Walter Isaacson set out to write about a world changing genius in Elon Musk and found a man addicted to chaos and conspiracy.

I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertip feel for social emotional networks.

The book launched a thousand hot takes, so I sat down with Isaacson to try to get past the noise.

Well, I like the fact that people who say I'm not as tough on Musk as I should be are always using anecdotes from my book to show why we should be tough on Musk.

Join me, Evan Ratliff, for on Musk with Walter Isaacson. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Tune in to the new podcast stories from the village of nothing, much like easy listening, but for fiction. If you've overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you. I'm Catherine Nikolai, and I'm an architect of cozy. Come spend some time where everyone is welcome and the default is kindness. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen to stories from the village of nothing much on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, everybody, we're coming to the Pacific Northwest. So if you live in that area or can get on a plane to go to that area, or a boat or snowshoe, whatever, we'll see you at the end of January.

That's right. Brand new show, brand new topic. We don't even know what it is yet, but we'll be in Seattle, Washington, on January 24, Portland on January 25, and then our annual trip to San Francisco, sketch Fest on January 26 in Seattle. We're counting on you. We're at the Paramount this year, and that's a lot of seats, so we need a lot of your lovely faces in the audience.

Yes. So get the two stuffyshoodnow.com and click on the tour button to get all your facts. Or you can go to Linktree Sysk and get the same links and the same facts, and we'll see you guys in January. We can't wait.

Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and Chuck's here, too. And Jerry's here, too. And we're here in solidarity together, the trio of us, ready to put up our dukes in this episode of stuff you should know.

The Triopus.

Sure. I said trio, right?

Yeah.

Okay. You were just messing around. You were horsing around.

I was running with it.

How are you doing?

I'm good. Quick shout out to the city of Mexico City. By the way, I meant to mention it the other day when we recorded. But I know that someplace you've been and Jerry's been. Finally, Emily and I made our first trip. And as you know, I can verify Mexico City is amazing.

It's a pretty cool town, for sure.

Boy, I feel really at home there.

You do? I do.

I feel very at ease. I was just like, this is. I don't know. I don't know if it's a past life thing or what.

That's what I was like.

This is like New York in a tropical forest. I loved every bit of it.

In the past life, you were Diego Rivera, but not the famous one. Just another Diego Rivera.

Another big old fat guy. We did go to Frida's house, which was a lifelong dream for both of us, but really for Emily. So that was amazing. And that's great. Just all kinds of great stuff. And that's it. Can't wait to go back.

Way to shout out a city right out of the gate.

That's right. And this was my idea. And I don't know, it may have been at the Bonnie Prince Billy shows that I went to in Arizona. We may have been talking about the fact that will oldham, as a teenager, was in the John Sales movie mate Juan. And I think that's where it came to me because I saw that movie back then and have not seen it since then. But I was like, hey, that sounds like a good topic to chew on.

Man, he was all over the place.

John Sales?

Yeah, he wrote and directed mate Juan. He wrote and directed brother from another planet. Whatever interested him, he just did.

Yeah, he was also a writer for hire. Like, he wrote as great an indie genius as John Sales is, he wrote the Piranha movie.

Oh, yeah, I think I knew that.

And a couple of other writer for hire things. But, yeah, always been a big John sales guy. And Matwan is awesome. I kind of want to check it out after I know more about it now.

Yeah, he wrote a lot of episodes of Spencer for hire, too.

And BJ Naver.

Yep. So, yeah, I'm glad you said Matwan because I had never heard that word out loud before. And I looked it up and I heard. Yes, I heard a resident say mate Juan. And I immediately came up with a great mnemonic device for it. You ready?

Oh, boy.

If you want to remember how to pronounce mate Juan, it's a small town in southern West Virginia. You just say, hey, who's that guy from West Virginia over there? You say, who? Him? That's my mate Tuan. Works like a charm. I am here to tell you, twan. Yeah, you could say Juan, but I think Twan has a greater ring to it to really drive home how to remember it.

Mate twan. Okay, sure.

Although you would say mate one as.

That Josh Clark spin. Mate one. That's it. I love it.

I wanted to see how quickly I could derail things this early in the episode.

Well, I mean, I talked about Mexico City, for goodness sakes.

So we are talking about Mate Juan. And I didn't know much about it. Again, I saw the word before I knew it was kind of a thing. But specifically, the battle of Mate Juan is what we're kind of talking about, although that's just one kind of island in the archipelago of incidents that took place in southern Appalachia, southern west Virginia, in coal mining country just across the river from Kentucky and right near its border with Virginia as well. And all the events we're about to talk about took place in the early 20th century. And I knew nothing about any of this until we started researching this episode. So kudos to you, because this is a pretty interesting chapter in not just american history or even West Virginia history, but labor union history as well.

Yeah, for sure. And this was olivia jam, and she did a great job. One thing I'm sure you knew before we started this is that West Virginia and coal have always been linked. And as coal went, the history of America has gone because of that robust, bituminous coal industry that has been around there since, jeez, probably, like, the mid 19th century, it allowed America to grow not only with their factories and railroads and things, but just people and heating homes and businesses and that kind of thing.

Yeah, because you can get some hot, hot heat from coal. Hot, hot heat. And you don't get quite as much from wood, from what I understand. So just right there, you have more energy at your fingertips. Plus, also, I didn't realize this, but I saw it somewhere, that it also kept cities from having to cut down all of the forests around them and rely on that it was just a better way to grow as an industrializing country. And so because America was booming thanks to coal, I think people just kind of assumed, like, the coal miners are probably doing great. They must be richer than astronauts for mining this stuff that's become so valuable.

