The life of John Worth Kern

by Claude G. Bowers

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 in The Survey in early April. An even more amazing story from M. Michelson, under the satiric title, “Sweet Land of Liberty,” appeared in the May number of Everybody’s Magazine. Collier’s Weekly gave 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 in session, 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.

VII

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 were to 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 former officials 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 York City 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. Kern had 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.