This episode takes us to the coal mines of West Virginia in the early 20th century, where one the largest labor uprisings in American history occurred, resulting in hundreds of deaths, thousands of people losing their homes, a march of armed miners to the state capital, and a pitched battle which took place over five days in which over one million bullets were fired.
Curious? Want to know exactly what started this chain of events? Well, this one is a longer one, but if you have about half an hour, give the episode and listen and let me know what you think!
Audio mixing done by Craig Murdock, as always! At least, since season 2.
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This episode takes us to the coal mines of West Virginia in the early 20th century, where one the largest labor uprisings in American history occurred, resulting in hundreds of deaths, thousands of people losing their homes, a march of armed miners to the state capital, and a pitched battle which took place over five days in which over one million bullets were fired.
Curious? Want to know exactly what started this chain of events? Well, this one is a longer one, but if you have about half an hour, give the episode and listen and let me know what you think!
Audio mixing done by Craig Murdock, as always! At least, since season 2.
Follow us on social media!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WhatExplainCast
Twitter: @whatexplaincast
Instagram: @whatexplaincast
1. West Virginia isn’t a state that gets a lot of attention nowadays. Bluntly, it’s not even the most well-known of states with “Virginia” in the name.
2. However, the story I am going to tell you involves the single largest American civil insurrection of the 20th century, the first time Americans were subject to an air-based attack on their own soil, and a battle in which over one million piece of ammunition was used, all of it taking place in West Virginia.
3. And what was the inciting reason for this chain of events that left so many wounded and dead? Fifteen cents a day. I’m Braden Thorvaldson, and this is What?! Explain.
4. West Virginia is one of the most coal-rich areas in the United States. In fact, only two of the 55 counties within West Virginia do not have some form of coal deposit naturally occurring within.
5. The demand for coal for lighting and power kept a brisk business going in West Virginia for much of the 19th century, but it wasn’t until competing railroad lines were built through West Virginia that the coal mining industry became the giant boom industry it was throughout much of the 1900s.
6. You see, with the railways, you were able to transport far more coal at a time to a much larger market. Just attach as many cars as you needed, and as many engines as you needed to haul said coal, and you could bring it to whichever client needed it the most.
7. The market for West Virginian coal all of a sudden grew a lot larger, and enterprising individuals started buying up coal-rich land and developing mining operations as fast as they could, particularly if it was very nearby the train tracks.
8. Given that many of the mining operations were far away from any existing towns, this necessitated the creation of company towns, in which houses, stores, and recreation areas were built for the miners and their families to use. However, there was no government and no municipal laws for these towns, as the company owned each and every part.
9. Often, the companies took advantage of this monopoly by paying their workers in a particular currency called scrip, which was only good for use in the company stores in the town, and nowhere else.
10. Imagine working for Amazon, and only getting paid in Amazon gift cards, and you have an idea of what sort of operation these companies were running.
11. Using this system, the companies were able to get around having to pay actual money, as the workers had no other choice but to use the scrip in the company stores for supplies and goods.
12. While the scrip issue was bad on its own, the high mortality rate of miners in West Virginia compounded it immensely. There were six mining collapses in 1906 alone, causing the deaths of hundreds of mining workers, and on December 6th, 1907, two interconnected mines in Monongah, West Virginia exploded, killing all 358 miners that were underground at the time.
13. Additionally, the prevalence of Coal workers' pneumoconiosis, or Black lung disease from inhaling coal dust over long periods of time, as well as spending long hours underground and the potential for coal dust and natural gas fuelling explosions underground led to a very high mortality rate.
14. To give you an idea of just how dangerous the job was, during World War 1, West Virginian Coal miners had a higher mortality rate than the American soldiers sent over to fight in Europe.
15. Meanwhile, the amount of coal being mined in West Virginia increased exponentially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, increasing from just under half a million tonnes of coal a year in 1867 to 89.4 million tonnes by 1917. The mine owners were becoming incredibly rich off of the incredibly dangerous work of the miners, and the miner’s discontent was growing.
16. The first major flare up of this discontent came in 1912, when the miners of the Paint Creek Mines tried to negotiate a new contract with the mine operators. Pretty much all of the mines in the area were unionized, but the Paint Creek Miners were making about 15 cents less a day for doing the same work.
17. The additions the miners wanted in the contract were to be paid that additional 15 cents a day, the same as other miners in the area, as well as being able to trade where they wanted, rather than being paid in scrip and forced to buy from company stores, and they wanted the United Mine Workers, the mine workers union of the United States recognized.
18. These changes would have cost the operators about fifteen cents more per worker per day. That’s about four dollars and twenty-eight cents per day in today’s money, or, assuming an eight hour workday for the union mines, about a 53 cent increase in the hourly wage.
