Gregor to a railway bridge and hanged him. Later they flogged a capitalist who furnished bail for a striker and ran the other strikers out of town. The mob was exculpated by the investigating committee, although it was found that Gregor had not been guilty of burning bridges as accused. They had been set on fire by live coals from the locomotive fire boxes. The Citizens' Court of Harrison congratulated itself on accomplishing more in the suppression of union labor in two days than the State authorities had achieved in two years.

See "The Harrison Riot or the Reign of the Mob," by Rev. J. K. Faris and files of the American Civil Liberties Union. Railroad Shopmen's Strike

On July 1, 1922, about 400,000 shopmen quit work in the repair shops of many railroads in protest against the decision of the U. S. Railroad Labor Board to reduce wages by $60,000,000, following previous cuts of $525,000,000. Other grievances were wiping out time and a half for overtime and farming out shop work to outside firms not affected by the award of the Labor Board in 1920 which increased wages. On July 11, President Harding issued a proclamation urging a settlement. He ignored the issue of a living wage, denied by the Board as "mellifluous phraseology," and implied that the men should work for the reduced wages offered. The workers declined to obey the Board, as the railroads, according to Samuel Gompers, had done with impunity 104 times. The railway executives declined to meet the workers to discuss the strike.

In 1924, the U. S. Supreme Court upheld the conviction of eight leaders of the strikers for conspiracy to interfere with the mails when they abandoned the trains at Needles, California, in 1922.

By the end of 1922 the cost of the strike to the railroads was estimated as $150,000,000 and to the strikers as $177,535,524. The strike was not formally terminated until February, 1925, the railroads claiming a victory because they were able to operate. The men claim they stopped the unjustified drive for reduced wages, and the contracting outside the railroad shops, and forced recognition of the value of labor unions.

Herrin Massacre

The so-called "Herrin Massacres" have been used as an argument against unionism by all the open-shop forces in this

country. In briefs submitted to the United States Coal Commission the operators featured Herrin as an outstanding example of the use of violence by the United Mine Workers of America. While the Illinois Mine Workers' Union (District 12, U. M. W. of A.) issued a pamphlet called "The Other Side of Herrin" in an attempt to refute some of the fantastic accounts of the rioting written in the New York offices of press-agents for the operators, this pamphlet had a necessarily limited circulation and the majority of people still believe that the riots at the Lester strip-mine four miles from the mining town of Herrin were a sudden and unprovoked flaming up of the mob spirit.

Uncontroverted evidence brought forth at the two trials that followed the rioting showed the contrary to be the case. This evidence told the story of a long series of provocations on the part of hired gunmen, brought to the Lester mine to guard non-union workers, provocations that had their climax in the killing of striking union miners. For ten days prior to the riots a powder train had been laid that finally and inevitably resulted in an explosion.

W. J. Lester, a Cleveland soft-coal operator was owner of a strip mine that lay half-way between the towns of Herrin and Marion, the county seat of Williamson. When it was evident, early in 1922, that there would be a national strike of the coal-diggers, Lester approached several other operators with the proposition that he continue to work his mine, non-union. Those familiar with conditions in southern Illinois warned him against any such adventure. They pointed out that there was one hundred per cent union organization in the State, that the Illinois Mine Workers with a membership of ninety thousand was the strongest unit of organized labor in the country and that the union card was the dearest possession of the rank and file of the diggers, because it symbolized better working conditions, an opportunity for a more abundant life. One of Lester's closest business associates bluntly told him that he was a "fool" to think of working his strip with non-union men and that he would have to go it alone.

Lester, however, had invested heavily in mine machinery. He owed money on the huge shovels, one of them used in digging the Panama Canal, which stripped the overlay from the coal, and he saw the chance of enormous profit in selling coal in Chicago during the strike. He entered into negotiations with

the Thiel Detective Agency of Chicago and other agencies to furnish him men and ammunition to guard his non-union men recruited from the flop-houses of Chicago. When the cessation of work was declared, in April 1922, Lester obtained permission from the head of the Herrin local to continue to work his steam-shovels to strip the dirt from the coal. It was distinctly understood by all parties to this agreement that the shovels were to be worked by union men and that under no circumstances could coal be shipped out of the mine.

On June 15th, under the leadership of Lester's one-legged Superintendent McDowell, who openly boasted that he was a trained "union-buster" and that he had helped put Alex Howat, the miners' idol, in jail in Kansas, a commissary car and some forty armed guards carrying high power rifles and revolvers arrived at the mine, together with seventy-five non-union men who began to load coal into the cars.

