The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-02-23
COAL COMP ANY
DEMONSTRATES
DICTATORSHIP
Drives Out All Stores of
Independents
BY ART SHIELDS, Federated Press.

BY ART SHIELDS, Federated Press.
CHARLESTON, w. Va. - OPP
Carbon Fuel Co.--ruler Of several
thousand mining folk on the upper
left gorges of Cabin creeks arrest
ing merchants who deliver goods to
their employees. The new order is
that workers must buy all their gro
ceries from the company stores or go
down the creek
mo Trespassing," warns the sign at
Dakota, border town of Carbonate.
But was able to go into the company
store at the frontier and price the
goods. I found rates considerably
higher than outside. A 24-lb sack
of flour that Frank Palma, one Of the
arrested merchants, used to fetch
from Eskdale, several miles down the
creek, for S160 brings SITS at each
Of the company stores. The can of
evaporated milk Palma delivered for
12hc rings up zoe on the company
| till; and the 25-fb sack of sugar the
! private dealer laid on the doorstep for
S1.S5 costs $3.50 from the boss.
Company store bills are checked of
the workers pay and often he finds
nothing coming. Pay is low at best.
Nominally at the 1917 rate (nearly
30 per cent reduction from the
peak it is actually still less. The old
union 1917 tonnage rate was guaran-
teed by a union-paid checkweighman
on the tipple. Now the miner has
to take the company's word on the
weight. The old union 1917 agree
ment-like all union agreements
provided special rates for putting in
props, removing slate and clay, and
doing other forms of dead work No
pay for those extras today, only for
coal.
Two of the arrested merchants are
putting up a fight. They have refus-
ed to pay the fines levied by justice Of
the peace Pat Brennan of Eskdale and
demand jury trials on the trespass
charge. Poff, the meat dealer, yield
ed and paid his fine of $40 and is
preparing to quit the community.
Half his business was up the creek.
His case was particularly hard. The
company told him his truck was dam
aging the road. The company's own
truck was much heavier, but Poff In
vested in a Ford truck. But that did
not save him; he was arrested.
The appeal of the other two mer-
chants turns on who owns the road.
Carbon Fuel has claimed it for years
but old timers tell me they worked
on the road for the county back in
the eighties before the mines were
opened.
Cabin creek was organized in the
bitter bloody strike Of 1928 when
the miners fought back against the
Baldwin-Felts guards who started the
killings and sent round number to
their graves. Frank Keeney, a Cab
in creek miner, led the walkout and
Mother Jones figured in dramatic de-
fiance of the thugs. Eventually the
entire creek, upper and lower, came
under the union agreement and re-
manned so till 1922 Several camps
of strike barracks remain of the fam
lilies that have stuck out the four
year fight but most of the men left
the community or were starved back
to the job. The rations are in flour,
meal, meat, beans, etc, what $3.50 per
person every two weeks will buy
Clothes depend on outside donations.
Discomfort Not Dead.
The mines are again working with
the starved-back men and imported
southern labor. But the working min
ers are bitterly disconnected. as the
stranger can quickly find where knots
of them are found on the streets.