19. The operators refused point blank to all demands, and the workers of the Paint Creek mines ended up dropping their tools and going on strike on April 18, 1912. Soon after, 7,500 of the non-union workers from nearby Cabin Creek joined in the strike.
20. In May of 1912, the mine operators doubled down on the strike-breaking, hiring the baldwin-Felts detective agency to get the miners back to work, no matter what needed to be done.
21. The Baldwin-Felts detective agency started out as detectives hired to find out about train robberies and criminal activities, but morphed over time into a private security firm for whomever would be willing to pay top dollar. By this time, they were known as strike-breakers and thugs for hire, depending on who you asked. If you needed men willing to commit violence for your cause, you went to Baldwin-Felts.
22. They sent in over 300 armed guards to the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek area, fortifying it with concrete forts and machine gun nests as an intimidation tactic. They also started running a specialized train called the Bull Moose Special, which was an armored locomotive, a passenger car, and an armor-plated baggage car with slots for two machine guns to poke out.
23. This acted as an escort for other trains bringing non-union workers who went into the mines, as the mine operators ended up bringing in labor from outside the state, and sometimes outside the country to try and maintain production.
24. Once information about the baldwin-Felts armed camp leaked out, people within the Socialist Party of the United States smuggled weapons into the camp of the striking miners, including six machine guns, 1,000 high powered rifles, and 50,000 rounds of ammunition.
25. Both sides were now armed to the teeth, and tensions were rising, exacerbated by the Baldwin-Felts men evicting all the union workers from their houses within the mine area, forcing them to live in a tent city that sprung up around the train tracks outside the mine.
26. Shootouts were a daily occurrence, mostly centered around the trains carrying non-union workers to and from the mine. The armed miners would open fire on the train, and the guards and police would fire back and try and chase the miners back into the hills.
27. ON July 26th, the striking miners attacked the town of Muchlow, where the baldwin-felts agents were located. The ensuing firefight left 12 miners and four agents dead. Less than a month later, a procession of armed miners, led by famed union organizer Mother Jones, marched up to the steps of the state legislature in Charleston to deliver a speech criticizing the governor of West Virginia, William E. Glasscock and his handling of the situation.
28. The miners wanted the removal of the Baldwin-Felts mine guards and the denial of the workers rights to free speech and assembly, as well as the recognition of the United Mine Workers to act as their negotiators. The mine operators thought that the United Mine Workers organization was just a front put up by their out of state competitors to drive up their prices and make them less competitive, and vowed to break the strike by whatever means necessary.
29. At the start of fall, on September 1, 1912, the miners finally had enough. Over 5,000 miners armed with rifles crossed the Kanawha River towards the mines, declaring their intention to kill the Baldwin-Felts mine guards and destroy the mines. The operators deployed more guards and prepared for the miners to attack. This was the tipping point for Governor Glasscock, who imposed martial law in the area the very next day.
30. While the miners initially celebrated the soldiers coming into the area as a return to the rule of law, it soon became quite apparent that the soldiers were only interested in breaking the strike and de-escalating the situation. The soldiers confiscated weapons from both sides, but it was only the miners that were arrested and subject to incarceration and military tribunals, rather than having a hearing in civilian court.
31. Meanwhile, as fall moved into winter, the miner’s families were suffering from cold and malnutrition in the tent camp that they had been living in since the Baldwin-Felts agents kicked them out of their homes.
32. Martial law continued on and off until January 10th, 1913, as Governor Glasscock only had two more months left in office, and reasoned that any political fallout would be his successors to deal with.
33. Having dealt with an entire winter under martial law and confined to tent camps, the miners attacked the agents at Muchlow once again, killing one person. In retaliation, the Sheriff of Kanawha, Bonner Hill, several of his deputies, and one of the mine operators, Quinn Martin used the Bull Moose Special by cover of night, and opened fire into the miner’s camp.
34. Hundreds of bullets ripped through the camp, as several of the miners were wounded, and one of the strikers, a man named Francis Francesco Estep, was killed when he was trying to shield his pregnant wife from the bullets. This was the incident that made the strike a national headline, as condemnation flooded in from across the country. Martial law was imposed a third and final time, as the miners struck at Muchlow one more to get revenge.
35. On March 4th, 1913, Dr. Henry R. Hatfield was sworn in as the new governor of West Virginia, and made the crisis his top priority. He immediately released the 30 miners being held under martial law, and moved to try to have the strike resolved by April. On May 1, 1913, the Hatfield Contract was presented to both parties, with both sides fairly bluntly being told to accept it or face consequences.
36. Given that most of the miner’s conditions had been met with the contract, they signed, and one of the bloodiest strikes in American history had ended. However, this was only the beginning of the blood to be shed in what would be known as the West Virginia Coal Wars.
