The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-08-31
WOMEN IN COAL
FIELDS DEFIED
BOSSES TERROR
Hate Lewis; Work for
New Organization

PITTSBURGH. Pa. (Bv MaiT.-
The women IRE the burden bearers
of the race. The women are the
greetest sufferers in industry. It
Is the wives on whom unern plov-
ment. strikes. lockouts end all the
hardships of industry fall heaviest.
It is the mothers whose hearts
break when children are hungry or
in want; when shoes are worn thin
and when STOCKINGS are past mend
ing. It is the wives and mothers
who have to worry most about rent
dav and the pay envelope.
Women are not only the child
bearers hut the greatest sufferers
from tho terrible system of exploita-
ton under which we live.
Company Barracks.
The women in the coal fields al
ways suffer. even in the hest of
times. They suffer because they are
never srra of emplovment: because
when their men go into the mines
thew never know whether they will
eva~ soc them alive again. They
~uffer because the company houses
in which thew live are often little
better than the shacks into which
thew have to move when they are
avir+nd in a strike period.
When the Jacksonville scale was
broken the women were the first to
realize that it meant that the min
ers would be forced to accept any
thing that the coal operators chose
to pay them and when the miners
went out in protest, it was the wo-
men who saw naked want staring
them in the face.
But thew were game. They en-
couraged their men and stood by the
strike. They went on the picket
line. They were given scant cour-
tesy. Our boasted American chiv-
airy fails to manifest itself in in
dustry. What was manifested was
a brutal disregard of workers rights
and the women and even the children
were treated to the clubs and beat
ings, arrests and frame-ups. The
weapons used by the coal operators
are used Unfortunately against
men and women alike.
The Lansing Women
So the wives and mothers of the
miners understand what is going on.
They know that the coal operators
work in conjunction with the police
and the judges and the courts. The
81 women of Lansing who were
locked up when they marched to the
Jail to see their men who had been
arrested on the picket line, have lost
whatever illusions they might have
had about justice and equality be-
fore the law. They know that the
laws are against them and their
class. They know that the jails are
made for the workers and not for
the coal operators or other million
aires of the country.
The women have also discovered
what is wrong with the U. M. W. of
A. They know that Lewis is wrong.
They clinch their fists when they
hear his name They hate him more
than they do the coal operators and
with good reason, for he has be-
trayed them in a hundred ways.
And when the miners are betrayed it
means the betrayal of women and
children; it means hunger and cold
and sickness. And the women hate
John L. Lewis bitterly and when the
new union is formed without Lewis
and his gang) the women will have
Mad a hand in it and deserve to have
a place in it for the women fought
as stubbornly to win the strike as
the men.
The Proletarian Women.
There are women in the coal fields
who deserve to be known in song
and story. They have braved every
peril; have shown revolutionary
courage; have defied the sheriffs
and the courts.
The women are the burden bear
ers and they will be the fighters in
the great struggle for proletarian
victory.
The miners wives in southeastern
Ohio have organized into groups
with the express purpose of getting
together for mutual benefit and also
to be able more effectively to win
any future struggles that may be
in store for them.
And they have also helped them
selves at the present time through
holding picnics, dances and through