The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-07-16

wasn't out on strike, unarmed, hungry battling
bare armed for bread.
The constable's voice came down tone For
all he knew Dresser might be a coal company
official, down hre for some mysterious reason
who did you say you are?" The constable
asked
Dresser refused to give the information until
the constable offered his own name Thereupon
this burly lieutenant of the Pittsburgh Term
ina1 Company ventured that maybe" Phillips
was in Allegheny County Prison. cat least that
was where he was taken"
The novelist by this time had gotten a faint
taste of the treatment accorded the miners by
law"
The most illuminating eye-full of the war
area the novelist caught, when he inter-
viewed the score or more of miners and their
wives as to their living conditions.
He discovered such facts as the following: that
for months many of these had been living on
bread, dandelion leaves and water. He learned,
for instance, from Frank Luciano, of the Creigh-
ton Mine at Tarentun, that "Some pay day
get $14, some $24. Pay day come every two
weeks. I have children I pay s25 month
rent for my four-room house. Eats cost too
much. I can't pay rent. I owe 5000 on the
grocery bill Some time I eat one time day.
morning or evening. Some time I eat some kind
of grass, what you call Italian grass. You cook
it good, take little flour, that is all"
He learned from Jack Rogers, of Midway, Pa,
that he had averaged Gust the groceries" for
the past two years "Clyde Brow. of the Cres-
cent Mine told him, Fellows co-1e in with
potato ipee1s in their buckets. Leave the pot
atoes for their children to eat. I went to work
~,
my bucket" He learned that many other miners
carry no food into the pits-on1y water in their
| dinner pals.
Dresser learned that to date $50 miners their
women and even children had been arrested
| That bail for them has exceeded one million,
dollars. That two miners had been killed. That
nineteen are dying or seriously wounded That
more than 1000 we're gassed, dubbed and rid
den down by the cavalry of the State Police
He discovered that the casualties on the other
| side-the coal operators side-consisted of moth
! ing more to date than curtaiment of produc-
ton. Not one serious personal injury was sus-
tanned by any mercenary in the armies of the
mine owners-the strikers totally unarned
except for their rock-hard fighting qualities
He learned that the State police-the so-called
courteous, impartial" horsenen of Governor
| Pinchot-have ridden down strikers; that the
| imprints of the iron hoofs of the Cossacks
horses are on the bodies of many miner OF
his woman. He learned that Judge H. H. Row
and OF Pittsburgh, had handed down an injunc-
ton against pcketing to the Butler Consolid-
ated Coal Company-which was pretext for
the deputies to fire on the picket at Wildwood
and kill one wound 10, and for the arrests of
SO miners Immediately after--1rd.
| He discovered that the coal operators are YER
liable feudal lords inside of the capitalist state
| That these feudal barons have their own do
| mains-upon which to trespass may mean death;
have their own armies, the special deputies, the
state police; have their own currency, scrip and
coins; their own commisaries, where they charge
the miners from so per cent to 100 per cent
more on each article their own schools and
churches and jails. These feudal barons rule
as arrogantly as any noble of the Middle Ages,