The Daily Worker Newspaper, November 28, 1925, Page 7

ine Cie be veg? onp NG ‘GL “The ide becomes power when it pene- trates the masses.” —Karl Marx. SPECIAL MAGAZINE SUPPLEMENT THE DAILY WORKER. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1925 i 290, —_—______. .. The Zeigler Frame-up -_ - HIRTY one thousand dollars is the amount. turned in to the district executive board. of District No. 12, United Mine Workers of America, by the Zeigler Local’ 992, in one’ year. This same Zeigler: local is having a good part of this money used against : it by, the’ Farrington machine which is actively aiding in the frame-up to - railroad’ 20 of the best union mien in » Southern Illinois to the state penitent- lary, and one of them, perhaps, to the gallows. The astounding frame-up is based on what took place one night at the local union meeting, and what hap- pened there is told in the following story which was related to me by one of the defendants, a lean, leather- necked miner who was born and raised in the Arkansas coal mine re- gion, * *+s8 Miner Tells Story. This Bell and Zoller Mine No. 1 has a pretty big output of coal, being one of the biggest mines in these parts, and they have a very complicated system of weighing. And they run the cars over the scales so swift that one man can hardly keep much track of the weight. It’s been so bad that we've had eight checkweighmen in two years. Well, this time we gave the check weighman an assistant and for con- siderable more than a month he work- ed pretty good and the boys were * satisfied with his work. Then one day the company refuses to let him-into the mine and we called in sub-district Vice-President Cobb to handle the case. That same day the company ran more than one car over the general average on the scales each minute and the checkweighman comes and tells Henry Corbishly, president of Local 992, that he couldn’t weigh the coal right. Miners Léave Pits. Henry told him he was under affi- davit to weigh the coal right and that if he couldn't do it it was up to him to know what he could do. Pretty soon the checkweighman walks out of the scale room and tells Corbishly that he couldn’t weigh the coal and was going home and for Henry to tell the miners, And Henry tells them, and pretty soon all the miners but a few walks out too, no one wanting to stay in the mine without there being a checkweighman, At night the boys got together in the park and Henry spoke to them for more than thirty minutes and told them to go back and let the sub-dis- ~ trict officials settle the dispute which they did. Next morning, in comes Cobb again from West Frankfort and for four days they hear evidence from the boys. The company wanted to have Corbishly, young Farthing, Pete Blazin, who was checkweighman, and Steve Meanovich removed. So finally Cobb and E. L. Berger,—that’s the mine superintendent—bring in a deci- sion giving the company what they want, and this with only four union men out of a hundred testifying for the company, and them four being Aiars as was proved in the other test- imony. Klansmen Rally Forces. The boys were pretty mad about the decision and they refused to go back to work, So Lon Fox, our sub- district president, orders a_ special meeting of Local 992 to elect new offi- cers, which he thought we would. Tuesday evening, we see a few car- loads of Klansmen circling around and driving over to West Frankfort and then coming back with D. B. Cobb, Lon Fox, Darby Babbington and Hezza Hindman, We kind of felt there was something coming because they'd pe rp aoeeetineesinmeshintife “etnies resets trict office all the time. Anyhow, we were quiet. Frank Skibinski opened up the meeting and Lon Fox gets up and tells the boys to elect new officials and go back +o. work..Cobb and Bab- bington says the same thing too, Then Corbishly spoke and that was. pretty good for most of us, him:showing that the ‘sub-district officials always did what the operators wanted. Well, they told us to elect new officials and g0 back to ‘work, but we just sat tight and didn’t. So there was nothing to do for it, and we adjourned the meet- ing. Klansmen Assault Aged Miner. There was’ about seven or eight hundred miners at the meeting and when they had most of them xft the hall and only fifty or sixty .¢ft inside, old man Bert Farthing said some- thing. The old man and the young Farthing used to stick by the klan but turned bitter on it in the last months, and began helping Henry Corbishly, im the belly which it goes thru and lands in Board Member Hindman. Hargis Shoots Sarovich. A few days later Mike dies, suffer- ing terribly all the time. But before he died we asked him who done it and Mike says{ “Alec Hargis done it, look- ing’ me-straight in the eye.’’ Also, the night of the shooting, Rey Martin, the state’s attorney finds Hargis with the -38 and looks at it and says: “Alec, this gun’s been shot off right recent. There's still powder smoke smelling fresh from the barrel. Did you fire the shot?” And Alec says: “I ain’t saying nothing.” . So the coroner's inquest gave a ver- dict that Big Mike had come to his death by a bullet fired by Alec Hargis and they held Alec for “$10,000 bail. And Lon Fox puts jt up for him. Well, this looked bad for the reactionaries, and so they went to work pretty hard to get out of the hole they were in. Cobb and Lon Fox swears out war- rants for twenty-six of the boys char- SECOND SECTION This magazine supple ment will appear every Saturday in The Daily Worker. By Max Shachtman boys in Benton with the coal oper- ators and the kluxers and Lon Fox and Farrington planning to do every- thing to send them up the road, And every man in six counties knows why, too, because they’ve always been plan- ning to get rid of our boys because they was always strict and honest, by the men and wouldn’t let the company run the cars fast.over the scales, and because Local 992 was always pro- gressive and fighting Mr. Lon Fox and the Farrington machine; up, in Springfield. And the’re using,the) as- sessments and suchlike that"Local|§92 sent in to them to put-our owh mem- bers into the pem But they ain’t going to. Terrorize Rank and File. This is the story in brief. There have been stories before of a reaction- ary Officialdom terrorizing a progres- sive rank and file. But this case is practically unique. The reactionary Farrington-Fox-Cobb machine has ‘combined with the ku klux klan, the “LAW AND ORDER” IN GREAT BRITAIN | Well, no one knows what the old man said, but Asa Wilson and his brother, who support the klan, begin -hitting him, and he being well nigh seventy pretty soon he’s on the floor bleed- ing. Oscar Farthing’s half out of the hall when he sees his old man being beat up and he runs in to help -him, dragging off the Wilson brothers, Cobb Pulls Blackjack. Just then Cobb pulls a blackjack from out of his hip pocket and was attempting to use it when someone gets it on him and stops him, The boys got mad, Cobb trying to use a blackjack and none of the boys arm- ed, or showing it, and so the fight be- gun. Some of the boys got pretty well bruised and Cobb got a couple of chairs bust on him which wasn’t serious but laid him up in the hospital for a while and no one feeling sorry about it or sending him flowers. Anyhow, when the fight was about over, Alec Hargis come in. He ain’t got much standing in the union be- cause he was part responsible for Mike Rosko getting away with $11,000 union funds, and Hargis himself being found guilty of stealing $67 from the benevolent sdéciety of the union. Well, Hargis had a .38 automatic in his hand and just when big Mike Saro- been scheming around in the sub-<dis-vich is going out, Hargis shoots him ging them with assault with intent to murder and conspiracy for same, when Cobb’s the man who tried to sap up on the men with a blackjack. And then they get to work pretty hard and in a month or so we find that the grand jury won't indict Hargis for the murder of Big Mike and he’s let off scot free, : Frame-Up Corbishley, Well, Mike was aeaad and someone shot him and they just couldn't turn Hargis loose without saying someone else did it. So they indicts Frank Corbishly for having shot Mike dead and wounded Hezza Hindman, And anyone that knows anything about the shooting knows Frenk wasn’t even in the hall when the shooting took place. But old man George W. Payne from Alabama, who we know is a klans- man, testified that he saw a bulging under Frank’s shirt which he said he thought looked like the print of a gun and Bill Hogan also gave some kind of testimony. So they picks on Frank as the killer when everyone knows Frank was a good friend of Mike’s and never had nothing against him and wasn’t even in the hall when it took place. But someone had to be the goat so’s they could turn Alec Hargis loose. Well, now they're going to try the From the London Daily Herald. British “Democracy” Winks at the Crimes of the Fascisti. coal operators, and the republican party machine to bring progressive union members into capitalist céurts on a frame-up of the bureucrats’ own construction, Such a flagrant act of treason to the miners has seldom been seen in any labor organization in this country. Defend Miners! The twenty defendants may be rail- roaded. Determined and unscrupulous working class enemies have succeeded in framing-up on labor when the “evy)- dence” was even more flimsy than it in this case. Men can still be found anywhere who will swear to anything and against anyone. Juries can still be handpicked and sewed up. The Franklin county miners are appealing to labor everywhere to assist them in this struggle against reaction and to remove from the shield of the union the blight of a united front against the membership of the officialdom and the instruments of capitalist injust- ice. Victor Cernich can be reached with money and mail at Christopher, linois.g He is the treasurer of the Franklin © nty Defense Committee. Or else you can send it to the Inter- national Labor Defense, at 23 §S, Lin- coln St., in Chicago, which is actively cooperating in the defense. a a A