Matewan Firebugs Burn Mine House 

MATEWAN FIREBUGS BURN MINE HOUSE FIREMAN REFUSE AID

MINGO CONSTABULARY PREVENTS THE SPREAD OF FLAMES, WHICH DO $15,000 DAMAGE

UNION ORGANIZER SEIZED

Charged With Threatening Death to Miner Who Came to Take Place of Striker

DISARMING TO BEGIN SOON

State Police and Vigilantes Ready to Enforce Orders of Martial Law Proclamation

Special to The New York Times
Williamson, West Virginia May 22,1921

Matewan was again the scene of strike disturbances today. At 2:30 this morning the head house of the Stone Mountain Coal Corporation near that town was set afire and $15,000 damage done to mining property. A force of deputy sheriffs and members of the State Constabulary were sent from this city in motor cars by Adit. Gen. Thomas R. Davis, but when darkness fell no arrest had been made.


The Stone Mountain mine was deserted. It had been worked by a non-union force for several months. Ten days ago all the workers were ordered under penalty of death to leave by last Monday. They quit. P.J. Smith, Superintendent of the mine, sent his family away, but remained himself. On last Tuesday "Sid" Hatfield, Chief of Police of Matewan, met him, felled him with a rifle butt and left him on the street for dead. Superintendent Smith had been in a hospital here since the encounter and today is out for the first time.

There had been a strong force of State police om guard at Matewan for the last ten days. They had been patrolling the scene of the fire up to 1:30 this morning. The fire was discovered and the alarmgiven by the crew of a passing train.

Firemen Refuse Aid

N.C. Kindleburger, Assistant State Fire Marshal, who is attached to the staff of Adjt. Gen. Davis, accompanied Cheif Deputy Sheriff John Hall and the constabulary to Matewan. When they arrived the head house had been totally destroyed, while fire was threatening other mining property near by.

"The property was set afire, evidently by some person or persons living at Matewan," said Mr. Kindleburger when he returned this evening. "There is not the slightest doubt that it was of incendiary origin."

The assistant Fire Marshal and Deputy Sheriff Hall and his constables got to work at once to prevent the spread of the flames. One of the mine cars which caught fire broke away and ran some fifty feet down the tipple, setting fire to a heap of refuse from the screening of coal beneath and threatening the tipple it's self. The officials got no assistance from the Fire Department in the town and had to send to Williamson for fire hose to fight the flames. At an early hour this evening the fire was still burning, but all dange of it spreading had been adverted.

It is believed that as a result of this new outage drastic steps will be taken against certain trouble makers in Matewan, including "Sid" Hatfield, against whom a charge has not even been lodged for his attack on Superintendent Smith. He is still to be tried for the murder of "Devil" Anse Hatfield, who was in witness against him before the Grand Jury that investigated his share in the bloody fight at Matewan a year ago.

Matewan Hotbed of Plots

Hatfield is known as a "two-gun man" whose aim when he shoots from his pocket, is deadly. Almost invariably he carries a rifle in addition to two pistols when he is abroad. In his encounter last week with Superintendent Smith the latter was unarmed. Hatfield was out of town when THE TIMES correspondent visited Matewan on Wednesday to interview him. So far every newspaper correspondent who has visited Matewan has been run out of town by Hatfield. The place is a trouble nest and a hotbed for plotting and scheming by the strikers and their sympathizers.

C.R. Kenney, President of District 17, United Mine Workers, who is in personal charge of the strike in the Mingo and Pike County fields, made almost daily visits to Matewan last week. Superintendent Smith said tonight that ever since the battle of Matewan last year, life had been made miserable for him and his men and their families by the townspeople.

One arrest was made by the State police today at War Eagle, where the head house was dynamited and $50,000 worth of damage done to the mining property last Thursday. The prisoner, who is thought to be a union agitator from the adjacent McDowell County, was arrested for threatening with death a miner alighting from a train who was going to work in the mines. David B. Robb, financial agent of the United Mine Workers, said tonight that he had received no report regarding the fire at Matewan and did not care to comment on it.

Liverymen with automobiles to rent today refused to carry any one through the "war sector" between Williamson and Matewan, which THE TIMES correspondent traversed last week. One, when it was urged that the trip had been made without untoward incident last Wednesday, shook his head and said; "That was trouble in the mountains" where stray shots have been falling from the Kentucky side at half a dozen points today, according to reports reaching this city.

