By John Dorsey
IT IS two years now since the State Legislature passed Governor Allen’s law to stop strikes—the Industrial Court Law—but we are still having strikes in Kansas. The miners of District 14 have kicked this anti-strike law around so much that nobody in this part of the country pays any more attention to it. I noticed that the packinghouse workers went out on strike when they got ready, and the Industrial Court didn’t even try to stop them. No, the law didn’t stop strikes in Kansas, and the whole idea of chaining men to their jobs by law has been pretty thoroughly discredited.
We paid a big price for this result. District 14 has been living on short rations for a long time; Howat and Dorchy had to lay in jail for awhile, and so did many of our best rank and file fighters. Our union is fighting for life right now. But we have one consolation: The Industrial Court Law is as dead as a doornail. The workers of America owe that to us.
I said the Industrial Court is dead, but maybe I am speaking too quickly. There is a chance that it will come back to life again, after all. It was dead, sure enough, and everybody knew it. But John L. Lewis, the International President of our organization, sent his men down here with the pulmotor, and they are trying their best to pump the breath of life back into it. The bosses tried by all means to establish the anti-strike law in Kansas. The Governor, the legislature, the press, the militia, injunctions, jails, special “vagrancy” ordinances against strikes—all these instruments and some others were brought into play to put over the anti-strike law, and the net result was total failure as far as we miners were concerned. They couldn’t make it stick. We went on strike just the same as ever, and the workers in other organized trades did the same. But now the International President of our Union is on the job using all the power of his office to break up our district organization and make us submit. If the Industrial Court Law is finally put over, John L. Lewis will be the man who did the job.
When Howat and Dorchy went to jail last September the Kansas miners again came out on a general strike in protest. We stayed out for over three months to prove to the world that the Industrial Court Law could cause strikes, but couldn’t stop them. It was a bitter struggle. The coal operators, the Governor, the courts, the state troops, the county officials and the “Provisional Government” of our union, set up by President Lewis, all worked hand in hand to drive us back to work; but their combined forces only succeeded in getting a few hundred to break ranks. The District as a whole stood solid until the strike was called off on January 12 by Howat on the ground that we had thoroughly discredited the Industrial Court Law, and that further demonstration was not needed.
The general strike made the Court look like a joke. Our enemies didn’t think we would have the nerve to do it again, after all we had gone through, but we did it. The members of the Industrial Court got cold feet, and went back to Topeka. The business men and the coal operators began to holler for a compromise. They had Howat and Dorchy in jail but they couldn’t get the miners back to work.
Howat said: “We never denied that they could pass a law to put men in jail; but we do deny that they can stop strikes by law. They have got us in jail, but they have also got the strike. You can’t stop strikes by law in Kansas because the Kansas miners will not obey such a law.”
It was at this point that John L. Lewis took a hand in the game. While Howat and Dorchy were in jail, they were removed from office and expelled from the United Mine Workers of America for life. Our District Executive Board was deposed. The charter of our District organization was revoked, and a “Provisional Government” appointed to take charge. They ordered the miners to go back to work. For three months they tried every means to break the strike. They worked hand in glove with all the other tools of the coal operators. Thomas Harvey, the sheriff’s brother, was appointed secretary of the district organization. Van Bittner, the special representative of the International, chummed around with the state and county officials.
A little conversation that I chanced to hear shows this well:
I was in the District Courtroom one day during the strike, to attend a damage suit. Right after adjournment, the Judge inquired for the Sheriff. The stenographer spoke up: “Did you try Van Bittner’s? I usually get him there if he isn’t in his office.”
They got a few hundred men to desert us. Several mines started up, and Van Bittner began to give out optimistic interviews in the capitalist papers. He made arrogant claims about “breaking the strike,” using about the same manner and language that the big packing companies were using at the same time about the strike of the packinghouse workers. The members of the Industrial Court plucked up courage to come back to Pittsburg to look the situation over. Governor Allen, who had been singing mighty low about his law to stop strikes, again began to issue statements denouncing Howat and the “foreigners” who supported him. So far it had been a man’s fight; at this point the women took a hand.
It was done by the women themselves, on their own motion. No men were allowed to take part, so I can only tell about it as it was told to me by some of those who took part in the action. They organized into an “army” about four o’clock on the morning of December 13. Led by a woman with a baby in her arms, they marched to the working mines. From one shaft to another they went, routing out the scabs and chasing them away like so many outcast dogs. The papers made it out to be a sort of peaceful demonstration, but from what they told me there was nothing “lady-like” about the way they handled those they went after.
They took the lunch buckets from the scabs, and threw the contents at them. An Austrian woman with a Chaplin-like sense of humor took a fiendish delight in searching the buckets for custard pie. Woe to the man in whose bucket she found it. They tore one fellow’s trousers off and sent him flying home across the cold prairie in his shirt, “like a rabbit,” they told me. They made the scabs swear allegiance to the strike while they poured cold coffee from their own lunch buckets over their heads.
“It was no ‘tea-party,’” I suggested to the group of Italian women who were telling me about it with twinkling eyes and enthusiastic gestures. “No! No!” they laughed, “coffee-party.”
But the strike has been called off now, and Alex Howat is down at the Indianapolis Convention to appeal to the delegates from all over the country to uphold the Kansas Miners and keep them in the organization. For a time there was a little irresponsible talk about an “independent union,” but that was quickly sat on. The Kansas Miners are a part of the United Mine Workers of America, and they are going to remain there. They are the last ones in the country to split the ranks.
They are now preparing for the expected national strike, and you can bet that if it comes off, and all other districts hold as solid as District 14 will, the strike will be won. Kansas has had more than her share of the fighting, but we can go another one if we have to.
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