Part Two: The Second American Civil War You Never Learned About

Robert is joined by Spencer Crittenden to continue to discuss The Battle of Blair Mountain.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the podcast where
bad people are talked about, and in this case, the
bad people are coal mining company executives in specific and
capitalists in general. And my guest for part two, as
with part one, is Spencer Crittenton. Spencer, the inventor of

(00:21):
Dungeons and Dragons more or less essentially um and uh
the the show runner for Harmon Quest. Um, even though
your name is not Harmon. But we'll just we'll just
skip right past that. It's all marketing, you know, it's
all marketing. Yeah, Spencer, are you a how do you?

(00:42):
Are you a big fan of the First World War? You?
Are you a World War One stand? Yeah, I'm a
I'm a big World War One stand. You love trenches,
trench foot, oh my god, and like mustard gas. Oh
hell yeah, mustard gas, Oh my god, child soldiers being
massacred by the thousand, just pumping people into a meeting exactly.

(01:05):
World War One was awesome for everybody, but it was
a particularly good thing for coal miners and for unions
in general. Um, because the United States, right, we we
got involved in World War One. Spoilers, um and uh
it uh it it wouldn't. Um, we had to go
to like the the whole country had to get on
a war footing because the US military and on once

(01:26):
upon a time actually was weird the idea that we
would have a standing military that was bigger than just
a couple of thousand guys um. And so we had
to like really quickly make an army because we just
kind of didn't have one when World War One kicked off.
We had like a few thousand guys on horses who
were used to like shooting it out with Poncho Villa,
but that was about it. So we like had to
build this army up suddenly. And that's like that that

(01:46):
takes a lot of fucking coal, right, Like at this point,
all of your fucking industry bullshit is fueled by coal.
So we had to get a lot of coal real
fucking fast. Um. And the president also had to institute
a draft because we didn't have a whole lot of soldiers,
and this constricted the labor supply. So US suddenly needs
a shipload more coal. And also there's a lot less
uh labor age men that you can hire to do it.

(02:10):
And this means, I don't know, if you understand if
you know much about economics. I do not, but I
know that when you have less of something, it gets
more valuable. So suddenly coal miners, which had kind of
just been treated like trash before this, as you might
have guessed from the fact that they machine gun them
from an armored train, Um, they're valuable. Now you can't
just machine gun them. Um. And so the federal government

(02:33):
actually kicks in some protections from miners and starts treating
them really well. Uh. The National War Labor Board, which
President Wilson instituted to help manage American industry, pushed for
the eight hour work day, granted raises to laborers, and
supported equal pay for women doing what was then still
considered to be men's work. Equal pay for equal work
was the idea, and where we are still not there. Uh,

(02:53):
but they start talking about it now right like it
stops being prior to World War One. Like if you're
kind of on the fringe, if you're saying emen should
get paid for doing the same job that a man
is doing, like that's a loony kind of like how
as soon as the fucking like everybody's laughing about basic
income being like a fringe position And then a plague
hits and everybody's like, oh, maybe this is actually a

(03:13):
normal thing that should exist. Yeah. Yeah, So all of
that ship starts to happen because of this whole, this
whole war thing, And I don't want to make it
out to like Wilson was like super pro labor because
the i w W, the Wobblies, the group who, like
one of their members wrote the song that been in
the last episode with Wilson brutally cracks down on them
because there are a lot of them are like fucking anarchists, right, Um,

(03:35):
they're very interesting group because like the the the guy
who wrote Solidarity Forever fucking hated the communist like governments
um that that came out of like the end of
World War One, and also hated capitalists. Interesting group, interesting
person worth reading about. But President Wilson fucking cracked the
ship down on those guys because, um, they were seen

(03:56):
as being like two politically radical and it's easy to
punish radicals during a wartime. But the actual union men working,
like the the UMW, like these coal miners, these were
seen as being like fundamentally pretty American and they were
also necessary. So Wilson did support miners war, and things
got more and things got a lot better for particularly
mine workers during this war. Um so yeah. President Wilson

(04:20):
declared at the outset of US involvement that a lack
of coal was quote the most serious danger facing the
United States in this current crisis. He declared coal miners
immune to the draft. And for the first time, these
rough and tumble rednecks who were used to being treated
like disposable assets, started to realize that they were actually
really valuable and kind of critical to the nation working.

(04:40):
Uh And they had to promise not to strike during
the war, but in exchange for this promise, they received
a substantial raise. Now, the result of all this was
that by the time the war ended and the troops
started to return home, coal miners had started to get
used to the idea that they were valuable, skilled workers
performing a critical task. Now, if you're at Dusk Capital, Spencer, no,

(05:02):
that's fine, it's it's it's it's super boring, um and
and a real snooze fest. Uh So. Dust Capital is
a book written way back in eighteen sixty seven by
Karl Marx who Karl Marks was the founder of the
Marx Brothers. He invented uh comedy. Um, but he also
had some theories about labor. Yeah, and the big mustache
and had some theories about labor to um. Lennon read

(05:26):
a book on him in the song American Pie Uh
anyway uh so um yeah, Karl Marks in Dust Capital
landed on something that's generally referred to as immiseration theory
and Admiseration theory is the idea that, um, because cutting
wages and benefits to workers is the easiest way to
increase profits. Right, So, like, if you operate a coal mine,

(05:47):
the cost of building um, you know, mine carts, the
cost of donkeys to like toe mine carts, the cost
of you know, electricity to light the minds. These are
all fixed costs, right, These things cost what they cost.
But you can cut what you pay the workers, you
can cut their benefits, and that will increase your profits.
So because doing this is the easiest way to increase profits,

(06:09):
Mars was like workers in capitalist societies are going to
be victims of a gradual chiseling away of their quality
of life. Um, so pay will get cut, you know,
and you know you you might you might say that
things in the modern day that would be an example,
this would be like monitored bathroom breaks, robotic trackers to
inform your boss when you're not loading Amazon packages. Enough
things that, in Marks's words quote, destroy the actual content

(06:33):
of his labor by turning it into a torment. Uh,
they transform his life into working time and drag his
wife and child beneath the wheels of the juggernaut of capital.
But all in production of surplus value or at the
same time methods of accumulation, and every extension of accumulation
becomes conversely a means for the development of these methods.
It follows therefore, that in proportion as capital accumulates, the

(06:55):
situation of the worker be his payment higher low must
grow worse. So this is this is This is a
big part of Marxist theory, and it suggests Marx kind
of suggested that amiseration is what helped tends to produce revolutions.
People get so fed up with being abused and chiseled
away at that they revolt. Um. Now, this is definitely
true in a number of cases, and you can point

(07:15):
to certain specific cases where like, this is what happened
to workers and it caused a revolt. But I think
one of the issues that kind of people who are
really in the market Marxist theory have is that they
kind of over apply it. And it is a fact
that that a miseration theory actually doesn't always hold true,
and in fact often does not hold true. More than
a century of scholarly analysis has actually shown that living

