The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-09-10
HUNGER, COAL
BARONS' ALLY
IN MINE WAR
q
Desperate Conditions in
West Virginia
Rx ART SHIELDS.

NJ 0 r G A N 7 wv N, w. Va,
Sept. o.-Can hunger win?s This
is the question the operators are
asking as the strike begins at
the two big Brady-Warner
mines at SCOTS Run near here.
1t is a fight watched keenIy by
some union operators who
would like to go non-union.
Same Brady is counting on
starvation and evictions to win
for him. Several months. ago
he locked out his miners after
declaring that he would not ac-
cept the Jacksonville pact. Now
he is attempting to reopen on
an open shop basis and under
the 1917 scale.
The miners were hungry: no one
who has not seen the suffering in
coal camps where there has been no
work for such a long time can realize
how much they were suffering, but
not a single miner entered the scab
pits. Not single miner needed
Brady's threats to put them and their
families out Of the company houses,
The only homes they had.
Dedicate New Hall.
The SCOTS Run miners had recently
attended the monster mass meeting
at Brady, Is miles away, where the
United Mine Workers Of America ded-
icated the new union hall that rises
on the ashes of the one Sam Brady's
thugs burned down. They felt the
spirit of mass solidarity there and
they came back ready to fight regard
less of empty stomachs.
But unemployment has brot an in
tense crisis to the union. In SCOTS
Run eighty per cent of the 5000 min
ers, when they work at all, are still
working under union conditions
Only the Shriver Coal company, the
Bunker Coal company and the New
Shaft concern are getting out any
black diamonds without union sane
ton. But the situation is worse in
other parts of West Virginia. Near
vision, with non-unionism more gener-
al, Bethlehem Steel dominating Radi-
ating out from Fairmont and Clarks-
burg union and nonunion companies
alternate.
Miners Migrating.
Unemployment is turning the min
ers into wanderers Families have
been migrating wholesale to Pennsyl-
vania and to other parts of West Vir-
ginia. This industrial depression is
the worst West Virginia mas ever felt,
miners everywhere to- me, and it is
pulling the miners out Of their old
environments and throwing them on
the world elsewhere.
Even the men who have been lead
ing the fight have been forced to move
on in the search for bread. Going
several miles out of Clarksburg to
see a certain local secretary l found
] was just in. time, he is in on the
point of moving on, with his family,
and turning the relief work for rs
families over to a successor.
Relief Is Meaere.
Relief funds are being distributed
thru the state, but a maximum of nine
dollars for family of IL, in the vi
cinity of Clarksburg, can barely main
tain existence under the scale of
prices charged by the merchants in
John W. Davis community. And
calls for relief are increasing.
Can hunger beat the miners? The
operators are calculating on widening
the open shop area while this hunger
situation continues at its present des-
perate pitch. If one considered only
the purely material factors one would
agree with the pessimists. But the
miners army does not crawl soley on
its stomach. 1t has an esprit de
corps, fighting spirit of union 10y
atty, that sometimes rises highest
when physical conditions are almost
at their worst / saw 1t in the mon
ster Brady meeting, and l found il
in the miners homes in the hearts of
men and women who may be evicted
in a few days.
Will c. Thompson, secretary Of Dis
trict II, says that in the southern part
of the district the morale has steadily
improved in spite of the fact that
relief rations have been cut.
ut depends on the winter trade"
says thompson when that demand
for coal comes, Wen organize all Ka-
nawha county again."
The unions fight now Is to hold the
lines until the demand for coal comes.