The Waterbury Democrat., 1946-11-22
by DreSO Pearson

IA waa because these miners knew Lewis well that they fought him 90 bitterly,
 The battle lasted the best part of decade t began in 1929 when john Walker was president of the Illinois Federation of Labor and Harry Fshwick wAa nreadent of District 2of the United Mine Work era illinois miners had been getting restless under tewss high.handed methods, % m retaliation he removed all District i2 officials without even the pretense of a trial Appointing his own stooges he sent them to take oyer Springfield headquarters un- der an armed guard.
 Despite this, the duly elected District officials refused to step down. bitter struggle followed, with the courts finally ruling that Lewis had no right to interfere in the affairs of District i2
 Finally, in 1889, Lewis negotiated a new contract with the illinois coal operators fn those days, how- ever miners dld not accept LewiBs dctation without question They voted their contracts And in this case, they voted Lewis and his new contract down.
 Lewis then ordered another ballot and this time
 set of ballots stored all nitlt at tne Eidgey Farm CTS State Bank were taken out by two Lewis hench- men and destroyed The henchmen albied that they had been robbed.
 Though all evidence pointed e Che fact that this second vote also was against the new contract Lewis later that day, declared an emergency and signed the contract behalf of the miners He then ordered the men back to work.
 This was on Aug. iO ie32 From that date until ig37, bloody warfare continued between Lewis and the miners who opposed him, the latter eventually 
 prolonged battle that 2i of the anti-Lews miners were killed.
 The Progressive Miners retaliated as best they could but Lewis had the advantage He had just con- tributed half million dollars to the reelection of Roosevelt in 1896. So in 1887, an FBT agent. George Stevens. came to Illinois and began collecting evi- dence against Lewiss miner rivals for conspiracy interfere with interstate commerce and the D. g. malls
 The FB1 agent was followed by a special prose- eutor from the Justice Department Wely K Hop- kins, who finally succeeded in sending 4i of the Progressive Miners to jail This ended the battle With the Justice Department behind him, Lewis had won an important victory However there are three aftermaths to the victory.
 1. welly Hopkins, the Justice Department law yer who sent Lewss enemies to jail. later was given a juicy job as counsel to the United Mine Workers Today he is advising Lewis his injunction battle with Hopkins former pals in the Justice Department
 g. In the 1887 trial 1t came out that, in 1882 Lewis apparently had been in cahoots with the Ilh- nos coal operators; because they knew at 7:30 A. NJ on August 10 that the miners going back to work that same day. even though the theft of ballots from the Ridgely Farmers State Bank did not take place until 9:05 of that morning. It that same day. after the ballot theft that Lewis declared emergency and signed the contract with the oper- ators.
 3. The final aftermath is that the Justice De. pertinent, which once sent 4l miners to jail at John L. Lewiss instigaton. now finds itself threatening jail for the big miner boss 1t once befrended