Latest / Stuff You Should Know / The Matewan Massacre
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we're coming to the Pacific Northwest. So if
- 0:03Speaker 1: you live in that area or can get on a
- 0:06Speaker 1: plane to go to that area, or a boat or
- 0:07Speaker 1: snowshoe whatever, we'll see you at the end of January.
- 0:11Speaker 2: That's right, brand new show, brand new topic. We don't
- 0:14Speaker 2: even know what it is yet, but we'll be in Seattle,
- 0:16Speaker 2: Washington on January twenty fourth, Portland on January twenty fifth,
- 0:20Speaker 2: and then our annual trip to San Francisco's Sketch Fest
- 0:24Speaker 2: on January twenty sixth in Seattle. We're counting on you.
- 0:28Speaker 2: We're at the Paramount this year and that's a lot
- 0:29Speaker 2: of seats, so we need a lot of your lovely
- 0:31Speaker 2: faces in the audience.
- 0:33Speaker 1: Yes, So get THEE two stuff youshould Know dot com
- 0:35Speaker 1: and click on the tour button to get all your facts.
- 0:38Speaker 1: Or you can go to link tree slash sysk and
- 0:41Speaker 1: get the same links and the same facts and we'll
- 0:43Speaker 1: see you guys in January. We can't wait.
- 0:47Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
- 0:57Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and Chuck's
- 1:00Speaker 1: two and Jerry's here too, and we're here in solidarity
- 1:03Speaker 1: together the trio of us ready to put up our dukes.
- 1:08Speaker 1: In this episode of stuff you should know the trie
- 1:10Speaker 1: ipis sure, I said, trio right, yeah, okay, you were
- 1:16Speaker 1: just messing around, your horsing around.
- 1:18Speaker 3: I was running with it.
- 1:20Speaker 1: How are you doing?
- 1:22Speaker 3: I'm good.
- 1:24Speaker 2: Quick shout out to the city of Mexico City, by
- 1:26Speaker 2: the way. I meant to mention it the other day
- 1:28Speaker 2: when we recorded, but I know there's someplace you've been,
- 1:31Speaker 2: and Jerry's been. I finally, Emily and I made our
- 1:33Speaker 2: first trip, and as you know, I can verify Mexico
- 1:38Speaker 2: City is amazing.
- 1:40Speaker 1: It's a pretty cool town. For sure.
- 1:42Speaker 3: Boy.
- 1:43Speaker 2: I feel really at home there, you do, I do.
- 1:46Speaker 2: I feel very at ease. I was just like, this
- 1:48Speaker 2: is I don't know, I don't know if it's a
- 1:51Speaker 2: past life thing or what. That's what I was going
- 1:53Speaker 2: to be, but I was like, this is like a
- 1:56Speaker 2: New York in a tropical forest. I loved every bit
- 1:59Speaker 2: of it.
- 1:59Speaker 1: Asked Life, you were Diego Rivera, but not the famous one,
- 2:03Speaker 1: just another Diego.
- 2:04Speaker 3: Rivera, another big, old fat guy.
- 2:08Speaker 2: We did go to Frida's house, which was a lifelong
- 2:12Speaker 2: dream for both of us, but really for Emily so
- 2:14Speaker 2: that was amazing, and that's great, just all kinds of
- 2:17Speaker 2: great stuff. So that and that's it. I can't wait
- 2:21Speaker 2: to go back.
- 2:23Speaker 1: Way to shout out a city right out of the gate.
- 2:25Speaker 3: That's right. And this was my idea. And I don't know.
- 2:31Speaker 2: It may have been at the Bonnie Prince Billy shows
- 2:34Speaker 2: that I went to in Arizona. We may have been
- 2:36Speaker 2: talking about the fact that Will Oldham as a teenager
- 2:41Speaker 2: was in the John Sales movie Mate Wan. And I
- 2:44Speaker 2: think that's where it came to me because I saw
- 2:46Speaker 2: that movie back then and have not seen it since then.
- 2:50Speaker 2: But I was like, hey, that sounds a good, good
- 2:53Speaker 2: topic to chew one man.
- 2:55Speaker 1: He was all over the place John Sales. Yeah, he
- 2:58Speaker 1: wrote and directed Mate Wan. He wrote and directed Brother
- 3:01Speaker 1: from Another Planet. Like he whatever interested him, he just did.
- 3:05Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 3:05Speaker 2: He was also a writer for hire, like he wrote
- 3:09Speaker 2: as great at Indie Genius as John Sales is. He
- 3:12Speaker 2: wrote the Piranha movie. Oh yeah, I think I knew that,
- 3:16Speaker 2: and a couple of other like writer for Higher Things.
- 3:18Speaker 2: But yeah, I always been a big John Sales guy.
- 3:20Speaker 2: And mate one is awesome. I kind of want to
- 3:22Speaker 2: check it out after I know more about it now.
- 3:25Speaker 1: Yeah. He wrote a lot of episodes of Spencer for
- 3:27Speaker 1: Hire two.
- 3:29Speaker 3: And BJ and the Verar yep.
- 3:32Speaker 1: So, uh yeah, that's I'm glad you said mate one
- 3:35Speaker 1: because I had never heard that word out loud before,
- 3:39Speaker 1: and I looked it up and I heard one. Yes,
- 3:42Speaker 1: I heard a residence say mate wan, and I immediately
- 3:47Speaker 1: came up with a great mnemonic device for it.
- 3:49Speaker 3: You ready, oh boy, if.
- 3:52Speaker 1: You want to remember how to pronounce mate wan, it's
- 3:54Speaker 1: a small small town in southern West Virginia.
- 3:58Speaker 3: Uh huh.
- 3:59Speaker 1: You just say, hey, who's that guy from West Virginia
- 4:02Speaker 1: over there? You say, who him? That's my mate? Twan
- 4:08Speaker 1: works like a charm. I am here to tell you Twan. Yeah,
- 4:12Speaker 1: you could say wan, but I think Twan has a
- 4:14Speaker 1: greater ring to it to really drive home how to remember.
- 4:18Speaker 3: It, mate Twan?
- 4:20Speaker 1: Okay, sure, although you would say mate one.
- 4:24Speaker 3: Is that Josh Clark's fin maybe one? That's it. I
- 4:29Speaker 3: love it.
- 4:30Speaker 1: I want to see how quickly I could derail things
- 4:32Speaker 1: this early in the episode.
- 4:33Speaker 3: Well, I mean I talked about Mexico City forgetting us sakes.
- 4:36Speaker 1: So we are talking about Maye Wan and I didn't
- 4:40Speaker 1: know much about it. Again, I saw the word before
- 4:42Speaker 1: I knew it was kind of a thing, But specifically
- 4:45Speaker 1: the Battle of maye Wan is what we're kind of
- 4:47Speaker 1: talking about, although that's just one kind of island in
- 4:51Speaker 1: the archipelago of incidents that took place in southern Appalachia,
- 4:56Speaker 1: southern West Virginia, and coal mining country just across the
- 5:00Speaker 1: river from Kentucky and right near its border with Virginia
- 5:04Speaker 1: as well. And all the events were about to talk
- 5:08Speaker 1: about took place in the early twentieth century. And I
- 5:11Speaker 1: knew nothing about any of this until we started researching
- 5:15Speaker 1: this episode. So kudos to you because this is a
- 5:18Speaker 1: pretty interesting chapter in not just American history or even
- 5:22Speaker 1: West Virginia history, but labor Union history as well.
- 5:27Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And this was Olivia jam and she
- 5:30Speaker 2: did a great job. One thing I'm sure you knew
- 5:33Speaker 2: before we started this is that West Virginia and coal
- 5:37Speaker 2: have always been linked. And as Cole went, the history
- 5:44Speaker 2: of America has gone because of that robust by two
- 5:48Speaker 2: minus coal industry that has been around there since geez,
- 5:52Speaker 2: probably like the mid nineteenth century. You know, it allowed
- 5:55Speaker 2: America to grow not only you know, with their factories
- 6:00Speaker 2: and railroads and things, but just people and heating homes
- 6:04Speaker 2: and businesses and that kind of thing.
- 6:05Speaker 1: Yeah, because you can get some hot hot heat from coal,
- 6:08Speaker 1: hot hot heat, and you don't get quite as much
- 6:11Speaker 1: from wood from what I understand, So just right there,
- 6:14Speaker 1: you have more energy at your fingertips. Plus also I
- 6:16Speaker 1: didn't realize this, but I saw it somewhere that it
- 6:21Speaker 1: also kept cities from having to cut down all of
- 6:24Speaker 1: the forests around them and rely on that wood. Right,
- 6:27Speaker 1: It just makes it. It was just a better way
- 6:30Speaker 1: to grow as an industrializing country. And so because America
- 6:35Speaker 1: was you know, booming thanks to coal, I think people
- 6:40Speaker 1: just kind of assumed, like, the coal miners are probably
- 6:43Speaker 1: doing great. They must be richer than astronauts for mining
- 6:47Speaker 1: this stuff that's become so valuable. Coal companies were, Yes,
- 6:51Speaker 1: And the problem is all of these events came from
- 6:55Speaker 1: would have been totally avoided probably had the coal companies
- 6:59Speaker 1: shared in the wealth less sentially. Yeah, but that's the
- 7:05Speaker 1: continuing story of you know, the world right Sadly. Yes,
- 7:10Speaker 1: I don't know how long that's going to go on for.
