Bituminous Days

In the bleak, grimy hill-and-dale coal country around Pittsburgh, last week was much like the week before, and the week before that, and months before that to the tens of thousands of bituminous workers who, because their union-leaders told them to, came out of that countryside's black bowels last year and refused to work for less pay.

Dulled by months of malnutrition, monotonous argument and the sapping vices which poverty invents in idleness, the actual pick-and-shovel men of the miners' union were scarcely aware that their condition had been brought to the whole country's notice. All they knew was that dressed-up visitors seemed more numerous in the valleys and that, perhaps as a result, the valleys seemed more quarrelsome.

At the Crescent Mine, near California, Pa., picketers jeered and swore as usual at "scab" workers (mostly Negroes) filing in for another day's work. The Pittsburgh Coal Co.'s strong-arm men* jostled the picketers, bade them begone. A striker fired a shotgun. Two strong-armers roared with pain. The crowd dissolved, growling with satisfaction. The week before it had been a striker's woman who was hurt--trampled by a police horse. . . . Next time the California picketers assembled they were dispersed by tear gas.

At Russelton, Pa., they burned two houses belonging to the Republic Iron & Steel Co. That was to get even with one Joe Baldi ("that dirty louse"), who had quit the strike.

At Washington, Pa., they bombed the house of Tom Cakus, mine boss.

At Harmarville, Pa., a shipment of cast-off clothing from anthracite miners of the Scranton district brought 300 bituminous strikers stumbling through the muddy snow to scramble for pickings. Of this scene, Vice President Charles E. Lesher of the Pittsburgh Coal Co. (Mellon) said:

"That's stage stuff in so far as the union officials are concerned. . . . These folks you saw were dubs. ... I mean by that that they enjoy misery--or what would be misery to you or me, but to them is just normal existence. Why, some of them have been living like that around here for three years, and they'll continue to do it as long as the public helps them and the union exploits them. . . ."

"All the decent people among the union miners have gone away. They have found other jobs or dropped the union and they'll never come back. These sort of people, who had pride in themselves, wouldn't live in these wooden shacks the union has put up. Those that are there now are the dregs and they'll stay there as long as there are shacks and handouts in return for doing nothing."

The restlessness broke out in Ohio, too. At St. Clairsville, police hunted for "Red Head Carrie" Cressi, aged 18, for leading a crew of older termagants to hurl bricks at the Crabapple Mine, injuring Superintendent Tom Willis. But "Red Head Carrie" had fled home to Detroit. A mob of 200 unionists in the Flower Mine district (also near St. Clairsville) rambled down the highway flinging chunks of rock into non-union windows. Out of one window a shotgun blurted answer. Police locked up the shooter for safekeeping. Governor Donahey of Ohio sent word: "The law must be obeyed. If violence continues, troops will be forthcoming, no difference whether the miners or operators are to blame."

The situation in Ohio has been well handled by State militia whose orders were to relieve suffering, prevent violence, take no sides. In Pennsylvania, however, Governor John B. Fisher continued to be inactive and uncommunicative.

Senator Johnson of California having blazed out about it (TIME, Feb. 13) other politicians hurried into the bituminous mess--Senator Wheeler of Montana on the heels of Representative La Guardia of New York. Representative Casey, from Wilkes-Barre, Pa. (an anthracite region), took the floor in the House. Himself a coal-breaker when eight years old, Mr. Casey brought to mind heart-breaking memories, gave way to tears of grief and rage. "Oh, Pennsylvania, what a shame!" he cried as he belabored operators and executives, including "the great Herbert Hoover," whom he blamed for not denouncing an inhuman situation;* President Coolidge, to whom he imputed "presidential yellowness;" and Secretary Mellon whose interests were accused of "hiring private assassins." The Red Cross was also taken to task for doing nothing to relieve the miners' suffering.

Following Representative Casey's speech, Representative La Guardia obtained lurid effects in an oration on "Hootch and Harlots," illustrated in the tabloid sheetlet manner with a gigantic photo of a hard-boiled Coal & Iron Policeman which was passed from hand to hand over the House desks.

Most effective of all was vice president Philip Murray of the United Mine Work ers, a youthful person with a quiet voice, who talked for three hours to the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee about injunctions, evictions,, bloodshed, rape, coal prices and the cost of living. When Mr. Murray was through, no non-union mine operator answered him. The Committee voted to recommend a Senate investigation.

*"Coal and Iron Police," badged and deputized by the Governor of Pennsylvania; uniformed, armed and paid by the operators. The Coal and Iron Police were first formed during the Civil War, to guard Northern mines from Southern raiders. During the present "civil war," some 4,000 Coal and Iron Police have been operating.

*Mr. Casey's point was that the wage agreement, broken for economic reasons by the coal operators, was made at a conference sponsored by Secretaries Hoover and Davis-of-Labor, at Jacksonville, Fla., in 1924.