Arrest focused national attention on Paint Creek mine war

CHARLESTON, W.Va.-- One hundred years ago Wednesday, labor crusader Mary Jones, better known as Mother Jones, alighted from a Kanawha & Michigan passenger train from Smithers, and began walking toward the state Capitol building, then located in downtown Charleston.

The white-haired firebrand, accompanied by a committee of Smithers-area miners, was carrying a petition to Gov. William Glasscock calling for the end of martial law and the removal of state National Guard troops from Paint Creek and the Upper Kanawha Valley. There, a bloody coalfield unionization struggle was underway, with no end in sight.

After a series of violent confrontations between striking miners and detectives hired by mine operators during the previous summer, Glasscock had placed the Paint Creek coalfields under martial law in September 1912, and sent National Guard troops into the area to enforce it. The troops seized arms and ammunition from both sides, and by Nov. 15, martial law was lifted.

Coal operators began sending in replacement workers by the trainload, and in short order, those trains came under attack by the miners they displaced. Coal company detectives, meanwhile, evicted striking miners from company-owned homes and broke up union meeting. Martial law was imposed for a second time on Nov. 15, 1912, and lifted again on Jan. 10.

http://wvgazette.com/News/201302120184