National Affairs: Trouble in the Hill Country

In the scrabbly hill country of central Pennsylvania, where coal runs rich to the surface, a man could almost breathe the trouble in the air. Across five counties the peace was broken by Americans fighting Americans.

At the black-scarred coal strips and tipples of 70 independent coal mines, owners and a scattering of non-union diggers worked warily, with loaded shotguns and rifles close at hand. A convoy of 15 loaded coal trucks was ambushed in hilly Centre County, attacked with rifle fire and stones before the drivers could rumble on to safety. At Grassflat, a $10,000 tipple of the Junedale Coal Co. was blown up by a 50-lb. charge of dynamite. One non-union mine owner drove off marauding strikers with a brace of .45 automatics; another was stabbed during an argument with U.M.W. pickets in front of the Hawthorn, Pa. post office.

Guns & Dynamite. The trouble reached to other rebellious patches of John L. Lewis’ empire as picketing union miners tried to repair small defects in the weapon that had always served them best—a nationwide coal strike. A Hawkes Coal Co. tipple near Morgantown, Ky. was dynamited. In a lonely stretch of northwest Alabama, six brothers named Preskitt stocked their 150-ton-a-day strip mine with all the weapons they could find and waited grimly for something to happen.

It did next day. Scores of men came running and crawling through the woods, shot it out with the Preskitts for two hours. One intruder was carried away with a shattered jaw, his chest and abdomen peppered with buckshot. The Preskitts finally gave in, agreed to close down their mine until “an agreement” could be reached. But other independents kept operating. “We’re going to stay in operation unless we’re shot out,” roared one owner.

Layoffs & Grocery Bills. John L. Lewis himself was devoting only part of his time to the state of his mine workers. He absented himself from negotiations with the operators at White Sulphur Springs and Bluefield, W.Va., and traveled to Springfield, Ill. to visit his 91-year-old mother who was seriously Ill. But the two-week-old coal strike he had imposed upon the nation—and on his 480,000 coal miners—was clearly not accomplishing its purpose.

By week’s end, some 50,000 non-U.M.W. miners were digging 400,000 tons of coal a day, about 18% of the nation’s normal output. Coal stocks above ground were enough to keep the country running normally for about two months; with steel shut down, the supply would last far longer than that. The miners themselves, with winter to face and grocery bills to pay, were restless.

Northern, southern and western coal operators sat calmly at negotiating tables in West Virginia, apparently willing to wait indefinitely for Lewis to name his terms for a new contract. Lewis had cut output with his “memorial” and “stabilizing” stoppages and the three-day work week; yet he had let his miners dig enough coal to keep them in business.

This time, even John L. seemed to realize that he had gone too far. Leaving the announcement to a lieutenant, he ordered 80,000 Pennsylvania anthracite diggers and his 22,000 U.M.W. miners west of the Mississippi back to the pits this week. So far, the only victims of John ‘Lewis’ haughty methods were his own miners.