Bloody Williamson (6 page)

Visiting the region in mid-August, George E. Lyndon, Jr., representing the
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
, found Herrin and Marion “sullenly ashamed, but not repentant.” By local standards, as he interpreted them, the victims were outcasts. “They committed the cardinal crime, the unforgiveable treachery of selling their labor without the sanction of unionism. Theirs was a treason in the eyes of organized labor above and beyond the treason to
country, even as the terrible vengeance of organized labor was above and beyond the majesty of the law.”

From the beginning, editorials condemning the Herrin killings had been salted with demands that the authorities—county, state, or national—bring the participants to justice. Day after day the
Chicago Journal of Commerce
ran a box on its front page headed: “Ten Days Since Herrin,” or: “Fourteen Days Since Herrin,” calling for the indictment of those who had taken part in the rioting. On June 29 that same paper reprinted several columns of editorials under the heading: “Press of Nation Demands Justice for Murders That Disgrace State,” and added its own assertion that “forty-seven states of the Union are looking to Illinois to administer justice to all responsible for the murder of workingmen, the torture of wounded, the desecration of the dead and the defiance to law and order on the part of the Miners’ Union at Herrin.”

As time passed without any apparent action, one organization after another demanded that something be done. The Chicago Association of Commerce passed resolutions urging that the offenders be brought to justice and that the officials whose negligence contributed to the disorders be disciplined. The Board of Directors of the National Association of Manufacturers chided the American Federation of Labor, in session when the massacre took place, for its failure to rebuke the mine workers, and called on every loyal American “to join in demanding the protection, by state and nation, of these fundamental rights of the citizen, that no man shall live his life by the consent of others, and no official shall refuse or neglect to guard these living truths of the day’s work.” In a letter to Governor Small the president of the National Coal Association charged that Williamson County officials had done little or nothing to punish the rioters, urged that the state use its law-enforcement agencies, and offered the Association’s resources to the prosecution. The Illinois Manufacturers Association sent its members a communication headed, “The Home of Lincoln Threatened with Disgrace,” in which it
asked that they write or wire the governor requesting him to place Williamson County under martial law so that residents having knowledge of the events of June 22 could offer their evidence without fear.

In early August the National Coal Association distributed hundreds of thousands of copies of a thirty-eight page pamphlet entitled
The Herrin Conspiracy.
On the outside front cover were several excerpts from newspaper editorials, concluding with this from the
New York Sun
of July 6: “Until this coal mine butchery is legally avenged Americans can no longer boast that in the United States the Constitution is supreme.” The body of the publication was a reasonably objective account of the massacre and the events leading up to it—there was no need to color the facts—but its final paragraphs drove home its real point:

Prominent Americans made the same demands. At Marion, Ohio, on July 4, 1922, General John J. Pershing alluded to the Herrin massacre without naming it, called it wholesale murder that was as yet unpunished, and asserted: “… it is imperative that public opinion should demand that the strong arm of the law, under fearless officials, take positive action.” On July 13 Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, told delegates to the Elks’ National Convention that Herrin was “as atrocious a massacre [unclear]. as is contained in our annals” and
reminded his audience that poor man and rich man were equal before the law. Reversing the usual emphasis, he declared: “The offender of great wealth must be brought to task for his iniquities, and the offender of small wealth must be brought to task also.” But the sharpest reproof of all came from President Harding. In the course of an address to Congress the President referred to Herrin as “a shocking crime” that shamed and horrified the country,” as “butchery … wrought in madness,” and asked for legislation extending the jurisdiction of the federal courts so that such “barbarity” could be punished.

The President’s address was read before Congress on August 18. On the following day he received a telegram from John H. Camlin, president of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, informing him that despite appearances the people of Illinois were determined that the mine rioters should be apprehended and punished, and that his own organization had taken steps to see that there would be an effective prosecution. “There is, of course, a conscience in Illinois which will not tolerate such a disgraceful thing,” Harding replied. “It will be very pleasing to me and reassuring to the whole country to know that this conscience is finding expression.”

In his telegram Camlin referred to a letter that his office had sent to each of the state’s 102 chambers of commerce two days earlier. In this communication the Illinois Chamber declared that neither State’s Attorney Duty of Williamson County nor Attorney General Edward J. Brundage had adequate funds for prosecuting the murderers, yet they were the only officials in the state who could take action. Contributions totaling at least twenty-five thousand dollars were requested, and a quota was assigned to each local chamber.

Williamson County in Relation to the Principal Cities of Illinois

On the day this letter was released Judge Hartwell summoned a special grand jury to convene at Marion on Monday, August 28, to investigate the Herrin killings.