- 7:12Speaker 1: I don't think it's it has to be the way,
- 7:14Speaker 1: but yes, that is so far the story of capitalism.
- 7:19Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, it was it was a pretty
- 7:21Speaker 2: brutal existence as a miner back then. I mean, it's
- 7:24Speaker 2: still a very very tough job. There are still dangers
- 7:27Speaker 2: to be had, even though they've you know, cleaned it
- 7:29Speaker 2: up quite a bit, but it's nothing like it was
- 7:32Speaker 2: back then. It was dozens of miners died every year.
- 7:36Speaker 2: There were all kinds of accidents all the time, big
- 7:41Speaker 2: big events where hundreds of people die, and a single
- 7:44Speaker 2: disaster or just you know, the daily work of dying
- 7:49Speaker 2: on the job or dying you know because you just
- 7:52Speaker 2: do that job and you breathe in that air, that.
- 7:56Speaker 3: Kind of thing.
- 7:57Speaker 2: And to add insult to injury, and a lot of
- 7:59Speaker 2: these owns, the coal companies sort of ran everything, you know.
- 8:05Speaker 2: Sometimes they owned the houses that the people that worked
- 8:08Speaker 2: there lived in. Sometimes they owned all the businesses in town.
- 8:11Speaker 2: Sometimes they ran the law offices there legal offices, but
- 8:17Speaker 2: you know, the cherff's department and police and stuff like that.
- 8:20Speaker 2: So it was a sort of a monopolistic control in
- 8:24Speaker 2: a lot of these towns.
- 8:26Speaker 1: Yeah, and even when they whether or not they had
- 8:30Speaker 1: the local sheriff for constable in their pocket, they also
- 8:33Speaker 1: found out that they could really supplement their hold their
- 8:37Speaker 1: grip over their workers by hiring private police forces, as
- 8:40Speaker 1: we'll see. Yeah, and they.
- 8:43Speaker 2: Were really always a great idea, the private police force,
- 8:45Speaker 2: that's exactly.
- 8:46Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, and they were really deliberate about keeping
- 8:50Speaker 1: their workers from unionizing. A good example of that that
- 8:54Speaker 1: Olivia turned up there was a mine owner named Justice Collins,
- 8:58Speaker 1: and he I don't want to say caught, because I'm
- 9:01Speaker 1: sure he really didn't care whether you heard this or not,
- 9:03Speaker 1: but he was basically saying, you want to keep a
- 9:06Speaker 1: quote judicious mixture of men as workers from groups like
- 9:11Speaker 1: European immigrants, the Appalachian folk that have lived here for generations,
- 9:16Speaker 1: and then black Southerners, I guess, deasperating from the Jim
- 9:21Speaker 1: Crow South in search of better lives who are showing
- 9:25Speaker 1: up in the area. You want some of each, because
- 9:27Speaker 1: these people don't naturally necessarily get along, and you can
- 9:31Speaker 1: make it, you can ensure it even further that they're
- 9:33Speaker 1: not going to get along by paying some better than
- 9:36Speaker 1: others for the same exact work. That really keeps people
- 9:40Speaker 1: from getting along very well. And so if you've got
- 9:42Speaker 1: groups of workers who aren't really interacting because they don't
- 9:46Speaker 1: really mix well together, they're probably not going to be
- 9:50Speaker 1: able to successfully form a labor union.
- 9:54Speaker 2: Yeah, but as we will see in many cases, the union,
- 9:59Speaker 2: in fact, it worked the opposite way, and they brought
- 10:01Speaker 2: together people of different ethnicities in a way that was
- 10:05Speaker 2: not common at all at the time as a whole.
- 10:07Speaker 1: You know, no, it's true. And I saw there's a
- 10:09Speaker 1: great Smithsonian article about all this, and the historian they
- 10:14Speaker 1: talked to was saying, I don't want to paint the
- 10:16Speaker 1: picture like I think. He said everyone was just holding
- 10:19Speaker 1: hands around the campfire. But they came together in ways
- 10:24Speaker 1: that were just unseen outside of this area, outside of
- 10:29Speaker 1: the mining industry, outside of the mining unions, and they
- 10:34Speaker 1: did probably get along better than people and other unions,
- 10:37Speaker 1: black and white workers and other unions, just because they integrated.
- 10:41Speaker 1: There's a really great scene that happened at one of
- 10:44Speaker 1: the mine cafeterias during one of these strikes. Black and
- 10:49Speaker 1: white workers held the cafeteria workers at gunpoint until they
- 10:53Speaker 1: were seated together eating in an integrated cafeteria room, like
- 10:58Speaker 1: they integrated themselves at gunpoint, essentially.
- 11:01Speaker 3: Amazing.
- 11:02Speaker 1: Yeah, it was pretty cool.
- 11:04Speaker 2: So the union did get going, although you know, as
- 11:06Speaker 2: we'll see as this story goes not quite yet in
- 11:11Speaker 2: mate Wan in what county was that again, Mingo County?
- 11:15Speaker 1: Yeah, I have a great mnemonic device for that, do
- 11:18Speaker 1: you really, oh man.
- 11:20Speaker 2: So the union did get going in other parts of
- 11:23Speaker 2: the country sort of late in the nineteenth century. The
- 11:26Speaker 2: United Mine Workers of America was founded in eighteen ninety,
- 11:30Speaker 2: and it was a real as far as unions go
- 11:32Speaker 2: at the time. It was a real all encompassing union
- 11:35Speaker 2: in that there were other unions around that sort of
- 11:39Speaker 2: you know, if you're like a smithy or you had
- 11:42Speaker 2: some really skilled specific craft, you might be represented, but
- 11:46Speaker 2: they may not represent you know, black workers, Chinese immigrants,
- 11:49Speaker 2: stuff like that. But the Miners Union kind of from
- 11:53Speaker 2: the beginning was like, you know what, we're stronger with
- 11:56Speaker 2: more people. We're going to represent all the miners who
- 11:59Speaker 2: wanted to jump on board. And they realized that, you know,
- 12:03Speaker 2: strikes were early on a real and you know still
- 12:07Speaker 2: today a real big way that you can make change.
- 12:09Speaker 2: But they were bloody affairs back then.
- 12:13Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Like people would get shot and killed on
- 12:16Speaker 1: both sides. The government forces would show up and sometimes
- 12:20Speaker 1: shoot people like it was a really really violent era
- 12:25Speaker 1: in labor history for sure. Murder it was murder, yeah
- 12:29Speaker 1: for sure, killing people Yeah for wanting to organize for
- 12:33Speaker 1: better working conditions and better pay. Yeah, like you could
- 12:36Speaker 1: get you murdered back then. And so the United mind
- 12:40Speaker 1: Workers of America they kept at it. I think they're
- 12:43Speaker 1: founded in eighteen ninety. Did you say that?
- 12:45Speaker 3: Yeah? Can we call them mamwa?
- 12:47Speaker 1: Sure? Sure you know how to remember that.
- 12:51Speaker 3: Sure.
- 12:53Speaker 1: So within seven years they held a strike, a major
- 12:56Speaker 1: strike in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and it resulted
- 13:00Speaker 1: in an eight hour workday for union miners. The thing
- 13:05Speaker 1: is is that didn't necessarily spread across across the country,
- 13:08Speaker 1: especially in southern West Virginia, which was almost entirely non
- 13:13Speaker 1: unionized as far as coal miners went, and they, I think,
- 13:17Speaker 1: from what I understand, is like the biggest pocket of
- 13:20Speaker 1: non union miners in the entire country. So UMWA said,
- 13:26Speaker 1: we need to start trying to make some inroads in
- 13:28Speaker 1: there because there's a lot of people who could use
- 13:30Speaker 1: our help. And one of the I think the first
- 13:34Speaker 1: big confrontations that came to be known as the West
- 13:37Speaker 1: Virginia Mine Wars took place in nineteen twelve, and UMWAH
- 13:42Speaker 1: didn't actually bless it I guess is the way to
- 13:46Speaker 1: say it. So it was considered a wildcat strike. But
- 13:50Speaker 1: as soon as the strike began and it grew very quickly,
- 13:53Speaker 1: umwah said we're behind you guys, one hundred percent whatever
- 13:57Speaker 1: you need.
