On July 6 an old woman alighted from the train in Charlestown. She had now reached her eighty-third year and during the greater part of her life she had been the heart and center of the great industrial battles of the country. The country had come to know her as “the angel of the miners,” and her boys, as shecalled the miners, as “Mother” Jones. For years she had gone where men had not dared to venture. She had faced guns, thwarted conspiracies, partaken of bull-pen fare, but, as this gray-haired old woman with a grandmotherly face, she was planning for the greatest battle of her life. She knew the West Virginia coal fields and the conditions. She had been there before. And she realized that the representatives of feudalism were preparing to exterminate unionism and establish gun-men rule in Paint Creek as across the ridge. She was a strategist. She had no faith in defensive warfare. She proposed to force the fighting, to sustain unionism in Paint Creek and carry it across the ridge.
Having decided upon this counter movement she quietly arranged for an initial demonstration that would awaken the public to what was going on. One day the city of Charlestown was startled to see an old woman leading three thousand miners through the streets to the state house, and bearing banners to the effect that the gun-men had to go. The men were sober and orderly—she had seen to that. Governor Glasscock saw her. She served notice upon him. Calling attention to the inscription in front of the state house, “Mountaineers are Always Free,” she told the governor, that the boast would be made to stand the test of reality. And she gave the governor twenty-four hours to get rid of the gun-men. Andif the state failed to rid the mining region of these guards she told him boldly that the miners would. The gun-men did not go in twenty-four hours. It was now evident that the state, organized for the protection of society, would not intervene and rid the commonwealth of these ruffian mercenaries. The miners determined that they would no longer be terrorized, beaten, robbed, their wives and daughters should no longer be insulted and cuffed about, their constitutional rights no longer disregarded. And while they had no thought in the beginning of civil war they now proceeded to arm themselves—to do for themselves what the state had refused to do for them. In less than three weeks after “Mother” Jones had served notice on the governor, the miners, infuriated at the prodding of the gun-men, entrenched at Mucklow, moved upon the stronghold of the enemy with such fury that the pitched battle resulting left the guards in danger of annihilation. The state now became alarmed. This was serious. And the governor hurried the state militia to the scene in special trains. The militia now proceeded to disarm both sides.
During the first week in August, “Mother” Jones, taking her life in her hands, invaded Cabin Creek, and in the early afternoon called a meeting of the miners at Eskdale.
And that afternoon she organized them into theunion and swore them to the oath of the United Mine Workers. The men were instantly discharged and told to “go to ‘Mother’ Jones for work.” A week later another meeting was held at Eskdale and when eighty Baldwins attempted to prevent the meeting they were put to flight by five hundred armed miners. This was followed by evictions, and West Virginia was in a state of civil war.
To the gun-men and the coal barons “Mother” Jones became a pet abomination. The brutal treatment accorded her by the guards has seldom been equaled in the case of a woman. Meanwhile martial law had been declared.
Realizing the necessity of informing and arousing the country on the conditions, “Mother” Jones left for a speaking tour which included the city of Washington. It was unnecessary. The operators had planned something much better for that purpose.
The miners’ tented camp at Holly Grove had become an eyesore to the representatives of feudalism. They determined to wipe it out and thus terrorize the strikers into submission. Their plan was diabolical, medieval in its brutality. An armored train was equipped at Huntington, W. Va., for the purpose. On the night of February 7, 1913, the special crew went aboard.
The miners were peacefully in their tents or houses that night, many asleep, when between ten and eleven o’clock the armored train moved slowly at a speed of about seven miles an hour through Holly Grove pouring a fusillade of bullets upon the unsuspecting and unprepared inhabitants. Cesco Estep, who was sitting with his family by the fire when the shooting began, called upon his family to take refuge in the cellar and led the way. He fell dead a few feet from the cellar door. His wife, who was about to become a mother, fled for her life. One woman was shot in the feet. About fifteen shots passed through the Estep house, which sheltered women and children that night. The woman was shot in her own home. Bullets passed through many houses and tents, setting fire to a store, and the marvel was that many were not murdered. The miners, as quickly as they could recover from their surprise, in a few instances returned the fire, and this was the occasion for much indignation in the capital, where it was understood that the miners had brutally attacked an armored train. The train passed on and was dismounted in the C. & O. shops in Richmond. This incident was something novel in the history of industrial warfare in America.