Representatives of the miners' union made immediate protest. They were shown machine-guns, hand-grenades and a ton of ammunition stored in the company's offices and told that Lester intended to run his mine "if he had to run it with blood." The guards went out on the public roads and warned all passersby to keep away from the mine. They stopped machines, flourished their weapons in the faces of the occupants, beat up three young men, none of them miners, who were driving by the mine at night, insulted the wives and daughters of farmers in the neighborhood, cut through and shut off a road that had been used by the public for generations and generally aroused the wrath of the quick-tempered community. On June 21st, Jordan Henderson, an unarmed miner standing at a farmer's house a half-mile from the mine was shot through the heart by a bullet fired from over the mine embankment by Superintendent McDowell, according to a statement issued from the hospital by one of the gunmen wounded in the ensuing rioting. This sent a crowd of some two thousand armed men out to attack the mine.

The guards with their machine guns and rifles stood off the attackers armed with revolvers and shot-guns for one night. The following morning, however, McDowell and his men surrendered. They were marched along the road to Herrin apparently with the idea of putting them on a train bound for Chicago. On the way, however, a crowd came up from Herrin,

took the guards away from their original captors and butchered twenty-three of them in shockingly cruel manner. Eleven miners were tried of the two hundred and more indicted for participation in the rioting. There were two trials lasting six months and the verdict was the same in both "not guilty." States Attorney Duty nolled the other indictments. The two juries were composed for the most part of farmers and were pronounced satisfactory by both sides. The Chicago Chamber of Commerce contributed $75,000 to the cause of prosecuting the miners who were defended by Angus W. Kerr, chief counsel for the Illinois Mine Workers Union. President Frank Farrington of the mine workers stated that the action of the Chamber of Commerce had made it plain that the prosecution of the miners was being financed and inspired by anti-union interests and that his union would accept the challenge by assessing its membership for the heavy expenses of the trials. Attorney Otis Glenn, for the prosecution, made a statement after the first trial that the Herrin mob was not led by a union man and that the union was not on trial. All of the defendants were union members however. Neither Lester nor any of his gunmen were indicted.

The disorders that have occurred in Herrin since the trials which ended in April, 1923, have no connection with the Lester mine riots. They have arisen from the attempts of the Ku Klux Klan to oust the elected labor officials in Williamson.

John E. Merrick

MCALISTER COLEMAN

On May 19, 1923, Merrick was indicted for planting a bomb on the premises of the Knipe Bros. shoe factory at Haverhill, Mass., on January 4, 1923. The bomb was found to be nonexplosive. A reward of $2,000 was offered by the owners of the factory. The police raided Merrick's shop without warrant and "found" several pieces of wire similar to those in the bomb. Those active in his defense claim that the bomb was charged against him because he was a union sympathizer. His defense is being conducted by the Workers' Defense Conference, 14 Water St., Haverhill, Mass.

Martin Tabert

On December 15, 1921, Martin Tabert, 22 years old, of North Dakota was arrested in Leon County, Florida, for stealing a ride on a train. He was fined $25, but, being unable to

pay, was sent to jail for 90 days. He telegraphed for money and $75 was sent by his parents in care of the sheriff who did not permit Tabert to receive it. Instead, the young man was leased for a year with other prisoners to the Putnam Lumber Company in whose camp he died as a result of a whipping administered by the "Whipping boss." The publication of a pamphlet containing these facts resulted in investigations and a change in the custom of leasing prisoners in Florida.

Injunctions in Labor Disputes

Organized labor feels much aggrieved over the use of injunctions issued by the courts in hundreds if not thousands of labor disputes, practically always in favor of the employers, even though no damage to property has been threatened during the strike in question.

The Pennsylvania Railroad applied for an injunction to restrain the Railroad Labor Board from publishing the violation by the Pennsylvania of an order of the Board, and actually won in the district court, but the U. S. Supreme Court permitted publication, censuring the Pennsylvania as "refusing to comply with the decisions of the Labor Board and thus defeating the purpose of Congress."

One of the fundamental objects of the use of injunctions is to make punishment more sure by avoiding trial by jury, which has always been a principle of American criminal law. In no other country is the injunction used to so great an extert in labor disputes as in the United States.

In the following cases, which are representative of many others in the state and lower federal courts, the United States Supreme Court upheld injunctions (i. e., court orders) granted against labor unions ordering the officers or members not to do the specified things enjoined. If the person enjoined is charged with disobeying the injunction, the court which issued the injunction hears the case, almost always without a jury, and if satisfied of his disobedience, holds the offender in contempt of court and imposes a jail sentence. Injunctions are supposedly granted only where the acts enjoined would result in "irreparable damage" to the party seeking injunction, that is, where money damages would not compensate for the injury.

The late Chief Justice Walter Clark of North Carolina stated that injunctions caused increasing social unrest because