(07:37):
standards for workers often raising time in various capitalist countries,
and yet those workers still engage in revolts. And so
the question is if if standards don't necessarily get chiseled
away at, but those workers still revolt, what is causing revolts?
And so there's alternate theories that have been proposed to
to explain this. James C. Davies, an American scholar, theorizes

(07:57):
that social revolutions often occur after what he calls needs satisfaction,
which is generally measured by income, has risen for a
period of time and then sharply drops. So this causes
a sudden and massive gap between expected and obtained satisfaction,
which provokes action on behalf of the aggrieved. So Marx
is saying that, like workers, things just get worse and

(08:18):
worse and worse and worse until they're forced into action.
Um and Davies is suggesting that social revolutions occur after
things actually get better for a while and then suddenly
get worse and people just are furious, and you can see,
like the strikes that we talked about in the last episode,
we're kind of the result of miners just getting chiseled
away at for so long that they got really piste um.

(08:41):
And what we're going to talk about today is more
an example of what Davies is talking about, is things
getting better, like during World War One, things get a
lot better for miners, and then after World War One
that changes sharply and people get really fucking piste off,
and everything that we're about to to talk about today happens.
So things were all sunshine and roses for labor during

(09:01):
the war. Woodrow Wilson crackdown, like I said on the
I w w UM, but the government was willing to
work with unions to express the proper amount of patriotism. Um.
That said, they were still terrified of anything that smelled
even a little bit like communism. And this fear only
increased is the Russian Revolution heated up and the Bolsheviks
got down to some serious Bolsheviking as soon as the
war I mean, it wasn't even a joke. As soon

(09:24):
as World War One was over and more young men
returned home, that opened up the labor market, and so
bosses began to correspondingly cut wages and benefits to their
workers again to try to claw back more control, power
and profit, and this led to immediate strikes. Obviously, m yeah,
the strikes started among the nation's steel workers, but in

(09:46):
over the course of like the fall of nineteen nineteen
early nineteen twenty, there were like several thousand strikes in
the United States from all sorts of different works, including
police officers. Cops have unions and they strike to they
just also break up strikes by other unions. UM so again,
maybe something to think about. So in September nineteen nineteen,
half of America's steel workers go on strikes and Woodrow

(10:08):
Wilson uses federal troops to violently break the strike, and
this for shadows how labor would be treated over the
coming years. But while the steel workers could be crushed
rather simply, mine workers were in a much better position
to resist. For one thing, they had more institutional support
within the government because of like systems that had been
set up during World War One, to support miners um

(10:29):
so they were also the best organized chunk of laborers
within the country. By this point, United Mine Workers was
more than half a million men strong, and the union
then possessed the ability to shut down almost the entire
coal industry. And if you shut down the coal industry,
you basically shut down the United States. Now, by September
of nineteen nineteen, when the u m W held their

(10:51):
annual convention, workers were pissed. Wages had been slashed and
workers had been laid off as soon as the fighting stopped,
and demand felt this made miners eel as if they'd
been bait and switched, which they sort of had been,
and they Yeah, this particular chant was common among miners
at the time, and I think it gets across the
general feeling of many. We mind the cold of transport soldiers,

(11:13):
we kept the home fires all aglow, we put old
Kaiser out of business. What's our reward? We want to know.
So they're a little bit pissed. Yeah, So the union
calls a strike. Uh, and this was still illegal under
wartime laws which had not been lifted yet. In President
Wilson promised that the law will be enforced, which was

(11:33):
generally taken to mean that federal troops would be used
to shut down any strike, and a tedious game of
political back and forth followed, with the government issuing court
injunctions against the strike that rendered the union unable to
call for a walk off. So the unions like, we're
gonna strike. The government says, actually, that's fucking illegal, and
the union says, okay, we're not going to call for
a strike. But then four hundred thousand coal industry workers

(11:55):
just walk off the job anyway, But it's not a
union strike. It's just four hundred thousand Americans being like
fuck you. Then like, what are you gonna do. You're
gonna come to our houses and kill us all, Like, all,
we gotta deliberate the coal mines. Yeah, reopened the economy,
Yeah exactly. Yeah, you can go in there and liberate them.

(12:18):
Do the job if you think it's so fucking easy.
So the problem with this was that winter had started
a hit by the point that all these guys come
off the job, and co shortages during the fall and
winter mean that a lot of Americans start suffering right
because they can't heat their homes um and this pisss
off a lot of normal American citizens who might otherwise
have sympathized with the union because like they're freezing in

(12:40):
their houses. Um. So, the union was ultimately stymied in
this nationwide strike by a mix of public disapproval and
the fact that there were still a lot of non
union mines in West Virginia, in Mingo County to be specific.
And these were very productive minds that put out enough
coal to keep critical US industry afloat. So normally Americans
are suffering, but the things that are necessary to maintain,

(13:03):
like the nation's existence, that ship keeps going because of
these non union mines in West Virginia. And eventually the
UMW is forced to cave and the miners have to
go back to work. And yeah, the bosses buy in
large one this round, and their victory made it clear
to the union men that they could not successfully execute
a nationwide strike without unionizing the minds of West Virginia.

(13:26):
Mm hmm. Yeah. So that's good and valuable lesson, a
valuable lesson. So to us, all, to us all, um,
As I have often said, Mingo County is the enemy.
Um still true to this day. So Mingo County was

(13:46):
the mine operators stronghold in West Virginia, and they fought
like devils to keep union organizers out and to clamp
down on any individual miners who might try to change
the status quo. They were aided in this by the
Logan County Sheriff's Department, which was wholly owned corporate interests
and dedicated to crushing worker organization. The cause of the
union was made all the more difficult by cultural factors
in Mingo County. Most of the miners there were farmers first,

(14:10):
men who saw coal mining as a temporary placeholder gig
when prices were lower crop yields were poor. They didn't
truly identify as miners, and so it was hard to
organize them. Mingo County remained resistant to the cause of
organized labor until early nineteen twenty. Now, in the wake
of that strike, the union goes to the table with
the bosses and you know, they basically try to iron

(14:31):
out what differences they can so that there won't be
another strike because it still hurts the mine company's profits.
And this arbitration commission like concludes by recommending a significant
raise for union miners twenty seven to avert future strikes.
So union miners get a raise. Non union miners, the

(14:52):
miners in Mingo County who had allowed the bosses to
in the strike, they don't get a raise because they're
not part of the union. So these guys just fucked
over the union and a strike, and then they immediately see, oh,
this is why we have a union, because it increases
the amount of money that we make. Um. Yeah, So
over on the other side of the holler, their union
neighbors were suddenly getting paid as shipload more Mingo County