The following evening “Mother” Jones went to Hansford to see what arrangements had been madefor the burial of the murdered man and what could be done for the widow and orphans. The miners there, expecting a visit from the train later, had taken precautions to prepare. There was some excitement. Later that evening “Mother” Jones went to Charlestown. Meanwhile troops had been sent into the mining section, martial law had been declared, and miners were being arrested in numbers. Hearing of the intense excitement at a mining camp known as Bloomer, where the majority of the miners were Italians, “Mother” Jones called a meeting there with the view to preventing them from taking extreme measures. The excitement was so intense that she adjourned the meeting until the next morning at Long Acre, a few miles distant. Having impressed them with the thought that lawlessness would be a play into the hands of the enemy, she had them select a committee to call upon the governor with a request for the release of their fellow workers. She paid their fares to Charlestown. When she reached Charlestown she was taken into custody by local officers, taken to a justice of the peace court where a warrant was sworn out against her, conveyed across the river to a C. & O. train, carried twenty-two miles into the martial law zone, and turned over to the military authorities. There this venerable woman was placed in a room in the house of a poor miner where the only furniture in the room was a small lounge, onwhich she slept, a small table and two rocking chairs, with no wash bowl. For eight weeks, day and night, two or three militiamen marched around the house keeping guard. No one was permitted to see her. Newspaper men were especially taboo.
And she was to be tried before a drumhead courtmartial, with all the civil courts open, on a charge of murder! Others were included in the charge. The miners who had fled from Holly Grove to Hansford after the attack, had set out to capture a machine gun near Mucklow, and in the pitched battle the bookkeeper of a coal company was killed. There was no concern over the murder of Estep. The killing of the bookkeeper was followed by the arrest of more than a hundred miners—and “Mother” Jones.
We now enter upon the most startling feature of the feudalism of West Virginia in the coal districts. It was soon made evident to the thoughtful that the system was in position to enforce darkness. With pitched battles, armored trains, murdered women, there was little or nothing about it in the press of the country. But when the story that a woman of the celebrity of “Mother” Jones, loved by millions among the toilers, was to be tried for her life before a drumhead courtmartial was told in less than a dozen lines, the system made a fatal blunder. That little lightillumined the darkness. Senator Kern, reading these few lines in theWashington Post, expressed his amazement to those in his office that so little information was furnished. Far out in San Francisco, Fremont Older, the fighting editor ofThe Bulletin, who had been one of the leaders in the movement that destroyed the Schmitz boodle brigade and sent Abe Reuf to the penitentiary, talked it over with his clever wife and decided that she should go at once to West Virginia and ascertain by personal observation the occasion for the silence. The story of Mrs. Older was soon told inCollier’s Weekly—a brief, gripping, startling story of an unthinkable situation for America.
The darkness gave such light that magazines took steps to secure articles concerning an unparalleled condition. Harold E. West’s startling story of “Civil War in West Virginia” appeared inThe Surveyin early April. An even more amazing story from M. Michelson, under the satiric title, “Sweet Land of Liberty,” appeared in the May number ofEverybody’s Magazine.Collier’s Weeklygave its readers Mrs. Older’s story about the middle of April. The country began to wonder—and to wait.
Meanwhile the most dangerous and startling evil in the situation—the power of the governor to trample upon the constitutional rights of the people of his state, to ignore the civil courts when they were insession, and try men and women for their lives by a military tribunal—was vigorously contested in the Supreme Court of Appeals in the now famous habeas corpus cases of Mays and Nance and a little later in the cases of Jones, Boswell, Batley and Paulson. The constitution of West Virginia was explicit and emphatic on the point, but the court decided that the constitutional rights of citizens could be brushed aside. A more remarkable decision has probably never been handed down by any American tribunal. How remarkable the world was permitted to understand through the vigorous and indignant dissenting opinion of Judge Ira E. Robinson.
And yet for three months this military tribunal sat at Pratt on Paint Creek sending men to the penitentiary and jail and fixing penalties in many cases in excess of those fixed by the statute with the approval of the then Governor Glasscock.
It was long after her release that “Mother” Jones found that she had been sentenced to the penitentiary for five years and that several of the men had been sentenced to twenty years. She went back to her prison.
Senator Kern introduced his famous Paint Creek resolution in the senate, on the request of representatives of the United Mine Workers, on April 12, 1913.He did not at that time have the slightest idea of the tremendous importance of his act. The disclosures made to him were so unusual as to convince him that light could do no harm, and his confidence in the judgment of William B. Wilson, then secretary of labor in the cabinet of the president, who had introduced a similar resolution in the House, and of Senator Borah, who had presented such a resolution in the Senate in the preceding session, was such that he did not hesitate in acceding to the request. But he was not to be left long in the dark as to the significance attached to his resolution by many of the most powerful financial elements in the country. The original resolutions directed that an investigation should be instituted to ascertain whether or not a system of peonage was maintained in the coal fields of West Virginia; whether or not access to the post-offices in these coal fields was ever denied miners, and if so, by whom; whether or not the immigration laws of the country were being violated; in the event that any such conditions existed, what could be done to remedy them, whether the commissioner of labor or any other government official could be of service in adjusting the strike, and whether or not parties were being convicted and punished in violation of the laws of the United States. This resolution was offered on April 12. The following six weeks wereto astonish the senator in the disclosures of the resources and ramifications of the representatives of feudalism in West Virginia.
