Happy Harlan

Soon after Senator La Follette's Civil Liberties Committee started its investigation of death and terror in Harlan County, Ky., Irene Juno, "the flying reporter," made a flying trip to that coal mining district, wrote a gushing account of what she saw for the National Voting Democrat under the title "The Happy Side of Harlan."

Apparently overlooked by happy Miss Juno was a side of Harlan revealed last week in a complaint filed by John L. Lewis' United Mine Workers against Clover Fork Coal Co. in Kitts, Ky.

An old story to the National Labor Relations Board was the wording of one section of the complaint--alleged employment of "armed guards, notorious criminals, gun-thugs commissioned as deputy sheriffs and other irresponsible ruffians for the express purpose of threatening, intimidating and coercing its employes." But a new wrinkle in unfair labor practice was contained in the complaint that the company was luring good unionists away from union meetings with a kind of entertainment the union could not offer. The coal company, charged the United Miners, "did procure lewd and immoral women to perform free, indecent exhibitions known as strip-&-tease dances, and to otherwise engage in gratuitous, licentious conduct at times when union meetings were scheduled for the purpose of enticing its employes from attending such meetings."

"Strip-tease!" exploded Clover Fork's Secretary-Treasurer A. F. Whitfield. "We deny that. The company has been observing the Wagner Labor Relations Act to the letter."

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