The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1916-09-23

was sent Dy the WOmanS welfare
league to- get first hand information
about the treatment accorded to men
land women during the miners strike
on the Mesaba range, following a
speech made before the league by Ma
ry Heaton Worse and Elizabeth Cur
ley Flynn.
The st. Paul women wanted a color
less story of actual conditions. Mrs.
I4amlin, we'll trained for this sort of
Investigations, was requested to do
the work. She visited all the impor-
tant points in the strike zone. and
her story confirms the claims made
during the strike by the miners.
|. Minnesota is closely following in the
footsteps of Colorado and West Vir-
ginia, as is shown by the report. It
reads in full as follows:
Members of the Womans Welfare
league will recall that on Tuesday,
Aug. IS, We were addressed by Mary
Heaton Worse and Elizabeth Gurley
Flynn on the subject of strike condi-
tions on the range and that great in
terest was aroused by their descrip-
tons of the part women were taking
were enduring in consequence.
Following the meeting an informal
request was made by officers and
members of the league that an investi-
cation of strike conditions as they af-
feet women and children be made by
the State Labor department with spec
ial reference to the\case of Mrs. Ma
sonvich held, with her baby, without
bail, in the st. Louis County Jail. This
request was endorsed by other
women's organizations and later a
committee of three members Of the
League, of which I was one, was ap-
pointed to follow up the inquiry.
In response to our request an in
vestigation was made by the Labor
Department into the Masonovioh case,
and into certain charges of child labor
at the mines, and a report filed with
the governor.
quite unofficial, but as enjoyed
rather exceptional opportunities of
meeting and talking with the strikers
and their families, a brief summary of
my impressions and conclusions may,
perhaps, be Of interest. 49,
From the Keewatin picnic on Sun
day, when several hundred men and
women walked a distance of fourteen
miles or more to. protest in a half
dozen different languages against the
refusal by the sheriff Of Itasca county
Of the right of free asse1nbiage in that
county, to my visit to Carlo Tresca
and Mrs. Masonovich iii the Duluth
Jail, the week was a continuous mo-
ton picture performance of the most
novel and vital sort.
= Reel after reel 1nro1ieds of; ~heart
throb' stories Of a sindp1e foreign
people; Of tragedy suddenly injected
into homely domestic scene; of
heart--breaking struggle of the work.
ers against wealth and power and
hunger and stupid, sometimes brutal
officialdom; of defiance and the
swift, sure descent of the law: of'slow
imprisonment and the marshalling of
the legal forces for the final battle
all against background of bare.
riven, red earth and beautiful, swept
and garnished cities. Verify a cross
section of American life.
There was wild ride through the
rain followed by careful, painstaking
examination of the house near BIZ
wabik in which the shooting of Dep
uty Myron occurred, a tragedy as
stupid, as unnecessary as could we'll
be imagined. Four armed deputies
enter a home and demand the imme-
date surrender of a man who hap
pens to be asleep at the time in an
adjoining room-on the charge of
unlawful assemblage." The people
in the house are immigrants from the
South of Europe, speaking little or no
English. wait till O'Hara Gomez
say VS.: the woman. O'FIara is the BIZ
wabik police officer whom all the for
eisn people of the district respect and
obey
But no, these newly, created officers
of the law cloth~l in little brief
authority, will not wait. They pull
their guns and begin to shoot. The
woman struggles with one Of the
deputies and tries to take his gun
from him. The husband and the four
ooarders~ and the, woman struggle
with the deputies and beat them off.
A deputy is shot dead. A man deliv-
ering case of pop at the gate. is shot
dead. Two presumably useful lives
are snuffed out, two women made
widows, and their children fatherless,
and all because they wouldn't wait
till O'Hara come.'
Now a slender, dark eyed Monte
negren woman with pale-faced baby
at her breast waits in a close, sunless,
inside Jail room, along with a dozen
drunk and disorderly" women of the
streets, charged with murder because
she Joined in defending her home and
|. her family against an attack of armed
and apparently. lawless men. The pity
of 1t, and the shame of tin Amer
lea.
There was q, visit to two women in
Duluth hospital, one a. young Fin
nish woman whose back had been
severely injured. by being dragged
over railroad ties and then :rtumbled
into a,ditch while on picket duty. The
other, an Austrian woman. was ar
rested in her kitchen, also on a charge
of picketing.- She *deniet the charge
and resisted arrest and lost her un-
born baby as a result: 81 the en-
counter, She was very, ill., indeed,