Hatfield's Two Unions: One For Labor, One For A Lady

kind of cool sometimes to dig into etymology. Yeah, oh wait, no, I guess I don't think it's fantastic because I find it easy to believe. I just think it's great. So I think that it's the new version of fantastic, but not the original version of fantastic. Thank you, Thank you for all the pedants out there like us. That was for you, for you, that was for you, that's for you, fantastic people, So fantastic every way. Oh now that's sarcastic fantastic. Yeah,

that's my spectacular spectacular sarcastic. If show it'll be sarcastic fantastic. I feel like sarcastic fantastic could be your autobiography. Alright, Oh, it's so unbelievable. Uh, he said, I have a fake sounding laugh. I know, forced giggles, forcing your giggles, And people have said that for a long time. Because I'll tell you, I'll tell you why I changed my laugh in maybe middle school or high school. I did put some work into it because I laughed differently before. How

did you laugh? Let me see if I can conjure it up. What if you revert? You did that? Yeah, I did like the donkey laugh, okay, and you didn't care for it. I didn't, Okay, I didn't. And um, look I don't feel things. Uh. I don't react very regularly. If I wanted to, I could just have a very blank expression all the time. I believe that. Yeah, what's

that supposed to mean? I think you just do like Queen's Gambit, but like black Back or something, you're just like up in your head envisioning game, just yourself from any situation and just play craps in your mind. And I don't know, I don't laugh like that. I laughed like I laugh now and it's just how it comes out. So I don't know. Maybe it sounds fake. Maybe everyone

I've ever laughed at. Was like, Wow, he clearly doesn't think I'm very funny, but actually kind of think I'm like very easy to to think something's funny, Like I'm I'm very forgiving in comedy. I'm not going to say I have a low bar because I'm regularly insulted by people trying to be funny and it's bad. But you know, earnestness and effort goes a long way in comedy for me. I agree, I agree, definitely. Sometimes I am maybe even often I am the only one laughing because he got me,

you got me. I'm a good audience. I think. I don't think there's anything wrong with going around being ready to be pleased, you know what I mean. That's just that's what I try. I'm trying, I'm striving for every day. Is just like, I don't want to be in a position where I'm just ready to complain all the time. I want to be ready to be pleased. I'm okay, you know, you know, unless something agreed just really happens, you know, there's really not much to get upset about.

I think in some ways it makes me a harsher critic because I want to like things. I want to laugh at things. I would so much rather enjoy something than not enjoy it. Like right, we talked about before. It was like movies and stuff of the time. I am trying to have a good time. So if I don't like something, I'm a little insulted, Like it's not hard to please me. You really fucked up? Yeah, come on, So I don't know. I don't know if that makes me a good person or more of an asshole. But

it depends. Yeah, it depends on how hard you sucked up and how ad you fucked up? How hard did I sunk up today? Yeah? Did Eli like it? Damn? I couldn't get Eli on board. Woof, we should make this whole obi Wan Kenobi series over again, I guess. I mean you know what I think several people. I was ready to see a new effort. I was ready. But enough of that. Well, but you know what, obi Wan was the product of a lot of labor. Yes,

Oh that's so good. Oh that's a transition. Oh it was like somebody just scratched the right spot on my back that I couldn't reach that transition. M hmm. Keep

it going by, they give me the medium books. Keep it going and today we are going to be telling a story right in time for Labor Day about how it came about that we have our eight hour work days and our you know, forty hour work weeks, and we have our certain wages and all these these workers rights that were for health and safety, that's right, that were fought for by actual people having to do a lot of crazy shit and and dead in the center

of it. A very bizarre romance. Yes, we don't even know a lot about, but it does sort of the story sort of radiates out from there. Yeah. So sid Hatfield was the police chief of mat Juan, West, Virginia in nineteen twenty when coal miners were striking a lot for better hours and better wages and safer conditions, and private detectives acting for the coal companies responded by forcibly a big strikers from their homes and all of this

culminated in a shootout that left seven of the detectives. Yeah, as the miners and their allies maintained that the detectives had shot first. They killed the mayor, who was a union man named Testerman, but the detective said that Sid Hatfield shot Testerman because he was hot for his wife. Oh so yes, let's celebrate Labor Day by talking about the American Coal Wars and what really happened during the Battle of Maitlox Hey their French. Come listen, Well, Elia

and Diana got some stories to tell. There's no matchmaking a romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships, a lover. It might be any type of person at all, and abstract cons a from a concrete wall. But if there's a story, were the second Glance ridiculous romans? A production of I Heart Radio? Well, listen, how much do you know about Cole Cole? Just off the top of your head, top of my head? It is, uh, you get that for Christmas every year? Right? It shows up and you're

talking right, Cole every year? Yeah, that's that's normal, right, That's that's just what bad boys and girls get. Well, I am something of a bad boy, so I think that works out pretty well. Something of a bad girl too, and that I'm bad at being one. So overall I'm a I'm a bad boy and I'm a I'm a poor girl. I guess I am kind of a poor girl too. Anyway, enough about me, Well, basically, nothing I know nothing, but I know we get them for the

grill sometimes when you have a charcoal girl. Sure, yeah, right, and there's somewhere out there cole eventually makes things work, right, Like my laptop is being charged. Maybe because there's coal somewhere somewhere doing something. Somebody can fact check us on that. I don't know. Well, yeah, I just didn't know much about particularly more specifically the getting of coal and getting it to me the consumer. Okay, how does it end up in my stocking? Yeah? What is this? Is Santa episode? Yeah?

