.
![Miners with guns in Eskdale](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Miners_with_guns_in_Eskdale.png)
Mother Jones was arrested on February 13 in
Pratt
Pratt is an English surname. Notable people with the surname include:
A–F
* Abner Pratt (1801–1863), American diplomat, jurist, politician, lawyer
* Al Pratt (baseball) (1847–1937), American baseball player
* Andy Pratt (baseball) (bor ...
and charged in military court for inciting riot (reportedly for attempting to read the
Declaration of Independence
A declaration of independence or declaration of statehood or proclamation of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of the ...
), and, later, conspiracy to commit murder. She refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the military court, and refused to enter a plea. Jones was sentenced to twenty years in the state penitentiary and acquired a case of pneumonia.
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 in April moved to impose conditions for the strike settlement. Strikers 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. The Cabin Creek miners continued to resist, with some violence, until the end of July.
Aftermath
![Mother Jones outside her prison in Pratt WV](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Mother_Jones_outside_her_prison_in_Pratt_WV.png)
Mother Jones remained under house arrest, in
Mrs. Carney's Boarding House, until she smuggled out a message through a secret trapdoor in her room, a message sent to pro-labor Indiana Senator
John Worth Kern
John Worth Kern (December 20, 1849 – August 17, 1917) was a Democratic United States Senator from Indiana. While the title was not official, he is considered to be the first Senate majority leader (and in turn, the first Senate Democratic Lead ...
. Governor Hatfield released Jones, without comment, after a total of 85 days imprisonment.
The Senate's
Kern Resolution of May 26, 1913, led to the United States Senate's
Committee on Education and Labor
The Committee on Education and Labor is a standing committee of the United States House of Representatives. There are 50 members in this committee. Since 2019, the chair of the Education and Labor committee is Robert Cortez Scott of Virginia.
Hi ...
opening an investigation into conditions in West Virginia coal mines. Congress almost immediately authorized two similar investigations into the copper mining industry in Michigan, and mining conditions in Colorado.
[Steel, Edward M. ''The court-martial of Mother Jones'', p. 61]
![The news poisoned at the source](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/The_news_poisoned_at_the_source.png)
One theme of the Senate hearings was an attempt to identify the number of deaths related to the strike, and responsibility for them. One source estimates "perhaps fifty violent deaths"
without estimating the effect of the conditions in the tent camp.
The strike came to national attention in July 1913, cartoonist
Art Young
Arthur Henry Young (January 14, 1866 – December 29, 1943) was an American cartoonist and writer. He is best known for his socialist cartoons, especially those drawn for the left-wing political magazine ''The Masses'' between 1911 and 1917.
B ...
published a cartoon in ''
The Masses
''The Masses'' was a graphically innovative magazine of socialist politics published monthly in the United States from 1911 until 1917, when federal prosecutors brought charges against its editors for conspiring to obstruct conscription. It was ...
'' called "Poisoned at the Source" depicting the president of
The Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
,
Frank B. Noyes, poisoning a well labeled 'The News' with lies, suppressed facts, slander, and prejudice. It was accompanied by an editorial by
Max Eastman
Max Forrester Eastman (January 4, 1883 – March 25, 1969) was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet and a prominent political activist. Moving to New York City for graduate school, Eastman became involved with radical ...
claiming that the AP had not only suppressed the facts of the strike, but that the AP had a profound conflict of interest. Despite the AP's denials, its local AP representative, Cal Young, was also a member of the military tribunal passing judgment on the strikers. The AP responded with two suits of
criminal libel
Criminal libel is a legal term, of English origin, which may be used with one of two distinct meanings, in those common law jurisdictions where it is still used.
It is an alternative name for the common law offence which is also known (in order ...
against Eastman and Young in November 1913 and January 1914. Both suits eventually were dropped. The AP's specific reasons for dropping the suits, and its general relationship to labor, are explored in
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American writer, muckraker, political activist and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California who wrote nearly 100 books and other works in seve ...
's 1919 exposé ''
The Brass Check
''The Brass Check'' is a muckraking exposé of American journalism by Upton Sinclair published in 1919. It focuses mainly on newspapers and the Associated Press wire service, along with a few magazines. Other critiques of the press had appeared, ...
''.
The United Mine Workers of America, Mother Jones, and Baldwin-Felts Detectives would all be involved in the
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) agai ...
, which began as a strike against the
Rockefeller Rockefeller is a German surname, originally given to people from the village of Rockenfeld near Neuwied in the Rhineland and commonly referring to subjects associated with the Rockefeller family. It may refer to:
People with the name Rockefeller f ...
-owned
Colorado Fuel and Iron
The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) was a large steel conglomerate founded by the merger of previous business interests in 1892.Scamehorn, Chapter 1, "The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1892-1903" page 10 By 1903 it was mainly owned and co ...
company in September 1913 and saw the April 20, 1914
Ludlow Massacre.
See also
*
Murder of workers in labor disputes in the United States
The following list of worker deaths in United States labor disputes captures known incidents of fatal labor-related violence in U.S. labor history, which began in the colonial era with the earliest worker demands around 1636 for better working co ...
Notes
References
* Corbin, David Alan. ''Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880–1922.'' New ed. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1981.
* Corbin, David Alan, ed. ''The West Virginia Mine Wars: An Anthology.'' Charleston, W.Va.: Appalachian Editions, 1990.
* Green, James. ''The Devil is Here in These Hills: West Virginia's Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom.'' New York: Grove, 2015.
* Laurie, Clayton D. "The United States Army and the Return to Normalcy in Labor Dispute Interventions: The Case of the West Virginia Coal Mine Wars, 1920–1921." ''West Virginia History.'' 50 (1991).
* Lee, Howard B. ''Bloodletting in Appalachia: The Story of West Virginia's Four Major Mine Wars and Other Thrilling Incidents of Its Coal Fields.'' Morgantown, W.Va.: West Virginia University Library, 1969.
* Savage, Lon. ''Thunder in the Mountains: The West Virginia Mine War, 1920–21.'' Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1990.
* Scholten, Pat Creech. "The Old Mother and Her Army: The Agitative Strategies of Mary Harris Jones." ''West Virginia History.'' 40 (Summer 1979).
* Shogan, Robert.
The Battle of Blair Mountain: The Story of America's Largest Labor Uprising.' Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2004.
* Sullivan, Ken, ed. ''The Goldenseal Book of the West Virginia Mine Wars.'' Charleston, W.Va.: Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, 1991.
External links
Blair Community Center and Museumfor a museum and research facility that specializes in the West Virginia Mine Wars
{{DEFAULTSORT:Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike of 1912
Coal Wars
Labor disputes in West Virginia
Mining in West Virginia
Labor disputes led by the United Mine Workers of America
1912 in West Virginia
1913 in West Virginia
1912 labor disputes and strikes
1913 labor disputes and strikes
Society of Appalachia
Coal mining in Appalachia