(15:15):
miners started demanding raises from their bosses, pointing out that
they loyally kept working during the strike and this surely
meant that they deserved the increased pay. And this did
not convince the people who were their bosses. Shocking. Yeah,
I'm shocked. As Robert Shogun writes, quote the response of
the Howard Colliery at Chadowroy typify and management's attitude. The

(15:38):
Howard manager offered a modest increase, but then boosted prices
in the company store when some miners complained they were
pistol whipped by mine guards. Yeah. Not. This is actually
probably going to surprise a lot of people, but most
folks don't like to be pistol whipped. It's not great.
I know, I know, I take some controversial takes, and

(15:59):
that's going to be one of them. But I'm generally
anti pistol whipping. I'm not gonna say there's a time
in a place for pistol whipping, but it's a bad
thing to receive. You know, you'd rather be the giver
of a pistol whipping than the receiver. Yeah, mm hmm.
So at Burnwell colon Coke, one impatient miner posted a
notice at the entrance to the miners of Burnwell Coal Company,

(16:22):
we shall have this raise. We want this raise which
the government had granted us. The response from the president
of Burnwell was not long in coming. He said, as
one of his employees recalled, he would let his mind
go until moss grows over it, until it falls in
the Huckleberry ridge before he would ever work a union man.
Eighty of the ninety two Burnwell miners walked off their

(16:43):
jobs and sent two of their number to Charleston to
ask District seventeen for a charter. Hundreds of other miners
elsewhere in Mingo did much the same thing. In accordance
with union policy. They were extructed by the head of
the union to return home, reclaim their jobs, and reopen
the minds. Then the union promise they would be welcomed
into the union. The discontents did as they were bidden.
As the last week of April began, the organizing drives

(17:04):
swept like wildfire through Mingo County. The union counted three
hundred new members in one day, and hundreds more than next,
And of course, true to form, the bosses fired every
single man who came into work with a union card,
and they then sent armed goons in to force these
men out of their company homes. So hundreds of workers unionized.
They wind up homeless, their families wind up homeless, and

(17:26):
the union has to set up and pay for miners
camps to put these guys up and keep them in
their families alive while they begin to unionize the minds
of Mingo County and start to strike. So, how how late?
How much later was this than the last episodes? This
is eight years later? This is nineteen nineteen twenty one
is when all this happens. So it's like enough time

(17:47):
to forget, but not like for the people who lived it.
They're like, oh ship not again. Yeah, yeah, and a
lot of the people, the people organizing this strike on
behalf of the union had also in large part taken
part in the ship that happened in the last episode.
And also all of the folks cracking down on them,
like the people in charge of Baldwin Felts and everything.
All of these folks are a lot of these folks

(18:08):
are still around, so both sides have more experience and
are bringing what they experienced at the last set of
strikes into this one. So um yeah. And one of
the things that's interesting to me about this is that
these workers had refused to unionize and it kind of
sucked over the union, but then the union basically spends
a shipload of money buying them tents and food and
helping to like take care of them as they begin

(18:31):
their strike, because that's just the way the ship works.
So the whole situation infuriated larger and larger sections of
the minor Mingo County minor population as they see their
friends and family members kicked out and made homeless. And
by May nineteen twenty three thousand of Mingo Counties four
thousand miners had been unionized. Now they were aided in

(18:51):
this by the fact that much of the local government
in Mingo County was pro union. The town of Mattawuan,
which is like one of the big towns in the area.
The town of Mattawuan's mayor, cable Testerman had been elected
by miners and he was loyal to them rather than
the mind bosses. Yeah, it's a funny name, that's all.
It's a funny name. Yeah, a lot of great names
in this people didn't know how silly their names were.

(19:13):
Back in the day when the county sheriff's so so
not the county sheriff's the state police in West Virginia
were in the pay of the mind bosses. And like
the boss of the state police was a captain named Bracus,
and he was totally pro mine like corporate mind company.
But like a lot of the county sheriffs were very
pro minor. Some of them were pro like. It kind

(19:33):
of depended on the county a lot like Logan County
was really shitty and pro mine company. Um, but Mingo County,
you know, things were a little bit more you you
had a lot more sympathy for the miners. And the
police chief of the town of mattawan was profoundly pro minor,
and his name was Sid Hatfield. Like the old governor
Doc Hatfield, Sid came from a family that was infamous

(19:55):
for fighting and feuding, and at twenty seven years old,
Sid was one of the best gunmen in the eight
Then as now, the redneck farmers of West Virginia were
all quick to brag about their handiness with a gun,
but even among a crowd of marksmen, Sid Hatfield stood out.
He always carried two pistols. He was known in duels
for shooting them through his pockets, sometimes just to kill
people faster he was. He was kind of a badass, um. Yeah.

(20:21):
He always carried two long pistols, and he was said
to be equally accurate using either hand. He had a
habit of showing off his skill by tossing a potato
into the air and splitting it open with a shot
from his gun. In nineteen fifteen, he had a semi
famous duel with a mine foreman that left the foreman dead.
Hatfield had claimed self defense and been cleared of all charges. Now,

(20:43):
in general, local law enforcement around Mingo County was unwilling
to help the mind companies evict union men from their
homes uh. The sheriff's department would only assist when proper
notice was given, and when that and that interfered with
the desire of mine operators to throw out unionized workers
on the same day they were fired. So again the
bosses called on the services of the Baldwin Felts Detective Agency.

(21:04):
Many of these men were deputized by friendly West Virginia sheriffs,
which gave them official license to enforce laws in the
mining camps and to carry guns. The bosses use them
to collect rent, to guard payroll, and to suppress union organizing.
So that's good. I'm in favor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You
might compare them in Shadow Under like nightA rant or whatever,

(21:26):
which is why Shadow Run has so many, like four
pay police departments. That's a thing that happened, like that's
not like a like yeah, so like the Pinkerton's. Yeah,
there are another and they do. They do a lot
of union crushing. It's just it's mainly Baldwin Felts here
in West Virginia. So the Baldwin Felts men were particularly
despised for their undercover work. The agency regularly deployed men

(21:47):
to hide among the miners and pretend to be union sympathizers.
One of these men, Charlie Lively, went so far as
to organize several Union local outposts in Mingo County during
the spring of nineteen So Lively would like set up
union groups and then he would provide names of all
the people who were secretly meeting to the company, who
would then like fire and and evict those people. Um

(22:07):
Lively and his agents would also act as agent provocateurs,
so when like miners would hold protests, they would create
violence at those protests and able in order to justify
violent crackdowns by mine guards. That happens today right well,
all the time, dude, all the fucking time. Yeah, yeah.
So the head of the Mingo County operation was a
fellow named Albert Felts, one of the leaders of the