This is the Christmas time year round? No, it's not. It is a story about workers, damn it. And so I say we start off with a quick filling with history. You're fire. So coal was a big business in the late eighteen hundred's and early nineteen hundreds because it was the main energy source for the country. I mean everything, everything runs on coal. Yeah, but getting it was extremely

hard work and still is. You gotta blow up mountains, and you've got to break rocks until you find a steam of coal, and then you got to break that up, and then you gotta get it above ground and sorted and loaded into railroad cards, and then they carried around all the country. That's one of those things. We've talked about this before with like chocolate and stuff, and I'm like the first person to go down there and find coal. It was so hard. Why didn't they just say, no,

let's go a different direction on looking for fuel? This isn't this isn't it? Where is it? Just a couple of guys like, let's just see wish Rocksburg, move it over to throw it away. How about this rock this rock bird? Nope, Like it's just that board, Like, holy sh it, this one burns really well. Hard to get though. So yeah, besides being just an incredibly hard job, it was also very dangerous. Between eighteen eight, more than seventy

thousand coal miners died on the job. They were crushed to death, they were killed and gas explosions or by machinery. Yale University notes that many many more workers died from occupational diseases from inhaling methane and cold dust for hours on end, and those are not included in official death tallies. So we're talking about probably hundreds and thousands of people dying to get us the coal, and the work stepped so bad that coal companies went around recruiting workers from

all over. They would pay poor whites who were struggling in small towns in South and eastern Europe to relocate, and they would also learn black people from former plantation areas, and they were looking to kind of get the funk out after the collapse of reconstruction led to a wave of white violence. Oh wow, okay, because they were like, come,

it's safe over here. Crushed by a mountain. So by nearly half a million people labored in coal mines, mostly in Appalachia on the East coast, but the reality of the coal camp was like pretty dismal. You can imagine, most coal fields were located in small company towns, and this is where all the property was owned by the company, and they were also the main employed. Like the coal companies, steel mills, factories, et cetera. They would just own everything.

These developed in the eighteen seventies, with the companies then paying their workers not in dollars but in company currency. This would be either fouchers or tokens or what they called coal script or they would like give credit at the company stores, so it'd be like it'd be like working for Amazon gift cards at Amazon, right it's like, we're instead of paying you a wage, you can just buy everything from us. Here's an Amazon gift card. I'm

sure they're thinking, don't say that too loud. You just told Alexa. Now. The company would set everyone's wages, they would set their rents, they would set the price of goods, and they also managed the churches and the schools in town. Historian Linda Carlson wrote in an article called Company Towns in the Pacific Northwest that most people thought company towns have the right idea. Right, it sounds like a decent plan. They provided, quote, a good quality of life, providing decent housing,

good schools, and a morally uplifting society. In return, they expected stable, hard working employees who would eschew the evils of drink and most importantly, not fall prey to the blandishments of union organizers. S union organizers the skirt. Let's sounds so lovely and generous on the part of these companies to run all this wonderful services. Nice of you. Why would I need money of my own when everything

is provided for here. It's like working at the cracker barrel and you can shop at the Cracker Barrel store and eat a cracker barrel and cracker barrel. Yeah. I mean it sounds like a very minimalized version of federal capitalism, right Like, instead of working for credits which I then spend at businesses the federal dollar, I'm working for a credit directly within my town. Everything is provided for based on how much labor I provide. Sounds great, sounds very well.

Have you spotted the problem? Guess not? Because the companies, would you know, set the wages, that the rents at the prices of goods and food and the stores, and they owned all the lands. So you're a hundred percent beholden to the whims of the company in everything. And since you're not paid in real money, it's not like you could take your business elsewhere or you know, just the American dream of getting a deal on things. True, but surely the companies are in charge of like my

wages and the rent and everything. Sure but I work for them. Surely they want to take good care of me. Right well, they're not going to screw me over. That's so sweet and fantastic of you to think. Because there's this big economic panic and it led this company called Pullman located in Illinois, to decrease their workers hours and wages because they had a decrease in demand, so they were decreasing supply in perfect economic sense, right, that's why

to do. But they refused to simultaneously decrease the cost of living in their company town, so rent, food and goods were just as expensive as before. This led to

the Pullman Strike of eighteen nine four. The town ended up being annexed to Chicago in eight because that's how bad it was, you know, they were like, we can't we're starving, you know, like they could not afford any But this is a common problem that the companies would often pay poorly and then they would turn around and take their money right back for overpriced goods and services

and squalid housing like not nice stuff. And they also restricted basic human rights like the freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of movements that we value so highly. They also employed mine guards and company paid sheriffs, so that they kind of had a private force on to

police your behavior. And on top of all that, minors were paid by the ton, and the process of weighing the coal often resulted in conflicts with the and he is of course finding plenty of ways to short, the workers, and I didn't quite get a ton so not today Jr. And most politicians of course sided with the wealthy company owners over the workers. So nobody is looking out for the little guy. See, you're telling me that the people with all the money and power in this situation, we're

not fairly treating the people without any money your power. Right. I don't buy it for a second. I know it seems surely you could just go to your boss and say, hey, my housing is squalid, could you, uh maybe show out a lot of that extra cash you got lying around to kind of make my living conditions better? And they would say, oh, you're fired for asking. So as a result of all this, the coal miners started to organize unions.