- 13:58Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
- 13:59Speaker 2: This was the the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek coal
- 14:03Speaker 2: mines in Kanawa County, and they struck. And these people
- 14:08Speaker 2: will really factor in here in a second to the
- 14:12Speaker 2: mate Wan affair. But the Baldwin Feltz Detective Agency, which
- 14:15Speaker 2: will tell you all about here in a sec They
- 14:18Speaker 2: were hired to come in, these sort of hired quote
- 14:21Speaker 2: unquote guards also known as thugs if you were one
- 14:24Speaker 2: of the unionists. They came in and had literal machine
- 14:28Speaker 2: guns and shot up the homes of miners when their
- 14:33Speaker 2: family was were there. These miners, I mean they called
- 14:37Speaker 2: them wars for a reason. These miners were heavily armed.
- 14:39Speaker 2: They fought back, and the governor at the time, the
- 14:43Speaker 2: Venerable William ME Glascock, came in, declared martial law and
- 14:49Speaker 2: sent in the state militia to break this strike up,
- 14:52Speaker 2: and a couple of hundred and it wasn't just you know,
- 14:54Speaker 2: throwing all the union leaders in jail.
- 14:56Speaker 3: They were I think some of the.
- 15:01Speaker 2: Some of the Baldwin Feltz people went to jail, but
- 15:03Speaker 2: it was mainly strikers and union leaders that were sort
- 15:07Speaker 2: of under the thumb of Glasscock at the time. So
- 15:10Speaker 2: Mother Jones, which by the way, I think Mother Jones
- 15:13Speaker 2: should be a total topic that the person, not the magazine.
- 15:17Speaker 1: Sure or both.
- 15:19Speaker 3: We'll talk well, we'll talk about the magazine a little bit.
- 15:21Speaker 2: You have to, right, because like you could do an
- 15:23Speaker 2: episode on People of the World that you'd have to
- 15:26Speaker 2: talk about the magazine.
- 15:27Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, or anytime we talk about us, we
- 15:30Speaker 1: should probably active a nod to that magazine team.
- 15:35Speaker 2: Mother Jones was arrested though, along with a lot of
- 15:36Speaker 2: the leaders and strikers. They had military tribunals and this
- 15:42Speaker 2: sort of closed that the first chapter of the West
- 15:46Speaker 2: Virginia Wars because World War Two came along and distracted
- 15:50Speaker 2: everybody for a while. But things would kind of kick
- 15:53Speaker 2: back into action in nineteen twenty.
- 15:55Speaker 1: Yeah, and the Paint Creek Cabin Creek Striker War followed
- 16:00Speaker 1: a pattern that would would become pretty regular. The miners
- 16:04Speaker 1: would stop working, go on strike. The company would send
- 16:08Speaker 1: in goons to come evict them from their company homes
- 16:11Speaker 1: without any kind of warrant or anything like that. The
- 16:15Speaker 1: families of the people evicted from those company homes would
- 16:17Speaker 1: set up a tent city. The goons that the mine
- 16:21Speaker 1: operators employed would go attack the tent city that would
- 16:24Speaker 1: be a site too far for the miners. They would
- 16:26Speaker 1: rise up armed and a real bloody clash would begin,
- 16:31Speaker 1: and then the state or federal government would send in
- 16:35Speaker 1: essentially troops to quell this uprising, and then the organizers
- 16:39Speaker 1: would be unfairly arrested, often again without warrants, and tried
- 16:45Speaker 1: and held, and then eventually things would kind of subside
- 16:49Speaker 1: for a little while. That was the pattern that was,
- 16:52Speaker 1: if not established there, it certainly was followed by all
- 16:55Speaker 1: of the wars after that one.
- 16:57Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, we take a break, Yeah, I think we should.
- 17:02Speaker 3: All right, we'll be right back.
- 17:24Speaker 2: So we promised to talk a little bit more about
- 17:27Speaker 2: this company that figures into the maeite Wan affair or
- 17:31Speaker 2: the mate Wan I mean, there's a lot of different
- 17:33Speaker 2: names the war, the Battle at mate wand stuff like that.
- 17:38Speaker 2: The Baldwin Feltz Detective Agency, So this was eighteen ninety two.
- 17:42Speaker 2: They were founded by a guy named William G. Baldwin
- 17:46Speaker 2: in Roanoke, Virginia, and a year later he hired a
- 17:49Speaker 2: guy named Thomas Feltz to run the place with him.
- 17:53Speaker 2: So it was the Baldwin Felts Agency, and they were
- 17:56Speaker 2: modeled very much after the Pinkerton Agency in that they
- 18:00Speaker 2: they were hired as sort of at first before they
- 18:02Speaker 2: were even though they had a feeling they were going
- 18:05Speaker 2: to get into union busting like Binkerton did. At first,
- 18:07Speaker 2: they were one of those private police forces you were
- 18:09Speaker 2: talking about, and they were charged depending on where they
- 18:13Speaker 2: were and what town they were in, with everything from
- 18:17Speaker 2: kicking hoboes off trains or killing hoboes that were on trains,
- 18:22Speaker 2: to sort of supplementing local police forces when they were
- 18:26Speaker 2: small towns, to eradicating what they call black crime in
- 18:31Speaker 2: the South, like really sort of casting an on black
- 18:34Speaker 2: people in the South and going after them. And they were,
- 18:37Speaker 2: you know, they were thugs. They were the guys that
- 18:40Speaker 2: they hired were Their backgrounds were pretty rough and tumble,
- 18:44Speaker 2: and they would use any means necessary to do what
- 18:47Speaker 2: they wanted to do. They kind of had free reign
- 18:48Speaker 2: to do what they wanted.
- 18:50Speaker 1: Yeah. Part of the reason why is because again a
- 18:53Speaker 1: lot of these towns were quite literally run by the
- 18:56Speaker 1: mining company. So if the mining company brought in an
- 18:59Speaker 1: outside police force, the actual police force would work with them.
- 19:05Speaker 1: At the very least, the courts would turn a blind
- 19:07Speaker 1: eye or they just couldn't get arrested. And there were
- 19:09Speaker 1: a lot of murders, like in broad daylight that happened
- 19:12Speaker 1: during this time, that these private police force detectives I
- 19:16Speaker 1: guess carried out and just were not even arrested for.
- 19:20Speaker 1: So it was really lopsided. If you were a minor.
- 19:25Speaker 1: Not only did this company like basically own you, but
- 19:28Speaker 1: if you got out the line, there was a chance
- 19:29Speaker 1: that you or your family were going to be beaten
- 19:32Speaker 1: in or killed. So as the as the Umwa also
- 19:37Speaker 1: known as Umwah really started to try to make inroads
- 19:41Speaker 1: into southern West Virginia to organize this largest pocket of
- 19:44Speaker 1: non union miners, the coal mine operators pushed back by
- 19:51Speaker 1: hiring more and more private police forces, especially the Baldwin
- 19:56Speaker 1: Felts Detective Agency. They became not the only one, but
- 19:59Speaker 1: probably the most prominent in southern West Virginia as far
- 20:03Speaker 1: as the the amount of work they got and then
- 20:07Speaker 1: the dirtiness that they got their hands into.
- 20:10Speaker 2: Yeah, and they, I mean they were called the Pinkerton
- 20:12Speaker 2: in the South. They were very effective at least at
- 20:15Speaker 2: first because I think between over like an eight year
- 20:19Speaker 2: period at the turn of the century at the end
- 20:21Speaker 2: of the last century, they prevented these unions from organizing
- 20:26Speaker 2: in West Virginia, and you know, I think there were
- 20:29Speaker 2: some strikes that happened and they kept West Virginia out
- 20:33Speaker 2: of it. So they were successful for a while at least.
- 20:37Speaker 2: Like you said, they would beat up organizers. If you're
- 20:40Speaker 2: pro union, you know, you might get kicked out of
- 20:43Speaker 2: your house. You might have your house burned down. They
- 20:45Speaker 2: place moles, they play spies among the miners and also
- 20:50Speaker 2: just in town. As we'll soon see, they had one
- 20:53Speaker 2: guy open up a restaurant a spy in mate Wine,
- 20:57Speaker 2: and we'll meet him later as well. But it was
- 21:01Speaker 2: I think it was the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek
- 21:04Speaker 2: strikes that we talked about a few minutes ago, where
- 21:08Speaker 2: all of these guards came in hundreds of these dudes
- 21:11Speaker 2: killed up a bunch of people. The same thing happened
- 21:14Speaker 2: in Colorado in nineteen fourteen and what was called the
- 21:16Speaker 2: Ludlow massacre, where eleven literal children were killed because sometimes
- 21:21Speaker 2: these miners were kids, like you know, I don't know
- 21:24Speaker 2: how young they got, but they were children.
- 21:26Speaker 1: These kids that were killed weren't even miners, they were
- 21:28Speaker 1: miners children. So they were really like not they were
- 21:32Speaker 1: really out of bounds. And the fact that eleven of
- 21:34Speaker 1: them were killed because the Baldwin Felts detectives came and
- 21:38Speaker 1: burned the tent city down that they were living in,
- 21:41Speaker 1: that was it that really caught the nation's attention as well,
- 21:45Speaker 1: and it gave a really terrible name to the Baldwin
- 21:48Speaker 1: Felts Detective Agency, which they managed to trade on very
- 21:51Speaker 1: heavily in southern West Virginia.