(22:30):
Baldwin Felts Agency. He and his men had been tasked
by their employer with serving a series of evictions on
families who lived in Mattawan. Since the local police, led
by Chief Hatfield, would not help, he asked his brother
Tom Felts, who was directing the agency, to send him
a bunch of reinforcements. Mattawan was the heart of unionist
resistance in Mingo, and Albert knew that evicting families there

(22:50):
would be dangerous work. Uh so he he's there were
about six other men. He approached Mayor Testament and asked
if it would be okay for uh he and his
in to set machine guns up on the roofs of
some local buildings in Manawan in case things got out
of town. He's basically like, hey, we gotta evict a
bunch of people might piss off the locals. Can I
put machine guns up on your roof to murder your

(23:11):
citizens if they get angry? Now, the mayor made a
controversial call and said, no, you cannot set up machine
gun nests on the roof of local buildings. Brave. Yeah,
So he's he's the opposite of the Jaws mayor. Um
kind of. I don't know the Jaws mayor doesn't really
square with this, but he's everyone's cultural touchdowne for a

(23:33):
bad mayor, so imagine him is not looking like that?
Um so yeah. Albert offers next to bribe the mayor
with a thousand dollars for the right to set up
a killing field in the middle of town, and to
his credit, the mayor says no, Well, can I at
least set up a killing field? Yeah? What can? I
just want to have the ability to machine gun every

(23:54):
one of your voters. Why is this a problem. What
about some sort of death bog? What about a deaf bog?
What about I don't know, a murder forest, murder forest. Yeah.
So on May nineteenth, nineteen twenty, Albert Felts his reinforcements
arrived seven men, including his other brother, Lee Felts. This

(24:15):
gave him a total of thirteen armed detectives. Uh. And
detective at this point is a word that just means mercenary. Like,
these guys are detecting ship, they're armed thugs. Yeah, I
solve the mystery of why I beat that man to
death with a blackjack. It's because it was Paul. I
remember when I learned that, like, oh, private detectives are

(24:36):
just people that you hire to uh monitor other people.
They're just kind of like paid stalkers. And I was like, oh,
that's it's a very different picture. You know, that's a
broad generalization. But still and yeah, and here they're just paid.
They just are are men with guns who do whatever
the people hiring the mask and in this case it's
throw people out of their homes. So Albert Felts gets

(24:57):
thirteen detectives and when he gets his reinforcements, um so yeah.
He was worried about the danger of doing this work
without machine gun nests to back him up, but he
and his men hopped into three cars and drove out
to the edge of town to start evicting the ship
out of some miners. Now the Baldwin feltsmen were all
heavily armed, and the miners in the area could do
nothing but stand by and watch as they tossed furniture
and valuables out onto the street. This kind of work

(25:18):
was routine for the Baldwin feltsman and they intended to
destroy the lives of a number of families and then
hop on the train to get back to their homes
at the end of the day. Now, the Baldwin Felts
detectives were interrupted in their task by Sid Hatfield, the
police chief and Mayor Testament. Again, Albert tried bribery, this
time offering Sid two or three hundred dollars a month
for his allegiance. Hatfield turned him down and demanded to

(25:39):
know what authority Felts had to evict people. Felts replied
that he'd gotten a court order from the capital in Charleston,
but he didn't have it on him. So Hatfield and
Testament are like, that's unacceptable. You don't even have the
fucking court order. You have no we have no way
to know that you you have a right to evict
these people, uh, and Felt just shrugged and said, basically, like,
I have thirteen men with guns. What are the two

(26:00):
of you going to do about this? So the mayor
and the police chief go back downtown and they attempt
to like get on the telegraph or whatever, and they
call up warrants from the local court to try and
arrest the Baldwin feltsman for unlawfully processing evictions. But it
doesn't really work out. Things aren't very fast back then,
and while they do this, an armed posse of locals,
mostly miners, start to congregate in downtown Matajuan, which is

(26:20):
why Albert felt what had some machine gun nests there. Um.
So by the time the Baldwin feltsmen finished their work
and return to the hotel they'd been staying at, there
were an awful lot of angry men with guns in
the middle of Mattawan ready to do violence. So the
Baldwin Felds men get back and they're packing up to
get to the train station, and there's another confrontation between
Mayor Testament, sid Hatfield and the detectives. The two groups

(26:42):
threatened to arrest each other, and then, as historian Robert
Shogun writes, quote, there would be nearly as many versions
of what happened next as there were witnesses to the scene.
By some accounts, Albert felt shot the Mayor, then World
and fired into the hardware store at sid Hatfield. Others
said the first shots came from the store itself and
from Hatfield's guns, striking both Felts and Testament. At any rate,
everyone agreed that the first men to fall were Cable

(27:04):
Testament and Albert Felts. Then all hell broke loose. Immediately,
Hugh Combs's deputies and some of the other miners had
been looking on raked the street with gunfire. Albert Felts,
his brother, Lee, and Cunningham drew their pistols and returned fire,
but they were badly outgunned. Most of their comrades, whose
guns were packed away, scrambled for cover behind trees and fences.
But Combs's men were relentless. One after the other, the

(27:24):
Baldwin Felts agents fell, so at the end of the
blood letting, three Mottawan locals, including Mayor Testament, were dead,
along with seven Baldwin Felts detectives, including both Felts brothers,
and most of the killing on this day was done
by Sid Hatfield. Now, it was rare for cops to
wind up on the side of union strikers, and this,
plus Sid's well earned reputation is kind of a larger

(27:44):
than life gun slinger made him an instant hero of
union men nationwide. Like they fucking love Sid Hatfield because
he shoots a bunch of detectives. Yeah yeah, he like,
I mean those were and he got the two brothers.
It's like he took out the ball almost, although yeah,
I'm sure there's more bosses. There's more bosses. He took
out a boss. And like every post, every like photo

(28:07):
you see of Sid Hatfield from this period of time,
he's pointing both of his guns directly at the cameraman,
like smiling and posing like he's They weren't great on
gun safety back then. A lot of pointing guns at
people to get good photos. Yeah, So the United Mine
Workers Union puts together a propaganda film called Smiling Sid,
which they played in camps to help inspire in organized miners.