The three big ones at the time where the United Mine Workers of America, the Progressive Miners Union, and the National Union of Mine Workers. Which I would just get those confused so many times to be like, which place are we having a meeting tonight? The Mine Workers Union of Workers or the Workers Union of Mine Working union ers? Like that's why teams have mascots, right, they should just be like where the falcons and we're the dodos, Jags

and the jag. Now together, these guys could band together and they could agree to stop working, which would cost the company untold profits, and then they would make their demands to come back to work. Usually it was just for like shorter hours, because these people were working insane hours. They would ask for better wages so they could pay for their housing and things and lives. Um. They would ask for safer conditions because you know, people kept dying

and getting horribly injured. They were like, hello, so can I please and not get crushed to death at work today? And the companies were like, well, that's not my problems. Sounds like are you problems getting down them? Or they'd say you're fired for asking. I'll ask this other poor desperate person who's more desperate than you are, and they'll

come and do it. And pretty soon everyone is so desperate that they will work for practically nothing just to be given a scrap of bread and a tin roof over their head, you know, And that's why you need the unions. But the companies, of course, did not take

unionization lying down. They would bring in armed private detectives essentially their own little private army, and they would beat up and intimidate union representatives until they forced them to leave town, or they would do the same to workers to keep them from joining. If the workers decided to strike, the detectives would come in and forcibly evict them and their families from their homes. They would cut off their credit at the company stores, so these families couldn't get

any food or clothing. See, the companies hope that people watching their children's starve would force the miners to come back to work under any conditions they had. The unions would try and counter that at supporting strikes by providing a small amount of money and little sacks of flower and things to keep the union workers from starving, but

they weren't as well funded as the companies. Obviously, plenty of workers did starve, and the constant clashes between the coal companies and their private armies against the workers and unions became known as the Coal Wars, which a journalist named Winthrop Lane likened to another civil war. Crazy to think about basically another civil war being five and I've never heard about it. They didn't cover this war, so all right, that is kind of the overall coal industry.

But our story takes place in West Virginia, which is still coal country to this day. And it's here where the West Virginia mine wars began in nineteen twelve, specifically in Paint Creek and Cabin Creek. More than seventy people were employed in those creeks in nineties six coal mines, and half of those mines reunionized. But the union minds made slightly less per ton for coal than the non union minds. This was just another way to de incentivize

joining a union. You got like, you know, fraction of a penny less for your mind. But you know it, all that's up in the end right now. Cabin and Paint Creeks decided they would join forces and strike for higher pay and also for concessions like freedom of speech and assembly, ending compulsory trading at all company stores, and the blacklisting of fired workers. And they also wanted to be able to employ their own check waymen, who determined how much coal each miner had brought up at the

end of the ship. They were paid by the ton, and the companies were doing a lot of fuckory to make sure they weren't getting their full day's wage. Hold on there. Fellow Now before I weigh your coal. Let me just do a quick repair on the scale here, just gotta twist a little nuts. And oh, it looks like you didn't bring up any cold today, young man. But that's like a half a ton of cold right there. Oh, I don't see any myself on with you. You don't

want to get fired, do you? So? Yeah, they wanted their own guys to do the counting, or at least maybe do a double check of accounting or something or something. Well, the companies immediately brought in private detectives from the Baldwin Felts Agency. This agency got its start by bringing in bad guys who robbed railroads just James Ship, okay, But by the eighteen nineties their main job was breaking strikes and bullying workers, and they were incredibly violent about it.

In nineteen thirteen, they would reinforce a railroad car called the bull Moose Special with iron plating and machine guns, and they would drive through a miner's camp just shooting indiscriminately into tents, and they killed several people. In nineteen fourteen, they attacked a tent colony of twelve hundred striking miners and their families in Colorado and they murdered twenty one people, and this included women and children. This became known as

the Ludlow massacre. So when these assholes showed up in paint and cabin creeks, armed and dangerous, miners knew what was coming, and they also armed themselves, and they marched to the state capital to read a declaration of war. Through the summer, more than fifty people were killed directly and many more died from malnutrition and star nation. Eventually, the governor had to declare martial law just to restore order.

Although the militia that the governor put forward was on the side of guess who, the coal companies workers Sorry, coal companies faced zero consequences for their violence, while miners were tried in military tribunals and imprisoned. Because of the number of casualties, it's counted as one of the worst conflicts in American labor history. And have you ever heard of it? The Battle of have painting cabin creeks doesn't

sound familiar to me me neither. That's crazy. Oh, this is this is turning into us stuff They don't want you to know. Episode. We ought to get been in here now in this whole chaotic environment, coal miners fighting for their lives, detectives coming in Bang Bang Bang. Our subject for today, Mr Sid Hatfield became police chief in Cold Country and we're going to find out more about him right after this and welcome back to the show. So Sid Hatfield was born in Pike County, Kentucky in

eighteen or eighteen. You know, I'm going to write these things has happened so often in our episodes, were like they were born in either seventeen forty two or eighteen sixty seven. Scholars aren't sure which. The records are not clear like this he was born in but we know for a goddamn fact he wasn't born in eighteen ninety two. No chance in a hill I was. I know. I do think that's really strange. Now. He first worked on his family farm, and then he became a coal miner

as a teenager and then a blacksmith. So this guy's hard labor his whole life. And he was called Smiling Sid because he had a lot of gold caps on his teeth. I'd smile a lot too, I do. He's I got to show him off. I mean, if you're going to put golden new teeth you may as well get that little dink I know, like like home alone. Yeah yeah. And apparently he also like smiled a lot, I guess in confrontation because he was known as the kind of a hard living, hard fighting kind of guy.

