The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-07-13
COAL OPERATORS
TRY new TRICK
Great Defense Week
Plans Speeded

PITTSBURGH, Pa, July 12.-
What coal and iron police, terroriza-
tion, state cassacks' clubbings, and
fifteen months of hunger failed to
do, the Carnegie Coal Company is
attempting to effect with a trick.
Two years back rent for company
houses must be paid, the officials
declare, or the miners and their
households will be thrown into the
muddy roads, already flooded by the
spring rain. But the willy operators
are willing to be charitable. They
will open their mines, and the coal
diggers may go back as scabs, the
operators say, and work three days
for every two months back rent they
owe, and stay in their homes.
AS soon as the or, N were posted
at the mines, the coal diggers de-
clared they would not be duped into
returning to open shop mines, and
committees were quickly dispatched
to the national miners relief COM
mittee, Gil Penn Ave-, Pittsburgh,
to ask for tents. "They won't make
strikebreakers out of us!" the mill
tant miners said. Immediately a
special appeal was issued by Alfred
Wagenknecht, relief director, to re-
lief committees and sympathizers all
over the country, for funds to fur
nlsh feefs to cover the heads of the
striking miners children.
Houses Dilapidated.
Thousands of families in McDon-
aid, Atlasburg and Primrose will be
affected. The company houses are
smoky, broken-down shacks, border
ing the hills in crooked rows. The
walls are streaked with the remains
OF years old paper, holes in the win
dows are stuffed with rags, there is
hardly any plumbing and the roofs
are leaky. But they are the only
roofs the miners families have to
protect them from the frequent rain
storms. Hunger, lack of clothing,
privations and hardships innumer-
able they have lived through, these
fifteen months. Nevertheless the
threat of losing what little shelter
they have, comes like thunderbolt.
Great Solidarity Week.
THE greatest manifestation of
solidarity that the workers of Amer
lea have ever shown for their strik-
ing brothers will be seen every-
where during the week of July %
to the 29th" Wagenknecht said in
the appeal sent broadcast from the
Pittsburgh office. "The Interna-
tional Labor Defense is cooperating
with us to raise money to buy tents
for the evicted miners, food for their
children and defense for their ar
rested leaders,"
The miners are in the vanguard
of the struggle against the open shop
and slave standards of work and life
for all labor" Martin Abern of the
international Labor Defense added
to the appeal. "They are on the
firing line, and we must rush am
munition to them. Every dollar,
every dime available must be rushed
to the relief headquarters at Gil
Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh. Every
worker must join the drive, to swell
the national relief-defense week
drive, July % to the 20, to mass
proportions!
Join the Caravan.
"Join the caravan to Pittsburgh,
Saturday, July Ia, and see for your
self how the courageous strikers and
their families are living!" the Off
cial communication concluded.
Arrangements for joining the auto
mobile campaign can be made
through local national miners relief
committees or International Labor
Defense branches, or directly
through the national headquarters
in Pittsburgh.
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