Bloody Williamson by Paul M. Angle Read Free Book Online Page B

district for the defense of any union miner who might be indicted for participation in the Herrin riots. “We have a proper appreciationof the magnitude of the forces that have combined to convict our members,” he said, “and we shall leave nothing undone that will enable us to combat these forces.” What that meant became clear when the union miners of the state met in convention at Peoria early in September. There, in executive session, they voted a one-per-cent assessment on the earnings of all their members after September 1, 1922, and directed that the money be used for the defense of those whose indictments were expected.
    Equally significant was the opportunity the action of the Illinois Chamber gave to the labor press.
    The smoke of gunpowder at the powerhouse woods had hardly cleared before the Associated Employers of Indianapolis, an organization dedicated to the open shop, addressed a letter to its clientele calling upon “red-blooded citizenship” to urge Governor Small “to afford the fullest possible protection to life and property in the legitimate mining of coal, notwithstanding the miners’ union.” When President Harding, on the Fourth of July, proclaimed that “a free American has the right to labor without any other’s leave,” no labor editor, with public opinion as inflamed as it was, had the temerity to contradict him. When associations of employers—and particularly the National Coal Association—began to blanket the country with pamphlets, labor’s friends saw, or professed that they saw, an anti-union conspiracy. But not until the Illinois Chamber of Commerce made its financial appeal did they have what could be presented as convincing evidence.
    They were quick to use it. Announcing that henceforth he would devote his entire time to defending any miners who might be indicted, A. C. Lewis, a lawyer of Harrisburg, Illinois, charged the “organized wealth of the nation” with “poisoning the minds of the public” and with trying to create “a public sentiment which will prevent these men from receiving a fair trial.… It is apparent,” he continued, “they have raised and are spending fabulous sums of money, not for the purpose of bringingthe guilty to justice, but with the intention of seeking victims in the hope that … they can in some measure discredit organized labor.”
    Behind the prosecution [asserted the
Illinois Miner
, official organ of the Illinois district], crowding it, whispering to it, pointing a dark finger now at one point of labor’s defense front and now at another point, is the allied employing class.… They advocate more things than conviction. They talk solemnly of the “inalienable right of every man to work, wherever he will, at whatever wage he will.”
    Such pronouncements as these led Philip Kinsley, level-headed representative of the
Chicago Tribune
, to write from Marion on September 1: “The murder charge will be lost sight of in the trials of the rioters and the cause of the open shop versus labor will be the central issue.”
    Appearances to the contrary, Illinois officials had not turned their backs on the Herrin killings. Two days after the massacre, representatives of the Attorney General were in Williamson County interviewing county officers and leading citizens. Three weeks later Brundage offered a reward of one thousand dollars for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the murderers. Moreover, Judge Hartwell had summoned a special grand jury for July 9 in the expectation that it would investigate the mine riot, only to be told by the prosecution that it was not yet ready. Consequently, only routine cases were presented to the jurors, and the county officials suffered charges of neglect and nonfeasance in silence.
    By the end of August the prosecution had gathered its evidence. The judge, having called one grand jury prematurely, wanted to defer the investigation until the September term of court, when a jury called in