So it was a surprise to many respectable citizens when the mayor of Mate one, West Virginia, Cabal Cornelius Testament, appointed Sid the police chief in nineteen nineteen. And he was about twenty seven years old old smile and smiling. Please chief in charge around here. That sounds crazy to me. Come on in get you some path of all of the South. But Testaman was a big supporter of the United Mine Workers of America. It was pretty unusual for a mayor, and so he wanted a police chief who

was also a union supporter. So Sid was his guy is a big union guy too. Now. Also in the year nineteen nineteen, according to Smithsonian Magazine, the United Mine Workers held a nationwide strike of four hundred thousand workers, and they succeeded in securing higher wayes in better working conditions. They were also heavily active in mait wand then signed up miners left and right. And it seemed like all this made the coal company in mait wand the Stone

Mountain Coal Company really nervous. Was firstly, they started making workers sign what we're called yellow dog contracts, and those said that when you were hired, if you joined a union at any point, it was grounds for immediate termination

and therefore you would get evicted from your company home. Additionally, that Baldwin Felts Detective agency that we talked about earlier, they had operatives offer Testament and SID five hundred dollar bribes, which is worth about it looks like seventies six hundred dollars today, and they wanted to bribe them to let them place machine guns on rooftops throughout the town so they could suppress union activity. That machine bonkers to me.

It's like people might join unions, so let's militarize the rooftops. I mean, that's crazy right that They were just like, why didn't open fire on you? This is how much money we're saving by oppressing our workers, and how dangerous it would be for them to demand better conditions. Smiling Sid and mayor test your man told the Baldwin Felts agents that they could go suck rocks. Yeah, and they're

like we're here in the mountains. There be plenty of rocks around, so stop sucking that one burns that one. Don't take your pick well. Instead of sucking rocks, the coal companies took more direct action. They fired three thousand workers, and then they sent Baldwin Felts detectives to evict them from their houses. So in May nine, nine twenty a dozen Baldwin Felts detectives led by Albert Felts, showed up to spend a busy day ejecting men, women and children

from their home. Not the knowable work that I undertake, and hundreds of families ended up spending the spring of nineteen twenty living in tents. According to a book called Thunder in the Mountains the West Virginia Mine War by Lawn Savage, the first family they evicted was a woman

and her children. Her husband, Bend, was not home at the time, so the minor that would be striking that they would be austin sensibly punishing, was not present, and they forced this woman and her kids out of the home at gunpoint and threw all their stuff into the street in the middle of a steady rain. The National Park Service estimates that in the Paint and Cabin Creek evictions, Baldwin Felts agents destroyed forty dollars worth of personal property,

including furniture. So it's pretty safe to assume that the miners here in Maitland got very similar treatment. All their stuff was thrown out, just real crazy, over the top actions to get them out of their homes. And so words started spreading around town about these evictions and quickly reached the ears of the police Chief, Sid had Field. It's scary to me regularly whenever I think about this, because it always feels so historical, like couldn't happen, But

it happens all the time. When you create h a force of people, a little a little militia or military and tell them, hey, you can treat those people however you want they are, they turn into the most horrible monsters you can imagine it. And it keeps happening. It always happens. I mean, so many experiments have shown that we kind of all of us have us have it in us. It's just the circumstances we live in, right, And whether or not, of course, you give into that impulse.

But they have seen I think they that was that the Stanford Prison experiment. I think it is most often cited. I wouldn't. I'm all good. Oh, I just smiled at the gold tooth sparkled, how fantastic, How fantastic. Wait a minute, I know what that word really means. Earlier you said I could let all kinds of things happen and just have a totally blank emotion. I could do that if I chose to. But I would yeah, I would never. Okay,

I'm all good. I'm glad to hear. I'm like a good div a truffle, just sweet all the way through. So the Baldwin Felts detectives were heading off to the train station after a long day of evicting women and children from their homes in the rain, got to catch the five o'clock But Sid and his deputy and several other miners intercepted these guys and on the porch of the Chambers Hardware store on Mate Street, they confronted the agents about all these evictions. Sid told Albert Felts that

he had a warrant to arrest him. Albert replied, then he actually had a warrant to arrest Sid. Now, unbeknownst to the detectives, there were a lot of miners in town that day that we're collecting their bags of flower and their small stipends from the union. And most of these guys were armed. They were watching carefully out of windows and doors as Sid and Albert shoved each other's

warrants in their faces. Now Mayor Testament showed up, ran out of the streets, said, hold on, now, Albert Felts, Now I want to see the warrant that you have to arrest. Sid Felts. Handsome the warrants and he takes a long look at it, and Mayor Testament looks up an announced quote, well, this is a bogus warrant. Immediately, gunshots rang out. Mayor Testament was shot first and he fell to the ground wounded. Detective deputies and minors exchange

shots for a frantic fifteen minutes. Albert brother the Felts was killed, firing indiscriminately. Albert took shelter in the mate wand post office, but Sid, like an avenging angel, button finds him, probably calls him a yellow bellied coward and shooting. When the shooting stopped, the townspeople came out of hiding to assess the damage. And it was significant. Mayor Testaman was dead, along with one miner who had been fired the day before for joining the union, and another unarmed