- 21:53Speaker 2: Yeah, in tent city because they were kicked out of
- 21:56Speaker 2: the homes that were owned by the mining companies exactly.
- 22:00Speaker 1: So not only did that whole process take place in
- 22:03Speaker 1: southern West Virginia, it also happened in Colorado too. That's
- 22:05Speaker 1: just what happened. You got kicked out of your home,
- 22:07Speaker 1: you go set up a tent city, and then imagine
- 22:10Speaker 1: setting up a tent city that's nowhere near the miner's
- 22:14Speaker 1: land or the mine company's land, and yet the mine
- 22:16Speaker 1: company still comes and burns your tent city down because
- 22:19Speaker 1: you're still trying to organize. It's just some of the
- 22:23Speaker 1: most important, almost unimaginable acts that just were carried out
- 22:28Speaker 1: constantly between I guess probably basically the eighteen nineties until
- 22:32Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties when Franklin Roosevelt came into power. Like,
- 22:36Speaker 1: that's just what happened. That's what people did. That was
- 22:39Speaker 1: the risky ran if you didn't just keep your mouth
- 22:41Speaker 1: shutting your head down and take whatever abuse they heaped
- 22:44Speaker 1: on you in the mine as owners.
- 22:47Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, this is only one hundred years ago,
- 22:49Speaker 2: which one hundred years is a long time, but it's
- 22:51Speaker 2: not that long.
- 22:52Speaker 1: No, it's not. Which actually I mean, like there's still
- 22:55Speaker 1: plenty of reasons to organized and unionize, and there's still
- 22:59Speaker 1: plenty of grievances that need to be addressed, but just
- 23:04Speaker 1: the actual process that happens, it's just we've come quite far,
- 23:11Speaker 1: at the very least in removing generally violence from that
- 23:13Speaker 1: kind of process.
- 23:15Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So things are heating up in West Virginia.
- 23:20Speaker 2: End of nineteen nineteen, there's a big Umwah launched a
- 23:24Speaker 2: nationwide coal strike where they got a big fat raise.
- 23:28Speaker 2: They got a twenty seven percent raise if you were
- 23:30Speaker 2: a mine worker. But again, West Virginia was still almost
- 23:34Speaker 2: completely non union at this point, so they didn't get
- 23:37Speaker 2: the benefits from that, but I get the feeling that
- 23:38Speaker 2: it really sort of rallied them to organize. At the
- 23:42Speaker 2: same time, UMWAH was really mounting an effort in West Virginia,
- 23:46Speaker 2: so they launched a campaign there in nineteen twenty in
- 23:50Speaker 2: the southern part of the state and McDowell, Logan and
- 23:53Speaker 2: Mingo County, where Mate one is to really get them
- 23:55Speaker 2: together and say, hey, look, we got big fat raises
- 23:58Speaker 2: for people all over the country. Here, you really need
- 24:01Speaker 2: to unionize. And Mate wan was right there in the
- 24:04Speaker 2: middle of Mingo County. I'm sure someone's going to say, actually,
- 24:07Speaker 2: it's to the outside of Mingo County.
- 24:09Speaker 1: I think it actually is.
- 24:11Speaker 3: Okay, it's just a euphemism, like you know, smack dab
- 24:15Speaker 3: in the middle.
- 24:15Speaker 1: Yeah, I get you. I'm just saying I was being
- 24:18Speaker 1: the lone or the masked emailer.
- 24:21Speaker 2: Yeah, the well actually person exactly, that's me. Uh no,
- 24:26Speaker 2: it's not you at all, thank you, So mayite one.
- 24:28Speaker 2: You know, we described these towns that were literally kind
- 24:30Speaker 2: of run by the mining companies maye Wan was not
- 24:33Speaker 2: one of them. The mining company did have their fingers
- 24:37Speaker 2: in some operations, but there were like real legit local
- 24:40Speaker 2: businesses owned by locals. There was a real independent sheriff there.
- 24:46Speaker 2: I'm sorry, police chief. His name was Smile and said
- 24:49Speaker 2: hat Field. Of those hat Fields. I think his his
- 24:54Speaker 2: grandfather the best. It always gets so confusing with me
- 24:57Speaker 2: in genealogy.
- 24:58Speaker 1: As you know, that was his grandfather devil Ance.
- 25:01Speaker 2: No, his grandfather was half brother of the grandfather, half
- 25:06Speaker 2: brother of devil Ance.
- 25:08Speaker 1: Oh was that right? I saw he was the direct
- 25:10Speaker 1: grandson of devil Ance. But okay, he's still he's still
- 25:13Speaker 1: ken in folk as far as the.
- 25:16Speaker 3: He was one of those Hatfields.
- 25:18Speaker 2: And we did an episode on the Hatfield McCoys if
- 25:19Speaker 2: you want to check that out.
- 25:20Speaker 1: That was a good one. It was like Appalachian Romeo
- 25:24Speaker 1: and Juliet story.
- 25:26Speaker 2: Yeah, it totally was. But that is to say Sid
- 25:30Speaker 2: Hatfield was not in the pocket. He was a pro
- 25:33Speaker 2: union guy and not in the pocket of the coal companies,
- 25:36Speaker 2: which was kind of unusual.
- 25:38Speaker 1: He was such a pro union guy he was. He
- 25:42Speaker 1: stood trial once for blowing up a coal tipple, which
- 25:46Speaker 1: is the structure that a freight train car drives under
- 25:49Speaker 1: and gets filled with coal, and it's entirely possible he
- 25:52Speaker 1: did that. That's how sympathetic he was to the coal
- 25:55Speaker 1: miner's cause.
- 25:56Speaker 3: Yeah, so he was.
- 25:58Speaker 1: He was the not the sheriff in town. There was
- 26:00Speaker 1: a sheriff, and I get this the impression that the
- 26:02Speaker 1: sheriff was a law and order kind of guy. Like
- 26:04Speaker 1: his His allegiance was to law and order. So you know,
- 26:08Speaker 1: no matter what side you're on, if you needed his
- 26:10Speaker 1: protection or you know, the laws being broken, he took
- 26:13Speaker 1: that seriously. He seemed a little more even keel and
- 26:17Speaker 1: I can't remember his name. Sid Hatfield was one hundred
- 26:19Speaker 1: percent in the miners camp. And the fact that this
- 26:22Speaker 1: town existed and it wasn't in the pocket of the
- 26:25Speaker 1: mine operators is I think the reason why these things
- 26:28Speaker 1: happened because there was there was a power structure that
- 26:32Speaker 1: could start to take on these Baldwin Felts detectives who
- 26:35Speaker 1: were coming to town and causing trouble.
- 26:37Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, I think you're totally right.
- 26:40Speaker 1: Thanks to the law.
- 26:43Speaker 2: The company Inmate one, the mining company was called the
- 26:46Speaker 2: Stone Mountain Coal Company.
- 26:49Speaker 3: Also where I was born.
- 26:51Speaker 1: You were born at the Mate one.
- 26:54Speaker 3: I was born in Stone Mountain, Georgia, different places.
- 26:56Speaker 1: I didn't know that. I knew you, like you worked there,
- 26:58Speaker 1: but I didn't know you were born in Stone Mountain.
- 27:00Speaker 1: Wyn't we well.
- 27:02Speaker 2: I mean I was born. The hospital was the Cab
- 27:05Speaker 2: General back then. Now it's the Cab Medical Center, which
- 27:07Speaker 2: is Decatur. But I had a Stone Mountain address, even
- 27:12Speaker 2: though it was not near, you know, kind of downtown
- 27:16Speaker 2: Stowe Mountain, in Stowe Mountain Park.
- 27:18Speaker 1: I understand that's fine. That still comes a Stone Mountain.
- 27:21Speaker 1: I'm not questioning your bona fides.
- 27:23Speaker 3: No, no, no, it was.
- 27:24Speaker 2: It was just a little weird though, because if you
- 27:26Speaker 2: if you're from around here and you say you grew
- 27:27Speaker 2: up in Stone Mountain, people probably think like, oh, you
- 27:30Speaker 2: grew up and went to Stow Mountain High School and
- 27:32Speaker 2: live right near the park. But it was the dresses
- 27:34Speaker 2: were just different back then.
- 27:35Speaker 3: I get you.
- 27:37Speaker 1: You sound a little defensive.
- 27:38Speaker 3: No, no, no of it all proud Stone Mountain guy.
- 27:43Speaker 2: I remember when I was a kid, Steve Martin referenced
- 27:47Speaker 2: Stone Mountain and I think the man with two brains.
- 27:50Speaker 2: You were like, it was a very big deal because
- 27:55Speaker 2: Stone Mountain didn't get a lot of shouts and those.
