Industrial Police

The Coal & Iron Police of Pennsylvania have been for years a cause of fury to union labor and organized liberals. Recruited to protect corporate property, their strong-arm work has on occasion become nationally notorious. Crowning brutality occurred two years ago when three Coal & Iron policemen quarreled with one John Barcoski, Polish miner, while he was on his way to work. They beat him, bent a poker over his head, left him dead. Two of the officers were convicted of manslaughter.

In accordance with his pre-election pledge, Governor Gifford Pinchot* last week announced that when the 1,100 Coal & Iron police commissions expire on June 30 they will not be renewed. "I recognize," said he, "the necessity for police protection in these regions [chiefly the State's western industrial centres], but I believe it should be provided under conditions which will make such outrages as the Barcoski killing forever impossible."

The Coal & Iron Police were organized under legislative enactment of 1865, extending to railroads the privilege of employing private officers to protect property from theft, trespassing, malicious damage. Next year the act was amended to give collieries, rolling mills, furnaces the same right. Six years ago the privilege was granted to light and power companies.

To qualify as an industrial policeman the law stipulates that a man be a citizen of the State, furnish a $2,000 bond, convince the Governor's office that he is of good character. However, the Governor is empowered to withdraw these commissions at any time without necessity of explanation.

Governor Pinchot proposed a substitute plan for industrial police protection: to have the State pick, train and direct the officers, rent them to the companies in time of disturbance. Civil libertarians pointed out that under this plan all the taxpayers would have to pay for the officers until they were called out by an industrial concern; that persons injured by them would have redress against neither State nor private company, that the establishment of such a system would put the commonwealth in the position of merchandising police protection.

* Last week he made known that, like New Hampshire's John Gilbert Winant (see p. 16), he would address the commonwealth weekly by radio.

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