37. The Matewan Massacre of 1920 was the next escalation of the battle between mine workers trying to unionize in West Virginia, and mine operators using guards and threats on the miners livelihoods to stop that happening. This time, the events occurred in Matewan, a small town in Mingo County, West Virginia, less than 100 miles southwest of Paint Creek.
38. During the previous decade, the miners of West Virginia had some manner of success in unionizing and striking when needed in order to get a fairer wage. Often, these strikes would result in the striking miners being fired and tossed out of their homes by the mine operators. In the bitter West Virginia winter, that was no laughing matter, and some miners and their families died due to the cold, or malnutrition.
39. Even with the possibility of losing their homes and livelihoods, many of the coal miners still signed on to join the United Mine Workers union, including 3000 coal miners in Mingo County alone in the spring of 1920. In retaliation, the Stone Mountain Coal Company, the primary employer in Mingo County at the time, began the process of mass firings of union members, and using mine guards to evict the miners and their families from their homes.
40. After losing their homes, the unionized miners and their loved ones began a tent camp just outside of the town of Matewan. As spring rolled on, the unionized miners showed no signs of giving in, so the Stone Mountain Coal Company hired the Baldwin-Felts detective agency to break down the tent city to continue pressing the miners into a corner: basically saying, come back to work, or die in the cold.
41. The Baldwin-Felts agents went into the camp in force and started destroying some of the miner’s tents. After the agents carried out several of these evictions, they went back to Matewan, ate some dinner, and then tried to get back to the train station to catch a train back to Bluefort, West Virginia.
42. As the Baldwin-Felts agents moved towards the station, they were stopped by Matewan Mayor Cabell testerman and Chief of Police Sid Hatfield. Hatfield was sympathetic to the miner’s plight, and claimed to have arrest warrants for the agents provided to him by the Mingo County Sheriff due to the agents not having any legal jurisdiction in the area.
43. In turn, Albert Felts, the leader of the agents and brother of the founder of the baldwin-Felts detective agency, presented his own warrant for Sid Hatfield’s arrest. Upon examining the agent’s warrant, Mayor Testerman claimed that it was a fake.
44. As the two parties yelled at each other over who had the power to arrest whom, neither noticed that they were being intently watched by a steadily growing group of miners who had followed the agents from the tent camp, all armed with rifles.
45. To this day it isn’t known who exactly started shooting and when, but bullets began flying, and after they were done, Mayor Testerman, seven of the Baldwin-Felts agents, including Albert Felts, and two of the miners lay dead on the ground.
46. Given that a massive shootout occurred and the elected mayor was killed, the Governor of West Virginia instated martial law in the area, and Sheriff Hatfield complied, instructing his deputies to stockpile their weapons in the hardware store and co-operate with the soldiers when they came in.
47. Many of the miners involved in the shootout, as well as Sheriff Hatfield and his deputy Ed Chambers were arrested when the soldiers arrived, and the trials for the miners began on January 26th, 1921 for the murders of the seven Baldwin-Felts agents. All of the miners were acquitted of all charges on March 19th, 1921.
48. Hatfield and Chambers’s trial took longer, mostly due to the baldwin-Felts agency attempting to provide additional proof that there was premeditation on the Sheriff’s part. However, both men were acquitted, and the Baldwin-Felts agency had to take matters into their own hands.
49. Hatfield and Chambers were both killed on August 1st, 1921 on the steps of the McDowell County Courthouse by Baldwin-Felts detectives. The murder of the two men, both union sympathizers, was enough to start the bloodiest chapter of the coal wars, and the largest civil insurrection in the United States in the 20th century: The Battle of Blair Mountain.
50. Less than a week after the murder of Hatfield and Chambers, the leaders of the union miners in West Virginia submitted a list of demands to Governor Ephraim Morgan. They explained their grievances with the mine owners, especially with their employment and use of the extra-legal Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency guards, who used intimidation and violence to suppress the miner’s civil liberties.
51. Ten days later, on August 17th, Morgan not only refused the miner’s requests, but he wouldn’t even comment on the murders of Hatfield and Chambers in front of a West Virginia courthouse.
52. After the announcement was made, many armed union miners began gathering in the town of Marmet, eight miles south of the state capital of Charleston, with an estimated 13,000 miners arriving by August 20th.
53. They wanted to avenge the murders of Hatfield and Chambers, both seem as symbols of the union cause, and to free the union miners jailed in Mingo County, which was still under martial law. However, they still had one obstacle in their way before they reached Mingo County: Logan County, and their staunchly anti-union Sheriff Don Chafin.
54. While mine operators in other counties had to rely on the private sector for mine guards, Don Chafin and his deputies fulfilled much of the same role in Logan County, to the point where Chafin had his deputies posted outside of mine entrances throughout the county, looking for evidence of union organization.