All over the country editors commended the Illinois Chamber for its action, though many wondered why Illinois, one of the wealthiest states in the Union, had to depend on a private organization for the money with which to prosecute murder. (The reason was to be found in a political feud between Brundage and Governor Small. In 1921 Small had vetoed a large part of Brundage’s appropriation, leaving him barely enough money for the routine functions of his office.) Only a few Illinois papers spoke out in opposition, taking the position that it was the duty of the state in its official capacity to enforce the law, and not the concern of a chamber of commerce.

In some places, however, the action of the state chamber aroused more than theoretical dissent. Months earlier the Illinois Chamber had planned to make a tour of southern Illinois in late September. The schedule called for a half day in Marion, with a barbecue and a visit to a mine. After the massacre, the half day was cut to forty-five minutes. When the state chamber issued its appeal for funds, an officer of the Greater Marion Association asked that the city be omitted altogether. “I do not believe the average business man in Marion,” he informed the state secretary, “is in a proper frame of mind to make a genial host for your party.” The trip was abandoned.

Much more important was the reaction of the United Mine Workers of Illinois. Two weeks after the state chamber asked for contributions, Frank Farrington, the miners’ district president, and other officers conferred with the union’s lawyer. After the conference Farrington pledged all the resources of the district for the defense of any union miner who might be indicted for participation in the Herrin riots. “We have a proper appreciation
of the magnitude of the forces that have combined to convict our members,” he said, “and we shall leave nothing undone that will enable us to combat these forces.” What that meant became clear when the union miners of the state met in convention at Peoria early in September. There, in executive session, they voted a one-per-cent assessment on the earnings of all their members after September 1, 1922, and directed that the money be used for the defense of those whose indictments were expected.

Equally significant was the opportunity the action of the Illinois Chamber gave to the labor press.

The smoke of gunpowder at the powerhouse woods had hardly cleared before the Associated Employers of Indianapolis, an organization dedicated to the open shop, addressed a letter to its clientele calling upon “red-blooded citizenship” to urge Governor Small “to afford the fullest possible protection to life and property in the legitimate mining of coal, notwithstanding the miners’ union.” When President Harding, on the Fourth of July, proclaimed that “a free American has the right to labor without any other’s leave,” no labor editor, with public opinion as inflamed as it was, had the temerity to contradict him. When associations of employers—and particularly the National Coal Association—began to blanket the country with pamphlets, labor’s friends saw, or professed that they saw, an anti-union conspiracy. But not until the Illinois Chamber of Commerce made its financial appeal did they have what could be presented as convincing evidence.

They were quick to use it. Announcing that henceforth he would devote his entire time to defending any miners who might be indicted, A. C. Lewis, a lawyer of Harrisburg, Illinois, charged the “organized wealth of the nation” with “poisoning the minds of the public” and with trying to create “a public sentiment which will prevent these men from receiving a fair trial.… It is apparent,” he continued, “they have raised and are spending fabulous sums of money, not for the purpose of bringing
the guilty to justice, but with the intention of seeking victims in the hope that … they can in some measure discredit organized labor.”

Such pronouncements as these led Philip Kinsley, level-headed representative of the
Chicago Tribune
, to write from Marion on September 1: “The murder charge will be lost sight of in the trials of the rioters and the cause of the open shop versus labor will be the central issue.”

Appearances to the contrary, Illinois officials had not turned their backs on the Herrin killings. Two days after the massacre, representatives of the Attorney General were in Williamson County interviewing county officers and leading citizens. Three weeks later Brundage offered a reward of one thousand dollars for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the murderers. Moreover, Judge Hartwell had summoned a special grand jury for July 9 in the expectation that it would investigate the mine riot, only to be told by the prosecution that it was not yet ready. Consequently, only routine cases were presented to the jurors, and the county officials suffered charges of neglect and nonfeasance in silence.

By the end of August the prosecution had gathered its evidence. The judge, having called one grand jury prematurely, wanted to defer the investigation until the September term of court, when a jury called in due course would be available, but the State’s Attorney insisted that a special grand jury be called at the earliest possible moment. Judge Hartwell yielded, and issued his summons for a venire to be present at the courthouse in Marion on August 28.

At the roll call that morning twenty-six men came forward. Four were excused for personal reasons, so one more was selected from the panel to make the necessary twenty-three. Philip Kinsley classified twenty-one of the group as farmers, one as a furniture and lumber dealer, and one as a part-time farmer and coal miner. “All,” he wrote, were Americans “of the normal back-country type of Anglo-Saxon-Celtic descent through the southern mountains … a little harder of eye, perhaps, than the average farmer of the corn belt.”

The judge delivered his charge with the utmost informality, standing with one foot on the railing of the witness box, leaning forward, and speaking as if in conversation. His words, however, contradicted his nonchalance. He reminded the jurors that they had not been summoned to settle a labor dispute, and that they represented neither operators nor miners. They owed allegiance only to the people of Illinois; their guide should be their oath to inquire “fully, fairly, and impartially” into the facts.