In the Pittsburgh Area

Take a pencil. Take a U. S. map. Draw a line from Canton, Ohio, to Williamsport, Pa., then to the middle of the southern Tennessee border, then back to Canton. Within that wedge lies the great eastern bituminous coal field. Mark off the central third of the wedge: the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, the northern spike of West Virginia, a narrow strip that lies beyond the Ohio River in Ohio. If you drive fast, your car will take you across that country in five hours. It is "The Pittsburgh Area." the richest bituminous deposit in the world, whence comes one-fifth (some 100,000,000 tons a year) of the nation's soft coal. Now take a red crayon and dot the Pittsburgh Area, for in many of its countless, wretched little mining communities during the past month --and particularly last week--blood flowed.

On May 29, miners in the Pittsburgh Area struck. By June 9 they numbered 19,000, including 4,000 West Virginia miners who walked out weeks before. They protested "starvation wages," poor working conditions, poor living conditions, non-union check weighmen at the tipples (scales). Not only were they disgruntled at their employers but with each other, for their strength was divided between two unions--the old United Mine Workers of America (affiliated with the American Federation of Labor) and the New National Miners Union of Communist com- plexion, formed in 1928. Each disavowed the other. The National said the United had betrayed the miners when it was bested in the 1927 strike. The United said the National was an organization of irre- sponsible radicals. Picketing of mines and demonstrations against workers who would not walk out followed, attended by violence and mobbery. Results for June were as follows:

In West Virginia there was picketing but little civil disorder.

In Ohio disturbance was most violent at the M. A. Hanna Company's New Lafferty mine, where an encampment of 400 strikers, women and children, was established. The mine was rushed twice, successfully defended by company guards. Shortly thereafter, a mob of 2,000 stormed the jail. Seven more agitators were apprehended, twelve overcome by tear gas.

In Pennsylvania the situation was even more acute. On June 8, deputies, State police and Coal & Iron police tried to disperse 1,000 picketers at the Westland mine of Pittsburgh Coal Co. with tear gas. At the Ellsworth mine of Bethlehem Steel Corp., miners stormed a barricade with sticks and stones, were repelled by tear gas and machinegun fire.

On June 11 a strike sympathizer was shot at Gallatin by a deputy who said the man threatened him. On June 13 a train carrying 60 strikebreakers from Cleveland to the Kinloch mine (Valley Camp Coal Co.) was stopped near Parnassus by ties placed across the tracks by strikers. The 200 strikers broke all the windows in the train, battled up and down the right of way with State police.

Pinchot Patching. Meanwhile, what was Governor Gifford Pinchot, outspoken foe of "the interests," doing? With a sly dig at his predecessor, John S. Fisher, said he: "I recognize the terrible condi- tions in the mining district. They were bad when I was in office before [1923-27], I arbitrated the anthracite strike and conditions were improved there. After I went out of office, conditions got worse. ... I have no power over the judges and the injunctions they grant [against picketing]. I have no power to prevent evictions [of miners from company-owned houses]. I have no power to stop the deputy sheriffs from breaking up picket lines. ... I am making an honest effort to end this trouble. . . . Operators cannot sell coal at prices people will not pay. But I am doing the best I can to get work back." He also made it known that he would disband the notorious Coal & Iron police on July 1, as promised. Most of these men, however, will be re-employed by the companies as watchmen.

Governor Pinchot's first step toward patching up the quarrel was to call a secret meeting between President Samuel Pursglove of Pittsburgh Terminal Coal Corp. (a $23,000,000 concern operating seven mines at present and second in the Area only to Pittsburgh Coal Co.) and United Mine Workers officials on June 18. United Mine Workers had already agreed with two smaller companies on a wage scale of 58-c- a ton for loading machine-mined coal, 78-c- a ton for "picked" coal. $4.80 for day work. Upshot of Pittsburgh Terminal's conference with the union was that last week the company offered work to union miners for the first time in four years. United representatives said that 1,800 men had gone back to Pittsburgh Terminal. National Miners Union, whose wage demands differ very little from those granted United, repudiated the agreement, said that only 350 men had returned to Pittsburgh Terminal's workings, that they had already coaxed some of these away.

Unpatching, Last week just as some semblance of peace was about to be restored to the district a fresh outburst of tragedies occurred. In defiance of an injunction, a mob of 600 National strikers marched on Butler Consolidated's Wildwood mine. According to police, the march had been planned the day before by William Z. Foster, No. 1 U. S. Communist whose Trade Union Unity League embraces the National. According to strikers, the deputies started firing without warning. Throwing rocks, the miners stood their ground for 15 min. When the smoke cleared away, twelve strikers, including a woman, lay wounded and groaning in the roadway. A man named Peter Zigaric was killed. Forty-one of his comrades were arrested.

At 7 o'clock next morning, a truck carrying men to work at Pricedale (Pittsburgh Coal Co.) rumbled through Arnold. Strikers blocked the road, pleaded with the strikebreakers. Then a little boy threw an egg at one of the convoying deputies. The shooting started. One Mike Filopovich, 40, father of five, ran to the door of his store, which also houses the National relief station. One slug clipped him in the head, another in the chest. He died instantly. Four strikers were wounded. Six constables and two Coal & Iron policemen were arrested for the killing. The Governor ordered an investigation.

Sketchy press reports made little attempt to picture the hatred, misery and ignorance seething in this shabby community, for by now it is an old story, uniform for all the country's bituminous fields.

Significance. President William Green of the American Federation of Labor, solidly conservative, sat quietly in Washington. Most active strike leader on the ground was lean-faced, mild-mannered Communist Foster. Against him, radical as they come, no cry of "foreigner" could be raised by patriotic coal operators because he was born at Taunton, Mass., 50 years ago. Last year he languished six months in a New York City jail for leading a Red demonstration at Union Square against police orders. He emerged just in time to run for Governor of New York on the Communist ticket, poll 18,034 votes. Last month he was ejected from Moundsville, W. Va. for trying to address striking miners. In last week's disturbances he controlled his temper, did not get himself into the headlines by vigorously championing the National Miners Union side.

In 1927 there was the issue of the Jacksonville Agreement, which the operators claimed they could not live up to. But the hardship and wretchedness of this year's "starvation strike" appeared to be not the result of sudden conflict, but the festering of a chronic industrial disease.

Because it was summer, because coal mining is already the most overmanned industry in the land, the strike in the Pittsburgh Area produced no fuel shortage, affected the comfortable habits of 122,000,000 people not at all.

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