The age-herald., 1898-10-23
Was Employed in importing
 Negro LabOreTS.
CLAIMS MINERS FIRED FIRST
Special Train Was Accompanied By Fifty-Five Pinkerton Men-Virden Company Will Return Menif
 They Can't Work Them.

l train load of negro miners to Virden, Ill.,, which left here on October il, and who l were present when the Virden miners fired | on the Alabamlans two days later, returned to Birmingham yesterday. They give l graphic accounts of the adventures of the hundred or more colored miners of this dis i trict who went to that state to take the places of the striking miners. They were surrounded all day yesterday with crowds | of negroes, listening to the accounts of the battles and hearing the news of their | friends who are still in Illinois.
 l Duffy and Haywood. were two of the men employed by the Chicago-virden Coal company to get up the miners for them | in this district to work their mines in Vir- den. As will be remembered, the company l also had several white men of their com l pany down here looking aftr the securing of laborers and they employed Duffy and l Haywood to assit them.
 | Duffys account of their trip is most in l teresting. I've left Birmingham" said he, l lon Tuesday, October Il, over the Kansas | City, Memphis and Birmingham railroad, | I6O coolred people in all. including some of | the miners wives and children. Right here l l want to make one positive statement cor rectng an impression which may have gotten abroad, and that Is, that every negro who left Birmingham on that train knew where he was going, and that she was to take the place of striking miner in some one of the Chlcago-virden Coal com pany's mines. They were told all the facts tol Birmingham in the dark as to where they were going and what they were to do, as has been suggested. Another thing I want to say is that the reason the negro miner so thoroughly dislikes the union miner IS that the union miner has shown so little respect and such bitter hatred for him.
 "As you probably know we went from Birmingham to Memphis in special train of three coaches. From there we went by way of Cairo to St. Louis on the regular passenger train, but there we agaln boarded special train for Virden. At Cairo, East St. Louis and one or two other places along the route we were joined by large detachments of Pinkerton detectives about fifty-flve of them in all.
 x # course;- we know that the Virden miners had been causing great deal or trouble and that there would be some re- fnohstrance to our men taking their places . in the mines, but none of us dreamed of the bloody reception which awaited us The men in the cars were all talking and laugh ing their usual way. Haywood was in one car and was in the other. We approached Virden about 12:30 o'clock Thursday after , noon, running suppose at the rate of fftpep to twanty miles an hour.
 "The first thing we knew of any trouble we heard shots outside of the cars, and on looking out we saw a great crowd of white men shooting at our train and pretty soon t1.e deputies on our train began firing back at them. I am sure the white miners and not the deputies began firing first. On the inside the colored men behaved themselves very well. and only few of them became panic-stricken. None of them were armed, except, perhaps, few of them with pistols, and there was not much left for them to do but to lay down in the cars to dodge the |, bullets. I saw few of our men pick up the rifles which some of the wounded depu- | ties had dropped, but I don't think any of | them were fired. Only one of the colored l miners was injured, and that was scalp l wound received by miner named Jack l SOmeDOuy, from blue creek.
 l '.The train did not stop in Virden, but | went straight on through to the stockade
 on the other side of the city, where we l stopped for a while. There the deputies succeeded in driving the union miners on the outside back several hundred yards | We did not remain there long, and only a I few of the men got off the cars. We were l soon taken right on through to Springfield, l where the wounded on our train could be taken care of and the dead prepared for
 burial. Up to the time we arrived at Spring.
 field not single one of our colored miners
 had deserted us since we left Birmingham
 but there the union miners succeeded in
 decoying about forty-seven of our men
 away from us. They left the cars and we
 haven't seen them since. I hear that as
 soon as the striking miners heard thai | Governor Tanner announced that none oi
 the imported laborers could work in tho
 mines, the union men let them drop imme
 diately, with no money, nothing to eat, ant
 no jobs. By some means, I don't know | how, they were taken back to St. Louis
 where the mayor of f-the city interested him
 self and got all of the ffty-seven jobs
 working on the grades of the Mobile ant Ohio railroad at that city.
 All of the colored miners who remaine.
 with the Virden company, as they agree,
 to do when they left Birmingham, are nov
 being excellently treated. According to tn
 attitude Governor Tanner has taken, tn
 company cannot at present work any O
 lAem in their mines, and hear the matte
 is to be settled in the courts. Until thi
 is done, the Alabamians will be given sucl
 employment as can be found for them a
 the companys works around Atlanta, Ill,
 and are feeding and caring for them. If tn, company sees finally that they cannot em
 ploy the colored laborers, they will sent
 them back to Alabama with full pay, the, l say, for the time they have been there" When asked whether the Virden compan,
 would attempt to import any more coloret
 laborers from Alabama, Duffy became non
 communicative, and said that he did no
 know fully what the plans of the compan!
 were.
 CURE A COLD IN A DAY