Evening star., 1938-04-17
.U.S.PROSECUTORS S.
TO co TO HARLAN
"a Mine Executives, % Law
Officers and ~ Firms
Face Violence Trial.

| Three special assistants to Attorney
General Cummings will leave tomor-
row for Harlan County, KY. where
the Federal Government is preparing
to try "a mine executives, % law
enforcement officers and % corpora
tions on charges of conspiring to in
| timidate union organizers and miners.
The trial is scheduled to begin May
is before Judge H. Church Ford and
jury in Federal District Court at
London. KY. The Federal Bureau of
Investigation has collected mass
of evidence. said to be Of sensational
nature, regarding acts of violence in
the county allegedly plotted by soft
coal operators and the Harlan County
sherif1's Office.
Chief counsel for the Government
will be Brien Mcmahon, Assistant At
torney General in charge of the Grim
inal Division of the Department of
Justice. He will leave for Kentucky
about May l. Attorneys leaving to-
morrow are Welly K Hopkins. Henry
Schweinhaut and Walter E. CAL
lagher-all special assistants to the
Attorney General.
Cummings Ordered Probe.
Attorney General Cummings in
structed J. Edgar Hoover, director of
the F. B. l., to investigate conditions
in Harlan County after witnesses
summoned by the Senate Civil Liber-
ties Committee had unfolded tales
of terrorism in connection with a
drive by the United Mine Workers of
America to organize the soft coal
industry.
G-men spent several months in
the county. and their findings resulted
in the indictment last September of
the coal companies and their execu-
tives and also of Sheriff Theodore
R. Middleton and 81 of his deputies.
They are charged with violating an
obscure and seldom-invoked provision
of the criminal code enacted soon
after the close Of the Civil War, in
addition to the new Wagner Labor
Relations Act. The old law prohibits
interference with the free exercise
or enjoyment of any right or privilege
secured to him "a citizen) by the
Constitution or laws of the United
States" In this instance the right
OF labor to organize was invaded, the
Government contends.
Death Told.
In the hearings before the La Fol-
lette Committee last spring numerous
acts Of violence, designed to intimi-
date miners and organizers, were de-
scribed. The wife of an organizer
for the United Mine Workers told
Of a barrage Of shots fired into her
home in an apparent effort to kill
her husband, but causing the death
of son. An organizer testified that
deputy sheriffs fired at q car bearing
union representatives out of the
county, wounding one of the passen-
gers. He also gave an account of
tear gas bombing Of union headquar-
ters in a hotel, and dynamiting Of
automobiles owned by the organizers.
Various other shootings and assaults
were related.
Sheriff Middleton, since relieved of
his Office, is charged with using the
power of his Office to appoint the
other said law officer defendants as
deputy sheriffs, thereby giving
them greater authority and power
to threaten, beat and kill" He is
charged also with protecting his CO.
defendants from legal punishment.
The sheriff, the coal operators and
the corporations are under $1,000
bond and the deputies under t2,500
bond eAeh.