bystander named Tot Tinsley. Not Tot Tinsley, Hot Tinsley. No, damn, what a good name. Hats off to Tot. Yes for top After Tot Tonight and four other towns spoke were wounded, but on the Baldwin Felt side, seven detectives had died, including both Albert and Lee Felts. Now this was huge

for miners. This was the first time that the seemingly invincible bullies of the Baldwin Felts Agency had been beaten, and the gunfight became known as the mate Wan massacre, and Sid Hatfield became a legend and a hero to the union miners. He even started in a short film for United Mine Workers called Smiling Said, and he was photographed with other celebrated labor leaders, including Mary Harris Mother Jones. Yes that one Jones from the magazine That's right, one

of the people who was arrested after painting cabin creeks. Actually, oh, mother Jones. She got her military tribunal and went to for a little while. Yeah, I want to I want to see this movie. Okay, I will totally watch this movie. I mean it's got to be the old timey silent film, rights piano music and definitely right. And he's like he comes out, smiles and the and the cards come up and saying, hey the detective, I ain't taking no guff from you, and it detected like a big piece of ship. Guys.

He's got like money coming out of his pocket, got a dumb look on his face, beaver skin top hats. And then the title card comes up and he's like and said just pushes him over the edge. And they're like, support the union, that's not what it is because that doesn't sound very effective. Feels like would we're work, showing no wrong ideas, storing brainstorming time. But even with this

big victory, the union was struggling. At this time. Most of the mines reopened with imported replacements, likely these immigrants who probably didn't even know they were strikebreakers, you know, who had been heard in from Europe. And other strikers signed the yellow Dog contracts so that they could get back to work because they were done living in tents. So in late June, a union miners camp colony was raided and miners were shot and arrested. Their tents were shredded,

and their belongings scattered out into the wilderness. Another strike was organized in response in July, and violence quickly erupted. Railroad cars were blown up and miners were beaten and left to die by the side of the road. So just a lot of violence from both ends, and both sides were getting their ammo together. You know, this is a war after all, so their stockpile and stuff. Sid even converted may Or Testament's jewelry store into a gun

shop so more miners could arm themselves. And throughout the fall, more sporadic shootouts and violence occurred between the union and the coal companies. Now, in January of ninety one, Sid and the other miners involved in the massacre stood trial for killing Albert Felts, and this was a national story. Sid's legend only grew as he would go out and he freely chatted up with reporters posed for pictures. He absorbed the celebrity. It was like you, yes, everyone should

know who I am and what I did. Well. I think too that there maybe was a strategy involved with a speculation station that maybe the union was like, all eyes are showing you, So go out there and tell people why they should be supporting us and not the

coal company. Reason. Be charismatic and get your message out, you know what I mean, Because these these battles between unions and companies are so often well a wars of attrition, right right, Let's see how we're going to starve you out, Like you can strike, but you won't get paid, and let's see how long that strike last. And the other one is the war of of information because it's so much about getting people who are totally uninvolved. But are you know, we're affected way down the line by the

products and services we're getting from these workers. Um, so if they have our support as consumers, that's a lot more people pushing back against the company and vice versa. Right, you know. Well, and they say every war is a war on two fronts, the war itself and then the war of propaganzas keep popular support, because once you lose people's support for a war becomes very difficult to continue

doing it writing it. So so sids out here chatting it up with the media, getting on camera or getting newspapers. Probably not is not out there. You got intaking, but I don't know that they were taken any But at the trial sits the ridiculous romance at the center of this story because lawyers for Baldwin Felts argued that Sid Hatfield was the one who fired the first shot in order to use the cover to kill Mayor Cavil Testman because Sid was in love with Testerman's wife, jesse Lee Maynard.

Why did they think this. That's an outrageous claim, right, because why would this guy goes to go shoot the man who hired him, the guy who he was supporting, the guy who was protecting him by saying this is not a real warrant, like he's protecting Sid from getting arrested, and Sid thanks, and it was what he's in love

with his wife. Well, only eleven days after Mayor Testerman was shot and killed, Sid was discovered by a Baldwin Felts agency spy named Charles Lively quote have a improper relations with Testament's nineteen year old widow, and the very next day the two of them got married. Man less than two weeks ed okay, adds a little bit of suspiciosity to this whole thing. What was that speciosity. I

like that. Now. Newspapers said, quote she married the man who killed her husbands, the speed at which they got married after Testament died. It was definitely some compelling evidence. But Jesse herself claimed that her husband knew that they were in a very dangerous situation, and he asked Sid to take care of her and their young son if anything ever happened to him. Do you believe it? I mean,

