The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1932-04-14
BY MYRA PAGE

Foreign Correspondent of the Daily Worker
Brother miners across the ocean we extend
you our hand. Take courage! What you must
now struggle sgainSt, we also had to go
through, in the past You, like us, will win
freedom, and for your children a life far diff
ferent from the one you've had TO endure.
Let us come closer together, uniting our
strength against the common enemy"
These words come straight from Soviet COAL
diggers, their wives and children, TO the
$4,000 miners battling for bread and the right
of organization in Kentucky and Tennessee.
II is their message to the seventy-five
thousand miners on strike last year in Penn
syIvania, Ohio and West Virginia, and to all
coaI-diggers in Che industry who sometime in
the near future will join their forces in a
general move against the coal barOns in a
gigantic Strike against Starvation"
WHAT WE HAVE DONE YOU CAN Do!"
"TeI them our hearts are with them" Soviet
miners said to us. We had come to the mining
town of Gorlovka, in the coal region Of Don
Bias The men, their eyes trimmed with fine
coal dust, which sticks in spite Of daily scrub
bing under hot showers pressed around our
delegation Of workers from six foreign coun-
tries. Their voices grew thick with emotion;
their sturdy wives, blinking rapidly, Rugged
their children How different these tots, with
their plump bodies, warm clothes and shining
faces, from those thin little bodies had seen
a few months earlier in Pennsylvania, searching
for coal on the slate dumps so that their FAM
lilies could have bit of fuel for the stove.
SLOW well we know what they're suffering"
they continued. For many long years for us it
was the same. See here are bullet wounds
$xoyVn fNqySs
masters And many man and woman from
Gorlovka never came back from the front at
all. Well that's over now. For fourteen years
the workers have been the rulers of this coun-
try. You've seen for yourself what changes it
has made. Tell the American miners that
we are humans like they are We also go down
into the bowels of the earth, to dig and sweat,
but we dig gladly-for the coal we mine is for our
-Soviet-factories and engines.
"Teu your American miners to fight on, for
ahead lies freedom. What we have DONE they,
also, can do"
LABOR SOLIDARITY THAT SPANS OCEAN
AND CONTINENTS.
Gorlovka and Don Bas are many thousands
Of miles from Kentucky. Probably many miners
families in the States know little about the
Soviet Union. But the Soviet miners know
lot about you They know your conditions your
struggles In their papers, movies and study
circles they learn about their brothers in other
countries They know how the labor takers are be-
traying you They rejoice to see you organizing
YOUR own National Miners Union, led by men
whom you can trust. They hurrahed at the
news Of five hundred miners recently joining
the Communist Party. They feel your fight is
their fight
When they read how you're starving they
say, rs some did to me, IF only we could do
more 10 help them! Here, food is plentiful
~ we could get il to them. OF course, there
are boats. But we know, from experience, the
damn capitalists who run the United States
government wouldn't let us help you. They'd
boiler convict labor and Soviet dumping.
ANY lie serves them to keep their workers
starving and to prevent American workers
from learning the truth about u.s."
FROM NOVELS TO MODERN APARTMENTS.
AS we went through the old part Of Gorvolka,
where the miners had been forced to live, under
the car, thought: How like the mining camps
in American Small houses crouching close to
the ground a few rambling shacks or barracks.
Behind the smoking tipple besmirching the air.
No water in the houses, toilets, light or heat
except from the stove. Dirt streets, no trees or
grass. Once there had been the company store
and saloon where many miners, deadened from
eleven hours labor. would waste their small
earnings in an attempt to "get away from It all"
. q asy sAuailies are asu Living in the best Of