By WILSON BUTT
Bluefield Daily Telegraph
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A few days ago I stopped by the Division of Highways field office trailer on the McKinney Road at the top of Tams Mountain where old friends David Goddard and Kenneth Carpenter were working. Goddard is a project supervisor for the Coalfields Expressway projects. Carpenter is the project supervisor for several other local projects.
Several miles of the scenic road are complete and in use between Sophia and Slab Fork in Raleigh County. The grading is complete for several additional miles and there is only a small section to be constructed to connect the road with Route 54 near Mullens. The completion of that portion would give Wyoming County a useable section of the first modern four-lane highway in the County. The vistas from the top of the mountain on the completed section are breathtaking.
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There is another buzz among sources along the banks of great the Kanawha River concerning the state’s 24th Delegate District. A high-level politician suggested that Bill Cole mount a write-in campaign as an independent candidate. If the rumors pan out, Republican candidate Marty Gearheart may have a race on his hands. Apparently Cole has made an impression on some West Virginia leaders and would have their backing. Cole is a local businessman and has several car dealerships in the Bluefield-Princeton area.
In the Republican Convention for the 10th Senate District seat, Gearheart was certainly an advocate for John Shott and worked to help Shott in his bid for the Senate nomination. Gearheart contacted every delegate to the convention on Shott’s behalf, placed Shott’s name in nomination, and delivered his nomination speech.
“Unfortunately, the efforts of everyone on John’s behalf fell on deaf ears,” said Gearheart, who also said that he simply asked the Mercer County Republican Committee to consider himself as a candidate and the committee did see fit to place his name on the 24th Delegate District ballot.
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Tomorrow is Labor Day. West Virginia’s labor movement began nearly 180 years ago or some 30 years before the Civil War. In 1829 William Howell Cooper founded The Eclectic Observer and Working People’s Advocate in Wheeling. The publication supported public education and voting and office holding rights for laborers who did not own real properties. Wheeling had unions for typographical workers and stogie makers.
In 1869 Uriah S. Stephens formed the Knights of Labor. That union stood its first test when the Trainmen’s Union in Martinsburg reacted to a 10 percent wage reduction by taking possession of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway and kept trains from moving. The strike spread nationwide and affected the rails from Baltimore to San Francisco. President Rutherford B. Hayes sent in federal troops to disperse the strikers. The lasting affect was that the union workers were given a sense of solidarity.
By 1866, the National Federation of Miners and Mine Laborers attempted to organize the Kanawha-New River Coalfields. The United Mine Workers of America was formed in 1890 by the urging of Samuel Gompers. Labor problems festered in the coalfields until on July 27,1897, when Gompers, Michael D. Ratchford, John R. Sovereign, Eugene Debs and “Mother” Mary Jones addressed some 17,000 miners in Wheeling. Mother Jones was perhaps the most noted.
Gov. Henry Drury Hatfield (the former surgeon-in chief of State Hospital No. 1 in Welch) probably saved Mother Jones’ life. Shortly after he was elected, Hatfield, in the face of possible assassination, took his medical bag to Pratt where he found Jones extremely ill with a cough, high fever and rapid respiration. Hatfield sent Jones to Charleston for treatment.
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There you have it, a few comments on items of interest to the area. I hope that Hurricane Earl stays away and that you have more blue skies. Enjoy Labor Day.
Wilson Butt, a resident of Bluefield, is a retired Department of Highways official.