(28:29):
Sid Hatfield becomes the focus of regular newspaper stories and
photographs inevitably capture him pointing again both of his guns
at the camera. There was a trial for Sid Hatfield,
of course, but the Mingo County jury decided that Smiling
Sid had done nothing wrong. It also happened that several
witnesses hostile to Hatfield died mysteriously right before the trial. Obviously,
the Baldwin Felts Detective Agency and the surviving Felts brother

(28:52):
we're not about to take this lying down. They attempted
to frame Hatfield and one of his deputies for the
destruction of coal company property at a nearby county where
the legal situation was friendlier. So Hatfield and his deputy
had to travel to McDowell County, West Virginia to stand trial. Now,
there was no real evidence against them, but the goal
was never to convict them. In August of nine, Sid
and his deputy arrived in town to go to their trial,

(29:13):
and as they stepped up to the courthouse doors, a
group of Baldwin Felt Mine guards, including that labor spy
I was talking about earlier. Lively, drove up and just
pumped them full of gunfire and kill both men. Now,
the men who murdered, said Hatfield, were tried in turn,
but McDow County Justice proved his unwilling to convict them,
as Mingo County Justice was to convict their victims. So

(29:35):
this happens. Um. Yeah, so that's cool and good. Do
you know what else is cool and good? You know
what won't murder? The only good cop in this story,
the products and services that support this podcast. None of
them killed, said Hatfield. That is a hard line we

(29:56):
draw with our sponsors. I ask every one of them,
did you murder, said Hatfield, and they all say no,
except for the one that said yes, the Koch brothers,
And I apologize for that getting through. Um here's the ads.

(30:19):
We're back. Oh my Christ, sweet bleeding Jesus, we are back.
What a good time. So yeah, that's the hat Field stuff.
It's a bummer. Um. And while all this is happening,
So this like occurs over the course of about a year,
you know, you've got the Mattawan massacre as it's known
um and then you've got Sid Hatfield's assassination. You know,
there's two a little less than a year apart, but

(30:39):
this happens like one. And while all this drama is progressing,
and like there's a bunch of court cases and ship
and hat Fields, you know, becoming a public figure. While
all this is going down, the overall situation in Mingo
County had continued to degenerate. Striking miners had formed into
a series of heavily armed camps, and groups of them
started regularly sallying out to carry out hyper attacks and

(31:00):
acts of sabotage on mine company infrastructure, and also to
assassinate mine guards. Now, West Virginia's governor at this time
was fundamentally a coward, and his first instinct was to
beg President Harding to send in federal troops to help
calm the violence. Harding replied that he wouldn't send in
federal troops until he was convinced the governor had actually
taken some sort of action. So the governor enacted West

(31:21):
Virginia's Public Safety Law, which enabled him to seize authority
for Mingo County law enforcement from the local police, who
sided with the miners and handed over to the head
of the state police, a guy named Bracas who was
in the pay of the mine owners and was a
real piece of ship. So that's good. Yeah, I guess
that must have happened in history before. But that seems

(31:42):
to be drastic to be all like the police, they're
not the police. Yeah, the police aren't policing the way
we want him to police. They're not the police anymore.
This other guy that we pay is now the police. Yeah. Yeah.
It is important to note that there is there is
a history in in the labor movement of East sighting
with workers and being very useful in that, but also

(32:04):
there's a history of the state just being like when
they do that, you're not the police anymore. Yeah. So
Bracus gets to create new police because the police that
were there didn't hate minors enough, and he immediately uses
his powers to create a law and order community made
up of two volunteers. And these were mostly wealthier men

(32:24):
from Mingo County, business owners and landed gentry who would
just be given rifles by the state and the legal
authority to violently suppress their poor working class foes. So
that's cool, yeah, but maynight, Yeah, it's awesome and good
and cool. I I also love it. And what's even
cooler is that today, if this happened, no one would

(32:44):
even need to give them rifles because they already have them,
and a lot of the people that would be shooting
at don't, which is part of a anyway. On May nine,
the governor declared a state of martial law in West Virginia.
He put Major Thomas B. Davis of the of the
of the of the state, you know, National Guard or
whatever the militia in charge of finally suppressing the strikers.

(33:08):
And Major Davis was a real piece of ship. So
Davis had joined the U. S Military to fight in
the Spanish American War, which is a bad war to
have joined to fight in, um, but he also failed
to see any action in it. Um. So, even though
he never got any combat, he decided he really liked
military life, and when his regiment was disbanded, he joined
the West Virginia National Guard to stay in uniform. UH

(33:29):
Davis had commanded a unit during the Paint Creek Strike
of nineteen twelve, and the whole experience had revealed and
Robert Shogun's words a nonchalance towards civil liberties on the
part of Davis, which is not a thing you want
to be nonchalant about. Um, be chalant about civil liberties?
Is my ship out of those? Yeah, you want to

(33:49):
chalant the hell out of him? Yeah, don't non the anyway.
Here's Robert Shogen quote. This is talking about what he
had done in uh uh, the nineteen twelve strike that
we talked about last episode. It also talks about some
shitty things that the governor, who was otherwise seemed pretty
cool um Dr Hatfield got up to. So it's a
useful paragraph. Quote. The military commission that had held sway

(34:13):
over defendants charged with violating Governor Glasscox martial law decrees
selected him as its Provost Marshal, him being Davis, despite
the fact that the civil courts in the martial law
district were open. The military Commission, sitting in the town
of Pratt and Kenawa County, ruled on offenses ranging from larceny, adultery,
and disorderly conduct to disobeying sentries and perjury. A nearby
freight terminal served as a bullpen to hold prisoners, among

(34:34):
whom was Mother Jones. On occasion, the commission tried as
many as thirty prisoners at a time. Dispensing with such
formalities his indictments or juries, Davis saw to it that
those convicted were hustled off not to the county jail
but to the Moundsville State Prison. With Davis's active assistance,
the Commission rode rough shot over civil courts. When the
County Circuit Court issued an order forbidding enforcement of the

(34:54):
commissions sentences, Major Davis, acting on orders from Governor Hatfield,
who had by now succeeded Glasscock, blocked the county sheriff
from serving the writ on the National Guard officer who
headed the Commission. In May of nineteen thirteen, after a
pro labor newspaper, the Socialist and Labor Star editorially denounced
the coal barons and attacked Governor Hatfield for arresting a
union lawyer and suppressing the Labor Argus sister paper to

(35:16):
the Star, Davis led a raid on the Stars offices,
bearing warrants from Hatfield himself. Davis and his posse of
guardsmen and sheriff's deputies forced their way into the paper's
offices in Huntington's overpower to guard and wreaked havoc destroying
type and printing equipment. From there, Davis and his commandos
invaded the editor's home, season correspondents and books and rummaging
through his files and searched for the paper subscription list.

(35:38):
The editor and assistant editor were imprisoned for two weeks.
So that's cool. So that's this guy's backstory. That's gonna
be like his that very precedented in history. I mean,
I'm sure you take out the press, but yeah, that
just seems like such a I mean, you know, obviously
it's like you cut them off at their communication. But
at the same time, it seems like such bystanders. You know.

(36:00):
Yet historically, uh, it's pretty dangerous to run a socialist
newspaper in the United States of America. A lot of
them got murdered, a lot of them got deported, a
lot of them got cracked down on. There's a long,
beautiful history of that. It's one of our proudest traditions
in the United States. Um. Yeah, it's cool and good.

