Twin city review. [volume] (Champaign, Ill.) 19??-1929, 1922-07-07
ILLINOIS MINER
TELLS STORY OF
HERRIN FIGHT

enringfeld. nl.-Union officials be-
gan Immediately after the Herrin
bloodsbed 10 nail the anti-labor propa-
ganda which has seized upon the out
break to attempt to discredit organ
Deploring the violence in Herrin,
John II. Walker, president of the
Illinois State FEDERATION of Labor,
declared:
aHowever. It is those forces of
greed that pfotteered so shamelessy
during the war and who are at the
present time so brutally and merci-
iessly trying to crush labor so they
may exploit them as serfs, particu-
larry those courts and the elements
they represent in industrial and
other walks of life that have created
the feeling Of suspicion, distrust, bit
terness and hatred that is response
Bile for acts of this character
The Illinois Miner, official organ of
the Illinois union miners, says of the
Heriin massacre
On June 81 at 3:15 p. m, George
Henderson, union miner, was shot to
death while walking on the public
highway quarter of a mile from the
Lester mine, near Herrin, Illinois.
Persons testifying at the coroner's
inquest stated that the fatal bullet
was fired by G. X. Mcdowell, the
superintendent of the above mine.
However that may be, the fact is
that the first victim of the much adj
vertised massacre" was an unarmed
union miner. The second man killed
was John Piteavitch, also a member
Of the miners union.
As soon as the news spread that
unarmed union miners had been killed
on the public highway, the sheriff of
the county, with a number of depu-
ties, rushed to the scene of the
trouble. They were forced back from
the Lester mine by a constant stream
Of bullets directed against the public
road.
When men learned that the sheriff
was unable to cope with the gunner,
entrenched in the mine, they rushed
to their homes for arms and ammuni-
ton to support the official and his
deputies.
BY six o'clock twelve hundred in
furiated men had gathered at the pit.
From then until dark the firing was
intermittent. At daybreak the army
of besiegers had swelled to three
thousand. The attack followed and
when the smoke had cleared away
thirty-nine dead and wounded strike
breakers lay on the battlefield.
II is, however, immaterial who
started the shooting. The skirmish
in Herrin is but an incident in a
struggle that is being fought out in
every mining field in this country.
Thousands Of miners have been
killed by private armies in the last
two decades. And we take it for
granted that goodly number Of gun
men and strike breakers have given
up their miserable lives during the
same period.
Ii we allow private individuals to
supersede constituted authority and
employ private armies for the protec-
ton of their profits, then affairs like
the one in Herrin must be the inevita-
BILE outcome.
The owners of the Lester mine are
neither better nor worse than the coal
operators in West Virginia, Kentucky,
Alabama or Colorado. They saw a
big profit--Mr. Lester gave it at
something like $500 per day--if
they could operate their mine.
Their former employees refused to
work for starvation wages. So Mr..
Lester called upon Chicago employ
ment agency to furnish the required
number of ''hands" at 80 much per
head.
The agency gathered in the human
wreckage that is hanging around en-
ployment agencies and shipped them
to Herrin. OF course, it took par
ticular pains to keep the real nature
of the work from the men themselves.
No, there was no strike-breaking for
them to do. No coal mining. Just a
little track laying and excavation
work at place a hundred and fifty
miles south of Chicago.
The next order of business was to
obtain the necessary protection for
these willing workers" The Har-
grave detective agency furnished the
protectors" at so much per head and
guaranteed that they would kill any
body or anything at so much per day
and board.
Mind you this is all strictly private
business. The state or government
has absolutely nothing to do with tic
transaction.
A band of hungry, jobless men is
shipped like cattle to the slaughter
house. Shady characters from the
underworld are supplied with guns,
munitions and poison gas to prevent
the victims of this INSCRIPTIONS pri-
vate agency from deserving to the
strikers as soon as they discover that
they had been lied to concerning the
true nature of their work.
A peaceful community is invaded
A few innocent men are shot and hell
breaks loose.
Does it ever strike our self-con-
fessed guardians of law and order
that the very existence of private
armies is the most glaring violation
OF law and order imaginable
The enforcement of law and order
is a government function and not 9
private business. And a government
that will farm out" its constitutional
powers by licensing private armies i.
dangerously near to moral bankrupt
cy.
If, as has been so often stated
every man has a right to work when
ever, for whomsoever and for what
soever he wants to, then it become
the duty of the government TO protec
that man in his fright"
But, as a matter of cold hard fact
no such right" exists. An employee
can close down his plant or mine an.