The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-02-09
Americanizing Foreigners
Official List of Dead.


Snyder, Alex Jylha, Jerome Ryan, Emil
Carlson, George Hochevar, Nels Ritala,
John Yal1alich John Stacker, John Muro-
vich, Roland Mcdonald of Duluth, Clyde
Revord, G.. H. Revord, John Minerich,
Fred Hart, Frank Hravatin, Elmer Hoag,
Frank Tomac, Mako Toljan, Nick
Radich, Martin Valenich, Henry Maxi,
Henry Laht, George Butkovich, Tony
Flack, Peter Magvich, Earl Bedard, L. J..
LaBrash, c. Harris, Victor Kattola, Roy
Cunningham, Captain Evan Crellin, Will
lam johnson, Mike Bazal, A. E. Wolford,
Valentine Cole, John Hendrickson Minor
Grove, Herman Holm, Oliver Burns, and
Harry Hosford.
Scan the list of the dead in the Milford mine
disaster-or in any other great disaster that
takes bloody toll of the lives of the workers
in basic industry.
Foreign names predominate-in the Milford
death list they are Finnish and South-Slav
names.
Citizens? Probably not, but good enough
for the Milford mining company to employ in
work of the most dangerous character and to
sacrifice to its desire for large profits from
which no expenditure for safety measures had
to be subtracted.
One does not have to be mining expert to
know that these foreign-born workers were
murdered in a far more deliberate and cold
blooded manner than if the stockholders of the
Milford mining company had taken them one
by one and hurled them down the shaft that
marks their tomb.
The miners themselves knew of the danger
and had protested and in all probability the
mine foreman had reported that 'those
damned foreigners are making trouble again"
Someone will ask why they did not quit.
We'll, they were almost all married, they had
families, they had to work somewhere and one
mine is much like another; miners are that
way; they have to be if they are going to get
work. They had no union, thanks to the steel
trust and the steel trust owned officials of Min
nesota, who have hunted the foreign-born
miners on the iron range like wild animals
whenever they have tried to organize. They
were at the mercy of the mining company ex-
cept for three alternatives-work, move or
starve.
Secretary of Labor Davis is much incensed
at the foregn-born workers He says they are
not good material with which to build America
and he wants to finger-print them and have
them report to the police.
In the drifts and slopes of the Milford mine
there large number of foreign-born min
ers who will never be finger-printed and who
never will have to report to the police.
Their dead hands, with the calloused palms
washed sickly white, still clasp the tools with
which they were building America. Their re-
ward is grave in the Shiny swamp-mud; the
reward of their families will be long years of
poverty in dreary mining camps.
Let us hope that such occurrences as the
Milford mine disaster, with the mute testimony
of the names of the dead, will arouse the work
ers of America to the real meaning of the hor-
rible proposals put forward by Secretary of
Labor Davis in their name and that they will
let the mining, steel, textile and packing COM
panies, in whose name he really speaks, know
that while liability insurance is cheaper than
safety measures they shall not be allowed to
hound and humiliate by legislative enactment
the foreign-born workers whom they send to
their deaths as first lesson in Americanism.
We shudder to think of the wave of RIGHT