HERRIN TRAGEDY.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 September 1922, Page 7

HERRIN TRAGEDY.

MURDEROUS STRIKE MOB. MASSACRE OF PRISONERS. HUNTED THROUGH WOODS. The outbreak of armed lawlessness by the striking miners of Herrin, Illinois, was the most serious episode in the history of a country notorious for rioting. It developed into a brutal massacre of workers and their guards at the Strip mine who had come from Chicago. The casualties, including wounded, numbered 72, of whom eight were strikers. The battle, which was a resumption of an attack when two were killed, started when an army of 1600 union miners and sympathisers marched to the mine. Hiding behind coal cars and in the mine shaft, 35 men attempted a defence; but the superior numbers of the attackers swept over the embankment like a line of infantry going over Lhe top, firing as it went. Almost by a miracle the little band of defenders escaped with their lives. They raised the white flag of surrender to the accompaniment of a hail of lead. When the imported workers were surrounded the strikers dynamited the mine virtually out of existence. They dynamited the battery of steam shovels, burned the company’s offices, and set fire to a long line of freight cars containing coal. SURRENDER TO THE MOB. The slaughter of the strike-breakers occurred after they had surrendered to overpowering numbers. They were herded together and started toward Herrin, where, according to the shouts of the victors, the captives expected to be “shipped out of the country.” Jabbed and beaten by the rioters, the prisoners were marched into the woods just outside Herrin. As the march proceeded, Mr. C. K. McDowell, superintendent of the mine, who was handicapped by his artificial leg, lagged. When he protested he would not make any better speed the mob beat him to death. Mr. James Shoemaker, a brother-in-law of Mr. William Lester, president of the coal company, protested against the attack on Mr. McDowell. Then the rioters shot him to death. He had been employed as the company’s civil engineer. There were said to be several hundred men and boys in the cavalade which started from the mine for Herrin, with the 44 men in front. When the column reached a point about half-way to Herrin, where it passes through the woods, the massacre began. Strikers say that the prisoners, apparently at a pre-ar-ranged signal, made a dash to escape, and that they were pursued and killed. Most of the strike-breakers are said to be Italians. There is a large foreign element in the local mining population, from which the union men came. ONE MAN HANGED. The positions of the bodies indicate that four of the prisoners were shot to death as they stood at the tree where one had been hanged. The bodies of the other dead and the wounded were scattered in the woods on the opposite side of the road. Women with children in arms were found beaten to death as part of the frightful scene which the strikers left behind them. The bodies of four women were found in a heap under the hanging body of a fifth near the Southern Illinois Coal Company’s premises. As soon as the forty-four Strip employees surrendered a cry went up for the lives of the captives, states one account. The cooler element, however, advised that the prisoners be marched into town, paraded before the townspeople, and then sent away.

The cooler element marched just behind the prisoners, who were at the head of the procession, and the disorderly element flocked behind and beside them. There were cries of “Beat it,” which grew into a chorus, but the leaders withstood the demand until they arrived at a wooded section. There the clamor increased, and the mob pressed around the fear-stricken prisoners, some of whom mumbled, apparently in prayer. Witnesses say the leaders, feeling unabled longer to resist the crowd’s clamor, said to the prisoners: “Yes, you’d better beat it.” MURDEROUS MAN HUNT. Between the road and the woods on the right side there was a barbed wire fence. Most of the prisoners, probably thinking vaguely that it would be something to have the fence between them and the mob, began climbing through the fence. They had difficulty with their suit cases. There were cries of “drop your suit cases; you don’t need them.” which appealed to the humor of the jeering mob. Most of the prisoners dropped their suit cases and scrambled through and scurried into the woods. The shooting was under way and the killing was on. Men were running and dodging, and the crowds were following and shooting them. When one fell the crowd closed in and fired a volley into the prostrate form. The throats of two were cut. As the men were shot down crowds gathered and watched them breathe their last, jeering and scoffing. A witness says he saw a knife plunged into the throat of a wounded man, who, in his dying breath, gasped a plea: “In tlie name of my mother, in the name of your mother, in the name of God, give me water,” only to receive laughs and jibes such as “Where you’re going you won’t see water/’ as a reply. Mothers carried babies into the morgues and up to piles of bodies in the roads with such remarks as “take a look at what your papa did, kid.” The strike-breakers were members of the Steam Shovellers’ Union which, according to a Miners’ Union official, had been “outlawed.”