It is estimated that before the strike began, there were approximately 10,000 men, women and children living along Cabin Creek and somewhat more than half that number along Paint Creek. A train runs up each creek in the morning and there is another in the afternoon and if you happen to miss the afternoon train out there is no way out except to walk, and walking is very difficult in that country. [Illustration: MINERS' HOMES LEASED FROM MINE OWNERS _Courtesy of the New York Sun_] For that reason little real news of the exact condition of affairs has reached the outside world. Newspaper men are decidedly unwelcome along the creeks; that is, their presence is distasteful to the mine owners. Few strangers had been allowed to enter the creeks for a long time prior to the entry of the militia last summer, without explaining their business to some man, and usually a man with a gun. Ordinarily a stranger would not get beyond the junction of the main line and the branch road. If the explanation of his business did not happen to be satisfactory, he was told to get out. If he demurred or showed a disposition to argue he was frequently beaten up. If he got up the line, his chances of getting beaten up were largely increased. One labor organizer told me that a couple of years ago he was pulled off a train and kicked into insensibility by the mine guards and when he recovered was made to "walk the creek" in water up to his waist because he had gone up Cabin Creek to see what the labor conditions were. _The Mine Guards_ These mine guards are an institution all along the creeks in the non-union sections of the state. They are as a rule supplied by the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency of Roanoke and Bluefield. It is said the total number in the mining regions of West Virginia reaches well up to 2,500. Ordinarily they are recruited from the country towns of Virginia and West Virginia, preferably the towns in the hill country, and frequently have been the "bad men" of the towns from which they came. And these towns have produced some pretty hard characters. The ruffian of the West Virginia town would not take off his hat to the desperado of the wildest town of the wildest west. These Baldwin guards who are engaged by the mining companies to do their "rough work" take the place of the Pinkertons who formerly were used for such work by the coal companies. Since the Homestead strike in the steel mills years ago when the Pinkertons fired into the strikers and killed a number of them, this class of business has gradually drifted away from the Pinkertons and much of it has been acquired by the Baldwin-Felts agency.