55. There was no greater enemy of the unions than Don Chafin, and the union miners singular stop on their way to Mingo County was to try and unseat Chafin as Sheriff of Logan County, no matter what methods they needed to use.
56. Once word of the march got to Charleston, Governor Morgan dispatched West Virginia state police to Mingo County, and petitioned President Woodrow Wilson to send in the national guard to assist them in quelling the miner’s rebellion. Wilson refused, so Morgan ended up giving Chafin permission to create a “home guard”, as he called it, to repel the miners before they made any inroads into Logan County.
57. A full-scale armed rebellion was too much for some of the union leaders, and even Mother Jones, who was instrumental in the success of the Cabin Creek and Paint Creek strikes, had had enough. Jones tried to stop the marching miners by reading a telegram purportedly from the president himself, promising that if the miners returned to their homes, he would abolish the practice of hiring mine guards forever.
58. However, several of the men in the crowd doubted the legitimacy of the telegram enough that they continued marching on right past Jones towards Logan County that very night. ON August 24th, 1921, the first of the armed miner force arrived at the borders of Logan County.
59. Chafin had been busy once he had received permission from the governor to set up his own private army. Also receiving financial backing from the Logan County Coal Operators association and volunteer recruits from many in Logan County, Chafin had raised an army of 2,000 within a matter of days, which he armed and stationed along Blair Mountain, a ridge that the miners had to cross in order to get into Logan County. Once positioned, all they needed to do was wait.
60. The miners and Chafin’s forces began exchanging fire on August 30th, 1921, and for three days after, the two sides fought with gatling guns, rifles, and whatever firearms either side could acquire. The miners had the greater numbers, but Chafin’s forces were better armed, and had better positioning on the mountain ridge.
61. On the second day of fighting, Chafin commanded the three biplanes he had acquired to fly over the miner’s camp and drop two gas bombs, and two bombs filled with gunpowder and metal shrapnel, marking the first aerial assault on American civilians on their own soil.
62. Given that the ridge of Blair Mountain prevented the miner’s full force from entering into Logan County, the fighting was at a stalemate until federal forces arrived, demanding both sides surrender.
63. The miners surrendered to the federal troops willingly, because their grievances were with the state government and county sheriffs that were enabling the mining operators and jailing their comrades. Additionally, many of the miners were veterans of the US Army in World War 1 themselves, and didn’t want to fire on the American soldiers.
64. Many of the miners retreated after the federal forces arrived, trying their best to disguise their rifles and handguns as they left. At the end of the conflict, 985 of the miners were indicted for murder, conspiracy to commit murder, accessory to murder and treason against the State of West Virginia. Most of the miners were acquitted due to sympathetic juries, but some jail time was served, with the last of the miners being paroled in 1925.
65. The Battle of Blair Mountain was something of a short-term victory for the mine operators, and a long-term victory for the miners. Membership in the United Mine Workers union dropped from its peak of 50,000 members in West Virginia to less than 10,000 within a year, and Don Chafin was considered a hero by many mine operators in the area for busting what was considered an armed uprising of the union.
66. However, the unions altered their strategy more towards getting the law on their side through pointing out the abuses of management rather than holding out for operators to change their minds one at a time, or leaning towards armed rebellion if the government does not see their way.
67. The unions were instrumental in many aspects of FDR’s New Deal, and were able to organize into much larger groups, such as the American Federation of Labor, and the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
68. The thing that gets me about this particular bit of history isn’t the sheer amount of violence that took place in West Virginia over the decade of the Coal wars. It isn’t even that there was a straight up insurrection not just once, but twice, or that you can in fact shoot a sheriff AND a deputy on the steps of a courthouse with no repercussions.
69. It’s that all of this can be traced back to one group of mine owners not wanting to pay their miners fifteen cents more a day. That’s it. Simple greed. Instead, they decided to throw their workers out of their homes and hire additional armed guards to KEEP them out, which I imagine cost them more than fifteen cents a day, but I digress.
70. It absolutely astonishes me how some people that are wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, with more money than they could possibly spend in a lifetime, are rabidly opposed to their workers getting a livable wage.
71. . If you’re not allowing people to go to the bathroom on a shift, or making mandatory unpaid overtime a part of the job, you are blatantly making money off of the suffering of your workers.
72. Is it a coincidence that the richest man in the world is in charge of a company synonymous with working their employees to the bone amidst draconian employment conditions? It is a super interesting statement that this person’s wealth increased by almost 40% during the COVID pandemic, and the workers conditions… well, have gotten worse. Hint: you’ve definitely gotten a package from them at some point.
73. I’m Braden Thorvaldson, and I’ll talk to you in a couple weeks.
74. Audio mixing for this episode was done by Craig Murdock, who tells me that while saying the phrase “Governor Glasscock” is a little bit funny, it is quite difficult to edit out my giggles each time. Apologies to Craig.
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