- 27:57Speaker 2: I remember there was one line where you said something
- 27:59Speaker 2: about Stone Mountain, Georgia during like a rant, and it
- 28:04Speaker 2: was just like what Steve Martin, why is his hair gray?
- 28:10Speaker 2: I guess the good thing about that is Steve Martin
- 28:12Speaker 2: looks about the same he does much forty years ago.
- 28:17Speaker 2: All right, So workers did they even though they weren't
- 28:21Speaker 2: under the thumb necessarily as a town of the Stowe
- 28:24Speaker 2: Mountain Coal Company. A lot of the workers did live
- 28:27Speaker 2: in company housing, and sometimes they were paid in dividends
- 28:30Speaker 2: instead of you know money, like real American money. And
- 28:35Speaker 2: they did use they employed the Baldwin Feltz Company to
- 28:38Speaker 2: kind of, you know, come in and keep things quelled.
- 28:42Speaker 1: Yeah. That they had a spy too, Who was I mean?
- 28:46Speaker 1: In an episode full of really terrible people, this guy
- 28:49Speaker 1: might be the most terrible of all. His name was C.
- 28:52Speaker 1: Everett Lively see E. Lively, and he was involved in
- 28:55Speaker 1: that Ludlow massacre in Colorado. He had killed at least
- 28:59Speaker 1: one person for sure, and he moved to southern West
- 29:03Speaker 1: Virginia and set up shop as a spy. Ostensibly he
- 29:07Speaker 1: was a miner who or he had mining experience, but
- 29:11Speaker 1: had gotten into the restaurant business and opened a cafe.
- 29:14Speaker 1: And he opened the cafe and basically put out the
- 29:16Speaker 1: welcome mat for the local miners union to come have
- 29:19Speaker 1: their meetings at so he could keep tabs on what
- 29:21Speaker 1: they were saying. And you know, he wanted to say, like, wow,
- 29:25Speaker 1: they really fell for that. Yes, this guy, he befriended
- 29:29Speaker 1: Sid Hatfield. He made the right kind of friends to
- 29:32Speaker 1: make himself seem legitimate. So it was, you know, not
- 29:35Speaker 1: hard for him to get to get some of these
- 29:39Speaker 1: organizers leaders and otherwise to cough up like details because
- 29:44Speaker 1: they trusted the guy. And they even very smartly the
- 29:47Speaker 1: organizers for the like Mingo County area, they did not
- 29:53Speaker 1: have an elected leader, and if they did, they kept
- 29:56Speaker 1: it secret, so you didn't know who was actually running
- 29:58Speaker 1: the show, which.
- 30:00Speaker 3: No union, no local union had right.
- 30:02Speaker 1: Oh interesting, even behind the scenes, a lot of people
- 30:06Speaker 1: didn't know who was actually calling the shots, which actually,
- 30:09Speaker 1: from what I understand, led to a kind of a
- 30:12Speaker 1: just a byproduct democratization of the whole process as well,
- 30:17Speaker 1: which I think brought people in even further because they
- 30:20Speaker 1: had a real stake in what happened and had a
- 30:22Speaker 1: real say in what happened.
- 30:24Speaker 3: Was they're a leader, Like, do we know who it was? Now?
- 30:27Speaker 1: Yeah, his name was I think Frank Keeney. He was
- 30:31Speaker 1: his one of his descendants as a local historian, who
- 30:35Speaker 1: knows all about this stuff, but he was He was
- 30:37Speaker 1: definitely the guy in charge of the Mingo County Area
- 30:44Speaker 1: UMWAH chapter. He was the one who was organizing it,
- 30:47Speaker 1: and he was doing it at a time when no
- 30:50Speaker 1: one else would do it. And actually they sent mother
- 30:53Speaker 1: Jones to come in. Who would She would have been
- 30:56Speaker 1: about eighty at the time. She'd been a labor organizer
- 30:58Speaker 1: for at least fifty years since and she helped big
- 31:04Speaker 1: time for sure. But it was Frank Keeney who was
- 31:07Speaker 1: the guy who was in charge.
- 31:09Speaker 2: I thought you were going to say they kept Keene's
- 31:11Speaker 2: identity a secret, and they were like, could you know,
- 31:14Speaker 2: he's just sweeping up around the restaurant, and they're like,
- 31:16Speaker 2: old Keeney lost his tongue about thirty years ago and
- 31:19Speaker 2: he can't even talk anymore.
- 31:21Speaker 1: Yeah, no one opened his mouth to check. They just
- 31:23Speaker 1: took it out that he really had.
- 31:26Speaker 3: That's right, And he literally kept his mouth shut.
- 31:28Speaker 1: So remember ce Charles Everett Lively. Yeah, he's a terrible person.
- 31:33Speaker 2: Yeah, he's the spy. So we mentioned that Tin City.
- 31:36Speaker 2: That happened in other places, this did happen in mate Wan.
- 31:40Speaker 2: A lot of the families were kicked out of their homes,
- 31:43Speaker 2: relocated to live together on land in tents, and in
- 31:49Speaker 2: the spring of nineteen twenty, Mingo County the mate Wan
- 31:55Speaker 2: workers finally said we're going to go on strike, mainly
- 31:59Speaker 2: to protest the fact that these thugs, these Baldwin Feltz
- 32:02Speaker 2: thugs as they were called, came in to bust up
- 32:06Speaker 2: their organizing efforts, which culminated in I guess what we'll
- 32:10Speaker 2: call round one of three rounds of events on May nineteenth,
- 32:15Speaker 2: nineteen twenty, when about a dozen of these guards from
- 32:20Speaker 2: Baldwin Felts came in to mate Wan. They went to
- 32:24Speaker 2: a victim from tent City. A lot of people say
- 32:28Speaker 2: that they were just kicked out of their homes, but
- 32:31Speaker 2: the National Park Services on record saying that, you know,
- 32:34Speaker 2: like you said earlier, they actually went to a place
- 32:36Speaker 2: that they didn't even have jurisdiction and said you got
- 32:40Speaker 2: to get out of your tent city as well, even
- 32:41Speaker 2: though we have no power here. And those did we
- 32:45Speaker 2: already mentioned Lee Felts, right, or did we.
- 32:49Speaker 1: No, we've only mentioned his brother.
- 32:51Speaker 2: Okay, so a couple of the guards or Albert and
- 32:54Speaker 2: Lee Felts, and they're brothers of the co owner of
- 32:58Speaker 2: the company, Tom Feltz, So he has literal family members
- 33:01Speaker 2: sort of on the ground as one of these local thugs.
- 33:06Speaker 2: And Albert his brother, and another one of the guards
- 33:08Speaker 2: named Cebe Cunningham, and this was a guy that was
- 33:11Speaker 2: in that Colorado massacre. Another one of the guys in
- 33:14Speaker 2: the Colorado massacre. In addition to see E.
- 33:16Speaker 3: Lively. I hope this isn't getting too confusing with all
- 33:19Speaker 3: the names.
- 33:21Speaker 1: Just map it out everybody.
- 33:23Speaker 2: They had a shootout in town, like just a sort
- 33:27Speaker 2: of a good old fashioned you know, meet in the
- 33:29Speaker 2: middle of town and had had guns drawn.
- 33:32Speaker 1: So there's a lot of variations on exactly what happened,
- 33:37Speaker 1: and we'll give you two of them. One, according to
- 33:39Speaker 1: the West Virginia Department of Culture, said that after they
- 33:44Speaker 1: evicted people from the tent city or the company homes,
- 33:48Speaker 1: those Baldwin Felts detectives actually went into town and had dinner,
- 33:52Speaker 1: and they were on their way to the train station
- 33:54Speaker 1: and they were going to catch the five o'clock train
- 33:56Speaker 1: out of town when they were approached by smiling City Hatfield,
- 34:01Speaker 1: and Hatfield said, hey, you didn't have any right whatsoever?
- 34:05Speaker 1: Do e vict those people? I have a warrant for
- 34:07Speaker 1: your arrest? And Albert Felt said, you know what, I've
- 34:11Speaker 1: got a warrant for your arrest. He might have even said,
- 34:14Speaker 1: uh uh first right. It just so happened that the
- 34:18Speaker 1: mayor of Maate, one Cabell Cornelius Testament CC Testament again
- 34:24Speaker 1: with the double C initials. Yeah, he was on the scene.
- 34:28Speaker 1: He was a good friend of Sid Hatfield's, and he said,
- 34:30Speaker 1: let me see that. He said, this is a fake,
- 34:32Speaker 1: This isn't actually a warrant for Sid Hatfield's arrest. And
- 34:34Speaker 1: by the way, you can't arrest the chief of police here,
- 34:38Speaker 1: so get out here. And while this was happening, a
- 34:43Speaker 1: bunch of miners who were armed had taken notice of
- 34:46Speaker 1: this confrontation that was taking place in the middle of
- 34:49Speaker 1: the street between a bunch of Baldwin Felts detectives, their
- 34:52Speaker 1: mayor and their police of chief of police, and so
- 34:56Speaker 1: they kind of armed themselves to see what happened. Somebody
- 35:00Speaker 1: fired a shot in all heck pro procluse.