Taking its natural course the resolution went first to the committee of the senate on contingent expenses, and here the system first became active. One of the operators of West Virginia, a former member of the senate, wired former colleagues protesting any investigation. It was sixteen days before the committee submitted back a favorable report with certain amendments, and while there was nothing on the surface during these sixteen days to indicate that a bitter battle was being fought, it was impressed upon Senator Kern in many ways. It was not until May 9, or twenty-seven days after the resolution was presented, that the resolution really got before the senate in shape for discussion. Meanwhile the author of the resolution was learning things concerning conditions in the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek region. Letters and telegrams by the hundreds poured in upon him from people in all walks of life familiar with those conditions, miners, merchants, lawyers, school teachers, telegraph operators, former legislators, and the striking feature of these letters was the request that their names be protected from publicity. The merchant frankly feared a boycott, the lawyer social ostracism, the teacher a discharge from his position, the operator the blacklist of the railroad, the formerofficials political destruction, but all united in one common story—a story of such unthinkable lawlessness and cruelty as to be almost past belief. Newspaper men who had attempted to enter the field to ascertain the real conditions and had been met at the train by the armed guards and sent on about their business, added their story. Mrs. Fremont Older, who had been both a witness and for a time a victim of the system, went to Washington and told him her story—a story calculated to outrage any man of the legal profession who entertained the slightest regard for the courts or the constitution. Representatives of the United Mine Workers armed him with plenty of ammunition from their arsenal. But even before the miners’ side of the story had been impressed upon him Senator Kern was convinced of the imperative necessity for the investigation by the nature and persistence of the opposition. Men with no apparent interests in the coal fields not citizens of West Virginia began to wire and phone their importunities to drop the proposed investigation. Many railroad officials seemed morbidly concerned. The highest financial circles of New York City brought every possible influence to bear. Being a man of more than ordinary perspicacity the grave concern of these men opened to the senator a broad vista. The climax of this campaign to influence him to drop the fight came when an old and valued friend in New YorkCity connected with one of the greatest financial groups of that city called him on the phone in an effort to dissuade him.
“I will see you in hell first,” was the reply as Kern slammed up the receiver.
As usual with men of this type their vaulting ambition overleaped itself. Meanwhile Governor Haywood of West Virginia, elected to succeed Glasscock on the pledge to eliminate the armed thugs called guards, gave an interview to the press which was sent throughout the country attacking Kern in the most bitter language.
Thus at a time when the public, kept in the dark as to the horrible conditions in West Virginia through the deliberate suppression of the most sensational news, Kern was being pilloried throughout the country as a demagogic sensationalist, in league with lawlessness, and not above stooping to ordinary falsehoods. The conservative element, prone to suspect all strikers, and exonerate all against whom strikes are aimed, was being prejudiced against him. The masses of the people were not aroused because they did not have the facts. The most powerful influences were in league against him. And the whisper went about the corridors of the capital that the resolution was a deadly blow at the rights of the states, and was only the beginning of more dangerous encroachments upon state sovereignty. Mr. Kernhad only entered upon his work as senate leader and his personal, and especially his political enemies, knowing little and caring less about the merits of the resolution, and convinced that it could never pass the senate, were already gloating over his humiliation, and preparing to herald it as an early repudiation of his leadership by his party.
Never before in the history of the United States senate in a straight contest between the lowly or the workers and the great financial interests had the workers won—and the politicians were judging the future by the past.
But on the very day that Haywood issued his scurrilous statement an historic telegram was placed in the hands of Kern which did much to turn the tide. This telegram has its own story.
One day in early May, Mother Jones, enjoying life in “the pleasant boarding house in a private family on the banks of the Kanawha river,” was startled by some one throwing into the open window of the room where “she was detained but in no sense confined” beyond the fact that armed sentinels saw to it that she did not leave the room, a copy ofThe Cincinnati Post. Opening the paper she found under glaring headlines the story of the battle in the senate of which she had been in utter ignorance. This article told ofthe bitter fight being made against the Kern resolution, of the long distance call to Kern from New York City, and of the senator’s indignant response, “I’ll see you in hell first.” And she realized that if the battle in the senate was lost the cause of the miners in West Virginia would be set back for a generation. She did not know Kern—had never met him. The thought came to her that she should write him of the real conditions. Then she readThe Postarticle again in which the comment was made that the New York financiers “did not write, did not telegraph—they took the quickest way to reach him.” A letter—it might never reach him, and everything might be lost in the meanwhile. She decided to send a telegram. And she wrote:
Hansford, West Virginia, May 4.Senator Kern, care Senate Chamber, Washington,D. C.:From out of the military bastile, where I have been forced to pass my eighty-first milestone of life, I plead with you for the honor of this nation. I send you groans and tears of men, women and children as I have heard them in this state, and beg you to force that investigation. Children yet unborn will rise and bless you.Mother Jones.
