|
Matewan Revisited
By Charles Sullivan
03/05/06 "ICH"
-- -- The history of America is the chronicle of
class struggle. The current fight is the same fight that working
class people have always waged. In the past there were three
distinct classes: the upper class, the middle class and the
underclass. The middle class is rapidly melding with the under
class, leaving us with essentially two socioeconomic classes. In
essence, what remain are the rich and the poor. The chasm between
rich and poor has never been wider and it is growing every year.
For reasons that must be political, those in power expend much
energy and capital denying that America is a class society. Recall
how Poppy Bush used to accuse his political adversaries of
conducting class warfare, even as his policies, like those of his
son, do great harm to working people while benefiting the wealthy.
Unrestrained capitalism is the opposite of Robin Hood and it reigns
supreme in America. The hypocrisy of the elder Bush’s inane
pronouncement is an insult to the intelligence of every working
class citizen, who knows about class divisions first hand through
long experience. In essence, what we have here is a predator and
prey relationship. The rich are today preying upon the poor, just as
they have always done.
This relationship is portrayed clearly and accurately through an
examination of labor history. One particularly poignant example
occurred in the hills of West Virginia in the spring of 1920. This
was the battle of Matewan that pitted the mining companies against
the coal miners who were desperately trying to organize a union. Far
from being atypical of the oppression and wage slavery that
characterizes America to this day, the events that unfolded in the
coal fields of West Virginia are emblematic of class struggle, as
documented by the historical evidence. An examination of these facts
reveals the insult and insensitivity of Poppy Bush’s absurd
proclamations against the working poor.
Few of us today can appreciate the atrocious conditions that working
people once endured. Some of the worst working conditions in the
world were encountered in the coal fields of West Virginia.
Thousands of men and boys (child labor was also exploited in those
days) died in the mines as a result of wanton neglect on the part of
the mine owners. The lives of the coal miners were of no greater
worth to the mining companies than a turnip. Workers were nothing
more than property that was expendable and easily replaceable in the
field. The horrid conditions that prevailed in places like Matewan,
West Virginia, are almost beyond imagination.
Whole towns were under the oppressive dictatorship of the coal
companies, which included the political electorate. Thus the coal
companies assumed the role of God not only in the coal fields of
West Virginia, but all across the land. Other corporations did the
same. The coal miners lived in constant fear and intimidation of
their bosses and their goon squads. Their housing was owned by the
company. Entire towns were in essence owned by the company. The coal
miners were the slaves on whose backs great fortunes were amassed
for the mining companies and the robber barons. The mine owners
lived like kings, while the miners scratched out a subsistence
living in utter squalor. The miners had to purchase their tools,
their food and supplies from company stores, whose prices were
grossly inflated. The long hours of toil in the wretched and
dangerous mines were paid in company scrip. Often at the end of an
eighty hour work week, owing to the irregularities that always arose
in keeping the company books, the miners actually owed the mining
company money.
Those who tried to organize unions were summarily fired from their
jobs and evicted from their housing. Many were routinely beaten and
murdered by company thugs, such as the Felts Detective Agency. These
beatings and murders occurred all across the nation, and those who
administered them did so with impunity. The police and the National
Guard were under the employ of the mining companies. As they are
today, they were called forth to protect the wealth and property of
the rich from the justice demanded by the working poor. There was no
law and there was no justice for working people. The only protection
the workers had was the union. Despite that kind of opposition,
miners joined the union by the thousands in Matewan and vicinity in
a display of courage that is rarely seen today.
Matewan was different from the norm in an important way: its police
chief, Sid Hatfield, a former coal miner, and its mayor, C.
Testerman, were both men of courage and moral integrity who stood up
to the thugs hired by the mining companies to terrorize the miners
and their families. Understandably, such courage and strength of
character were an aberration. Under enormous pressure from armed
thugs, lesser men in other parts of the country capitulated and
cooperated with the corrupt power of the mining companies. These
companies were essentially all powerful
Agents of the Felts Detective Agency had been unlawfully evicting
union families from their homes, setting their belongings out in the
rain. Sid Hatfield and Mayor Testerman attempted to halt the
evictions, but to no avail. Then on the afternoon of May 19, 1920,
accompanied by a group of armed miners, Hatfield attempted to arrest
the detectives including Baldwin-Felts president Thomas Felts, and
brothers Albert and Lee, who carried out the evictions. Hatfield and
Testerman faced their heavily armed adversaries in the street.
Someone fired a shot and a fierce gun battle ensued. In less than a
minute eye witnesses reported that more than a hundred shots were
fired. Killed in the first volley were Al Felts and mayor Testerman.
When the shooting was over, seven detectives, including Lee Felts
and two miners were dead or dying in the streets of Matewan. The
incident became known as the Matewan Massacre.
The episode made Sid Hatfield a folk hero to working people
throughout the world. Here was a man who not only faced the armed
thugs hired by the mining company, he shot it out with them in the
streets of Matewan and killed two of the notorious Felts brothers.
Fifteen months later, however, Sid Hatfield was gunned down in a
surprise attack by agents of the Felts Detective Agency on the steps
of the McDowell County courthouse. No one was ever tried, much less
convicted for his assassination. The murder touched off a fierce
armed insurrection by the coal miners that involved more than ten
thousand men.
