The daily worker., 1931-11-21
By HARRY CANNES

THE Kentucky Health Department distributes
TO restaurants throughout the state an attrac-
tive poster on diet and Health" l saw one OF
them in Ptneville, KY. restaurant, and it in
formed the readers especially those who didn't
need the information because they were planked
down in front Of substantial meaD that to
maintain health they should eat plenty of green
vegetables, fresh meat or chicken drink plenty
OF milk, eat oranges or grape fruit, take suffi-
cient rest and eat slowly. Milk and fresh vege-
tables, fresh meat, chicken and oranges! When
miners child in Harlan stops feeding at it's
undernourished mothers breast it seldom if ever
sees milk again. Only to the Southern coal op-
orators government could it occur to paste up
fancy posters with tantalizing pictures of green
vegetables and fresh red meat among miners who
count the beans they eat and who consider the
fight for a few more ounces of greasy fat-back
and corn bread for their families a victory for
which to risk their lives.
To work in the Harlan coal mines simply
means you Starve little more slowly than when
you are out OF work or on strike No miner in
Harlan or Bell County, during the past two
years, has been heard to say that either he or
his family had enough to eat.
The Kentucky coal miners are gaunt bunch
The Southern ruling class and their pen-prosti-
the miners get the more picturesque" are they
considered 1t is only when the miners put up
heroic battle against starvation, class fight
against hunger that they suddenly lose their
designation as picturesque" Americans Ridicu-
lous as 1t may sound the Southern coal op-
orators label these old Kentuckians Virginians
and Tennesseans who consider a resident of a
Western Kentucky county distant ferriner,"
as Roosian reds New York snake doctors" or
as foreign bolsheviks" Wage-cut and worsen
ing conditions are making the term red" popular
among the miners
1t is seldom that a Kentucky miner sees money
His wages are SO low, the amount that the COM
pany cuts out of his wages SO high that often
after days OF work the miners wives are refused
company scrip and the miners must 90 to work
without any food in their buckets While rep
resentatives of the coal operators listened in
never once denying the facts, nor publishing
counter statements in their press the Harlan
and Bell County miners risked death to come
before the Dresser Committee and relate their
miserable lot The following few instances,
taken from the testimony of miners, can be
duplicated by the thousands
CALEB POWERS, AZ years old. miner for Is
years has wife and six children and is native
OF Kentucky He said:
lney kept cuttlng wages until you couldn't
make scarcely anything at all If man worked
he done well to make $40 or $50 month. was
working for the Birdie Coal Co. at Wallens Greek.
Some months ago made as low as $50 mor,h
out OF that paid sl2 or SIS rent month They
cut you for hospital s5 month, for accident
and for insurance and for burial You hardly
ever draw any money. You get scrip and part
OF the time they have you in debt. can never
ct e'--'''N F"'ed ~ II bry cfo-''77 we heg
4or' our clothes. The prices in tie company