Hansford, West Virginia, May 4.Senator Kern, care Senate Chamber, Washington,D. C.:
From out of the military bastile, where I have been forced to pass my eighty-first milestone of life, I plead with you for the honor of this nation. I send you groans and tears of men, women and children as I have heard them in this state, and beg you to force that investigation. Children yet unborn will rise and bless you.
Mother Jones.
Reading it critically she concluded that the words “military bastile” might smack of pose and she substituted “military prison walls.”
The next problem was how to get the telegram to Washington. The poor people at whose home she was “detained” were friendly to her and her cause, although this was not known to the authorities. Early during her incarceration she had thought it possible that she might be in need of communication with the outside world and with the aid of the head of the house a part of the flooring had been cut, and an empty bottle was suspended by a wire into the cellar. It was the understanding that at the sound of a bell with which she had been furnished the man should go to the cellar, where he would find a communication in the bottle. Into this bottle she stuffed the telegram with a note of instructions to deliver it to an operator who was friendly some distance away with the message from her to “get it to Washington if it is the last thing you do in life.” Some time later the messenger returned with the message from the operator—“Tell Mother Jones that telegram will be in Washington before you get back.” And it was.
That telegram was instantly given to the press and flashed over the country. It created consternation in Charlestown. It threw open the prison doors to the venerable woman. One of the military men at Pratt was instructed from the state house by phone to conduct Mother Jones to the capital by the first train. Reaching Charlestown she was taken before the governor and treated with exceptional courtesy.
She was permitted to spend the night in the hotel in Charlestown where she was accustomed to stopping. Immediately afterward at a miners’ convention in the city she was instructed by John P. White, president of the United Mine Workers, to go to Washington and give all possible aid to Kern in his fight.
And thus she went, without having been formally set at liberty and without knowing what the sentence of the military tribunal had been.
Reaching Washington she went into conference immediately with Kern, and the following day found her, loaded down with letters to senators from Secretary of Labor Wilson, trudging the interminable marble corridors of the senate office building, informing senators individually and at length of the conditions in West Virginia. At times her eighty-odd years bore heavily upon her and worn and weary she would return to Kern’s office, sink exhausted into a chair for a rest of a few minutes—then on her way again.
The most impressive and effective lobbyist that ever trod the stones of the capital was this old woman.
Senator Kern in opening the debate on the “Kern resolution” on May 9th asked that “this investigation proceed that the full light may be let in on this foulspot and that all the facts bearing on these questions may be brought out to the end that wrongs, if they exist, may be righted, and that any men who are unjustly accused may be vindicated.”
Five days went by before the resolution was again considered by the senate. In the meanwhile the country was awakening to the significance of the fight and Kern was able to present scores of letters, telegrams, petitions from miners of West Virginia and elsewhere, and a striking telegram from the victims of militarism then held in the jail at Clarksburg, West Virginia, “stripped of constitutional rights, denied a jury trial, forced to face a drumhead court martial, deprived of their citizenship, reduced to subjects and thrown into jail.” This resulted in the renewal of the discussion and Senator Kern said:
“I had a telegram the other day from a leader of Socialism denunciatory of these conditions. When I showed it to a senator here he deprecated the idea that there was such relationship between me and that man that he would feel free to telegraph me. Men are being imprisoned in West Virginia to-day because they are Socialists; newspapers are being suppressed because they teach the doctrines of Socialism; men are discharged from mines, according to the testimony taken before the military commission, because they vote the Socialist ticket and because they belong to a labor union; and while the doctrine of judicial recall gains favor with the people whose rights arestricken down by unjust decisions, so do the forces of Socialism multiply in such breeding grounds as those in parts of West Virginia, with special privilege on one hand eating out the substance of the people, and with judges setting aside constitutional safeguards to the end that the people may be oppressed and denied rights for which their fathers fought and died.“Socialism has grown in this country until more than a million men cast their votes for the Socialist ticket at the last election. The fire of Socialism is fed by such fuel as this West Virginia decision, and the lawless action there of men charged with the execution of the laws. Socialism grows and will grow in exact proportion as wrongdoing is countenanced and upheld, not only by the strong legislative forces of the country, but especially when they are backed up by the judicial arm of the government.“Senators, these million men who voted the Socialist ticket last November are the men who ought to be full of that kind of patriotism in time of war that would impel them to go out and walk on the uttermost ridge of battle, to peril their lives in defense of their country and their country’s flag because they love their country, because they venerate the laws of the land.