This is the history of class conflict in America—one episode among
countless thousands. But it is a history, common as it was, that is
rarely told. You will not read about it in the text books used to
teach history in our schools. Why? Because events like this tell the
real story about America’s long war on working class people. It
reveals how our nation’s wealthiest and most influential families
obtained their positions of wealth and privilege. It is the kind of
history that foments outrage at the injustice that still afflicts
working class people to this day. It is a history that demonstrates
that ordinary people can fight back and demand justice, even against
impossible odds. Better to die a free man than live a slave.
So when I hear the products of class privilege, the Bush family, for
example, accusing others of fomenting class warfare it makes me
shake with rage because I know the history of my country in sordid
detail. I know they are spewing lies that dishonor the countless
thousands of working class people who were brutally oppressed and
often murdered by their employers and their hired guns. I am also
reminded that the Bush family fortune has been amassed like so many
other dynasties—through the brutal exploitation of working people
known as wage slavery. The Bush clan has no conception about what it
is like to struggle, to sacrifice and to honor and uphold justice
for ordinary people. If I were a plutocrat, if this were my legacy,
I would not want the world to know about it either. It is a disgrace
too vile to be put into words. This is what I call America’s secret
history—the history those in power do not want you to know about. So
spare me the banal talk about a free and democratic society. That is
not what America is about.
This secret history explains current events perfectly. Working
people are still fighting the same fight against the same foes as
did Sid Hatfield and those coal miners at Matewan on that fateful
day in 1920. The descendants of those people continue to work the
coal fields of West Virginia and they continue to die in the mines.
Under burgeoning capitalism the mining companies are now permitted
to write the legislation that is supposed to provide for the safety
of the miners. Thus the guns of the Felts Detective Agency have been
rendered, for the time being, unnecessary. Why resort to violence
when legalized bribery works so well? How little things have
changed. Working class people continue to be the prey of their
corporate employers with little recourse to the judiciary. Unionism,
as timid and ineffective as it is these days, continues to wane as
corporate power increases. It is the same old drama being played out
in modern times by the descendants of the original players—and, like
it or not, all of us are participants.
Now the vast majority of workers are ‘at will’ employees without any
kind of protection from their employers. Thus, as in the days of
Matewan, if a person wants to survive they must submit themselves to
the indignity of being the property of their employers. America is a
nation that was built upon slave labor. Migrating from job to job is
no better than migrating from one master to another. In any case,
the worker is the slave of the employer. The tradition continues to
this day, although with far more subtlety than in the past. Our
elected officials, if calling them so is not to make a mockery of
the term, are increasingly under the employ of the ruling elite. The
judiciary is stocked with corporate apologists anxious to continue
the tradition of fleecing the workers and lining their own pockets
with wealth they neither create nor earn. The fact that Industrial
slavery bears a close and disturbing resemblance to its cousin
chattel slavery is no accident. Its end product is almost as tragic,
as the gap between rich and poor widens exponentially. As is the
custom in America, the rich have gotten to where they are by riding
the poor.
The character and the courage of Sid Hatfield and those coal miners
at Matewan, West Virginia, are inspiring. Following their
outstanding moral example, let us not capitulate to the modern thugs
of American corporatocracy—to the military industrial complex and
the champions of empire that would grind us under their heel. Let us
read and reread labor history—America’s history—with a sense of hope
and optimism, inspired by the example of Sid Hatfield and thousands
of people like him. Someone has to stand up to the thugs who have
always run this country for private wealth. We must, as history
demonstrates so clearly, take heart and show some courage. We must
stand for justice for all, no matter the personal cost. Otherwise,
we are only paying homage to high minded ideals while betraying them
with our misspent lives. We must stand together, shoulder to
shoulder and face the enemy.
A life lived in the pursuit of justice for all is the only kind of
life worth living. It is an examined life that requires character,
courage and a capacity for critical thinking that can see beyond
rhetoric and the mere symbols of freedom, to the bedrock of reality.
It is a life that demands substance from us. The Wobblies had it
right all along. The answer to justice, to world peace, is One Big
Union. An injury to one is an injury to all is as true today as it
was the day the phrase was coined. We should live by this credo.
Justice demands courage and even bravado. As Thoreau so eloquently
stated, “A man sits as many risks as he runs.”
American history, as dismal as it often is, is also the history of
class struggle against oppression. Therein lies its greatest
value—its eternal hope. It is the long continued fight that has
always kept America from being what it could become—a bastion of
democracy and hope, bristling with peace. This is because a
privileged few do not want to share the wealth of this nation with
those who create it. They intend to keep it for themselves, as their
predecessors did. So we must keep alive the idea of One Big Union.
It represents our best hope for halting the exportation of jobs that
pits worker against worker across political boundaries. To
accomplish this Herculean task requires that we have the courage and
the wisdom to bring back the revolutionary unionism championed by
people like Eugene Debs, Mother Jones, Emma Goldman and Big Bill
Haywood. Sid Hatfield and mayor Testerman have already shown us the
way. Do we have the fortitude and the courage to follow their
example?
Note: the author gratefully acknowledges and thanks long time union
organizer Anthony Debella for providing the inspirational impetus
behind this piece.
Charles Sullivan is a photographer and free lance writer residing
in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. He welcomes your comments
at earthdog@highstream.net
Click below to post a comment on this article
(In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational purposes.
Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the
originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) |