I don't know. It makes sense to me if she's the one saying that she was only nine, mean, you know, and this guy's like sure, she might just say that, maybe, but that would mean the two of them conspired together to kill her husband, the father of her sons. Seems hard, you know, I don't know, unless they unless he was

an abusive husband, which she might have been. She was nineteen, He was, you know, a mayor of some renown and probably could get whatever he wanted and wasn't used to being told no. So maybe he was a piece of ship and she was just looking for Was Sid better? I don't know, I mean, none of that. Unfortunately, it is nothing personal from anyone about this, so that we can only speculate. Yeah, oh, it's entirely in speculation station

run by a cold powered locomotive. This episode brought to you by Cole King Charcoal, so we don't know, we don't know. This is very suspicious, but also was also described as the prettiest girl on the mountain. Well, so you couldn't do better than Jesse. I suppose maybe somebody else was about to shoot the mayor, you know, like

his day was coming. But it seems like why would not the detectives, who are we already know like to shoot people, Not that the miners don't like to shoot people too, Like I mean, come on, I don't know. It feels like you'll do be shooting first a lot, That's all I'm saying. So she's if this, If that is the case, then she's like, she's our own little Helen of Troy, right, she's so pretty. This war broke

out the whole the entire labor union movement. It was just to cover up for these two guys fighting over this pretty girl. Where's the Helen of Troy? But it's said in the Battle of mate Wan, somebody call um Zenda. I couldn't think of another young actors ain't nineteen. She's well into her twenties. Now, where's the somebody call I'm not out of touch, I'm with it. I'm cool, I'm hipped, I know all the young stars rowing. Somebody calls one

of those kids from Euphoria. Probably I don't know. All right, Well, whatever happened. By the end of the trial in March, every mate one miner had been acquitted. But this really piste off Thomas Felts. He was Albert and Lee's brother and of course the co owner and operator of the Baldwin Felts Agency. I guess he just stayed back at home all they went into the dangerous situation. He's got a desk job, but there's still field agent, and so he waited patiently for his own little opportunity to get

rid of sid. That's his kill bill. Somebody call, who would play Thomas Felts. Somebody call who plays an asshole? Oh? Who's that guy who played Arlyne Cooper on Madman? Oh? Yeah, totally, I don't know. Dead. Yeah, he's going to be a good choice. He's there, you go. And as Thomas waited for his moment, the Baldwin faults by Charles Lively. That's sniveling, creep. Who caught Sid and Jesse together would eventually give him

his chance. And let's find out how right after this commercial break from Cole America's Cole America Runs on Coal. I hope everybody ran out and brought some cold during that short make them back, my little coal lovers. I don't like we're supposed to be moving away from coal. Overall, this is a story about labor, not about Cole. The opinions expressed in this episode did not reflect our own

opinions necessarily. Now, in mid May, union workers launched a full scale a salt of non union minds in what became known as the Three Days Battle. Martial law had to be declared to end the violence. A lot of

martial law going around. Miners, of course, were disproportionately arrested, and Charles Lively testified in secret that one night Sid had Field, his deputy Ed Chambers, and a number of other union miners were hanging out and Lively persuaded them to shoot up a non union coal tipple in Mohawk, West, Virginia. Cold tipples are what they used to load coal into railroad cars. Um so it would have been full coal and they would blow it up. So that the coal

couldn't be sold. Now, when the Union miners arrived to blow up this coal tipple, the mine guards were ready for them with machine guns and bloodhounds. So I'm not sure if they ever actually got to blow up blow up this cold tiple or hat um. They had gotten a nice heads up from Charles Live. Now, with this testimony from Charles Thomas, Felts was able to bring a charge of conspiracy against Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers. So

Sid would have to go to trial. And he knew that the Baldwin Felts agency was out for his blood and going out just out in the open somewhere was not safe for him. So Sid reached out to the sheriff of McDowell County, where the trial would take place. And this was a distant relative of his name to Bill Hatfield. And Bill's like, no problem, I got the whole Sheriff's office, just gonna have your backs. We'll all be at red alert, ready for anything and everything, and

we've got you, brother. But according to Howard Lee's book Blood Letting in Appalachia, the day before the trial, Bill took himself out of town for some self care at the Craig Healing Springs resort. So sure enough, when Sid and Ed arrived at the courthouse on August first, nine one unarmed at accompanied by their wives, there were no officers they're looking out for them. Several Baldwin Felts agents were lying in wait, and they opened fire on the

steps of the McDowell County Courthouse. Ed Chambers was shot several times and rolled down the steps of the courthouse, and while his wife screamed in protest, Charles Lively walked over and shot him point blank in the head. Sid himself was shot several times in the chest and he died instantly, with Jesse barely escaping unharmed. Now this made the Union argue that the entire Cold Tipple sabotage had been orchestrated by Baldwin Felts just to ambush and assassinate Sid.

So the real conspiracy. They're bringing a charge of conspiracy. But they were conspiring, like you guys set up the whole thing to begin with, right, right, that's what they thought. Yeah, that's what they think. But the Baldwin Felts agents bizarrely claimed that they had been acting in self defense, even though these two guys were both unarmed. They said they'd

seen Sid reach into his pocket. Classic detective defense heard this before, and I guess they could claim that they didn't know he was unarmed until they had already shot him. Oh that's the best claim in the world. Yeah, a great claim. Now, not a single detective was convicted, and to this day there are bullet marks visible on the stairs of the courthouse. The assassination of their hero Sid