“This great body of a million or more men whose loyalty you question, and the millions more who make up the organized labor forces of the land, and who are not yet Socialists, will love their country and its flag if you will permit them, and not drive them away by making them constantly realize thatthey can not expect fair treatment either in the administration of the law by executive officers or in the construction and enforcement of law by the courts.“If the time comes—we all pray it may be averted—when the integrity of this nation is assailed, either from within or from without—if the time comes when the American Republic is brought face to face with the marching armies of the nations beyond the sea, we will need those million of men, for they are men that toil with their hands. They have strong arms. They are the same type of men as that splendid Army of the Republic fifty years ago who won for themselves imperishable renown by their sacrifices in behalf of the Union and the flag.“Do you make good citizens of men by denying them their rights? Do you command the respect and the patriotism of the toilers of this land by turning them away when they come into this great tribunal and simply ask that the light be turned on, to the end that the people may know as to whether or not God reigns and the Constitution still lives, and whether they and their kind are to be despoiled of their heritage of liberty?“For a man to be a loyal, good citizen of this country he must love his country. Can you ask him to love his country and be true to her traditions and institutions when in his heart of hearts he knows that in this land and beneath its flag there is a law for him which is not enforced against others, and that he can no longer appeal to the courts for the enforcement of his constitutional rights?”
“I had a telegram the other day from a leader of Socialism denunciatory of these conditions. When I showed it to a senator here he deprecated the idea that there was such relationship between me and that man that he would feel free to telegraph me. Men are being imprisoned in West Virginia to-day because they are Socialists; newspapers are being suppressed because they teach the doctrines of Socialism; men are discharged from mines, according to the testimony taken before the military commission, because they vote the Socialist ticket and because they belong to a labor union; and while the doctrine of judicial recall gains favor with the people whose rights arestricken down by unjust decisions, so do the forces of Socialism multiply in such breeding grounds as those in parts of West Virginia, with special privilege on one hand eating out the substance of the people, and with judges setting aside constitutional safeguards to the end that the people may be oppressed and denied rights for which their fathers fought and died.
“Socialism has grown in this country until more than a million men cast their votes for the Socialist ticket at the last election. The fire of Socialism is fed by such fuel as this West Virginia decision, and the lawless action there of men charged with the execution of the laws. Socialism grows and will grow in exact proportion as wrongdoing is countenanced and upheld, not only by the strong legislative forces of the country, but especially when they are backed up by the judicial arm of the government.
“Senators, these million men who voted the Socialist ticket last November are the men who ought to be full of that kind of patriotism in time of war that would impel them to go out and walk on the uttermost ridge of battle, to peril their lives in defense of their country and their country’s flag because they love their country, because they venerate the laws of the land.
“This great body of a million or more men whose loyalty you question, and the millions more who make up the organized labor forces of the land, and who are not yet Socialists, will love their country and its flag if you will permit them, and not drive them away by making them constantly realize thatthey can not expect fair treatment either in the administration of the law by executive officers or in the construction and enforcement of law by the courts.
“If the time comes—we all pray it may be averted—when the integrity of this nation is assailed, either from within or from without—if the time comes when the American Republic is brought face to face with the marching armies of the nations beyond the sea, we will need those million of men, for they are men that toil with their hands. They have strong arms. They are the same type of men as that splendid Army of the Republic fifty years ago who won for themselves imperishable renown by their sacrifices in behalf of the Union and the flag.
“Do you make good citizens of men by denying them their rights? Do you command the respect and the patriotism of the toilers of this land by turning them away when they come into this great tribunal and simply ask that the light be turned on, to the end that the people may know as to whether or not God reigns and the Constitution still lives, and whether they and their kind are to be despoiled of their heritage of liberty?
“For a man to be a loyal, good citizen of this country he must love his country. Can you ask him to love his country and be true to her traditions and institutions when in his heart of hearts he knows that in this land and beneath its flag there is a law for him which is not enforced against others, and that he can no longer appeal to the courts for the enforcement of his constitutional rights?”
