Montana labor news., 1936-02-06
An Appeal To U. S. Editors


The greatest industrial catastrophe in the
history of the American people has yet to be
reported in the American press.
1t occurred at Gauley Bridge, West Virginia.
1t took 40 lives.
1t deprived another 1900 workers of their live
lihood.
1t left most Of the 1900 to cough their lives
away in slow death from the most deadly OF all
occupational disease silicosis, a malady Of the
lungs far worse even than tuberculosis.
Why is the press silent?
The press is silent for the same reason that
the victims have been helpless and silent.
The grip OF a great industrial autocracy holds
Gauley Bridge in its mailed fist.
West Virginia newspapers are forced to keep
silent, and dare send nothing out to the great
wire services.
Victims who sued for damages or sought to
sue have been deprived of unemployment relief.
The local doctor who has fought to help them
is being framed on a narcotic charge.
Employers for miles around Gauley Bridge
will give no work to any known survivor of the
1000 men who built the New River power tunnel
between Hawks Nest and Gauley Bridge for the
giant Union Carbide & Carbon Corp.
They will not give them work because they
know most of these men are doomed to die from
silicosis.
On May 9, 1884, the Baltimore American ran
a story on Strange Disease Killing Hundreds
of Miners"
A few glimpses of the tragedy appeared this
year in the weekly New Masses.
The rest was silence until on December 7 the
new national weekly, Peoples Press, took up the
fight for the victims and their families.
Since that time it has interested a group Of
liberal Representatives and Senators in the eau
ley Bridge tragedy.
They have promised to stage a battle for a
Congressional investigation at the coming SEES
sion of Congress.
Peoples Press appeals to the liberal newspap-
ers of America to lend a hand.
1t asks them to investigate for themselves, to
tell their readers of what has occurred, to sup
port the liberal Congressional bloc, led by Con
gresham Marcantonio and Amlie, in their de-
mand for a Federal investigation.
Never in our history have human beings been
so callously and sensationally sacrificed to pro-
fits as in the building Of the Gauley Bridge tun-
mel.
The deaths were totally unnecessary.
The power tunnel at Pigeon River, N. c., twice
as long as the Gauley Bridge tunnel and built un-
der similar conditions for similar purposes, was
constructed without the loss of a single life.
Men died at Gauley Bridge because the build
ers of the tunnel wanted to save a few thousand
dollars on safety appliances and because they
wanted to evade federal law.
Electro Metallurgical Company, subsidiary OF
Union Carbide & Carbon, is even now being sued
by the Federal Power Commission for building
the tunnel II on a n~avigable river for power pur-
poses without obtaining a federal license.
Electro Metallurgical rushed the work through
as secretly as possible because it did not want
to do the job under federal license.
Under federal license there would have been
federal inspection of working conditions, and it
would have been forced to use safety appliances.
Federal law provides for federal license and
it also provides for recapture of such projects