to Charleston to determine the extent of the emergency.19

After consulting with Governor Morgan, local officials, and spokesmen for Mingo County's chief coal operator, the Houston Coal and Coke Company, but apparently making no effort to learn the miners' side of the controversy, Major Thompson decided that lawless miners had caused a serious disorder warranting some form of military intervention. However, Major Thompson had also investigated the military capability of the governments of Kentucky and West Virginia, seeking to discover whether the available state forces could end the disorders. His assessment was that Kentucky, with three hundred deputy sheriffs and a fully organized National Guard force comprising five companies of infantry and three troops of cavalry, needed no federal assistance. Indeed, one hundred and fifty guardsmen had already beensent to the Kentucky side of the Tug River Valley and reported the situation there as improving. West Virginia, on the other hand, having temporized with the organization of its National Guard, had raised a relatively small volunteer state police force made up of "respectable Mingo County citizens." Major Thompson concluded, however, that in the cases of both Kentucky and West Virginia "authorities have not taken sufficiently active measures . . . (and that) for purposes of both politics and economy, they have decided to rely on federal protection."20

Major Thompson recommended against a third deployment of troops to West Virginia without a presidential declaration of martial law. In 1919 and 1920, the War Department had limited the troops in the state to guarding the mines. In each case