The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-05-28
In West Virginia
By MAURICE GOMBERG

the good will of our institutions" James obeyed as
all good American patriots" did He did not under
stand. 1t did not concern him. But now,
there was lost strike in which he himself particle
pated-There wage cut he considered I'M
justified-And then-the most of everything-there
hopes and aspirations he petted so caressingly
through all his darkest years in the coal pits,
dreams, he now regarded mythical as fairy tales
can only be. So now, there James entirely
different than the of five years ago James,
who already learned how not to care damn, what
ever, whoever is going to think of him Of his
action and over and over again he asking what
he was so anxious to know. "Why?" "Why?"
Since the last defeated strike in w. o. mining
camps several years passed away into eternity with
out any extraordinary occurrences With the wage
cut, the of total income" in the books of the
w. o. Coal Company of West Virginia began to
grow longer and longer by every month, while
the part of the miners, the growing objects were
the loose belt ends, which were also growing longer
and longer by every month while keeping track of
the ever hungry and shrinking bodies of the under
paid miners.
And although specifically, as one maquainted
with the Situation would conceive it, the pace of
life in the camps continued to make its normal daily
rounds, obviously smooth with signs of anxiety
or disturbance, the penetratve observer would
reveal under this camouflaged quietness a boiling
volcano of discomfort, whose furious vapors if con-
centrated and released, would exterminate in a
single blow all the barriers of their enemy oppressors
and exploteTs forever and without return And one
of those amongst them, fully aware Of this power
full weapon of Concentration" stimulating and
propagating it, is young James Anderson.
Broken and thing of the past is now that
charmed circle of "whys" he had been clampered
in in those early days of his awakening. And not
only became it clear now to young Anderson, why
that hypOcritical equal opportunity" hokum, in
vented by the capitalist rulers and exploiters to
delude the minds Of the exploited Masses is equiva-
lent to the "equal opportunities" every miners
lunch kit has to be rebuilt into radio set but he
also learned and knew how to combat such de-
usions to the of which he entirely and whole
heartedy devoted himself since the day Of his
awakening.
To organize, to educate and to concentrate that
boiling volcano of discomfort for the final battle
and victory of his class became his life ambition
and aspiration.
Young James Anderson, just recently deluded
and blind enemy of the struggles and aspirations
OF his own class by accepting and critically analyz
ing the facts which life itself presented to him. be-
came a class conscious and militant worker and one
of those struggling few in West Virginia who sees
in the far distance New Dawn-the Red Redeemer
of all the suffered and oppressed.
If passing through West Virginia alongside the
Kanawha River and making occasional stops at the
various so-called company mining camps one may
find some of these struggling few, energetic and
self sacrificing Andersons, in almost every camp
Not everything is bad that comes from West
Virginia The near future will prove it.
May, 1927, Charleston, w Va