Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/368

 You are, doubtless, a loyal American. You believe in the constitution and laws of your country, and you do not understand just what it meant to be Provost Marshal of the West Virginia State Militia during the coal strike of 1912-13. If you think that it meant to be a public official, performing a public service in the interest of the public, you are naïve. To have had anything to do with the West Virginia State Militia during that strike meant to be a creature of the mine operators, in the pay of the mine operators, owned body and soul by the mine operators. It meant that you were setting aside, not merely the laws of the state of West Virginia, but the Constitution of the United States. It meant that you were beating and flogging and shooting strikers, kicking their wives and children out of their homes to freeze in the mountain snows, turning machine-guns upon their tent-colonies, throwing their leaders into jail without trial, and torturing them there for months on end. It meant this, whether you were the lowest Baldwin-Felts mine-guard taken out of a city slum and put into the militia uniform; or whether you were Capt. Lester, an official of militia, who testified under oath before the Senate committee that it was not his business to know if miners had a legal right to organize or not—he was sent there to prevent their organizing, and he did what he was sent there to do.

And now, just what was the relationship of the Associated Press to this prostituted State Militia? Was the Provost Marshal of Militia the Associated Press correspondent in this field? He was, or he was not—according as you care about truth or technicality.

The Associated Press correspondent at Charleston, who covered all the strike, and who had been officially appointed and acknowledged, was a man named Cal Young, and he had his office in the office, or connected with the office, of the Adjt. General of Militia. This Cal Young had an intimate friend by the name of John C. Bond, who was Provost Marshal of Militia, and also was correspondent for several newspapers. Cal Young did not trouble himself to travel about in the strike field, which was widely scattered, occupying a number of mountain valleys. Bond, however, was compelled by his militia duties to travel to the scene of all troubles; therefore Bond and Young had an arrangement whereby Bond tele