Early in 1924 saw to events that deserve to be remembered; against the wishes of the Lewis leadership, the national United Mine Workers convention overwhelmingly voted to make membership in the Klan incompatible with membership in the union; and in the ‘Little Egypt’ town of Herrin, Illinois miners went on strike to rid their community of Klan rule, with murder and mayhem the Klan’s response. The conflict between radical miners, gangsters, coal operators, the U.M.W.A. leadership, and the Klan for control of the Southern Illinois coal fields was complicated by the splits within the left union forces, race, language, nativity, and guns. A long, roiling civil war within mining communities lasted two generations as the many foreign-born miners resisted the Klan despite their leadership. The mines and unions of Southern Illinois are gone, it remains a seat of reaction.

‘Herrin, the Klan, and the Miners’ by Tom Myerscough from the Daily Worker. Vol. 1 No. 339. February 14, 1924.

IT APPEARS that there are some people who are determined to keep the town of Herrin on the map, even at the expense of advertising for the merchants who deal in pillow cases and bed sheets. If, after the recent episodes in Herrin, there are any who still doubt that the Klan is a business organization, they should be treated to an examination by a competent phrenologist, so as to determine the reason for such doubt.

Under the cloak of a “Law and Order” campaign, and under the personal direction of a paid agent of the Ku Klux Klan, the otherwise peaceful mining community, located in what is known as “Little Egypt,” was invaded and its inhabitants brutally assaulted. The gang led by S. Glenn Young will find that they are not dealing with a lot of scissor-bills, for the miners of America, and especially the ones in “Little Egypt” have demonstrated before that they will tolerate no invasion.

The strike that has just been declared is only a natural conclusion to the events that led up to it, for there is one thing that is sure, that the miners there, as in any other union field, will refuse to work under armed guard, and it makes no difference whether they come as bums to work as coal and iron police, or as wearers of the K.K.K. hoods or tin badges, or even as the wearers of the khaki uniform. In the eyes and minds of the miners all three are analogous as far as they are concerned, and those who have undertaken to usurp the right to rule that community against the wishes of the people there, might just as well come to an understanding of that fact now, for if they don’t it will come to them later.

It is quite possible and even probable that there are men in the ranks of the miners, who because of racial or religious prejudices, have joined forces with the Koo Koo’s, but that should not deter action on the part of the others to put them where they belong, outside of the union. At the convention recently held in the city of Indianapolis, the miners, of the country declared in no uncertain tone, that the United Mine Workers could not harbor both union men and the K.K.K., Fascist wearers of the Nightie, and decided that inasmuch as the Miners Union was organized primarily for the purpose of protecting the members, it could not tolerate the agents of the business interests on the inside, and that they had to “get out.”

Now it is time for the officials of the miners’ union to get busy, and even tho there are many who do not admit to membership in the Klan we think that on an occasion of this kind they can be best judged by their actions. Let those who proclaim that the law of the United Mine Workers of America shall be obeyed by its members, not fail to act in the interest of the union, by applying Article 14, Section 2, to those who belong to the Klan, admittedly, and also to those who, by their action, have shown that they belong to it, even tho they do not possess the courage to publicly declare that they do.

The only sure way to cure an ill, whether it be social or otherwise, is to remove the cause, and the cause of the trouble at Herrin is in our mind, the desire to avenge the deaths of the “scab-herders” who were loaded up with death-dealing armament and sent into Herrin to help break the strike of 1922. To do this dirty job, the Klan-paid usurper, S. Glenn Young has injected himself, armed to the teeth, and the disorder and chaos that now prevails there is a direct result. He is the cause of all the trouble and should be summarily punished for his acts.

Young boldly declares that the law will be administered and that a “speedy justice” will be meted out, and now that he has made such a declaration he should be given a dose of his own medicine. There should be no hesitancy about placing the responsibility for the Herrin outrages on the shoulders of the Ku Klux Klan and its agent, S. Glenn Young. They are without a doubt the cause, and the cause should be speedily removed, so that the poor innocents who have been detailed to Herrin as National Guardsmen, under orders from the state, can return to their families and peaceful pursuits, and allow the people of Herrin to do likewise.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1924/v01-n339-feb-14-1924-DW-LOC.pdf