Ah, the Harding Telegram.

There'd been cycles of boom-and-bust throughout the development of the coal industry in the southern Appalachians. Also, the need to mine coal often in remote places also resulted in company-owned towns, or "coal camps" being built. Those two factors combined to make coal mines hard places to unionize, for labor organizers. Compounding that were the coal companies' brutal mine guards, who were on the lookout for them.

Nonetheless, the UMWA began to have some success with the northern mines. But those mine owners pointed out to the union that increasing wages and benefits increased the price of their coal, making it harder to compete against the non-union mines in the south. If the union wanted to keep its gains in the north, it obviously had to unionize the south. For that, it had a great asset in Mother Jones.

Mother Jones was one of the more effective organizers of the southern coal camps, starting in 1903. She sparked the famous Paint Creek- Cabin Creek strike of 1913. But there, having won some concessions from the mine owners and gotten an agreement, she and the national leaders of the UMWA were surprised to find many if not most of the striking miners disliked their compromise settlement. The miners saw their demands were not being met, that in order to strike a deal to secure the southern coalfields for the union the UMWA was willing to ignore a lot of what they wanted- especially in regards to the use of camp guards. With such great dissatisfaction with the UMWA leadership, more radical local union leaders, like Fred Mooney, came to dominate the southern WV coal fields. There were wildcat strikes, and growing conflict with the Baldwin-Felts agents, the most notorious of the camp guards. There was a gun battle at Matewan in 1920, and the murder of Sheriff Sid Hatfield by Baldwin-Felts guards in 1921. The state and local law enforcement of course took the side of the guards and the mine owners.

This growth of unrest happened at the worst possible time for the miners. In the years just before and during WWI, there was great demand for coal, profits were up, and the unions had been in a pretty strong position to bargain. But after 1919 the demand dropped, and mine owners became far less willing to raise their labor costs. By 1921, many miners had become convinced that , with little help from the national UMWA, the state government, local law enforcement or concessions from the mine owners, they'd only get what they wanted by force of arms. They grabbed guns and began to assemble for a march towards Charleston.

WV Governor Ephraim Morgan tried to get the UMWA leaders, local and national, to prevent the insurrection from growing. How he managed to get cooperation from Mother Jones is still debated, but he seemed to have charmed her (she would even say nice things about him in her later autobiography), convinced her that he was trying to avoid a war. She was also 90, perhaps not as discerning as she would have been even a decade earlier. It was Jones who seems to have come up with the idea of the fake. Basically, she addressed a gathering of miners in Marmet, and read what she said was a telegram from Harding stating that the miners should abandon their march and go home. It didn't fool anyone for long, apparently- later witnesses would say she read his signature as Warren A Harding ( not Warren G.) and refused to let anyone see the actual message. The march went on, to become the famous Battle of Blair Mountain.

Jones never tried to explain her actions- but she was correct in thinking the march would be a disaster. The Battle of Blair Mountain set the union back probably fifteen years from getting what it wanted in the southern coalfields. The incident also may have been given too much importance: it's quite possible that even a real telegram from Harding would not have stopped the march.

Simmons, G. (2021, Summer). Fallen Angel: Mother Jones and the Harding Telegram. Goldenseal, 47(2). p.38 ff