Saturday Man Movie

In Matewan, a movie based on true-to-life events in Mingo County, West Virginia, Police Chief Sid Hatfield tells the mine company's hired detectives how it's going to work.


Of course they come back with more men and guns, and Sid has to explain it to them with a bit more emphasis.

The Baldwin-Felts men weren't going to let that stand, however. They murdered Hatfield on the courthouse steps in Welch a few months later, and this act precipitated the great Battle of Blair Mountain as miners converged on the area from all over the state, only to be met by even more hired company gunmen.

Before it was over, thousands of men on both sides squared off in the hills and hollows, firing hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition at each other from every type of weapon available at the time, muzzle-loader to machine gun. It took the mobilization of US Army troops, including four of General Billy Mitchell's new biplane bombers, to bring an end to the violence, but not before over a hundred men had been killed in the fighting.

Good movie, and a true story, brought to you from the hills of West Virginia, circa 1920.