- 35:05Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's from the mouth of JM Clark legendary podcast.
- 35:11Speaker 3: You ever gone by JM?
- 35:13Speaker 1: I tried to, you know, once or twice. It felt
- 35:15Speaker 1: I felt wrong.
- 35:17Speaker 3: I like that JM Clark, do you.
- 35:19Speaker 1: I don't like those two letters together. They're not great.
- 35:22Speaker 3: Oh, I think it's good. You don't. The guy's a ring.
- 35:25Speaker 1: No, it's like it's like missing a vowel, like Jim
- 35:28Speaker 1: JAM something like that. JM. It's not They're not cc CB, JB.
- 35:33Speaker 1: All those are pretty good. JM is not good, and
- 35:37Speaker 1: I'm sorry all the jm's out there.
- 35:39Speaker 2: I think JM Clark sounds like a high end pantmaker,
- 35:44Speaker 2: like a clothier or a habitasher.
- 35:46Speaker 1: I make only tattersol vests.
- 35:49Speaker 3: CW.
- 35:51Speaker 2: I would think that doesn't sound great, but my dad
- 35:53Speaker 2: called me CW, so it sort of has a ring
- 35:55Speaker 2: in my mind.
- 35:55Speaker 1: No, it does.
- 35:56Speaker 3: I don't think they flow really c W does c W?
- 35:59Speaker 3: All right?
- 36:00Speaker 1: Yes?
- 36:00Speaker 3: JAM does not well at any rate. I'm gonna come
- 36:04Speaker 3: over and have you fit me for some for a pant.
- 36:06Speaker 1: Well, that's fine. I'm gonna start calling you C dubs
- 36:09Speaker 1: from now on, S dubs.
- 36:12Speaker 2: So they're surrounded by the miners. This is as far
- 36:16Speaker 2: as the different accounts go, this sort of became a
- 36:19Speaker 2: gredo shot first deal and that someone fired a gun,
- 36:24Speaker 2: shootout happens. Seven of the detectives were killed, including Albert Feltz,
- 36:30Speaker 2: the brother of the founder of the agency.
- 36:32Speaker 1: Yeah, that's and Lee, I think too.
- 36:34Speaker 3: Oh do they both die? Yeah? Okay?
- 36:37Speaker 2: And Mayor Testamon was killed and two miners. And again,
- 36:42Speaker 2: depending on who you talk to, there's a historian that
- 36:45Speaker 2: LVIA found named Rebecca Bailey that told the Smithsonian that
- 36:50Speaker 2: Hatfield probably shot first or the miners. Other people say
- 36:55Speaker 2: that contemporaneous accounts at the time, at least from the
- 36:59Speaker 2: Willi News, is like the day after they said that
- 37:03Speaker 2: detectives took sid Smile and said into custody, and that
- 37:09Speaker 2: when Mayor Testerman came up and said, no, no, no, you've
- 37:12Speaker 2: got to release him, that that's when things broke out,
- 37:15Speaker 2: and that Testerman and Felts were shot first. Yeah, and
- 37:19Speaker 2: then the Baldwin Feltz thugs kind of got out of there.
- 37:23Speaker 2: Some of them tried to get across the river to Kentucky,
- 37:26Speaker 2: some made it, some got shot there. Some supposedly were
- 37:29Speaker 2: shot while they were running away, not across the river,
- 37:32Speaker 2: and then some of those that did make it came
- 37:34Speaker 2: back later, like under the cover of night to catch
- 37:37Speaker 2: a train and secret. So who knows how it actually
- 37:42Speaker 2: went down. We do know who died.
- 37:44Speaker 1: Though, Yeah, and there's still bullet holes in some of
- 37:49Speaker 1: the brick buildings on mate Street where the shootout happened.
- 37:52Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 37:52Speaker 1: I think they preserved him by putting brass plugs in them.
- 37:55Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, So however it happened, there was definitely
- 37:59Speaker 1: a shootout and a bunch of people died, and we're
- 38:02Speaker 1: left in the street until you know everybody. I mean,
- 38:05Speaker 1: you've got like the dead mayor, the chief of police
- 38:08Speaker 1: is involved. There's just so many dead people laying around
- 38:10Speaker 1: that it took a little while to get everything cleaned
- 38:12Speaker 1: up and orderly again. Apparently trains of people had started
- 38:17Speaker 1: arriving and we're like okay, and we get back on
- 38:19Speaker 1: the train. And that night actually they redirected trains through Matewan.
- 38:24Speaker 1: They ordered the trains not to stop in Matewand as
- 38:27Speaker 1: usual until the next day. So it was a really
- 38:30Speaker 1: really big deal and rumors started flying very quickly, and
- 38:35Speaker 1: probably the biggest one was that it was actually Sid
- 38:39Speaker 1: Hatfield who shot Mayor Testament and that the reason he
- 38:43Speaker 1: shot him was because Sid Hatfield had eyes for Testament's wife, Jesse. Yeah,
- 38:49Speaker 1: and they traced this rumor to Baldwin Feltz detectives.
- 38:53Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 38:54Speaker 1: Right, And so apparently at Hatfield's trial for this, by
- 38:59Speaker 1: the way, he was a quit by a very sympathetic jury,
- 39:02Speaker 1: as was all of the miners involved. A lot of
- 39:06Speaker 1: people stepped up and said, no, this is totally wrong.
- 39:08Speaker 1: These guys were really close friends. Of course, he's not
- 39:10Speaker 1: going to shoot him in retrospect, from my view, to
- 39:14Speaker 1: execute your romantic rival in the broad daylight in the
- 39:18Speaker 1: middle of the street anticipating a gunfight would be pretty
- 39:21Speaker 1: brazen and just hoping for the best. So I think,
- 39:24Speaker 1: just you know, the fact that there was no one
- 39:27Speaker 1: who even said, yeah, he actually did this, I saw
- 39:30Speaker 1: him do it. I think he probably didn't. But but
- 39:34Speaker 1: there is a little bit of there's a strange PostScript
- 39:37Speaker 1: to this story that does make you wonder a little bit.
- 39:40Speaker 2: Yeah, Sid Hatfield married the mayor's wife, Jesse, less than.
- 39:44Speaker 3: A month after this all went down.
- 39:46Speaker 1: Yes, and it does good.
- 39:48Speaker 3: It does make you wonder.
- 39:49Speaker 1: And to make it even more interesting, Jesse was a
- 39:53Speaker 1: direct descendant of Randolph McCoy No way, really, yeah, for real,
- 39:59Speaker 1: I mean this a place like right across the river
- 40:01Speaker 1: from where the Hatfields and the boys lived in Kentucky.
- 40:05Speaker 2: Wow, smiling said he just he did. He didn't give
- 40:08Speaker 2: a crud, did he.
- 40:09Speaker 1: He didn't give a root and toot and crud.
- 40:13Speaker 3: He didn't.
- 40:14Speaker 2: I believe even after the wedding they were getting their
- 40:18Speaker 2: marriage license and they were in Huntington staying at a hotel.
- 40:22Speaker 2: So this is pre wedding staying in the same room.
- 40:26Speaker 2: So you could get arrested for that kind of thing.
- 40:28Speaker 2: Back then it was called cohabitation, and the police arrested him,
- 40:32Speaker 2: and of course it was Tom Feltz who had tipped
- 40:34Speaker 2: them off. But apparently the judge said, no, don't worry
- 40:38Speaker 2: about it. You guys are getting married today, and who
- 40:42Speaker 2: wants to mess that up?
- 40:43Speaker 1: Right?
- 40:44Speaker 3: Then Tom felt said me right.
- 40:47Speaker 1: The judge's famous quote was mazel tov, right, you want
- 40:51Speaker 1: to take a break.
- 40:53Speaker 2: Yeah, let's take our other break and we'll we'll finish
- 40:55Speaker 2: up what happens right after this.
- 41:16Speaker 1: So, like I said, Hatfield was acquitted. His deputy Ed
- 41:21Speaker 1: Chambers was there too. He was acquitted. Seventeen miners all
- 41:24Speaker 1: acquitted because they were tried in Mingo County, which was
- 41:28Speaker 1: again not run by the coal companies.
- 41:32Speaker 2: So.
- 41:34Speaker 1: That really didn't sit well with Baldwin Felts with the
- 41:37Speaker 1: coal operators.
- 41:39Speaker 3: Around one to the miners basically.
- 41:40Speaker 1: For sure, that's a really great way to put it.
