The battle itself was part of what was then known as the West Virginia Coal Wars. Boiled down to its simplest form, the largely undeclared war was fought between coal miners who wanted to unionize to gain better working conditions and the coal barons and land owners in West Virginia who simply wanted to make profit off the coal miners' labor. They were willing to use force to do so. The miners, who were forced to work in company towns, pay with company scrip, and were liable to be driven from their company owned homes if they failed to meet quotas or protested, were driven to extreme measures as they attempted to unionize.
The Battle of Matewan was a microcosm of the whole war as it took place thanks to warrants being illegally served to evict coal miners who were trying to unionize. The Baldwin Felts Detective Agency was hired by the coal company to go and serve these eviction notices. Naturally, the miners were touchy about this and armed themselves. When the mayor of Matewan and the sheriff Sid Hatfield (of Hatfield-McCoy lineage fame) intercepted the detectives after they had served some initial eviction notices, fighting started. What precisely started the shooting is disputed to this day, but it left several detectives dead (notably Albert and Lee Felts) and three townsfolk.
A small victory like this snowballed into the largest battle on United States soil between citizens and government (well, partially government) forces since the Civil War.
The Battle of Blair Mountain which followed involved roughly 10,000 loosely organized coal miners and their supporters fighting 3,000 law enforcement officers and militia mobilized to meet them. It lasted for over a week with over 200 casualties and involved the use of machine guns, a private air force bombing the striking miners, and trench warfare.
The fighting was eventually broken up by the intervention of Federal troops and order restored. However, even though it was a defeat for the union forces, it did raise awareness of the appalling conditions miners faced. Though not a hard fought and bloody victory like many stories would tell you, it is a fascinating story in and of itself and does show what can happen when push comes to shove and men and women are driven to desperate need.
As I mentioned at the start of this article, this was shown to my high school law class to make us understand that people had fought and died so we could have labor rights and negotiate with employers to prevent the abuse of workers from happening again. One hundred years after these phenomenal battles, I see workers in a time of global crisis being exploited. Whether it is at the largest retail and warehouse company in North America, one of the largest coffee chains, or even simply being forced to choose between staying home and safe or having to venture into work with a public who just doesn't care about them or even others in their quest for some nebulous thing they claim to need. Workers are at risk, especially the most vulnerable workers.
For what? So someone like Jeff Bezos can be worth more? So you can get your package in the mail faster, so you can get a haircut? None of that is worth a single worker's health or livelihood. We need to keep in mind that our ancestors, quite literally, fought and died so that we today did not have to be exploited in the same way. This battle is a microcosm of that struggle which went on, and arguably continues to this day. It's a struggle we're still fighting, and one I encourage people to be aware of.
In order to further give you a better understanding of the battle and issues surrounding it, I must encourage you to listen to the amazing podcast Behind the Bastards and their episodes on the matter. Robert Evans does a far better job telling the story than I can in a mere centennial blog post. He also gives you access to more information and is himself a phenomenal writer and host whose many podcasts should be listened to. You can also find him on Twitter.
In the end though, I hope you can understand that one hundred years ago, men and women had to fight and bleed to have even their basic rights respected in the face of profit hungry corporations. We can only hope that today we never have to do such again and that future generations will never know the same horrors our ancestors knew.
Solidarity.
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