The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-05-28

the narrow corridor-like roads alongside the Ka-
nawha River, and making here and there occasional
stops in the various so-caled company mining camps,
with eyes open and mind clear would find it
q most vivid illustration to learn from about the
much Dragged of equal opportunities, great pos
sibilities and prosperous blessing, one is able to
attain of, with just bit Of ambition and desire to
strive for it. worker in the United States in gen.
eral and miner in the West Virginian Open-shop
coal kingdom especially.
Another thing of major Importance one would
also learn, is the degree of misery degradation and
outraged rights, human beings may allow to be
hurled in in the midst of the most exravagant lux
ury and riches, in the richest country in the
world
There is hardly feeling more humiliating than
poverty when there is a will to work, or human
rights outrageously suppressed when there is viii
for creative activity. Yet such is the story as
would read it from the muddy streets and dirty
surroundings, filthy and ugly looking huts, and
above all from the frightened looks of of the
miners when attempting to enter into
tion concerning their circumstances betrayng in
human enslavement and disfranchisement.
Every family, nearly in every mining camp, has
dreadful and sorrow story of its own, of relatives
killed injured in exploded mines during strikes
But still they remain and generation after genera
ton they continually toll and suffer, struggle lose
and struggle again, with just few of them seeing
in the far distance the Red Dawn-the Great Re
It was about five months after the general walk
out in the camps of the W. o. Coal Co. of West
Virginia, following a wage cut-thus reducing
the then meagre earnings Of the miners to
rate of starvation-and the following day after
the work in the mines, being forced by poverty,
terror and disorganzation, resumed under con-
dtions as dictated by the coal operators, when
James Anderson, young MINER suddenly realized
that all his hopes and aspirations to work himself
up to a higher position in life, whatever his
ceptions were, but relatively to position somewhat
higher than the of common ordinary miner"
be occupied at present, these peted Dreams he sud
denly realized are nothing else but inaccessible,
self deceiving and naive illusions incompatible with
reality.
If asked by someone, it is very doubtful if James
could intellgibly explain the source and cause of
his new born conclusions, Just well he could
not probably explain the inspiring of his
former aspirations, dead. Nevertheless, there,
deep in his heart he felt and knew that it is now
that he is on the right path, wondering only, how
could he not it before and his former sefdeceiv
ing illusions which were wrong and misleading
James was young, in fact very young. And though
born and raised in surroundings very far from lux
ury-in mine workers surroundings-his knowledge
and conception of life such, of a sweet and
banal novelette, where everything is so noble and
magnificent. But starting in the mine at seventeen
with head and brain swollen of education" which
made hm hosulely inclined towards any modern
though ideal contradictory to his conceptions of
life ambitious aspirations, he now completing
his fifth year Of very much dscouragng hard labor
in the mine entirely disillusoned, his education
completely evaporated
Life-black and rough as pile of coal; those bru-
tai facts Of fe's reality, contradictory TO all the
platitudes he had been taught beginning almost from
his cradle up to the time of his first walk to the
mine; life-the most efficient and eloquent agita-
tor with hammerng facts Of truth and reality have
spoken to James reason in words more conceivable
and convincing than all the pamphlets he occasionally
read, mercilessly smashing his shattery beliefs into
dust and oblivion.
The inevitable followed. Overwhelmed by the
complexities Of contradictions, bewildered and dis
enchanted James conceded.
Days, dark and desperate, were those to young
James Anderson, days Of torturous and painful
righteousness, reminding those days of five years
ago after that disastrous gas explosion in the
mine he is working now, when with score of others
his father was also found dead, and he, James,
then school boy, picking up his fathers lunch-kit