- 41:44Speaker 1: And like I said, uh, Sid Hatfield. And it turns
- 41:48Speaker 1: out also Ed Chambers were tried for blowing up a
- 41:52Speaker 1: coal tipple like I mentioned, and they were actually dealing
- 41:55Speaker 1: with this case, and this one had had been set
- 41:58Speaker 1: in McDowell County and they had petitioned Chambers in Hatfield
- 42:02Speaker 1: too for a change of venue because they're like, we're
- 42:04Speaker 1: gonna get the death sentence for this thing here, and
- 42:07Speaker 1: it was actually granted. For it to be granted, they
- 42:10Speaker 1: needed to show up to court in McDowell County one
- 42:12Speaker 1: more time before it was transferred over to I think
- 42:14Speaker 1: Mingo County. And on that day they went to court
- 42:17Speaker 1: with both of their wives, came out, and they were
- 42:20Speaker 1: gunned down in broad daylight by no less than ce Lively,
- 42:24Speaker 1: the anti union spy who was supposedly Sid Hatfield's close friend.
- 42:31Speaker 2: Yeah, and get this round one goes to the miners
- 42:35Speaker 2: because they were in a like you said, the local
- 42:38Speaker 2: jurors were more friendly to them. Round two goes to
- 42:42Speaker 2: the other side because the assassins said it was self
- 42:45Speaker 2: defense and they weren't convicted because it was a McDowell
- 42:48Speaker 2: county and it was more friendly toward the coal company exactly.
- 42:52Speaker 3: So these juries are just biased on both sides.
- 42:55Speaker 2: Basically, as far as Jesse goes, she's now been widowed twice,
- 43:00Speaker 2: and she remarried in January of twenty two.
- 43:03Speaker 3: But not to a hat Field or a Pinkerton of
- 43:07Speaker 3: the South.
- 43:08Speaker 1: No, but he was a state constable, so she liked
- 43:11Speaker 1: the I guess the elected official.
- 43:14Speaker 3: Men in uniform. Sure she should have made a baker then.
- 43:18Speaker 1: For sure, I'm going to do something different this time.
- 43:23Speaker 2: So this all, you know, that's round two, which was
- 43:25Speaker 2: pretty quick. This kind of instigated Round three, which was
- 43:31Speaker 2: the big one, which were the march on Logan County
- 43:35Speaker 2: and the Battle of Blair Mountain. Because of these murders,
- 43:39Speaker 2: the Unionist and the miner sent some demands to the
- 43:43Speaker 2: governor Ephraim Morgan at this point and said, hey, this
- 43:48Speaker 2: Baldwin Felts group of thugs are violent and they're doing
- 43:52Speaker 2: things that are illegal and this can't stand.
- 43:56Speaker 3: But Morgan.
- 43:57Speaker 2: Of course everyone was in the pocket of somebody, yeah,
- 43:59Speaker 2: was an anti union Republican and said didn't even acknowledge it,
- 44:03Speaker 2: didn't even make a comment on the assassination, and took
- 44:06Speaker 2: no action on this list of demands at all.
- 44:09Speaker 1: So two things about Governor Morgan. One, while he was governor,
- 44:13Speaker 1: a US Senate Committee on Labor issued an opinion that
- 44:18Speaker 1: West Virginia was nothing more than an industrial autocracy and
- 44:23Speaker 1: that the governor was basically there strictly for the benefit
- 44:27Speaker 1: of the coal operators. And then number two, when he
- 44:30Speaker 1: was elected, the reason he won is because he ran
- 44:33Speaker 1: against three other progressives who were pro labor, and they
- 44:37Speaker 1: split that vote. He was the only anti labor guy,
- 44:41Speaker 1: and if you put their votes together, he would have
- 44:43Speaker 1: been beaten badly. But they split the vote, and that
- 44:48Speaker 1: led this anti labor guy to become governor. And it
- 44:52Speaker 1: reveals something really important that the people, the general voter
- 44:57Speaker 1: out there in West Virginia was pro labor, was in
- 45:01Speaker 1: favor of miners, was in favor of unions, was not
- 45:03Speaker 1: in favor of anti union conservatives. And just put put
- 45:08Speaker 1: that in your pocket for later, because it's a really
- 45:10Speaker 1: important point.
- 45:11Speaker 3: That's right front pocket even I think.
- 45:14Speaker 1: Is the front pocket of your ted or sal vest.
- 45:17Speaker 3: That's right right beside your pocket watch. Sure, all right.
- 45:22Speaker 2: So, because of the non action by the governor on
- 45:26Speaker 2: August of nineteen twenty one, ten thousand that's right, ten
- 45:31Speaker 2: thousand miners came to town, to Marmott, which is eight
- 45:35Speaker 2: miles south of Charleston, armed a lot, most of them armed.
- 45:40Speaker 2: Imagine everyone who had a gun had their gun definitely,
- 45:43Speaker 2: and they were trying to you know, avenge obviously the
- 45:46Speaker 2: deaths of Hatfield and Chambers, and they wanted to confront
- 45:50Speaker 2: this sheriff there in Logan County. His name was Don Schaffin,
- 45:54Speaker 2: and they also wanted and he was a minor guy,
- 45:58Speaker 2: so it was sort of all in the same bucket.
- 46:00Speaker 2: And they wanted to free some miners that were jailed
- 46:02Speaker 2: in Mingo County. So Governor Morgan finally steps in and Chaffin,
- 46:09Speaker 2: that sheriff I was just talking about, from Logan County.
- 46:12Speaker 2: He got a bunch of deputies together, got a bunch
- 46:14Speaker 2: of anti union civilians together, got their guns, and got
- 46:19Speaker 2: up on the ridge line at Blair Mountain because the marchers,
- 46:22Speaker 2: you know, heading into town had to go through there.
- 46:24Speaker 3: And this was a This was a war.
- 46:27Speaker 2: I mean, it was several days of gunfire, gapland guns,
- 46:32Speaker 2: machine guns, rifles. They had airplanes dropping shrapnel bombs and
- 46:37Speaker 2: dropping gas bombs, like gases that would make you nauseous
- 46:40Speaker 2: and stuff like that.
- 46:41Speaker 1: There was a guy on a horse with a tri dent.
- 46:45Speaker 3: I'm not gonna ask if that's for you, okay.
- 46:49Speaker 2: But it was several days of like a legit real
- 46:52Speaker 2: war such that the President of the United States, Warren Harding,
- 46:56Speaker 2: had to come in and send it. Well, it didn't
- 46:59Speaker 2: come in like literally, but sent in federal troops in
- 47:02Speaker 2: his stead right, and the Union surrendered. They were obviously
- 47:09Speaker 2: outgunned by that point, but a lot of them were veterans,
- 47:12Speaker 2: like army veterans, and so when they called in the army,
- 47:14Speaker 2: they were like, I'm not going to go to war
- 47:16Speaker 2: against my army that I served.
- 47:18Speaker 1: In, right. And so even though the miners didn't make
- 47:21Speaker 1: it to hang Don Chaffin, and they didn't make it
- 47:24Speaker 1: to free the miners in Mingo County, they still considered
- 47:28Speaker 1: this a win. Apparently, on the way back from town
- 47:31Speaker 1: or from the fight, one of the miners leaned out
- 47:34Speaker 1: of a passing street car and said it was Uncle
- 47:37Speaker 1: Sam did it. And they were saying, like, we surrendered
- 47:40Speaker 1: only two federal troops who were sympathetic with we. We
- 47:43Speaker 1: didn't surrender to Baldwin Felts detectives, we didn't surrender to Chaffin,
- 47:47Speaker 1: we didn't surrender the mine operators. It was strictly because
- 47:50Speaker 1: federal troops came that we we said, okay, because we're
- 47:53Speaker 1: not gonna we have no beef with the federal government,
- 47:55Speaker 1: so we're not going to fight them. So it was
- 47:57Speaker 1: actually generally it was pre much a win for the
- 48:01Speaker 1: miners for sure, and it definitely helped catalyze the organizing
- 48:06Speaker 1: that went on. I saw that right after sid Haffield
- 48:11Speaker 1: was gonned down. I think they reached like ninety percent
- 48:15Speaker 1: of miners had signed on for the union in the area,
- 48:20Speaker 1: and this just helped catalyze it even further. The thing
- 48:25Speaker 1: is is that the coal mine operators didn't give up
- 48:28Speaker 1: at all. They continued their tactics trying to break strikes
- 48:33Speaker 1: and break up the unions, and they actually proved to
- 48:36Speaker 1: be very successful. There was a drop in union membership
- 48:41Speaker 1: from the United Mineworkers Association from five hundred thousand and
- 48:45Speaker 1: nineteen twenty shortly after the events we've just described to
- 48:48Speaker 1: one hundred thousand in nineteen twenty nine, not because people
- 48:52Speaker 1: lost interest in unionizing or having better working conditions, but
- 48:56Speaker 1: because the mine operators ratcheted up the heat, both politically
- 49:01Speaker 1: and violently to make that happen.
