" Collective Bludgeoning "

Charging the United Mine Workers of America with " destructive monopoly of labor," the bituminous operators' special committee filed a brief with the United States Coal Commission, in which the union is denounced for maintaining " a campaign of deliberate violence."

The brief was submitted in reply to a request of the Commission for specified charges. It enumerated twelve cases of violence on a large scale in the bituminous fields since January, 1919, including the Herrin and Mingo County disasters.

According to the brief, these are the methods pursued to sustain union domination:

" By strikes in breach of contract, by stoppage for trivial causes, by restriction of output, by opposition to labor saving machinery and new mining methods."

The brief also described the United Mine Workers as a "super-government " which collects an annual war chest of $15,000,000 in dues.

In conclusion the brief, which is 5,000 words long, says:

" Acts of intimidation and violence are not accidental outbursts of mob violence but calculated lawlessness. . . . For collective bargaining this (labor) monopoly has substituted collective bludgeoning."

The United Mine Workers issued a formal denial of the operators' charges.