(36:20):
So um yeah, So this is that's the backstory of
this guy Major Davis, who winds up in charge of
the state of West Virginia's efforts to suppress the Strikers.
And end the violence UM, which they do by using
more violence. So Davis's first task in charge was to
vet the volunteers for the county's new vigilance committees. And
these are like the rich guys who volunteered to shoot

(36:42):
at poor people UM. And Davis ensured that no union men, farmers,
or black men were allowed on the commission or given firearms.
Citing his authority under martial law, Major Davis banned all
union gatherings and only union gatherings. He also banned the
distribution of pro union newspapers. He rescinded all gun permits
for union men as well, effectively stripping them of their

(37:03):
constitutional right to bear arms. So that's good. So Davis's
first actions targeted union organizers, arresting them for trying to
hold gatherings and having several of them brutally beaten by
his own men. He also put it in order for
a creative new Thompson submachine guns, which he hoped would
aid the Mingo police and clearing out strikers and their families.
The miners, however, did not wait for this to happen.

(37:25):
On a group of snipers from one of the striking
workers camps opened fire on camp guards. State police and
National guardsmen from nearby Kentucky came in to provide backup,
and two of them were killed by sniper fire. The
snipers were eventually driven off, several was arrested and one
was killed, and the whole encounter convinced the mine bosses
that it was necessary to break up these striking camps,

(37:46):
which had basically evolved into armed militia compounds. Now. Major
Davis's first plan for how to handle this situation was
to create concentration camps on US soil. He wanted to
send soldiers into the strike camps and four out most
of the committed union men and then reorganize the camps,
which would then be filled with women and children and
put them under semi permanent military guard. So yeah, he

(38:09):
just was like, what have we just made some concentration
camps out of this? That seems like a call. There's
only the same ideas like that. Guys don't have new ideas.
It's all the one idea really, which is, yeah, use
weapons that you have and they don't, to lock them
into prisons of one sort or another and make them
do what you want or just die if that's what

(38:31):
you're wanting to do. Yeah, that is the only plan. Ever,
like when you get right down to it, which is
cool and good, does not echo in history or into
the modern day and anyway. So as a prelude to this, uh,
this concentration camp policy, Major Davis began sending police and
soldiers on a series of raids against camps in Lick Creek. Now,

(38:53):
there were a series of gun fights involving hundreds of
men sniping at each other and like milelong skirmish lines,
and Davis ordering them to our machine guns into the
campus press strikers. A bunch of different gunfights like this,
multiple battles occur. So there's all these raids which kill
a number of people, and you know, happen over the
course of days and weeks um and you know, the
death toll of all these raids, combined with the anger

(39:15):
over the assassination of sid Hatfield, which happens in early
August of nine, all of this eventually pushes the striking
miners into massive retaliation. On October three, thousand of them
gathered with all of the guns that they could carry. Now,
since Davis's men had been rating their strongholds, they decided
to target, a stronghold of the mine bosses Logan County.

(39:37):
And I'm gonna read a quote now from a writ
up by a professor named Hoit Wheeler, a labor professor,
talking about what was happening in Logan County at the time. Quote.
Logan County in nineteen twenty one has been described as
a leer in the face of liberty, a feudal barony
defended by soldiers of fortune in the pay of mine owners.
The ruler of this feudal barony was the Sheriff of

(39:57):
Logan County, Don Chaffin. It is instead of Chafing that
in his heyday, when clothed with official power, he was
a hard drinking, swaggering, bragging, bullying gunman who ruled his
kingdom of Logan with a mailed fist. In Logan County,
it was the practice for coal companies to pay the
salaries of deputy sheriffs. These deputies were used systematically by
Chaffin to prevent union organizers from operating in Logan County.

(40:19):
Organizers were beaten and jailed at will. So this army
of miners from their camps organizes at Lynz Creek, which
is about sixty five miles from the Logan County line,
and they start marching. Two UMW officers who are terrified
of the bloodshed that might ensue if these guys reach
Logan County, they actually intercept the miners and they begged
them to call off the march. There basically, we can

(40:40):
negotiate this, we can work things out with the companies.
There's no need for this attorney into a massive blood bath.
Um and the miners agree, and the mining this army
of miners starts to back away, and while they're backing away,
Sheriff Chaffin of Logan County decides to launch an attack
while they're retreating, and he kills two men. After a
massive battle, um now pisces off the striking miners, and

(41:02):
suddenly they stop retreating and backing away, and in fact,
three thousand more men joined them, and like swell the
force to six thousand, and this army of six thousand
men starts advancing on Blair Mountain, a ridgeline that separates
the Union chunk of Logan County, which is pretty tiny
from the larger non Union chunk, and by the time
they actually reach Logan County there's more than ten thousand

(41:24):
miners in this army. Now, the soldiers in this massive
Union army are dressed as the nightmares of every American capitalist.
They wore red bandanas, and they tied red flags to
the barrels of their guns. They had an organized medical
corps to deal with casualties, and at least one machine gun.
Their commander, their general, was a Union officer with the
pretty awesome name of Bill Blizzard. Pretty fucking sick. Yeah yeah.

(41:53):
One witness who was present described the scene of the
army this way. One big redheaded fellow hopped off the
tray a lot of them to trains to get up
to the front, and got up on the platform and
waived his high powered rifle and said, the Coal River
hell cats have arrived. Now watch us work. He called
for detailed number seventy four. He got up on some
high ground and kept hollering for details seventy four, and

(42:14):
there were about twenty men all armed. They had on
the customary overalls and belt cartridges and a couple of
big forty four stuck in their belt and high powered rifles.
He called those men in and he called the roll
and then started off up Coal River, and word was
being passed around through the crowd. So on the opposite
side of Blair Mountain, Sheriff Chaffin had about a thousand
men at his command, amount about thousands like police and

(42:34):
stuff wrong with another two thousand volunteers, mostly these vigilance countymen. UM.
So he's got about three thousand fighters in total. But
he also has several commercial pilots and he has three planes.
So that's that's about to matter in a second. Now,
the assault of the miners begins on August thirty one,
and it is ugly from the jump. The miners had

(42:56):
the advantage of numbers, but they were assaulting an entrenched enemy.
They're trying to attack the top of this mountain. Um,
So they're attacking an entrenched enemy with the high ground
and access to a number of gatling guns and other
automatic weapons. Battle was joined at a number of sections
across the line, and the fighting was vicious. Sheriff Chafin
eventually decided to send out his planes. Now, initially, the

(43:18):
thing that he had like been legally authorized to do
was to load them up with copies of a proclamation
from President Harding basically saying like stop stop all this um.
But instead of loading them up with proclamations. On Thursday,
September one, he ordered them loaded with pipe bombs and
tear gas bombs and just starts dropping them on crowds
of miners. Now, this doesn't work very well. The Sheriff's