Strong support was given the resolution by Hollis of New Hampshire, Borah, Kenyon, Martine, but it was left to Root to brush aside the technicalities and precedents and insist that the vital thing involved was the preservation of American institutions. The fight against the resolution finally resolved itself into the proposition proposed and championed by Bacon to strike out the clause providing for an investigation into whether or not “citizens of the United States have been arrested, tried and convicted contrary to or in violation of the constitution and the laws of the United States.” It should be said in justice to Bacon that he was as forcible as any in his condemnation of the oppression of the miners, and favored the investigation with the elimination of the fourth clause. His amendment, however, was defeated by a vote of 59 to 10, and the resolution, as finally shaped by the committee on Education and Labor was agreed to without a record vote. This differed from the original resolution in that it broadened the scope of the investigation to include an inquiry into agreements and combinations contrary to the laws of the country.
Thus for the first time in the history of the senate in a fight involving a contest between capital and labor the workers won. The leadership of Kern was not “repudiated” as newspapers antagonistic to him, counting their chickens before they were hatched, had framed their headlines to read. The next bestthing was done—as little was said about his triumph as possible.
And the result of the investigation was a vindication—and a triumph for the miners. The sub-committee of the committee on Education and Labor, to which was assigned the task of investigating, was highly satisfactory to the author of the resolution. It was proof positive against a white wash. Kern was particularly pleased with the presence on the committee of Borah, Kenyon and Martine, all of whom were temperamentally sympathetic toward the oppressed, and interested in social justice, and the first two were in addition able lawyers and men with vision. The committee sat in Charlestown in July and with a recess necessitated by important business in the senate, concluded its work in Washington in September and early October. The reports were all the more impressive because of their fairness and the conservatism of expression. Peonage in the legal sense was not disclosed. That men who were indebted to the companies were in a state of virtual peonage there is no doubt. No proof was found that any “attempt to prevent the delivery of mail to patrons of the postoffice” had been made, other than the fact that the postoffice, in the company stores, were frequented by the armed guards. No evidence was adduced showing a violation of the national immigration laws though the fact was disclosed that men were induced through “misinformation and misrepresentations” to accept employment in the coal fields and that “hardships in this respect were disclosed.” But the all important charge that the constitution had been set aside, martial law established, men arrested without warrant of the civil authorities, tried by drumhead court martials, and given sentences in excess of any provided in the statutes was made good. This phase of the investigation was in charge of Senator Borah, who treated the evidence in a conservative judicial manner. In his supplementary report Senator Martine took occasion to say: “I charge that the hiring of armed bodies of men by private mine owners and others corporations and the use of steel armored trains, machine guns and bloodhounds on defenseless women and children is but a little way removed from barbarism.” Senator Kenyon in discussing the cause of the trouble and the suggestion of Bishop Donahue that “human greed on both sides” was responsible said: “It is a little difficult to realize how there can be so much human greed on the side of a man who is supporting a family and working day by day in the mines at ordinary living wages, but there is greed on the part of the owners of the property.” And the committee report, commenting on the situation at the time of its preparation, said:
“The differences between the miners and operators, which were considered irreconcilable, have been amicably adjusted. Peace now reigns in this section where heretofore existed strife, contention, and armed conflict. The relations between the operators and the miners have become friendly and conciliatory. Business has been resumed and the mines are being operated. Martial law has been abolished and civil law and authority fully established. The committee is satisfied that the investigations have greatly aided in the accomplishment of these beneficial and much-desired results.”
“The differences between the miners and operators, which were considered irreconcilable, have been amicably adjusted. Peace now reigns in this section where heretofore existed strife, contention, and armed conflict. The relations between the operators and the miners have become friendly and conciliatory. Business has been resumed and the mines are being operated. Martial law has been abolished and civil law and authority fully established. The committee is satisfied that the investigations have greatly aided in the accomplishment of these beneficial and much-desired results.”
And the miners knew, what was of more vital importance to them, that none of their men would serve twenty years in the penitentiary at the behest of a military despotism, and Mother Jones declared that “Senator Kern threw open the prison doors for me.”
The militant courage of Kern held high the torch that illuminated the darkness of the darkest spot, industrially on American soil, and it will never be so dark again. His action made him powerful foes, even in his own state. But it won him something that he cherished—the undying gratitude of the workers who go down into the earth for the fuel that warms mankind.
SENATOR Kern carried into the senate the keen sense of social justice, and the sympathy for the lowly which had characterized him through life, and during his term in the senate there was no controversy involving the rights or interests of the working classes in which he did not take an active interest. While no service he rendered to the workers required the courage called for in the battle against feudalism in the Paint Creek settlement of West Virginia, this was by no means an isolated instance of devotion to their cause. Nor was this in any sense a pose for political effect. He had an inherent hatred of oppression of the weak on the part of the powerful, and was temperamentally incapable of understanding the indifference of others. When during the pendency of the anti-trust bill letters poured in upon him urging that trade unions be placed in the same category with trusts, formed for the purpose of arbitrarily fixing prices and exploiting the consumers, he made no attempt to conceal his disgust. The insistence of some law-makers that the rights of man should be weighed in the same scale with the privileges of property, translated in the vocabulary of some into “rights,” aroused his wrath.