Hatfield royally piste off the union and the workers. After more than three thousands showed up to mourn him at his funeral, they became more determined than ever to organize. Armed miners started to gather and within four days they were a four thirteen thousand strong and they started to march to Logan County, West Virginia to forcibly unionize the

mines there. But the anti union sheriff there, Don Chafin, thanks to an influx of cash from the coal companies, managed to put together his own force of nearly two thousands that was the largest private armed force in the nation. He also had better weapons and better defenses in higher positions. I have the high ground, Annie, What are you doing? How do you do? How do you and McGregor, Yeah, what are you doing? I can talk? Is now over Anakin high? I loved you, like, oh my god. Can

we make the nineteen twenties Phantom Menace? Please? Yes, please? In silent film version of Star Wars. On August there were a few skirmishes where Chaffin's forces dropped bleach and shrapnel bombs on the United Mine Workers headquarters while most of the miners were still miles away from Logan County. The next day, President Warren G. Harding threatened to send in the Feds and even deploy army bombers, and after a long meeting, the miners were convinced to turn around

and head home. Peace restored. But Chaffin had put together this whole private army and he wasn't ready to stand down. He wanted to end union organization once and for all, so within hours of the miners deciding to leave, there were rumors of Chaffin's men shooting Union sympathizers just north of Blair Mountain in West Virginia, and their families got caught in the crossfire. Union miners were enraged, and they turned right back around to go back to Blair Mountain,

even commandeering trains to get there again. Even though they were outnumbered, Chaffin's private army had way better weapons, they had higher positions, they were ready, and private planes dropped homemade bombs on the miners. Several towns were inundated with poisoned gas and explosives left over from World War One.

The West Virginia National Guard was brought in to command the anti Union forces and gun battles broke out for a week and in the end a million rounds of ammunition had been fired and there were around thirty deaths on Chaffin's side reported, while the miners suffered over a hundred casualties and hundreds more miners were wounded. This five day conflict became known as the Battle of Blair Mountain and it is the largest labor uprising in US history

and the largest armed uprising since the Civil War. Can you imagine, though, like your employers, like I work at Panera, and Panera Bread is using weapons of war against me? That we're just used, I said, not a sponsor, just picked a name out of I would love some Panera after that era. Please don't bombas bred bulls. Not bombs, yes,

Trump Bread not bombs. I always say love from yeah, but yeah, it just would be so crazy to have just come out of a war where you use those weapons against enemies of your country and then had them turned against you. Like that would just be I think, very hard to see. Well, finally the FEDS stepped in on September two, and because many of the miners were veterans they fought in World War One, they were not willing to shoot US troops, so they started to leave

Logan County the next day. A lot of them hid their weapons in the woods, and nine and eighty five miners were indicted for murder, conspiracy to commit murder, accessory to murder, and treason against the state of West Virginia. Some were acquitted by sympathetic juries, but most were imprisoned for years. Not just looked like a huge victory for the coal industry owners and management, right, Like, they won, that's right, We've protected all of the money, could do

some pores and cash follows. So yeah, they won there in jail, and after the battle, union membership plummeted from fifty miners to tens. So the coal companies are like really patent themselves on the back here. But their victory did not last long because this battle also raised national awareness about the appalling and dangerous conditions that these workers were laboring under, and it led to important changes in union text as well. The unions maybe said, put down

the gun, pick up the lobbying pencil. Wow, you really you should really go out and start organizing, right if everyone is like, who thrilling, I'm stirred by your speech, But yeah, it was kind of like the first time in the coal Wars that the government was openly acknowledging that miners had the right to organize and they also had the right to survive their work day, which is a crazy thing to say out loud, but yeah, at

one point that was not a right you had. People felt that if you had a dangerous jem, suck to

be you. So eventually the unions had a much larger victory when the nineteen thirty three National Industrial Recovery Act was passed that protected collective bargaining rights for workers, which they immediately used to secure better wages and hours in safer conditions and all of that good stuff that they had been fighting for, and with less strike break and work coming in the Baldwin Felt Agency was dissolved in nineteen thirty seven. May But hey, whatever happened old Jesse

Lee Maynor or should I say young very young? Well, just about a half a year after Sid was killed, she accepted the third marriage proposal, again prettiest girl in Town the Mountain. This time it was from Sylvester Petrie, a state trooper, and within eighteen months, at only twenty years old, Jesse had been married three times and widowed twice.

So of course newspapers had a field day with the gun widow who first married the man who killed her husband, and then after he himself was killed by a gun violence, she went out and married one of the law and order types who would probably a shot Sid himself if

he'd been there. So it's a big story. Yeah, they were like, she killed the guy who killed her husband and getting married a guy who would have killed her husband have been there to do it, but he would have he wasn't, but it would like a side Jessel.

But these two were only married for a year before Sylvester passed away at the end of nine two, and the Mingo County records show that Jesse got the hell out of West Virginia and she married a fourth and final time to some guy named W. R. Jennings in Ohio, and you know, hopefully just settled down and was like, Okay, I'm done with my husband's dying. Let's see if this last. Yeah, I mean, I can't decide if. Like after Sylvester died, people were like cruel, what is going on, speculation Station,

Why do Jesse's husbands keep dying? Well? Maybe wait, speculation Station, Maybe she organized the entire labor movement just to take out her first couple of husbands. That's what she did. That's probably she was working with Baldwin felt the entire time as like an inside job, giving him all the goods. You hear me, Jimmy haff that's what happened. Some already nineteen year old just wanted to switch boys. More than likely he just had a dangerous job. Yeah, it's probably not.