(43:42):
air SATs air force was markedly ineffective, but it is
part of what makes the Battle of Blair Mountains so historic.
This was not just a strike or a riot. This
was a full fledged military action, a war on American
soil against American citizens, um, which included air power and
machine guns. It's a wild but people don't here learn
about this ship. Yeah, It's like people talk about like

(44:04):
the Oklahoma bombing and stuff, and this seems like the
same kind of level of escalation. Yeah, except an I
don't know. I'm I'm bann at history. You're good at history. Yeah,
I mean, like the Oklahoma City bombing people know about
because it was just like one asshole with no good grievance,
but like on the part of a bunch of right
wing nutfox um murdering people. Um. But these guys were

(44:28):
had a real grievance, and it was a grievance that
kind of cuts to the heart of inequalities in the
center of American society. So we never talked about the
time that they got bombed and tear gassed and shot
at with machine guns. Yeah, we just would you would
you just leave that out of the history books. Um? No,
The eight hour workday was entirely gained by polite people
with signs protesting. That's why. That's why we have a weekend,

(44:52):
not the men who charged machine gun nests and sniped
it corporate guards. Yeah, it's cool, Like, this is cool history.
This is what the industry should be. It's like, this
is you You've got to imagine that if we told
the stories like this, people would be would be a
lot more interested in history, our history. Yeah, the reason

(45:15):
we have these things like the weekend and the eight
hour work day is that and this is not just
you know what happened in West Virginia. All over the country,
there were a number of actions like this. This is
kind of like the biggest and most you know too,
But like all of these things that we consider just
a part of life, like the fact that you're supposed
to get a weekend, all of these things were bought
in blood by men who were willing to kill for

(45:36):
these rights by men who are willing to die for
these things, and we don't talk about that even though
it's cool and interesting because it might give people ideas. Yeah,
I mean, they sacrificed a lot, but I also like
retweeted a petition, so you know that is the same thing. Yeah, yes,
they were. These men were retweeting with their rifles. Yeah,

(46:00):
every every way, every one of the hundred thousand bullets
fired in that one battle was a tweet. It's all
about the ratio, then, is now. Yeah. Yeah, they ratioed
the mine bosses by strafing them with thirty six Yeah,
but um, it's for an outbreak. You know what also

(46:25):
supports the strafing of mine guards with high caliber hunting rifles.
The products and services that support this podcast. We're back,
We're back, and where we just left off, the sheriff
of Logan County had ordered chemical weapons and bombs deployed

(46:49):
by air against attacking workers. Um, so that's pretty cool. Um. Now,
over the course of days, uh, this battle escalates and
fighting continues again for days, and federal troops are finally
sent in, which you know, it takes a while to
get there, and the union men know that federal troops
are coming. They also know that like they can't fight

(47:10):
federal troops, right, you know, the army has cannons and
better bombers and a whole lot of machine guns. Um.
So they realized they only have like one last ditch
chance to like win this fight before the army arrives,
and they launched a desperate assault across the entire Blair
Mountain line. And I'm gonna quote again from the Battle
for Blair Mountain by Robert Shogen about this last assault quote.

(47:34):
In preparation for their attack, the insurgents dispatched a patrol
to destroy a railroad bridge on the Guyan Dot line
of the Norfolk and Western, hoping to keep reinforcements from
reaching the defender's positions. The bridge was set on fire,
but a century who extinguished the blaze discovered a charge
of dynamite and saved it from being blown up. But
the miners went ahead with their planned assault anyway. That
same morning, the attack began with a feint at the
center of the defense lines at Blair Mountain. The miners

(47:56):
opened up on an outpost manned by the Bluefield Boys,
a volunteer contingent from the town with machine gun and
rifle fire. Having gained the attention of the defenders, the
miners sent their main force against the left and right
flanks of the defenders. Attack was pushed desperately, reported one
local journalist from his vantage point in a machine gun
nest on the defense ramparts. The enemies seemed to have
no sense of fear whatever and advanced over the crest

(48:16):
of the hill and the face of machine gun and
rifle fire. But in reality that the defenders gave as
good as they got. We couldn't fire a shot, but
what they would rake our line from top to bottom,
one of the miners told reporters to this beleaguered insurgent.
The offenders seemed to be able to volley back a
hundred rounds for every shot fired at them, and when
it came to devious tactics, the defenders were at least
a match for their attackers. At one point, the defenders

(48:36):
in the first line of trenches abandoned their posts, seemingly
driven off by the force of the attack. The advancing
miners promptly occupied the trench, exulting in the ground they
had gained, but they had little time to celebrate. A
hidden machine gun nest, located barely fifty yards away, raked
the position and drove them back. Another machine gun nest,
protected by a rock cliff and barricades of timber and stones,
kept up a steady fire. Fortunately for the miners that

(48:58):
could only fire in one direction, but it was enough
to repel several assaults, so the attack fails. In the end,
the miners cannot break the line at Blair Mountain and
can't take the mountain, and federal troops arrive on September three,
and the miners were forced to retreat to their lines
and eventually to disband. In the end, fifty to a
hundred miners were killed, along with ten to thirty of

(49:19):
Sheriff Chaffin's men. Almost a thousand miners were arrested, but
the vast majority of the army dispersed. Many miners hid
their weapons and the hills and valleys around Blair Mountain
and caches of arms are actually still discovered there today.
Oh that's cool, yeah yeah, go arms hunting in Blair
County and send me what you find. Just mail it,
mail it. The US Post Office loves sending century old

(49:44):
munitions and dynamite. Just go ahead, and it's fine, get
They'll take what they can get. So yeah, yeah, yeah.
There were trials for treason and murder in the wake
of all this. Bill Blizzard was acquitted, but some of
the miners were convicted for a variety of crimes. The
UMW paid for everyone legal defense, which nearly bankrupted the union,
and the immediate wake of the battle was a huge

(50:05):
victory for the forces of capitalism. This time, the bosses
had won, but the United Mine Workers of America continue
to organize, and the Senate Investigating Committee looked into the
whole mess, which helped bring national attention to the plight
of miners in West Virginia and elsewhere. The bosses had
won on the battlefield, but they did not win in
the long battle for public opinion. By nineteen thirty five,

(50:25):
the new Deal brought new protections for workers and an
end too many of the abuses that had long plagued
the coal industry. The u m W succeeded finally in
organizing the vast majority of miners in West Virginia. So
that's good. Yeah. The ESU system, which we talked about
in our first episode, whereby women were forced to pay
for basic necessities by rape, Uh, is believed to have

(50:47):
come to an end around nineteen thirty four as a
consequence of the Union finally organizing West Virginia. While many
aspects of this violent struggle have been studied and covered
in detail by historians like Robert Shogun, THEESU system was
allowed to fade from memory. Historian Michael Klein writes that
the use of female flesh to extend credit to feed
the family was never mentioned by our own regional historians.