In the mid-summer of 1914 an incident occurred in the senate during the consideration of the sundry civil appropriation bill which, more than any other one thing perhaps revealed Senator Kern’s attitude toward the social and economic problems of the country. Some time before, the congress had created an Industrial Relations Commission and President Wilson had appointed as its chairman Frank P. Walsh of Kansas City, a lawyer of unusual ability who thought in terms of humanity—the ideal man for the position. This was one of the commissions that could be made worthless or worth while, according to the disposition of its membership, and the president had appointed a chairman who made everything worth while that he touched. He accepted his duties seriously and set to work in the most thorough and exhaustive fashion to probe to the bottom of the social and industrial problems of America. Within a few months he had accomplished enough to attract the attention of thinkers, social workers and economists to his work. The conditions he disclosed were in some instances startling. Senator Kern, who had sympathized with the purpose of the commission, read in manuscript the evidence taken by the commission at Philadelphia and was delighted with the spirit with which it approached its task, and impressed with the enormous possibilities for good from such an expose of evils.
He had enough faith in human nature to feel assured that ameliatory legislation would always follow the realization of its necessity as a result of the pressure of public opinion. He felt that many of the social and economic wrongs are permitted to exist merely because the public knows little about them, or knows them only as isolated cases of viciousness or injustice. He knew that the elements or interests that are the beneficiaries of such wrongs are vitally concerned in their concealment. And Mr. Walsh was seriously interfering with their peace of mind. The press was beginning to give considerable publicity to his work. The working class was intensely interested. Even the colleges were taking notice.
The result was the beginning of a propaganda to discredit the work of the commission, by picturing Walsh as a dangerous visionary, more or less socialistic, whose work was merely calculated to create bad blood between the employers and the employees. One feature of the propaganda was to create the impression that the commission was accomplishing nothing worth while and that public money was being squandered uselessly. “Why should such a commission be continued, anyway?”
When the sundry civil appropriation bill was under consideration by the senate July 7, 1914, Senator Borah of Idaho, whose views on social justice closely resembled those of Senator Kern, called attention tothe action of the Appropriations committee in cutting the appropriation for the commission from $200,000 to a paltry $50,000, which was equivalent to blotting it out entirely. With the appropriation previously made it had been utterly impossible to print the evidence taken at the various hearings. The reduction of the appropriation as proposed would have had the effect of destroying the commission utterly. If such was not the intention of the committee it was the desire of some members of the senate who feared the effect of the expose of the conditions of child labor and in the sweat shops and death traps where women are worked for a miserable pittance under conditions of sanitation disgraceful to the age.
In explaining the action of the committee Senator Martin of Virginia said that it was of the opinion that “no good was being derived correspondingly to that appropriation,” and expressed his personal doubt as to the work of the commission being “advantageous to the public.” Asked by Senator Borah whether the commission had been consulted as to the reasons for the larger appropriation, Senator Martin replied that it had not.
It was at this juncture that Senator Kern entered the debate with a warm commendation of the work and purposes of the commission.
As the fight developed—it consumed the greater part of the day—all those senators particularly interested in a program of social justice took part in the debate against the committee amendment, basing their arguments on the ground that society is entitled to all possible light on industrial conditions to the end that ameliatory legislation may reach the vicious features. The amendment was defeated with a decisive vote of 46 to 18, but would probably have gone through but for the fact that Kern and Borah led an aggressive fight against it.
Thus the commission was saved.
This position in regard to the commission is a fair indication of Kern’s attitude toward the problems, the wrongs and rights, of the men, women and children who earn their bread by the labor of their hands. And this attitude was consistently maintained, not only throughout his senatorial career, but throughout his life. This feeling grew stronger as he grew older instead of moderating with the chilling of the fire of youth, and he was never more radical along these lines than on the day he left the senate.