- 49:06Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 49:06Speaker 2: Absolutely, But while they while the unions sort of lost
- 49:10Speaker 2: the battle in that nine year period, they won the
- 49:13Speaker 2: overall war eventually because what it also did was just
- 49:16Speaker 2: sort of draw more attention to this kind of stuff,
- 49:19Speaker 2: and it was you know, national news and all of
- 49:22Speaker 2: these sort of militant anti union ideas were I think
- 49:30Speaker 2: as far as the American public goes were like, you know,
- 49:32Speaker 2: this is no good. And FDR comes in and says like,
- 49:35Speaker 2: hey guys, we need a new deal, and they're like, okay,
- 49:38Speaker 2: what should we call it? And he went how about
- 49:40Speaker 2: the new deal? And all of a sudden, you know,
- 49:43Speaker 2: unions had a I mean, I guess you could say
- 49:47Speaker 2: that had an easier time. They definitely weren't being intimidated.
- 49:50Speaker 2: I mean, their unions are still intimidated, but not in
- 49:53Speaker 2: the ways they were in the you know, turn of
- 49:55Speaker 2: the century through the nineteen twenties.
- 49:57Speaker 1: Yeah, remember when I said Governor Morgan was elected but
- 50:00Speaker 1: not by any sort of popular vote, and that the
- 50:02Speaker 1: will of the people actually was pro union. Thanks to
- 50:06Speaker 1: the United Mind Workers Association and some of the other unions,
- 50:10Speaker 1: that voice was elevated into national politics and it actually
- 50:15Speaker 1: ended up taking over the show, getting FDR elected, and
- 50:18Speaker 1: then working directly with FDR to get the new deal passed,
- 50:21Speaker 1: to get the labor union strength and to get better
- 50:25Speaker 1: benefits and working conditions for union members. And not just
- 50:29Speaker 1: union members, the unions had a knock on effect for
- 50:34Speaker 1: other workers who weren't even unionized because it it forced
- 50:38Speaker 1: the mine operators to improve conditions across the board, so
- 50:42Speaker 1: it benefited workers who hadn't even joined the union. And
- 50:47Speaker 1: the wages had to get competitive all of a sudden too,
- 50:50Speaker 1: so that benefited everyone as well. It's really difficult to
- 50:53Speaker 1: overstate the effect that the United Mind Workers' Union had,
- 50:58Speaker 1: like it was an enormously on the future of America. Yeah,
- 51:02Speaker 1: not just in southern West Virginia, but yes, in America.
- 51:04Speaker 1: They went on to form the CIO as an AFL CIO,
- 51:09Speaker 1: which organized industrial workers like the people who put together
- 51:13Speaker 1: stuff using the raw material that people like the miners
- 51:16Speaker 1: dug out of the ground and that had a huge
- 51:18Speaker 1: effect as well. So it was a really really big deal,
- 51:23Speaker 1: these mine wars that took place in southern West Virginia
- 51:26Speaker 1: and the effect that they had across the rest of
- 51:28Speaker 1: the country.
- 51:29Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely. They also went on to found the NFL
- 51:32Speaker 3: and the NBA and the C. W.
- 51:36Speaker 1: Bryant.
- 51:37Speaker 3: That's right in the J. M.
- 51:38Speaker 2: Clark as far as Baldwin felt, that company, that agency.
- 51:43Speaker 2: They operated for about fifteen years after that, not nearly
- 51:47Speaker 2: as sort of young in Busting.
- 51:49Speaker 3: Public eye sort of spectacle, a little quieter.
- 51:52Speaker 2: But when Baldwin and Felts both died within a year
- 51:56Speaker 2: and a half of each other in nineteen thirty six,
- 51:59Speaker 2: they folded for good. Rich dudes made a ton of money, obviously,
- 52:04Speaker 2: And I suggest seeing mate one that the John Sales
- 52:07Speaker 2: movie from nineteen eighty seven is really good. It's a
- 52:09Speaker 2: fictionalized version. There are a few characters, believe test the
- 52:17Speaker 2: Mayor is in it, and ce Lively is in it,
- 52:20Speaker 2: and a couple of others, but like the main players,
- 52:24Speaker 2: like Chris Cooper's is the lead, it's a fictionalized character.
- 52:28Speaker 2: But this is a really good movie. John Sales is
- 52:30Speaker 2: a great filmmaker.
- 52:31Speaker 1: Yeah, and it wrote and directed right in a nice
- 52:35Speaker 1: little PostScript to all of this is found with ce Lively. Apparently,
- 52:39Speaker 1: his usefulness ran its course after he was revealed to
- 52:43Speaker 1: not be an actual friend to the miners, and he
- 52:46Speaker 1: was no longer employed by Baldwin Feltz and by nineteen
- 52:48Speaker 1: twenty seven he had gone back to mining and was destitute.
- 52:53Speaker 1: That kind of thing makes you feel good.
- 52:55Speaker 3: Yeah, what about his restaurant?
- 52:59Speaker 1: It was shut down for health code violations. Somebody found
- 53:03Speaker 1: p in the suit. Oh my god, it was terrible.
- 53:07Speaker 3: I'm that old bag.
- 53:08Speaker 1: No, someone put their foot in the Brunswick Stew.
- 53:11Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, you remember that.
- 53:13Speaker 1: Well, I just listened to that. It's coming out as
- 53:15Speaker 1: a select I think sometimes that's okay.
- 53:17Speaker 3: Yeah, our foot in Brunswicks Dow episode.
- 53:20Speaker 1: Well, since Chuck referenced to our foot in Brunswicks Tew episode,
- 53:23Speaker 1: I think everybody we can all agree that it's time
- 53:25Speaker 1: for listener mail.
- 53:29Speaker 3: I'm gonna call this Josh correction. Sorry.
- 53:33Speaker 1: That seems to be like a good fifty percent of
- 53:36Speaker 1: our listener mail these days.
- 53:39Speaker 3: Well, I don't talk as much. I'm smart. I keep
- 53:42Speaker 3: my trap shut.
- 53:43Speaker 2: Okay, Hey, guys wanted to write in a clear up
- 53:46Speaker 2: Josh's conception of Catalina Island. It was my home away
- 53:49Speaker 2: from home for almost twenty years. My husband and I
- 53:52Speaker 2: lived on our forty four foot sloop and of moored
- 53:56Speaker 2: in that harbor many times, probably even the same morning
- 53:59Speaker 2: where the splendor had more in nineteen eighty one. And
- 54:01Speaker 2: of course this is referencing our Natalie Wood episode which time, Yeah,
- 54:09Speaker 2: the show's so nice, they released it thrice. Josh depicted
- 54:14Speaker 2: the location as a place where rich people go in
- 54:16Speaker 2: their yachts to party yacht to yacht. In reality, it's
- 54:18Speaker 2: more like camping at an RV park. Boats as small
- 54:21Speaker 2: as twenty feet sail over to twin harbors on Catalina
- 54:24Speaker 2: and the occupants all dine at Doug Harbor's Reef, which
- 54:27Speaker 2: is the only restaurant there.
- 54:29Speaker 3: The city of Avalon is the South.
- 54:31Speaker 2: Of France type place, but the isthmus of Catalina is
- 54:34Speaker 2: a boater's campground.
- 54:35Speaker 3: A couple of things.
- 54:36Speaker 2: I'll chime in about one and our experience. There's never
- 54:39Speaker 2: been a power voter that thought twice about disturbing their
- 54:43Speaker 2: anchorage neighbors with floodlights and generators and loud music.
- 54:46Speaker 3: And two.
- 54:46Speaker 2: As for the people who heard cries of help, I
- 54:49Speaker 2: wonder if they were actually downwind or upwind of the splendor.
- 54:51Speaker 2: Because sound travels very well across water, perhaps the dinghy
- 54:55Speaker 2: was actually very far away when they heard these cries.
- 54:58Speaker 2: Just curious part of the stuff you should know family.
- 55:02Speaker 1: Kathy with a K, oh, I wonder if that's Kathy
- 55:05Speaker 1: with the K who gave us lassos in Arizona.
- 55:08Speaker 3: Oh, is that Kathy with a K? You know? I
- 55:11Speaker 3: got my lasso hanging up at the camp still.
- 55:13Speaker 1: And that tracks people who have lassos also might have
- 55:17Speaker 1: spent a portion of their life living on the sailboat.
- 55:20Speaker 3: Uh huh.
- 55:20Speaker 1: So okay, if that's you, Kathy with the K, how
- 55:23Speaker 1: are you? Good to hear from you? And if you're
- 55:25Speaker 1: not the same Kathy with the K, good to hear
- 55:27Speaker 1: from you as well. Thanks for that. I love being corrected.
- 55:31Speaker 1: Even though you could make a case that partying from
- 55:35Speaker 1: RV to RV at RV park is a very celebrity
- 55:38Speaker 1: thing to do these days, that's fine, We'll go with
- 55:41Speaker 1: your interpretation of it, all right. Well, if you want
- 55:44Speaker 1: to get in touch with this, like Kathy with the K,
- 55:46Speaker 1: did you can send us an email to stuff podcast
- 55:49Speaker 1: at iHeartRadio dot com.
- 55:53Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
- 55:56Speaker 3: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app podcasts,
- 56:00Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.