Edris Mabie, murdered at his P.M.A. union hall by U.M.W.A. gun thugs; the eighteenth miner to die in the fight between the two unions.

‘Miners Honor Slain Fighter In Mass Funeral’ from New Militant. Vol. 1 No. 20. May 4, 1935.

Swarm into Springfield to Protest Mabie Murder

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. Five thousand pickets, members of the Progressive Miners union, retreated from this city after they had failed to stop the Woodside mine of the Peabody Coal Co. from operating. The sudden swarm of pickets was precipitated by the murder of Edris Mable, a Progressive miner. Mabie and several other miners were shot down by Ray Edmundson, U.M.W.A. state president, and two other company gunmen, who broke up an Easter day affair at the miners’ hall.

Hundreds of miners came from as far south as Saline and Franklin county to join the picket army. For days they swarmed around Springfield, sleeping on floors, eating piece-meal here and there, until finally misleadership on the part of the right wing caused them to leave in disgust.

The miners had a splendid opportunity to see the bankruptcy of the Keck leadership. From the outset of the march Keck’s second lieutenants were telling everyone not to mention the officers of the union in connection with the picketing as it might result in their arrest. The miners were flabbergasted at such tactics and they wanted to know what officers in a union were for besides drawing handsome salaries.

Edris Mabie’s funeral was truly an impressive affair. Fully ten thousand miners and the Women’s Auxiliary members marched sullenly for three miles as an escort to the cortege. A sixty-five piece band from Gillespie, Wilsonville and Benid played at the rites. It took over an hour for the huge funeral procession to pass one given point.

Mabie was employed in one of the Progressive mines. He was the father of five children. Although an avowed right winger he had great courage and most all the hot struggles found him in the heat of the fight. The Left wing miners came from many parts of Illinois by the hundreds to pay tribute to this worker, the 18th Progressive miner to die in the long mine war.

The New Militant was the weekly paper of the Workers Party of the United States and replaced The Militant in 1934, The Militant was a weekly newspaper begun by supporters of the International Left Opposition recently expelled from the Communist Party in 1928 and published in New York City. Led by James P Cannon, Max Schacthman, Martin Abern, and others, the new organization called itself the Communist League of America (Opposition) and saw itself as an outside faction of both the Communist Party and the Comintern. After 1933, the group dropped ‘Opposition’ and advocated a new party and International. When the CLA fused with AJ Muste’s American Workers Party in late 1934, the paper became the New Militant as the organ of the newly formed Workers Party of the United States.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/1935/may-04-1935.pdf