The Paint Creek and Cabin Creek Strikes, 1912–1913

West Virginia state troops during the Paint Creek strike in 1912. The strikes were among the most violent labour conflicts in American history and caused an estimated 100 million dollars' worth of damage. Credit: West Virginia History OnView.

From the 1890s, coal miners tried to organise the coalfields of southern West Virginia to fight the injustices of the mining labour system, and — as in most labour struggles of the era — owners and operators resisted fiercely. In 1912 the conflict turned violent in the Kanawha and New River coalfields with a "wildcat" strike, a work stoppage launched without a union. It marked the start of what became known as the West Virginia mine wars.

The strike

When operators in the Paint Creek Valley of Kanawha County refused union miners a modest raise in line with what other companies in the region had given, thousands of nonunion miners walked out. They were soon joined by 7,500 nonunion miners on nearby Cabin Creek, driven by the operators' oppressive rule. The strike began like any other, but when company guards began forcibly evicting mining families from company houses, the miners fought back. It became a 13-month struggle in which 12 strikers and 13 company men died.

The United Mine Workers (UMW), the country's main coal miners' union, had not started the strike but was keen to gain ground in the region and backed the strikers fully, sending the famous organiser Mary "Mother" Jones and UMW vice president Frank Hayes. The operators brought in strikebreakers from the South and New York State and hired 300 guards from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, a private security firm used by mine operators across the country to crush strikes violently in Appalachia and the West.

The guards and the Bull Moose Special

The Baldwin-Felts guards built iron and concrete forts armed with machine guns across the strike area. They went on evicting families, destroying $40,000 worth of belongings, furniture included, and enforced the operators' control of the company towns — keeping strikers off bridges over mountain streams and beating those who tried to board passing trains.

The most notorious act of violence was the night ride of the Bull Moose Special, a train car armoured with iron plating and fitted with machine guns. On the night of February 7, 1913, coal operator Quinn Martin and Kanawha County sheriff Bonner Hill switched off its lights and drove it through Holly Grove, a UMW tent colony for striking families, firing into the tents and homes. An Italian miner, Francis Francesco Estep, was shot in the face and killed while trying to protect his pregnant wife. Several miners had already died, but Estep's murder enraged the strikers. The attack made national headlines the next day, and one merchant was so angered that he sent the miners guns and ammunition.

UMW leaders Fred Mooney (left) and Frank Keeney. In 1916, with the national union's support, Keeney was elected president of UMW District 17, with Mooney as treasurer. Credit: Library of Congress.

Martial law

The fighting paused when Governor William E. Glasscock declared martial law and sent the state militia in. Miners at first welcomed the troops, expecting them to restore peace and protect their rights, but soon saw they were there only to break the strike. Martial law had never been imposed in the United States on the scale it was in West Virginia in 1912–1913. Without warrants, soldiers arrested 200 strikers and strike leaders, Mother Jones among them, jailed them and tried them before military tribunals for inciting violence, even though the civil courts were open. The guards and operators faced no consequences for their part in the violence. Glasscock's harsh use of martial law was condemned across the country — yet little changed in the southern coalfields.

Sources

Based on "Paint Creek and Cabin Creek Strikes," part of the series "West Virginia Mine Wars," published by the National Park Service; the series was written by historian Rachel Donaldson.

• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.