It's probably the speculated stations had some our trains are running right now, we've got a coal shortage. All the union workers are on strike. Yeah we got nothing now. I don't I don't know about you, but I was definitely like, what in the world was up with these cold companies? And and and Baldwin Felts detectives just being like, I will happily shoot this guy in the face. Like

I just don't. I don't get that now. Historian Rebecca Bailey and Smithsonian Magazine was like pressing for a little nuance, okay, And she points out that the Baldwin Felts agents and the other anti union folks really truly believed that they were putting down a sincere threat of Bolshevik communism, because, of course the Russian Revolution had just happened, Communism was gaining a lot of popularity for a number of years after that amongst the workers, and that did lead to

a lot of destabilization with the systems. That was the point of conclution. Of course, things got messy and uncomfortable, and so there were a lot of people who are very very very very very worried about communism in eighteen twenty and they were like, any sign of it is too many signs. And they were like, there's two possibilities here. Either we give you terrible wages, overcharge you for your rents, and give you working conditions that you die in. Or communism.

The choice clear, folks, Come on, people suffer under communism, yeah, but not under us, I know, right. She She also was saying that like they companies really hated, of course, the wage conversation, because the price of labor is kind of the only thing they could a yes, I guess, to their budgets, whereas like the cost of blowing up the mountain and transporting things and all that stuff was

like hard costs they couldn't do anything about. And then the amount they could sell it for, of course is designated by the free market supposedly, and so that was like kind of the one thing they could manipulate, which is not a strong argument for them. It's just their thought process. How am I supposed to make a million dollars if all the workers have enough food to feed themselves. If I let you have a fair share of your product, I might only have to have dollars a poultry. How's

a man is supposed to live on that? She also asserted that the miners would most often instigate violence because she said most outsiders gave them the moral high grounds no matter what happened, because they were the workers, I suppose, and so it was like it seems like a David and Goliath story, so you always side with David, even

if he through the first stone or whatever. But in the Smithsonian magazine, a former West Virginia coal miner and a member of the local United Mine Workers chapter, there Terry Steele really pushes back on that. He says, the narrative that most people heard where that mountain people and mine workers were inherently violent and unreasonable, perpetually drunk, and incapable of solving any problem without a gun. So most people that's what they thought about the miners. So Terry

says that locals knew good and well. The local wisdom was, quote, if you got a mule killed in the mines and you were in charge, you could lose your job over it. If you've got a man killed, he could be replaced. And in conditions like that, he argues, what other options do you have? But revolt? All right? And I kind of feel that, and he was pointing out to that. I guess I suppose the mind that he was working at had declared bankruptcy, so he was losing its health

insurance and entirement plan. So he's like, everything is still a company store to me, and to me, it's no different. And a lot of things that we had fought for in nineteen twenty. We're still asking for now because of the decline in union power of the last decades decades. But I'm thinking about those Starbucks that are unionizing. Well, you know, they shouldn't be getting fired, but at least

they're not getting fired upon with machine guns. Yeah, not yet, not yet, I know, but but I mean, that's the history of leaders in this country. It was very violent fight for the rights that we enjoy today, and we enjoy them. Were like, we want a four day working now, just to get to where we are today, which is still a lot of oppressive labor and low wages and

things like that too. I mean, you don't have to you don't need me to tell you the comparison between you know what, how wages have grown versus how companies have profited over the last you know, x number of decades is not proportionate. No, on the cost of living. Still there's all there's always further to go, yeah, you know, and it's rarely out of you know, this fabricated notion of like people are lazy and you know, and don't want to Who wants to work? My god, I want

to do anything but work, you know. But it's but it was, but we want to do something. You know, people don't want to just sit around on their butts all day, Like look what, I think they'll be innovative

and they'll be creative and they'll be productive. But the problem is they won't take out the trash and scrub the toilet and clean the ship out of the car and stuff like all the those jobs that no one would do for free and which should be highly financially rewarded because they're the grossest, nastiest jobs that nobody wants, right, which I know we have to me that just just real quick that to me that makes the most sense is like the worst job that no one would want

should get a lot of the money. Yeah, I don't know. I thought that. I think that I do have a bit more of an education on labor, the labor history, because he in my school, we were just very alternative that way. We didn't you know, we talked about this sort of thing, but I didn't know about this and

how many people died literally fully died. Yeah. I remember hearing uh, very high ranking union officer on a film set once on the cell phone and he just walked past me and all I heard him say was I will personally go dig up Jimmy Hoffa himself and get him down here, don't blah blah, And he kind of walked away and I didn't hear the rest. I was like, man, union fights are awesome. So you know where Jimmy Hoffa is. Right, everyone's been asking literally four years amazing speaking of, we've

already finished telling this story. So we're not getting paid for all this banter ship. Yeah, so we're gonna strike the end of this episode until we record the next one. Yeah, I'm striking. I'm striking to get us the hell out of here. Strike A Final thoughts, Final thoughts is I just hope that you enjoyed this story. I really loved

looking into it. It was so fascinating to me to learn about the Cold Wars and all this crazy ship that we never get told and the true blood that was spilled to get us the working conditions that we have now. And uh, hopefully we won't have to spill any more blood to get even better working conditions so we can all get our beautiful, beautiful coal miracles, the little nuggets of happiness. Yeah, come and you're talking if you're good? Yeah? Oh yeah. Cole uh well, thank you

so much for tuning in today. I hope you enjoyed this story. To um us an email and we'll shoot you back a little lump of coal. Find us ever dick Romance at gmail dot com right or on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Dynamite Boom and I'm at Oh great, it's Eli. The show is that Ridick Romance. Thanks again for tuning in everyone, and we will catch all our next one love you bye, so long friends, It's time

to go. Thanks so listening to our show. Tell your friends names Uncle Sindance to listen to our show, Ridiculous roll Nance