A decade before the Battle of Blair Mountain, there was the Battle of Mucklow and the Paint and Cabin Creek Wars. 1912 saw the start of a bloody armed conflict between West Virginia’s union miners and the bosses and their gun thugs in the Kanawha River valley of West Virginia.

‘Cabin Creek’ by Price Williams from International Socialist Review. Vol. 14 No. 2. August, 1913.

THE subservient newspapers of West Virginia have been displaying lurid dispatches of those “lawless strikers on Cabin Creek” again. The strikers are represented as having broken the terms of the “settlement” and using force to get other miners to strike. I have been with the miners in the midst of Cabin Creek District during and previous to the two reigns of martial rule and I know they do not shoot fellow men who fail to see everything in the same light. They will, however, shoot to protect their families, lives and home when the supposed-to-be legal guardians lie down on their job and fail to protect human life.

Among decent men in Cabin Creek there is a continuous “open season” on those two-legged inhuman brutes, the mine guards. It is a last resort. The Kanawha Co. officials claim they know who is now shooting up the scenery in Cabin Creek and promise indictments. I hope they get them, for the strikers are not shooting their laboring comrades from ambush even if they have been bulldozed or misled into working. The West Virginia strike never reached its enormous proportions through force among the workers. The leaders among the men (not the U.M.W. officials) know that their hope lies in reason.

The light of publicity on the Baldwin-Feltz Agency has resulted in a diminution of their power in the Cabin Creek field, though they are stronger than ever in the New River-Winding Gulf field of the young District 29.

The Baldwin Agency must now show how reckless the miners in Cabin Creek become when relieved of their depressing personal influence. Hence the renewed firing in the hills and the reports to the press. The strikers, although as unsettled as they were, are not forced to use guns now. Thanks to the effects of publicity and the Senatorial investigation.

The miners in Cabin Creek have not submitted to an odious and enforced settlement, despite all press reports which have been issued, but they are no longer helpless, and the Baldwin-Feltz Agency no longer reigns supreme in Cabin Creek District.

The official “settlement” of the strike was never sanctioned by the privates in the miners’ union. They who are fearless in the face of the death traps of coal mines were not bluffed by H.D. Hatfield’s ultimatum.

I was in Cabin Creek District April 28-30 after two weeks in the New River Field. Most of the men had heard of the official settlement and the general comment was: “What have we gained? The state law, enforced, gives us all that and more.” The more optimistic thought the settlement by the U.M.W. officials was to allow the strikers to rest and so they did not at once protest except among themselves. When the Labor Argus published its statement about “Haggerty as a Traitor,” they had good reason to believe it might be so. The Argus had been with them in the thick of the fight and they knew that it told the truth no matter whom it might strike.

If Haggerty is not a traitor, he is playing a game too deep for average intelligence to comprehend. He must prove his honesty at once or become an outcast among laboring men. Of course one who has rendered a service to the interests, as he has done, will be well taken care of. While the gods of greed have use for a traitor they pay him well.

The miners of Cabin Creek had struggled for over a year and for the principle of the cause were willing to continue their great struggle.

But they must sign a statement and go back to the mines with nothing gained. Haggerty had arranged it. It was the Interests that cried for the much-lauded peace. They could see that a continuance of the miners determined stand was bound to win.

But the West Virginia miners see a light in the fact that Thos. P. Haggerty is not the United Mine Workers themselves. They know that laboring men are helping laboring men and the “man behind” will have more influence in the great result than the man at the head who plays for peace and a “settlement” where none can be.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v14n02-aug-1913-ISR-gog-ocr.pdf