Using the opening of deer season as a pretext, miners with their militant organization and their hunting rifles, stop the eviction of a union officer’s family from their company-owned home.

‘Armed Unemployed Miners Stop Eviction’ from the Daily Worker. Vol. 6 No. 293. December 8, 1934.

Miners Bring Rifles as “Deer Hunting” Season Begins

By a Mine Worker Correspondent ALICIA, Pa. On December 1st, for the third time in as many months, the miners at Alicia No. 1, a company patch of the Monessen Coal and Coke, a Mellon subsidiary, stopped the eviction of the Mullen family, whose boy, Joe, is the president of the local of the U.M.W.A., at Alicia No. 1.

The fight with the company, and its super, Jim Gerry, started when the men demanded equal division of work, and pay for the dead work. This fight led to the picketing of the mine and eventual closing down of the mine. This was over three months ago, and even since then the company tried to get rid of the Union men out of the patch.

The first attempted eviction was led by “Preacher” Brady, who with seven other deputies and a truck came to Alicia, and began to carry the furniture into the truck. But, before they were able to carry out all the furniture, miners and their wives gathered and carried it right back into the house. A deputy got smacked in the scuffle and a miner was arrested; but the men and women forced his release.

About ten days ago, his “Nibs,” Sheriff Hackney with ten deputies came himself, but was unable to carry out the eviction. However, he told Mr. Mullen that he either move or be evicted by Dec. 1.

Expecting the eviction Dec. 1st, the Alicia local of the U.M.W.A. undertook steps to organize to prevent the eviction for the third time. Committees went and visited local Unions throughout the District No. 4; also in District 5. Finances were raised through a raffle and a dance, so that the work would not be handicapped for lack of some gasoline money for transportation. A committee from the local appeared before the joint committee of the captive mines and got endorsement in this fight, also a pledge of help. Despite the bad weather on Dec. 1 and the fact that mines worked, on Dec. 1 delegations came from as far as Lemont, Oliver, Masontown; also miners from Grindstones, Braznell, Fayette City, etc. Sheriff Hackney, knowing of the sentiment and organizational steps taken to resist the eviction, failed to make an appearance. A committee went to talk to Gerry, the super, also spoke to Hackney over the phone, and got a “postponement” of the eviction. One remarkable feature of some of the delegations was their preparations. December 1 is the first day of the deer hunting season, and some of the miners came to the eviction with their rifles. Their comment was that they expected “to get a buck.” Probably, the first reason Sheriff Hackney did not come was that he figured also that the miners were preparing for the opening day of the deer hunting, and he did not want to be mistaken for a “buck.”

The Unemployment Councils of Fayette County helped in the preparations. Delegations of the N.U.C. locals were present! The N.U.C. helped to prevent the previous evictions and gave its full support to the struggle against the December 1st eviction. In Alicia itself, practically the entire patch belongs to the local of the U.C.

The prevention of the eviction in Alicia is blazing a new trail in the struggles of the coke region and the miners generally! It has shattered the traditional fear of entering in a mass force a company camp!

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/1934/v11-n293-Nat-dec-08-DW-LOC.pdf