Coal companies were.

Yes. And the problem is, all of these events came from. Would have been totally avoided. Probably had the coal companies shared in the wealth less stingily.

Yeah, but that's the continuing story of the world, right?

Sadly, yes. I don't know how long that's going to go on for. I don't think it has to be the way, but yes, that is so far the story of capitalism.

Yeah. But it was a pretty brutal existence as a minor back then. It's still a very tough job. There are still dangers to be had, even though they've cleaned it up quite a bit. But it's nothing like it was back then. It was. Dozens of miners died every year. There were all kinds of accidents all the time, big events where hundreds of people die in a single disaster, or just the daily work of dying on the job or dying because you just do that job and you breathe in that air, that kind of thing. And to add insult to injury, in a lot of these towns, the coal companies sort of ran everything. Sometimes they owned the houses that the people that worked there lived in. Sometimes they owned all the businesses in town. Sometimes they ran the law offices there, legal offices, but the sheriff's department and police and stuff like that. So it was a sort of monopolistic control in a lot of these towns.

Yeah. And even whether or not they had the local sheriff or constable in their pocket, they also found out that they could really supplement their, hold their grip over their workers by hiring private police forces, as we'll see.

And they were really always a great idea, the private police force, that always works out.

Yeah, for sure. And they were really deliberate about keeping their workers from unionizing. A good example of that, Livia, turned up, there was a mine owner named Justice Collins, and he, I don't want to say caught because I'm sure he really didn't care whether you heard this or not. But he was basically saying, you want to keep a, quote, judicious mixture of men as workers from groups like european immigrants, the appalachian folk that have lived here for generations, and then black southerners, I guess, diasporating from the Jim Crow south in search of better lives who are showing up in the area. You want some of each because these people don't naturally necessarily get along. And you can ensure even further that they're not going to get along by paying some better than others for the same exact work that really keeps people from getting along very well. And so if you've got groups of workers who aren't really interacting because they don't really mix well together, they're probably not going to be able to successfully form a labor union.

Yeah. But as we will see, in many cases, the union, in fact, it worked the opposite way, and they brought together people of different ethnicities in a way that was not common at all at the time as a whole.

No, it's true. And I saw, there's a great Smithsonian article about all this, and the historian they talked to was saying, I don't want to paint the picture. Like I think he said, everyone was just holding hands around the campfire. But they came together in ways that were just unseen outside of this area, outside of the mining industry, outside of the mining unions. And they did probably get along better than people in other unions, black and white workers and other unions, just because they integrated. There's a really great scene that happened at one of the mine cafeterias during one of these strikes. Black and white workers held the cafeteria workers at gunpoint until they were seated together, eating in an integrated cafeteria room like they integrated themselves at gunpoint, essentially.

Amazing.

Yeah, it's pretty cool.

So the union did get going, although, as we'll see, as this story goes, not quite yet in mate one. What county was that again? Mingo county. Yeah.

I have a great mnemonic device for that. Do you really?

Oh, man. So the union did get going in other parts of the country sort of late in the 19th century. The United Mine Workers of America was founded in 1890, and it was a real, as far as unions go at the time, it was a real all encompassing union in that there were other unions around that sort of, if you're like a smithy or you had some really skilled, specific craft, you might be represented, but they may not represent black workers, chinese, immigrants, stuff like that. But the miners union, kind of from the beginning, was like, you know what? We're stronger with more people. We're going to represent all the miners who want to jump on board. And they realized that strikes were early on still today, a real big way that you can make change. But they were bloody affairs back then.

Oh, yeah. People would get shot and killed on both sides. The government forces would show up and sometimes shoot people. It was a really violent era in labor history, for sure.

Murder.

It was murder. Yeah, for sure. Killing people for wanting to organize, for better working conditions and better pay, like you could get you murdered back then. So the United mime Workers of America, they kept at it. I think they were founded in 1890. Did you say that?

Yeah. Can we call them Umwa?

Sure. You know how to remember that?

Sure.

So within seven years, they held a strike, a major strike in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and it resulted in an eight hour workday for union minors. The thing is that didn't necessarily spread across the country, especially in southern West Virginia, which was almost entirely non unionized as far as coal miners went. And they. I think from what I understand, it's like the biggest pocket of non union miners in the entire country. So Umwa said we need to start trying to make some inroads in there because there's a lot of people who could use our help. And one of the, I think the first big confrontations that came to be known as the West Virginia mine wars took place in 1912. And UmWa didn't actually bless it, I guess, is the way to say it. So it was considered a wildcat strike, but as soon as the strike began and it grew very quickly, Umwa said, we're behind you guys 100%, whatever you need.

Yeah, for sure. This was the paint creek and Cabin Creek coal mines in Kanawa county. And they struck. And these people will really factor in here in a second to the Matwan affair. But the Baldwin Feltz detective Agency, which we'll tell you all about here in a sec. They were hired to come in these sort of hired, quote unquote, guards, also known as thugs, if you were one of the unionists, they came in and had literal machine guns and shot up the homes of miners when their families were there. These miners, I mean, they called them wars for a reason. These miners were heavily armed. They fought back. And the governor at the time, the venerable William E. Glasscock, came in, declared martial law and sent in the state militia to break this strike up and a couple of hundred. And it wasn't just throwing all the union leaders in jail. I think some of the Baldwin Feltz people went to jail, but it was mainly strikers and union leaders that were sort of under the thumb of glasscock at the time. So Mother Jones was. Which, by the way, I think Mother Jones should be a total topic.

