The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-08-19
By VERA BUCH.

Inc not evening SeCtleS down after
the sweltering day. The sun is low
over the coal country, still the noun
tains are hidden in that white haze
in which they simmered all day. The
supper-hour is past, and now the
rambling, crooked village street
teens with new life. The miners
shacks have emptied upon the gravel
roadbed their swarms of ragged,
barefooted, whooping children, and
upon the front door-steps their
weary, sweating adults. Now and
then breeze wanders down the
street, family. Everybody relaxes
then, tries to drink it in . but be-
fore they can catch it, it is gone
again.
At the end of the street the col
liery. Towering into the sky, ten
stories high, the breaker rears it's
blackened, crazy structure. Upon the
chute leading down to the ground,
now and then miner appears, black
with SCOT, fresh from the bowels of
the earth, with the lamp on his head
still burning. rhythmic and loud as
the sea, the breaker throbs and roars
with the crushing of the coal. Here
too the culm-heap spreads its black
and desolate mountain, cutting off
the horizon, like the end of the world.
The children are scampering on it,
like little gnomes, outlined against
the sky. Around the colliery, the
little swarming mine village clusters
as though dependently, always in the
shadow of that mine which gave it
birth, yet whose destiny it too, can
hold in its power. Now and then
belated miner comes from work, leav-
ing the first shift, bent, soot-covered,
his dinner pail in his hand, his lamp
upon his head.
Nearest the colliery is Proska's
house. Proska is a miner different
from the rest. He is sitting now
with his four boarders around the
table, drinking homemade beer. He
is not broken like the others; he is
young, stalwart, powerful. His face
you can only describe by saying it is
that of an idealist. He is a persecu-
ted man, Proska. He is blacklisted
in the mines as radical. This
means that no sooner does he get a
job than he is fired, driven from pill
lar to post. He must get up at four
in the morning now to reach the job
that he has, far from this village, All
this Proska takes as a matter of
poI1rSo He ic n co1J;o,. -, 4I,o oloee
struggle,-must not soldier fight
Where and when the struggle calls,
he is ready and will go. All this
shines out in his face, and also
touch of gentleness and tenderness,
that comes to him from his love of
his wife, Mary, and their four little
children.
All these miners came here recently
from the soft-coal country. They had
enough of it there. After a year of
starvation, year of living on "re-
lief"-on two dollars a week credit
for families of eight and ten-they
finally pooled their few resources,
took their children-there was moth
ing else to lakeland came here to
the anthracite. Was it any better
here? They had no illusions-they
took up again here the daily struggle
that is all the life of the workers: the
struggle to make a living, and the
struggle against the boss. Now they
are talking about the unemployment
which is the most pressing thing to-
day.
Last week went to Bethlehem"
one of them was saying, painfully
seeking the English words. "Look
for job in steel mill. There they lay
off men too, take on only Mexicans,
terrible low wages. l go to Pitts
burgh,-same thing. Those they lay
off, they pick them up and take for
scabs to soft coal l think, bosses,
they lay us off here for this, keep
US from help soft-coal strike, break
it up sooner"
Proska kids him along a little.
you got nothing to worry, you
single fellow" he says with his soft
Slavic accent, smoothing off the cor
ners of the words. "You only got
worry for one, when you no work,
me, / got worry for six" He counts