LABOR: In Fayette County

Pennsylvania’s coal-mining Fayette County heard the tramp of soldier feet last week for the first time since the great strike of 1922. Three hundred guardsmen were marched in under orders from Governor Gifford Pinchot which amounted to martial law. Eight thousand striking coal miners looked on stolidly as a week of petty riots and bloodshed ended in peace, only to flare up again in a rash of nasty fights which spread the general disorder into adjoining counties, stopping work in at least 30 collieries.

As with the striking hosiery workers in Reading, Philadelphia and Lansdale, the issue in Fayette County was Unionization under the National Recovery Act. Focus of trouble was the non-union H. C. Frick Coke Co., subsidiary of the non-union U. S. Steel Corp. Even before the Recovery Act was passed in June, Frick Coke started organizing a company union, told its workers to sign up, picked representatives for them to elect as officers. Simultaneously United Mine Workers began a membership drive among Frick employes. Fortnight ago unionized miners held a protest parade at Maxwell. Deputy sheriffs hired by Frick Coke tossed tear bombs, provoked a clash. That started the strike which spread until last week 15,000 soft coal miners were out in Pennsylvania. When United Mine officials volunteered to negotiate a strike settlement, U. S. Steel flatly refused to dicker with them.

Twenty Fayette mines closed down. Picket lines were formed. Deputy sheriffs shot down four strikers. Frick Coke was accused of importing gunmen from New York—a charge its president hotly denied. Strikers sniped at mine guards, nearly killed one. All the makings for an ugly labor war were at hand.

Sheriff of Fayette County is Harry Hackney who, to hold his job, must stand in well with the mine operators. When Fayette disorders reached the front page. Governor Pinchot proposed to Sheriff Hackney the same remedy he successfully used week before in the Lansdale hosiery strike: let the sheriff withdraw his deputies and turn their job over to the State police. Sheriff Hackney refused, whereupon Governor Pinchot marched his soldiers into the county. Said he: “The miners have the right to organize, to picket peacefully and to assemble in meetings. . . . The mine operators have a right to protection of their property. The National Guard will protect the rights of miners, mine operators and citizens generally. It is impartial and will remain so.”

The steel industry’s backdown on “company unions” at NRA hearings in Washington did not diminish U. S. Steel’s resistance to unionization in the coal fields. As a matter of “common sense” Governor Pinchot attempted to mediate the Fayette County trouble by summoning United Mine Workers and Frick Coke officials to a peace conference—a meeting which would put the non-union company into direct negotiation with its union foe.