The person, not the magazine.

Sure. Or both.

I will talk about the magazine a little bit. You have to, right. Because you could do an episode on people of the world, but you'd have to talk about the magazine.

Yeah, for sure. Or anytime we talk about us, we should probably give a nod to that magazine, too.

Mother Jones was arrested, though, along with a lot of the leaders and strikers. They had military tribunals and this sort of closed the first chapter of the West Virginia wars because World War II came along and distracted everybody for a while. But things would kind of kick back into action in 1920.

Yeah. And the paint Creek cabin Creek strike or war followed a pattern that would become pretty regular. The miners would stop working, go on strike. The company would send in goons to come evict them from their company homes without any kind of warrant or anything like that. The families of the people evicted from those company homes would set up a tent city. The goons that the mine operators employed would go attack the tent city. That would be a site too far for the miners. They would rise up armed, and a real bloody clash would begin. And then the state or federal government would send in, essentially troops to quell this uprising. And then the organizers would be unfairly arrested, often again without warrants, and tried and held. And then eventually things would kind of subside for a little while. That was the pattern that was, if not established there. It certainly was followed by all of the wars after that one.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, should we take a break?

Yeah, I think we should.

All right, we'll be right back.

When Walter Isaacson set out to write his biography of Elon Musk, he believed he was taking on a world changing figure.

That night, he was deciding whether or not to allow Starlink to be enabled to allow a sneak attack on Crimea.

What he got was a subject who also sowed chaos and conspiracy.

I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertip feel for social emotional networks.

And when I sat down with Isaacson five weeks ago, he told me how he captured it all.

They have Kansas spray paint, and they're just putting Big X's on machines, and it's almost like kids playing on the playground. Just chews them up left, right, and center. And then like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he doesn't even remember it. Getting to Mars doesn't excuse being a total, but I want the reader to see it in action.

My name is Evan Ratliff, and this is Elon Musk with Walter Isaacson. Join us in this four part series as Isaacson breaks down how he captured a vivid portrait of a polarizing genius. Listen to Elon Musk on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Tune in to the new podcast stories from the village of nothing, much like easy listening, but for fiction. If you've overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you. I'm Catherine Nikolai, and you might know me from the bedtime story podcast. Nothing much happens. I'm an architect of cozy and I invite you to come spend some time where everyone is welcome and kindness is the default. When you tune in, you'll hear stories about bakeries and walks in the woods, a favorite booth at the diner on a blustery autumn day, cats and dogs and rescued goats and donkeys, old houses, bookshops, beaches where kites fly and pretty stones are found. I have so many stories to tell you, and they are all designed to help you feel good and feel connected to what is good in the world. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen to stories from the village of nothing much on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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So we promised to talk a little bit more about this company that figures into the Matewan affair, or the Matewan. I mean, there's a lot of different names, the war, the battle at Matewan, stuff like that. The Baldwin Feltz detective agency. So this was 1892. They were founded by a guy named William G. Baldwin in Roanoke, Virginia, and a year later, he hired a guy named Thomas Feltz to run the place with them. So it was the Baldwin Feltz agency, and they were modeled very much after the Pinkerton agency in that they were hired as sort of, at first, before they were, even though they had a feeling they were going to get into Union busting like Pinkerton did at first. They were one of those private police forces you were talking about, and they were charged, depending on where they were and what town they were in, with everything from kicking hobos off trains or killing hobos that were on trains, to sort of supplementing local police forces when they were small towns, to eradicating what they called black crime in the south, like really sort of casting an eye on black people in the south and going after them.

And they were thugs. The guys that they hired were, their backgrounds were pretty rough and tumble, and they would use any means necessary to do what they wanted to do. They kind of had free rein to do what they wanted.

Yeah, part of the reason why is because, again, a lot of these towns were quite literally run by the mining company. So if the mining company brought in an outside police force, the actual police force would work with them. At the very least, the courts would turn a blind eye or they just couldn't get arrested. And there were a lot of murders, like in broad daylight that happened during this time that these private police force detectives, I guess, carried out and just were not even arrested for. So it was really lopsided. If you were a minor, not only did this company basically own you, but if you got out of line, there was a chance that you or your family were going to be beaten and or killed. So as the UMWA, also known as OmWA, really started to try to make inroads into southern West Virginia to organize this largest pocket of non union miners, the coal mine operators pushed back by hiring more and more private police forces, especially the Baldwin Feltz detective agency. They became not the only one, but probably the most prominent in southern West Virginia as far as the amount of work they got and then the dirtiness that they got their hands.

I mean, they were called the Pinkerton in the south. They were very effective, at least at first, because I think between over like an eight year period at the turn of the century, at the end of the last century, they prevented these unions from organizing in. And, you know, I think there were some strikes that happened and they kept West Virginia out of it. So they were successful for a while at least. Like you said, they would beat up organizers. If you're pro know, you might get kicked out of your house, you might have your house burned down. They place moles, they place spies among the miners. And also just in town, as we'll soon see, they had one guy open up a restaurant, a spy in Meituan, and we'll meet him later. As it was, I think it was the paint creek and Cabin creek strikes that we talked about a few minutes ago where all of these guards came in. Hundreds of these dudes killed up a bunch of people. The same thing happened in Colorado in 1914, what was called the Ludlow massacre, where eleven literal children were killed. Because sometimes these minors were kids.

Like, I don't know how young they got, but they were children.

These kids that were killed weren't even minors. They were minors children. So they were really out of bounds. And the fact that eleven of them were killed because the Baldwin Feltz detectives came and burned the tent city down that they were living in, that was it. That really caught the nation's attention as well. And they gave a really terrible name to the Baldwin Feltz Detective Agency, which they managed to trade on very heavily in southern West Virginia.

Yeah, intense city because they were kicked out of the homes that were owned by the mining companies.

Exactly. So not only did that whole process take place in southern West Virginia, it also happened in Colorado, too. That's just what happened. You got kicked out of your home. You go set up a tent city, and then imagine setting up a tent city. That's nowhere near the miners land or the mine company's land. And yet the mine company still comes and burns your tent city down because you're still trying to organize. It's just some of the most important, almost unimaginable acts that just were carried out constantly between, I guess, probably basically the 1890s until the 1930s when Franklin Roosevelt came into power. That's just what happened. That's what people did. That was the risk you ran if you didn't just keep your mouth shutting, your head down and take whatever abuse they heaped on you in the mine as owners.

Yeah. I mean, this is only 100 years ago, which 100 years is a long time, but it's not that long.

No, it's not. Which actually, there's still plenty of reasons to organize and unionize, and there's still plenty of grievances that need to be addressed. But just the actual process, that just. We've come quite far, at the very least, in removing, generally violence from that kind of process.

Yeah, for sure. So things are heating up in West Virginia. End of 1919, there's a big. Umwalt launched a nationwide coal strike where they got a big fat raise. They got a 27% raise if you were a mine worker. But again, West Virginia was still almost completely non union at this point. So they didn't get the benefits from that. But I get the feeling that it really sort of rallied them to organize. At the same time, UMWA was really mounting an effort in West Virginia. So they launched a campaign there in 1920 in the southern part of the state, in McDowell, Logan, and Mingo county, where Matwan is to really get them together and say, hey, look, we got big, fat raises for people all over the country here. You really need to unionize. And Matewan was right there in the middle of Mingo county. I'm sure someone's going to say, actually, it's toward the outside of Mingo County.

I think it actually is.

Okay. It's just a euphemism, like smack dab in the middle.

Yeah, I get you. I'm just saying I was being the lone emailer or the masked emailer.

Yeah, the. Well, actually, person.

Exactly. That's me.

No, it's not you at all.

Thank you.

So, Matwan, you know, we describe these towns that were literally kind of run by the mining companies. Maitwon was not one of them. The mining company did have their fingers in some operations, but there were, like, real legit local businesses owned by locals. There was a real independent sheriff there. I'm sorry, police chief. His name was smile. And Sid Hatfield, of those Hatfields, I think his grandfather. It always gets so confusing with me in genealogy, as you know.

That was his grandfather, devil ants.

No, his grandfather was half brother of the grandfather, half brother of devil ants.

Oh, is that right? I thought he was the direct grandson of Devil ants, but, okay. He's still kin. Kin folk as far as the.

But he was one of those Hatfields. And we did an episode on the Hatfield McCoys, if you want to check that out.

That was a good one. It was like an appalachian Romeo and Juliet story.

Yeah, it totally was. But that is to say, sid Hatfield was not in the pocket. He was a pro union guy and not in the pocket of the coal companies, which was kind of unusual.

He was such a pro union guy, he stood trial once for blowing up a coal tipple, which is the structure that a freight train car drives under and gets filled with coal. And it's entirely possible he did that. That's how sympathetic he was to the coal miners cause.

Yeah.

So he was not the sheriff in town. There was a sheriff, and I get the impression that the sheriff was a law and order kind of guy. Like, his allegiance was to law and order. So no matter what side you were on, if you needed his protection or the laws being broken, he took that seriously. He seemed a little more even keel. I can't remember his name. Sid Hatfield was 100% in the miners camp, and the fact that this town existed and it wasn't in the pocket of the mine operators is, I think the reason why these things happened, because there was a power structure that could start to take on these Baldwin Phelps detectives who were coming town and causing trouble.

Yeah, absolutely. I think you're totally right.

Thank you.

The company in Matewan, the mining company, was called the Stone Mountain Coal Company, also where I was born.

You were born at the Maitwon?

I was born in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Different place.

I didn't know that. I knew you worked there, but I didn't know you were born in Stone Mountain, Wyoming.

Well, I mean, I was born. The hospital was decab general back then. Now it's decab medical center, which is decatur.

Okay.

But I had a stone mountain address, even though it was not know, kind of downtown Stone Mountain and Stone Mountain park.

I understand. That's fine. That still counts as Stone Mountain. I'm not questioning your.

No, it's just a little weird, though, because if you're from around here and you say you grew up in Stone Mountain, people probably think like, oh, you grew up and went to Stone Mountain High school and lived right near the park. But it was. Addresses were just different back then.

I get you. You sound a little.

No, I'm not defensive at all. Proud Stone Mountain guy. I remember when I was a kid, Steve Martin referenced Stone Mountain in, I think, the man with two brains.

I thought you were like, it was.

A very big deal because Stone Mountain didn't get a lot of shouts. And I remember there was one line where he said something about Stone Mountain, Georgia, during like a rant, and it was like, what? Steve Martin? Why is his hair gray? I guess the good thing about that is Steve Martin looks about the same.

He does very much 40 years ago.

All right, so workers did, even though they weren't under the thumb necessarily as a town of the Stone Mountain coal Company, a lot of the workers did live in company housing and sometimes they were paid in dividends instead, know, money, like real american money. And they employed the Baldwin Feltz company to kind know, come in and keep things quelled.

Yeah, they had a spy, too, who was, I mean, in an episode full of really terrible people, this guy might be the most terrible of all. His name was C. Everett Lively. C. E. Lively. And he was involved in that Ludlow massacre in Colorado. He had killed at least one person for sure. And he moved to southern West Virginia and set up shop as a spy. Ostensibly he was a miner who he had mining experience, but had gotten into the restaurant business and opened a cafe. And he opened the cafe and basically put out the welcome mat for the local miners union to come have their meetings at so he could keep tabs on what they were. You know, you wanted to say like, wow, they really fell for that. Yes. This guy, he befriended, Sid Hatfield. He made the right kind of friends to make himself seem legitimate. So it know, not hard for him to get some of these organizers, leaders and otherwise to cough up like details because they trusted the guy and they even very smartly, the organizers for the Mingo county area, they did not have an elected leader. And if they did, they kept it secret.

So you didn't know who was actually.

Running the show, which no local union head.

Right.

Oh, interesting.

Even behind the scenes, a lot of people didn't know who was actually calling the shots, which actually, from what I understand, led to kind of just a byproduct democratization of the whole process as well, which I think brought people in even further because they had a real stake in what happened and had a real say in what happened was they were a leader.

Like, do we know who it was now?

Yeah, his name was, I think, Frank Keeney.

Okay.

One of his descendants is a local historian who knows all about this stuff, but he was definitely the guy in charge of the Mingo county area UMwA chapter. He was the one who was organizing it, and he was doing it at a time when no one else would do it. And actually they sent mother Jones to come in. Who would. She would have been about 80 at the time. She'd been a labor organizer for at least 50 years since then. And she helped big time for sure. But it was Frank Keeney who was the guy who was in charge.

I thought you were going to say they kept Keeney's identity a secret. And they were like, he's just sweeping up around the restaurant and they're like, oh, Keaney lost his tongue about 30 years ago and he can't even talk anymore.

Yeah. No one opened his mouth to check. They just took it out of faith that he really had.

That's right. And he literally kept his mouth shut.

So remember Ce Charles Everett Lively? Yeah, he's a terrible person.

Yeah, he's the spy. So we mentioned that tent city that happened in other places. This did happen in Matwan. A lot of the families were kicked out of their homes, relocated to live together on land. Intense. And in the spring of 1920, Mingo county, the mate wan workers finally said, we're going to go on strike, mainly to protest the fact that these thugs, these Baldwin Feltz thugs, as they were called, came in to bust up their organizing efforts, which culminated in, I guess what we'll call round one of three rounds of events on May 19, 1920, when about a dozen of these guards from Baldwin Feltz came in to Matwan. They went to evict them from Tent city. A lot of people say that they were just kicked out of their homes, but the National Park Service is on record saying that, like you said earlier, they actually went to a place that they didn't even have jurisdiction and said, you got to get out of your tent city as well, even though we have no power. Did we already mention Lee Feltz? Right, or did we?

No, we've only mentioned his brother.

Okay, so a couple of the guards were Albert and Lee Feltz, and they're brothers of the co owner of the company, Tom Feltz. So he has literal family members sort of on the ground as one of these local thugs. And Albert, his brother, and another one of the guards named CB Cunningham, and this was the guy that was in that Colorado massacre, another one of the guys in the Colorado massacre, in addition to C. E. Lively. I hope this isn't getting too confusing with all the names.

Just map it out, everybody.

They had a shootout in town, like just sort of a good old fashioned meet in the middle of town and had guns drawn.

So there's a lot of variations on exactly what happened. And we'll give you two of them. One, according to the West Virginia Department of Culture, said that after they evicted people from the tent city or the company homes, those Baldwin Feltz detectives actually went into town and had dinner, and they were on their way to the train station and they were going to catch the 05:00 train out of town when they were approached by smile and Sid Hatfield. And Hatfield said, hey, you didn't have any right whatsoever to evict those people. I have a warrant for your arrest. And Albert felt said, you know what? I've got a warrant for your arrest. He might have even first. Right. It just so happened that the mayor of mate won, Cabel Cornelius Testerman. C. C. Testerman, again with the double c initials. Yeah, he was on the scene. He was a good friend of Sid Hatfield's. And he said, let me see that. He said, this is a fake. This isn't actually a warrant for Sid Hatfield's arrest. And by the way, you can't arrest the chief of police here, so get out of here. And while this was happening, a bunch of miners who were armed had taken notice of this confrontation that was taking place in the middle of the street between a bunch of Baldwin Feltz detectives, their mayor, and their chief of police.

And so they kind of armed themselves to see what happened. Somebody fired a shot, and all heck broke loose.

Yeah. And that's from the mouth of J. M. Clark, legendary podcaster. You ever gone by, J-M-I tried.

Know once or twice. It felt wrong.

I like that J. M. Clark.

Do you? I don't like those two letters together. They're not great.

Oh, I think it's good. You don't think as a.

It's like. It's like missing a vowel, like Jim, JM, something like not. They're not cc, CB, JB. All those are pretty good. JM is not good. And I'm sorry to all the JMs out there.

I think JM Clark sounds like a high end pant maker, like a clothier or a habitasher.

I make only tattersol vests.

Cw. I would think that doesn't sound great, but my dad called me Cw, so it sort of has a ring in my mind.

No, it does.

I don't think they flow, really.

Cw does.

Cw. All right.

Yes. JM does not.

Well, at any rate, I'm going to come over and have you fit me for a pant.

Well, that's fine. I'm going to start calling you cdubs from now on.

Cdubs. So they're surrounded by the miners. As far as the different accounts go, this sort of became a greedo shot first deal and that someone fired a gun. Shootout happens. Seven of the detectives were killed, including Albert Feltz, the brother of the founder of the agency, and Lee, I think, too. Oh, did they both die?

Yeah.

Okay. And Mayor Testimon was killed and two minors. And again, depending on who you talk to, there's a historian that Livia found named Rebecca Bailey that told the Smithsonian that Hatfield probably shot first or the miners. Other people say that contemporaneous accounts at the time, at least from the Williamson News, is like the day after they said that detectives took smile and sid into custody and that when Mayor Testerman came up and. No, no, you've got to release him, that that's when things broke out and that Testerman and Feltz were shot first. And then the Baldwin Feltz thugs kind of got out of there. Some of them tried to get across the river to Kentucky. Some made it, some got shot there. Some supposedly were shot while they were running away, not across the river. And then some of those that did make it came back later, like under the COVID of night to catch a train in secret. So who knows how it actually went down? We do know who died, though.

Yeah. And there's still bullet holes in some of the brick buildings on mate street where the shootout happened. I think they preserved them by putting brass plugs in them.

Oh, yeah.

So however it happened, there was definitely a shootout and a bunch of people died. And we're left in the street until everybody. I mean, you've got, like, the dead mayor, the chief of police is involved. There's just so many dead people laying around that it took a little while to get everything cleaned up and orderly again. Apparently, trains of people had started arriving and were like, okay, and we get back on the train. And that night, actually, they redirected trains through Matwan. They ordered the trains not to stop in Matwan as usual, until the next day. So it was a really big deal and rumors started flying very quickly. Probably the biggest one was that it was actually Sid Hatfield who shot mayor Testerman and that the reason he shot him was because Sid Hatfield had eyes for Testerman's wife, Jesse.

Yeah.

And they traced this rumor to Baldwin felt's detectives.

Yeah. Right.

And so apparently at Hatfield's trial for this, by the way, he was acquitted by a very sympathetic jury, as was all of the minors involved. A lot of people stepped up and said, no, this is totally wrong. These guys were really close friends. Of course he's not going to shoot them. In retrospect, from my view, to execute your romantic rival in broad daylight in the middle of the street, anticipating a gunfight would be pretty brazen and just hoping for the best. So I think just the fact that there was no one who even said, yeah, he actually did this. I saw him do it. I think he probably of. There's a strange postscript to this story that does make you wonder a little bit.

Yeah. Sid Hatfield married the mayor's wife Jesse less than a month after this all went. Yes, it does make you wonder.

And to make it even more interesting, Jesse was a direct descendant of Randolph McCoy.

No way. Really?

Yeah. For real. I mean, this took place, like, right across the river from where the Hatfields and McCoys lived in Kentucky.

Wow. Smile and says he didn't give a crud, did he?

He didn't give a root and toot and crud.

He didn't. I believe even after the wedding, they were getting their marriage license and they were in Huntington staying at a hotel. So this was pre wedding, staying in the same room so you could get arrested for that kind of thing. Back then it was called cohabitation and the police arrested him. And of course, it was Tom Feltz who had tipped them off. But apparently the judge said, no, don't worry about it. You guys are getting married today. And who wants to mess that up?

Right?

Tom felt said me.

Right. The judge's famous quote was Mazeltov.

Right.

You want to take a break?

Yeah, let's take our other break and we'll finish up what happens right after this.

When Walter Isaacson set out to write his biography of Elon Musk, he believed he was taking on a world changing figure.

That night, he was deciding whether or not to allow Starlink to be enabled to allow a sneak attack on Crimea.

What he got was a subject who also sowed chaos and conspiracy.

I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertip feel for social emotional networks.

And when I sat down with Isaacson five weeks ago, he told me how he captured it all.

They have Kansas spray paint and they're just putting Big X's on machines, and it's almost like kids playing on the playground just chews them up left, right, and center. And then like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he doesn't even remember it. Getting to Mars doesn't excuse being a total, but I want the reader to see it in action.

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So like I said, hatfield was acquitted. His deputy, Ed Chambers was there, too. He was acquitted. 17 miners, all acquitted because they were tried in Mingo county, which was again, not run by the coal companies. So that really didn't sit well with Baldwin Feltz, with the coal operators round.

One to the miners, basically, for sure.

That's a really great way to put it. And like I said, sid Hatfield. And it turns out also Ed Chambers were tried for blowing up a coal tipple, like I mentioned. And they were actually dealing with this case. And this one had been set in McDowell county and they had petitioned chambers in Hatfield for a change of venue because they're like, we're going to get the death sentence for this thing here. And it was actually granted. For it to be granted, they needed to show up to court in McDowell county one more time before it was transferred over to, I think, mingo county. And on that day they went to court with both of their wives, came out and they were gunned down in broad daylight by no less than C. E. Lively, the anti union spy who was supposedly Sid Hatfield's close friend.

