The daily worker., 1925-10-02
WEST VIRGINIA
MINE FIELDS A
SCENE OF WAR
Strikers Depending on
Weak Leadership
Especial to The Daily worker)

Especial to The Daily Worker)
FAlRMoNT, w. Va, Sept. so.--pIs-
pute still RACES whether the 5000
non-union miners called upon to strike
by Van Bittner, in charge of the cam
paign of the United Mine Workers In
Northern West Virginia, will answer
the strike call. t
Meanwhile, the strike which began
in April is still on, with the rank and
file of miners making heroic efforts
to hold out against the bitterest hard
ships and persecution. Union oficials
place the number on strike at $4,000.
Bitter Class War.
Twelve hundred families have been
evicted and are living in rude bar
racks erected by the union. A state
of unofficial martial law prevails. The
mines are guarded by thugs of the
Baldwin-Feltz type with rifles and
shot guns, machine guns and hand
grenades. Barbed wire stockades have
been erected around mine properties.
The houses in which scabs live are
bathed in a glare of lights every
night. And then there are injunctions,
injunctions galore.
Federal and state courts are turn
ing out injunctions every day. Forty
one injunctions were served on John
L. Lewis and other leaders Saturday,
but the picketing rank and file do the
going to Jail. Marion county had to
handle 1S0 pickets arrested in one
demonstration and ninety union men
and women, some mere children, are
in Jail for violation of injunctioAs.
Great meetings of strikers were
held here and in thirty other camps
within seventy-five miles radius of
this city on Saturday. Here women
carried infants in their arms and bare
foot boys clung to their skirts as they
marched up Main street to the old
fair grounds. The parade was led by
group of 100 miners who had served
in the world war, bearing banners
''They can evict US from our homes,
but they can't enslave u.s." etc. Chill.
dren bore banners, I'VE are proud of
our union daddies." Wives carried
banners, "Our husbands are honest-to-
god union men,"
Lewis Looks to "Publlc Opinion"
The demonstrations are aimed at
the Consolidation Coal company, the
Bethlehem Mines Corporation, the
Hutchinson Coal company, the Bertha
Consumers Coal company, the Pitts
burg and Cleveland Coal company
and others. Lewis, in his speech, said
that the Bethlehem company had
agreements MPennsylvania which it
lived up to, not explaining why he
should not have ordered those mines
struck, however. He replied upon
public opinion" and a new spirit
among the operators which would in
duce them to keep the Baltimore
agreement they have violated.
Injunctions Good "MoraI Influence"
The Baltimore agreement, Lewis
contends, was made with the coop
Grafton of high government officials
and he hoped that the moral infiu-
ence of those same officials would be
utilized to see that peace was main
tanned in the industry"
This, while all around him were the
signs of grim war, armed men, search
lights sweeping the roads and camps,
barbed wire barricades,. and the fed
eral judges of the same capitalist gov
ernment to whose moral influence"
he recommends the cause OF the strik-
ers, issued injunctions In job lots and
throwing men, women and children
in jail Some miners are heard TO say
that this is the way to lose a strike,
not to win it.