Preparations for the warfare, which began in April of last year, had been going on for months before the actual opening of hostilities. The miners on Paint Creek began buying old Springfield rifles which the government had discarded and which were offered in quantities by junk dealers and department stores in Charleston. There had been rumors of trouble, and the Paint Creek miners who were organized had received intimations that Cabin Creek conditions would be established in their operations. There had been no mine guards on Paint Creek for they are seldom seen in union operations. The miners had received information that the operators would not sign the scale for the new year but would repudiate the union and bring in the guards.
Their information proved correct. When the Kanawha Operators' Association met to consider the scale, the Paint Creek operators declined to sign it and withdrew from the association. The miners struck and the guards appeared over night. A big fight took place at Mucklow when the first blood was spilled in the trouble. It has been spilled in quantities since with more or less regularity.
The companies immediately prepared for a long fight. Miners were evicted from their homes and many of them have since been living in tents furnished by the United Mine Workers. Machine guns were imported and mounted in concrete fortifications that were hurriedly built on the roofs of the company stores and mounted in positions of vantage in the hills. Whisky, cartridges, rifles and machine gun ammunition were brought in in large quantities.
The strike spread at once to Cabin Creek and from the beginning the warfare has been more serious on Cabin Creek than it has been on Paint Creek. More machine guns were established on Cabin Creek than had been planted in Paint Creek. The situation grew so threatening that Governor Glasscock ordered out the militia early last August at the solicitation of the mine owners. By that time almost every man on Cabin Creek had his rifle and ammunition, hidden but where he could get at it without trouble. For the most part the arms were smuggled in over the hills. The mine owners informed Governor Glasscock that the miners were armed and were threatening to wipe out the mine guards, one of the guards, William Stringer, having been slain in a most brutal manner. The miners did not ask for protection, saying they could protect themselves. It is generally believed that they were waiting for some particularly bad move on the part of the guards, when they proposed to exterminate them if possible. The mine owners expected that when the troops came they would disarm the miners but allow the guards to retain their rifles, in other words, and to put it very plainly, they expected that the militia would be used as an additional force against the miners. But when the troops began disarming the guards as well as the miners they protested most vigorously. But for every rifle taken away from a guard in the early days of the trouble, dozens of new ones were brought in.