After his services to the miners of West Virginia Senator Kern’s most distinguished service to the toilers was in the part he played in securing the enactment of the Seamen’s bill, which was signed by President Wilson in the spring of 1915. The story of that measure reads like a romance. One of theunaccountable neglects of a humane civilization had been its utter indifference to the insufferable wrongs of the men who “go out upon the sea in ships.” The toilers of the land had been lifted from the degradation once associated with labor, but the toilers of the sea were left in servitude, not only with the knowledge but with the active connivance of governments. Underpaid, improperly fed, they were so much the slaves of the masters of the ships that a member of a crew deciding in port to sever his connection with the vessel was treated as the fugitive slaves before the war—hunted down by police officers and returned as escaped criminals to their masters. This impossible life gradually drove the more competent seamen from the waters and the traveling public paid the penalty in increased disasters. From 1860 until 1914 every succeeding record of lives lost at sea was lengthened, notwithstanding the better equipment of the boats. The rule that the wage fixed should be the wage paid at the port of employment led the ship owners to the manning of their vessels in ports where the scale of living was lowest, and the result was that the poorest seamen were entrusted with the lives of travelers. The ship owners only concerned themselves with profits. One of the reasons for the decline of our merchant marine was the refusal of Americans to take service on ships at the meager wage paid, and we entered into a treaty to arrest, detainand return deserters from ships in American ports. Thus we deliberately entered into a conspiracy against ourselves; for if the men employed in low-wage ports deserted in an American port and the master of the ship was forced to man his vessel here he would have to pay the higher wage and thus the equalization of wages for seamen on a higher plane would result. We helped to keep the scale of wages down below the American standard and thereby deliberately forced American sailors from the sea. Before President Wilson signed the Seamen’s bill of 1917 the sailors of the world were slaves.
The battle to right this wrong was waged for years through the patience and perseverance of one of the most remarkable lobbyists that ever haunted the capitol at Washington. Only a Victor Hugo could adequately tell the tale of Andrew Furseth.
Born in Norway, the Viking blood in his veins, he went to sea at the age of sixteen. He loved the sea. It was a hereditary passion. Standing on the shore and looking out to where the sky and waters met he thought he saw in the life of the sea the free life—and he had a passion for freedom. He soon discovered the tragic truth—he was the slave of the master of the ship.
“I saw men abused, beaten into insensibility,” he said. “I saw sailors try to escape from brutal masters and from unseaworthy vessels upon which theyhad been lured to serve. I saw them hunted down and thrown into the ship’s hold in chains. I know the bitterness of it all from experience.”
And he had seen over-insured and under-manned ships go down at sea because greedy owners would not furnish skilled seamen or provide lifeboats. He had lived to see white labor driven out by the shipping trust to make way for oriental slaves, and the sea power moving unmistakably to the orient as a result.
This condition was all the more bitter to Andrew Furseth, for he knew and loved the sea and its romantic history and knew that seamen had once been free men. He determined to dedicate his life to doing for the seamen what Lincoln did for the slaves, and he landed on the Pacific coast of America.
“For the seamen of the world,” wrote John L. Mathews inEverybody’s Magazine, “the most important event of the nineteenth century was the coming ashore of Andrew Furseth.”
His first step was to challenge the greed of the shipping interests by organizing the seamen along the coast. The organization was small and its membership pitifully poor, and it faced the bitter hostility of powerful interests and a prejudiced or subsidized press.
Knowing that the seamen of the world would not be freed by his little organization alone, he went toWashington as its representative. That was in 1894. The following twenty-one years of Furseth’s life mark the greatness of the man. So low had the seaman fallen in the estimation of the world that this man with no other motive than to secure the enactment of legislation was under police espionage and for years was shadowed by detectives. His persecutors wasted money—his life was in the open. Year after year he pressed his case on members of the congress. Many were openly hostile. Some mildly curious. None greatly interested. Sometimes his bill was introduced and quietly smothered in committee. Sometimes he could find no one to present it. Men of less heroic mould have succumbed to despair. Furseth never despaired. He never stormed at fate. He persevered. He was like the character in Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea.
Working for a ridiculously small salary, when hard times came upon the country he voluntarily cut his own pay. With no small vices to feed, he found he could exist on next to nothing in a sailors’ boarding house. Asked once if he had laid anything aside for old age, he made an answer that deserves to live:
“When my work is finished, I hope to be finished. I have made no provision against old age, and I shall borrow no fears from time.”
At length he forced attention. The Democratic party in its Baltimore convention incorporated aplank in its platform which pledged the party to the abrogation of treaties obligating the United States to hunt down and return as criminals the deserters from foreign ships in American ports and to general legislation in the interest of the seamen. Senator Lafollette introduced the Seaman’s bill.
That, however, was only a beginning and did not necessarily signify anything. The bill was certain to encounter the most bitter opposition of the most powerful interests, and senators naturally ultra-conservative were certain to find plausible reasons for opposition in the protests of foreign governments. The only hope was in enlisting the active sympathy and interest of an influential leader of the majority, and Furseth was urged to present his case to Senator Kern.
I shall let Furseth tell the story of his first call on Kern: