Thunder In the Mountains

Sympathetic account by a former UPI bureau chief (Richmond, Va.) of the fierce confrontation between striking miners and local and national governments that was also background for John Sayles' movie Matewan. Sayles lends a perfunctory introduction to Savage's reportorial and sometimes melodramatic rendering of the largest armed insurrection in America since the Civil War. All told, several thousand miners and several thousand opposing West Virginia militia, federal troops, and even Air Corps were involved in the battle, which began when Matewan Police Chief Sid Hatfield chose to side with striking miners against agents of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency who were attempting to block the formation of the miners' union. The deaths of Hatfield and several Baldwin-Felts agents triggered larger wars involving more than ten thousand combatants, climaxing at the Battle of Blair Mountain. Joining the miners' side were radical luminaries Mother Jones and John C. Lewis; meanwhile, President Warren Harding took a federal stand against the miners, ordering them at one point to lay down their arms. In the end 1,217 indictments were returned for insurrection or complicity to riot; 325 murder charges were filed; and 24 men were indicted for treason. Savage shows how the failure of the miners' war dealt a long-term blow to union morale nationally, and how in the short-term it effectively destroyed the economic strength of the mining industry. Lucid but superficial, lacking creative analysis and scholarly rigor. The heart of this event never beats loud enough here - a shame given its importance in US labor history. (Kirkus Reviews)