Yeah, and get this, round one goes to the minors because they were in a. Like you said, the local jurors were more friendly to them. Round two goes to the other side because the assassins said it was self defense and they weren't convicted because it was in McDowell county and it was more friendly toward the coal company.

Exactly.

So these juries are just biased on both sides, basically. As far as Jesse goes, she's now been widowed twice and she remarried in January of 22. But not to a Hatfield or a Pinkerton of the south.

No, but he was a state constable, so she liked, I guess, the elected.

Officials, men in uniform.

Sure.

She should have married a baker then, for sure.

I'm going to do something different. This.

Know, that's round two, which was pretty quick. This kind of instigated round three, which was the big one, which were the march on Logan county and the battle of Blair Mountain. Because of these murders, the unionist and the miner sent some demands to the governor, Ephraim Morgan, at this point, and said, hey, this Baldwin Phelps group of thugs are violent and they're doing things that are illegal and this can't stand. But Morgan, of course, everyone was in the pocket of somebody was an anti union Republican and said, didn't even acknowledge it, didn't even make a comment on the assassination and took no action on this list of demands at all.

So two things about Governor Morgan. One, while he was governor, A-U-S. Senate committee on labor issued an opinion that West Virginia was nothing more than an industrial autocracy and that the governor was basically there strictly for the benefit of the coal operators. And then number two, when he was elected, the reason he won is because he ran against three other progressives who were pro labor and they split that vote. He was the only anti labor guy, and if you put their votes together, he would have been beaten badly. But they split the vote, and that led this anti labor guy to become governor. And it reveals something really important, that the people, the general voter out there in West Virginia was pro labor, was in favor of minors, was in favor of unions, was not in favor of anti union conservatives. And just put that in your pocket for later because that's a really important point.

That's right. Front pocket, even, I think the front.

Pocket of your tettersol vest.

That's right. Right beside your pocket watch.

Sure.

All right. So because of the non action by the governor in August of 1921. That's right, 10,000 miners came to town to Marmot, which is 8 miles south of Charleston, armed, most of them armed. I imagine everyone who had a gun had their gun, definitely. And they were trying to avenge, obviously, the deaths of Hatfield and chambers. And they wanted to confront this sheriff there in Logan county. His name was wanted, and he was a minor guy, so it was sort of all in the same bucket. And they wanted to free some minors that were jailed in Mingo county. So Governor Morgan finally steps in. And chaffin, that sheriff I was just talking about, from Logan county, he got a bunch of deputies together, got a bunch of anti union civilians together, got their guns, and got up on the ridgeline at Blair Mountain because the know heading into town had to go through was a. This was a war. I mean, it was several days of gunfire, Gatlin guns, machine guns, rifles. They had airplanes dropping shrapnel bombs and dropping gas bombs, like gasses that would make you nauseous and stuff like that.

There was a guy on a horse with a trident.

I'm not going to ask if that's forgotten.

Okay.

But it was several days of a legit real war such that the president of the United States, warren Harding, had to come in and send in. Well, didn't come in like, literally, but sent in federal troops in his stead.

Right.

And the union surrendered. They were obviously outgunned by that point, but a lot of them were veterans, like army veterans. And so when they called in the army, they were like, I'm not going to go to war against my army that I served in.

Right. And so even though the miners didn't make it to hang Don Chaffin and they didn't make it to free the miners in Mingo county, they still consider this a win. Apparently, on the way back from town or from the fight, one of the miners leaned out of a passing streetcar and said, it was Uncle Sam did it. And they were saying, like, we surrendered only to federal troops, who we're sympathetic with. We didn't surrender to Baldwin Feltz detectives. We didn't surrender to chaffin. We didn't surrender to the mine operators. It was strictly because federal troops came that we said, okay, because we have no beef with the federal government, so we're not going to fight them. So it was pretty much a win for the miners, for sure. And it definitely helped catalyze the organizing that went on. I saw that right after Sid Hatfield was gunned down, I think they reached like 90% of miners had signed on for the union in the area. This just helped catalyze it even further. The thing is that the coal mine operators didn't give up at all. They continued their tactics, trying to break strikes and break up the unions, and they actually proved to be very successful.

There was a drop in union membership from the United Mine Workers association, from 500,000 in 1920, shortly after the events we've just described, to 100,000 in 1929. Not because people lost interest in unionizing or having better working conditions, but because the mine operators ratcheted up the heat, both politically and violently, to make that happen.

Yeah, absolutely. But while the union sort of lost the battle in that nine year period, they won the overall war eventually, because what it also did was just sort of draw more attention to this kind of stuff. And it was national news and all of these sort of militant anti union ideas where I think as far as the american public goes, we're like, this is no good. And FDR comes in and says, like, hey, guys, we need a new deal. And they're like, okay, what should we call it? And he went, how about the new deal? And all of a know, unions had mean, I guess you could say they had an easier time. They definitely weren't being intimidated. I mean, their unions are still intimidated, but not in the ways they were in the turn of the century, through the 1920s.

