National Affairs: Another Strike

With the strike, due to failure (TIME, Aug. 31) to reach a new wage contract, comtinuing for its second month in the nation’s anthracite coal fields in Pennsylvania, and with no prospect of a settlement there in sight, John L. Lewis, President of the United Mine Workers, traveled into West Virginia to start a strike there.

The West Virginia coal fields are unionized only in small part. But Van A. Bittner, agent of the United Mine Workers, has been busy there trying to bring that region under the Union’s dominance. He issued a strike order that took effect last week, and the mine leaders led by Mr. Lewis went down to celebrate the opening of the strike in an effort to make it successful.

The operators of the Non-Unionized mines prepared for their coming. For long they have protected their miners by armed guards, and have obtained injunctions against Union pickets. But none the less the Union miners have hissed the non-Union men, barked at them, shouted “Scabs!”

“Yellow dogs!” and sung their song:

Shoot them in the head, Shoot them in the feet,

Shoot them in the dinner bucket; How are they going to eat?

So the usual injunctions were got out against Mr. Lewis, 19 of them restraining him from interfering with the production of coal at the non-Union mines. Nineteen injunctions were leveled at Vice President Murray of the United Mine Workers, three against Secretary Kennedy.

The Meeting. The scene of the demonstration was a sunny hilltop near Fairmont. First there was a parade of men, women, children with placards “The Coal Operators May Evict Us from Our Homes, but They Can’t Enslave Us,” “Our Husbands are Honest-to-God Union Men,” “We are Proud of our Union Daddies.”

The injunctions were then served on the Union leaders, and they laughed before they began their harangues.

Said Van A. Bittner: “Injunctions are like leaves of grass in the lives of labor leaders. . . . Injunctions won’t break strikes.”

Said Mr. Lewis of the operators: “They have torn up their wage contracts. They have closed their mines for long periods in order to starve their employes into submission; they have evicted their employes from their homes; they have manned their properties with armed mine guards, searchlights, barbed wire fences, stockades and such paraphernalia of war; they have resorted to the use of unfriendly courts and have sought to bind the workers hand and foot by the issuance of court injunctions stripping the worker of nearly every right guaranteed him under the Constitution; they have, in substance and effect, conducted a campaign of community terrorism in the isolated mining villages.

The Significance. The question at stake in West Virginia is not only whether the Union shall gain as complete control of bituminous coal mining as it has of anthrasite, but also of whether the anthracite strike shall be successful. For while the anthracite mines are shut, a good part of their clientele is being supplied from the West Virginia bituminous region. A strike in West Virginia would make the Pennsylvania strike, effective.