Trouble Feared in Disarming

By this time couriers dispatched by Adjt. Gen. Davis have posted copies of Governor Morgan's proclamation, declaring Mingo County in a state of insurrection and establishing martial law in all of the mining settlements along the Tug River and in most of the more remote localities which, hemmed in by the mountains, are off the beaten track. Notice having thus been served on the inhabitants of what will be expected of them under the military regime, general enforcement of the rules embodied in the proclamation will begin this week. Most of the 500 newly deputized vigilantes received their Winchesters and allotment of ammunition last night.
"No overt acts against the Governor's proclamation have been reported to me aso far with the exception of the firing on the head house at Stone Mountain, and there has been no reason for drastic action elsewhere by the forces under my command," said Major Davis today. He added that, with the civil courts functioning, enforcement of the civil law would be left to the Sheriff and the civil law would be left to the Sheriff and the civil authorities generally. The adjutant General fully expects that enforcement of the proclamation will provide sufficient work to keep him and the 
constabulary-citizen police force at his command busy for the next few weeks. 

Disarming the persons who, under the Governor's proclamation only at their homes, it is generally feared, will be a troublesome task. Last fall, when there was a general seizure of firearms here, the local authorities had the backing of Federal troops in gathering in the weapons of gun toters. When the time comes to surrender their rifles or revolvers these mountaineers are obstinate. Men in the West Virginia and Kentucky mountains look upon the carrying of a gun as a birthright and to take it away from them is like cutting off their right arm. The task ahead of Adjt. Gen. Davis and his men would be less complicated if the prevailing unrest was confined to what has arisen as a direct result of the differences between the striking miners and those who take their side and the operators and those who sympathize with them. Then it would involve at the most 3,000 or 4,000 men and would hardly be beyond the powers of the local authorities to handle, but the unrest and terrorism that has prevailed for a year or more is due in large measure to smoldering feuds which have nothing to do with the strike but have been fanned into flame by the disorders and violence that marked the beginning of the labor war. In the mountains hereabouts live men with grievance of all his kin. A hasty word or an ugly look may be the beginning of a feud and the rankling memory of it may start a tribal war of annihilation a score or more years after everybody except the man to whom the insult was offered and his
kin have forgotten all about it. 

The two border counties which form the battleground of the present strike, Mingo in West Virginia and Pike in Kentucky the latter separated from Mingo only by the narrow, winding Tug River, is a feud country. It was in Pike County that the Hatfields and McCoys fought for more than a generation, during which the chief aim in life of the male members of either family was the extermination of the other. In this they proved so successful that the peace which now officially prevails between them is due largely to the heavy percentage of deaths, mostly due to violent causes, in both families and to the fact that most of the Hatfields who are not in the graveyard live in voluntary exile in Mingo, while the living McCoy's keep their dead company on the Kentucky side of the boundary stream.

Yet, and it may be only a coincidence, there are Hatfields and there are McCoys mixed up in the mining feud, and invariably on opposite sides. In one defense of the McCoy collieries during the three days battle a week ago one of the defenders, Mrs. Rose Cline, was a McCoy, daughter of the famous feudist. In the battle of Matewan a year ago "Sid" Hatfield, it's Chief of Police, used his two guns on behalf of the strikers.

Moonshiners Killed Staton

These feuds, the peaceful people here-about know to their sorrow, often survive the generation which saw them start. The present trouble is likely to give birth to new feuds. There is, for instance, the case of Squire Harry C. Staton, who was shot down at Sprigg on the day the most recent upheaval started, not by strike sympathizers, but by moonshiners, who under screen of the strike turmoil put out of the way a prohibition officer who had taken his job seriously.

Staton was buried within five feet of his own house. Every time his little boy goes into the yard to play with his toy wagon he will be reminded of the manner in which his father lost his life. When he grows too big for toy wagons or other childish things, his father's grave will be there to awaken from day to day tragic memories and breed vengeful resolves. As if "Squire Staton" had a premonition or more tangible reason to believe that he would fall by an assassin's hand when, upon returning home from Matewan on the day of it's bloody battle, he astounded his wife by the strange request that he be buried in his own yard. He could have done nothing more likely to make certain that his death would be revenged.