Yeah. Remember when I said Governor Morgan was elected, but not by any sort of popular vote, and that the will of the people actually was pro union? Thanks to the United Mine Workers association and some of the other unions, that voice was elevated into national politics. And it actually ended up taking over the show, getting FDR elected, and then working directly with FDR to get the new deal passed, to get the labor union strengthened, to get better benefits and working conditions for union members. And not just union members. The unions had a knock on effect for other workers who weren't even unionized because it forced the mine operators to improve conditions across the board. So it benefited workers who hadn't even joined the union. And the wages had to get competitive all of a sudden, too. So that benefited everyone as well. It's really difficult to overstate the effect that the United Mine Workers union had. Like, it was an enormously important.

On the future of America.

Yeah. Not just in southern West Virginia, but yes, in America. They went on to form the CIO as an AFL CIO, which organized industrial workers like the people who put together stuff using the raw material that people like the miners dug out of the ground. And that had a huge effect as well. So it was a really big deal, these mine wars that took place in southern West Virginia and the effect that they had across the rest of the country.

Yeah, absolutely. They also went on to found the NFL and the NBA and the Cw.

Bryant. That's right.

And the J. M. Clark. As far as Baldwin felt, that company, that agency, they operated for about 15 years after that, not nearly as sort of union busting, public eye sort of spectacle, little quieter. But when Baldwin and Feltz both died within a year and a half of each other in 1936, they folded for good. Rich dudes made a ton of money, obviously. And I'd suggest seeing mate one, that the John sales movie from 1987 is really good. It's a fictionalized version. There are a few characters, I believe the mayor is in it and C. E. Lively is in it and a couple of others. But the main players, like Chris Cooper, is the lead. It's a fictionalized character, but this is really good movie. John Sales is a great filmmaker.

Yeah.

Wrote and directed.

Right. And a nice little postscript to all of this is found with C. E. Lively. Apparently, his usefulness ran its course after he was revealed to not be an actual friend to the miners, and he was no longer employed by Baldwin Feltz. And by 1927, he had gone back to mining and was destitute. That kind of thing makes you feel good.

Yeah. What about his restaurant?

It was shut down for health code violations. Somebody found pee in the soup.

Oh, my gosh.

It was terrible.

That old bag?

No, someone put their foot in the Brunswick stew.

Oh, my gosh. You remember that?

Well, I just listened to that. It's coming out as a select, I think, sometimes.

Okay. Yeah. Our foot in Brunswick stew episode.

Well, since Chuck referenced our foot in Brunswick stew episode, I think, everybody, we can all agree that it's time for listener mail.

I'm going to call this Josh correction. Sorry.

That seems to be like a good 50% of our listener mail these days.

Well, I don't talk as much. I'm smart. I keep my trap shut.

Okay.

Hey, guys. Wanted to write in to clear up Josh's conception of Catalina island. It was my home away from home for almost 20 years. My husband and I lived on our 44 foot sloop and have moored in that harbor many times. Probably even the same mooring where the splinter had moored in 1981. And of course, this is referencing our Natalie Wood episode, which time, yeah, the show so nice, they released it thrice. Josh depicted the location as a place where rich people go on their yachts to party. Yacht to yacht. In reality, it's more like camping at an Rv park. Boats as small as 20ft sail over to twin harbors on Catalina, and the occupants all dine at Doug harbor's Reef, which is the only restaurant there. The city of Avalon is the south of France type place, but the isthmus of Catalina is a boater's campground. A couple of things I'll chime in. About. One, in our experience, there's never been a power boater that thought twice about disturbing their anchorage neighbors with floodlights and generators and loud music. And two, as for the people who heard cries of help, I wonder if they were actually downwind or upwind of the splendor, because sound travels very well across water.

Perhaps the dinghy was actually very far away when they heard these cries. Just curious. Signed, part of the stuff you should know. Family, Kathy with a k. Oh, I.

Wonder if that's Kathy with a k who gave us lassos in Arizona.

Oh, is that Kathy with a k? You know, I got my lasso hanging up at the camp still.

And that tracks people who have lassos also might have spent a portion of their life living on the sailboat. So. Okay, if that's you, Kathy with a k, how are you? Good to hear from you. And if you're not the same, Kathy with a k, good to hear from you as well. Thanks for that. I love being corrected. Even though you could make a case that partying from rv to rv at an rv park is a very celebrity thing to do these days. That's fine. We'll go with your interpretation of it. All right, well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Kathy with K did, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com.

Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartradio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Walter Isaacson set out to write about a world changing genius in Elon Musk and found a man addicted to chaos and conspiracy.

I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertip feel for social emotional networks.

The book launched a thousand hot takes, so I sat down with Isaacson to try to get past the noise.

I like the fact that people who say I'm not as tough on Musk as I should be are always using anecdotes from my book to show why we should be tough on Musk.

Join me Evan Ratliff for on Musk with Walter Isaacson. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Tune in to the new podcast stories from the village of nothing much like easy listening, but for fiction. If you've overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you. I'm Catherine Nikolai, and I'm an architect of cozy come spend some time where everyone is welcome and the default is kindness. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen to stories from the village of nothing much on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Join us for the can't miss live music event of the holiday season, our iHeartRadio jingle Ball special coming to ABC December 21, starring Cher, Olivia, Rodrigo Zizza, Niall Horan, Sabrina Carpenter, One Republic Jelly Roll, Big Time Rush, and more. Tune in to the iHeartRadio Jingle ball special on Thursday, December 21 at eight, seven central on ABC and stream next day on Hulu and Disney. Plus.