(51:09):
Now this has led many modern historians to doubt that
such a system ever existed. The men who line up
on this side, like West Virginia University professor Paul Rakes,
will point to the aggression and powerful self defense instincts
shown by the miners at Blair Mountain. Men who were
willing to charge machine gun nests to fight for their
rights surely would not have taken a system of bureaucratized
rape of their wives and sisters lying down. Labor historian

(51:32):
Wes Harris has a convincing argument though against this line
of reasoning quote, my best guess is they didn't talk
about it because if they had talked about it, they
would have risked their husbands getting really irritated and going
out and trying to get revenge. Your husband gets killed,
you're a widow, you're on the street, you get kicked
out of the company house, which is a point like
a lot of miners died because they got angry and

(51:53):
took up arms against the mine, and a lot of
these women were just like, if I let them know
what I'm doing to keep the family fed, they'll go
get themselves. Was killed, and then we'll be in an
even worse spot. Yeah, I mean, there's it seems like
there's no shortage of reasons why you might not, you know,
create a big thing of that that almost are you know,
at least in modern perspectives, seemed very self evident and

(52:15):
don't even need to be discussed. But its like it
was a big deal to be able to feel like, no, actually,
there's this logic to it. It's so strange. Yeah, Now
it's further evidence for the idea that the East House
system was real. Uh. Labor historian West Harris points to
the extremely well documented history of child labor in the
minds of West Virginia. Now, this was illegal even at

(52:36):
the time that we're talking about, but it was not
uncommon for ten year olds to be sent down to
work um and authorities were almost never called. As a
result of this, if a child were to complain to
a social worker, his family would lose their company house,
to be forced out onto the street. This is a
little bit like how today more than a fifth of
U S workers are regularly forced into uncompensated over time.

(52:57):
You might also compare it to the fact that in
two thousand seventeen, one study found that workers in tin
U S States had lost a combine eight billion dollars
per year to wage theft from their employees. Now that's
just ten states eight billion dollars in wage theft per year. Now,
one of the things that's interesting to me is that
the total value of all property theft nationwide on an

(53:20):
annual basis is about sixteen billion dollars. So if you're
looking at these numbers, you might come to the conclusion
that wage theft is almost certainly a larger problem than
all other theft combined in the United States, but it's
virtually never prosecuted. That's me, isn't that? It's yeah, one
of the I uh, I worked in a place that

(53:42):
had waged theft. I don't think I was ever deprived
of paid overtime or anything. But there's a lot of
people who just straight up didn't get paychecks and stuff,
and then we all talked about it. It's like, well,
it seems like there's nothing we can do. We can
try and fight and lose and then get sucked over
and then everyone gets sucked over or get fired, and yeah,
we won't be able to pay rent, will be out
of our houses now because of legal protections, will be

(54:04):
out of our houses in thirty days as opposed to
the same day. But like you know, um, things you
might conclude that things aren't as much better as they
should be, and some people might conclude that maybe some
folks need to be putting red bandanas around the barrels
of rifles today, but that's outside of my purview to
advise as a podcast host. UM. So, the battle between

(54:27):
labor and the bosses continues, and today it largely does
so without unions on the side of labor. Um Unions
are are a lot less common than they were back then,
and they have a lot less power. Uh. Strikes are
not a thing of the past entirely, um, but they
aren't They don't have the teeth that they used to,
although in two nineteen UM the threat of airline stewardess
is striking uh An. Air traffic control is just not

(54:49):
being able to handle working without pay. During the government shutdown,
UM showed us that the mere threat of such things
and the right industries can bring swift concessions to the
capitalist class because that fucking that situation ended real quick
once it looked like the planes weren't gonna be able
to fly. Now, the overall situation for labor in America
is not great today. Most of us have never known

(55:12):
a United States in which labor was organized and capable
of acting on a mass scale to achieve its goals.
While the new labor rights that FDRs administration put in
place helped to enshrine UM you know protections into law,
and these were very important, the fact that unions basically
bowed to the federal government and letting them set all
this meant that successive generations of politicians have been able
to steadily chisel away at labor rights while unions slowly

(55:34):
declined in power and influence. The struggle of labor is
the struggle of folks like you and me to live
a decent life. Our predecessors fought and bled for a
five day, forty hour work week. They picked up guns,
and they braved machine gun fire for the right to
organize themselves, to speak their mind, and to live independent lives.
Is something more than slaves of the wealthy. Now the
next chapter of this history, uh, the chapter that podcast

(55:57):
hosts will be talking about in another hundred years. This
is not yet and written. But everyone listening here now
has a chance to be one of the authors of
this history. Uh. And I'd like to end this episode
once we once we plug our plug doubles with another song,
another Union ballot by one of America's great folk musicians. Um,
whose side are you one? This is also by by

(56:18):
Mr Pete Seeker. As you sit in quarantine waiting for
whatever the future has in store for us, I think
it's it's good to ask yourself the same question that
Pete asks everybody in this song. So we're gonna we're
gonna play ourselves up with that. But Spencer, do you
first want to plug your plug doubles? Uh? Yeah, at
the six sler on all the things it's spelled like
it sounds. If you can't spell it, that's fine. You're

(56:39):
probably better off. Um, and I did a podcast called
Harmon Town. Um, you could listen to the ads. I'm
pretty proud of those ads. I'm not super proud of
my other output on the podcast. I mean it's fine.
It's just like you know, I was just hanging out.
It was just some bullshit. But yeah, that's some stuff.
Harmon Quest is a show I did. It's ah, we

(56:59):
played D and D and then animated. I think it's
pretty accessible. If you love DN D and your friends
just don't get it, you might want to show it
to them. Um, I don't know. But but really it's
about Robert. You know what is this is really about you?
Not me? You? So this is this is about all

(57:22):
of us. Uh. My only plugs are are our website
behind the Bastards dot com, our podcast on Instagram at
bastards Pod, and my podcast The Women's War, which has
a lot to say about systems that might be set
up that might work a little better than some that
we have today. So maybe listen to that. Uh and
right now listen to Mr Pete Seeger. Come all of you,

(58:09):
good workers, good news do you. I'll tell of how
the good old Union has come in here doo dwell,
Which side are you all? Which side are you are?
My daddy was a minor, and I'm a minor's son,

(58:32):
and I'll stick with the Union till every battle's one.
Which side are you all? Which side are you all?
They say in Harlem County EI. There are no neutrals there.
You'll either be a union man or a thug for

(58:55):
j H. Player, Which side are you all on? Which
side are you are? Or workers? Can you stand it?
Or tell me how you can? Will you be a
lousy scavel? Will you be, young man? Which side are

(59:18):
you all? Which side are you are? Don't scab for
the bosses, don't listen to their lives. Those poor folks
haven't got a chance unless we organize. Which side are
you are? Which side are you all? Which side are

(59:43):
you are? Which side are you are?