Thunder in the Mountains: The West Virginia Mine War 1920-21 (review)

Book Reviews Savage, Lon. Thunder in the Mountains: The West Virginia Mine War 1920-21. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania, 1990. 195 pages. $9.95. Of all the dramatic events of American labor history, none was more colorful or more neglected than the West Virginia mine war. Neglected, that is, until a handful of historians, including David Alan Corbin and Robert Spence, produced books in the 1980s. Corbin has written of southern West Virginia coalfield history and culture, and Spence's history of Logan County, West Virginia, is one of the best studies of a single county to appear in quite a while. But only Lon Savage, to my knowledge, has written a work of nonfiction focused specifically on the events of 1920-21 in Logan and Mingo Counties. Thunder in the Mountains is not a new work, but was brought out in 1985 by a small press which folded soon after, casting the book into limbo. It has been deservedly rescued and given a stylish reprinting by the University of Pittsburgh Press, with a Foreword by filmmaker John Sayles and an introduction by historian John Alexander Williams. It is always a joy to find a work of nonfiction that is as readable and gripping as a good piece of fiction. Savage does not merely convey dry facts; he makes his people—Matewan mayor C.C. Testerman, company spy Charlie Lively, Logan sheriff Don Chafin, above all, Sid Hatfield, and a host of other figures —come alive with a novelist's eye for detail. Here Savage describes the plight of one Baldwin-Felts detective at the Matewan Massacre: 62 "Oscar Bennett, another of the detectives , escaped because of a lucky choice. Just before the first shot was fired, he went in search of a pack of cigarettes, when the shooting began, he . . . calmly walked to the railroad station. There, in the waiting room, he quietly stood at a window and watched the battle, while silently tearing up his identification papers. When the train pulled in, he walked to the Pullman loading area and waited, still silent. When the train pulled away, Bennett was safely inside." Throughout, Savage is a master of narrative tension. When Sid Hatfield and Ed Chambers are shot on the steps of the McDowell County courthouse— Chambers' wife "beat[ing CE. Lively] with her parsol and scream[ing] 'Don't shoot him anymore! '"—when the miners organize and invade Logan County while coal operators and government officials plan to bomb the marchers, the reader is there. The book's bibliography reveals the author's extensive research in books, government documents, and newspapers of the time, as well as personal interviews with local residents still living. The book also contains a fine collection of photographs. And Savage was able to draw upon the reminiscences of his own father, a World War I veteran and West Virginia University student who volunteered to fight on the side of Chafin and the coal operators. The result is an invaluable historical work which appeared just in time, before those with memories of the events of knowledge of family stories had passed on. Savage has done the work of a detective , probing deeper than surface events to piece together a time when secrecy on both sides has left many questions unanswered. The work is highlighted by Williams' fine introductory essay, which provides historical background and draws attention to the federal government's plan to "use air power against civilians . . . nothing less than a foretaste of Guernica, Dresden, and Hiroshima in the West Virginia hills." According to John Sayles, "As we began shooting the movie [Matewan], we discovered Lon Savage's Thunder in the Mountains. For the first time I felt there was someone with a feel for the people and place who had gone out and done the legwork, had tracked down the stray bits of story, poked and probed at what was already on the record and dug up whatever new information was available." In the midst of writing Storming Heaven when Savage's book first appeared , I can also attest to its importance . Thunder in the Mountains confirmed and expanded on my own research, giving me added impetus to retell...