National Affairs: A Fight for Free Speech

The struggle in Logan County, West Va., between the United Mine Workers and the coal operators has become more than a simple class conflict of Capital and Labor. The American Civil Liberties Union and a representative Citizens' Committee headed by Norman Hapgood, editor of Hearst's International, have intervened to make the Logan situation a test of free speech and constitutional guarantees in West Virginia. The first thing they did was to hold an open meeting at Logan, in the heart of the non-union coal country, closed for years to free speech on coal questions, and discuss the subject: " What Shall the Federal Coal Com-mission Be Told About Logan?" Application was made to Sheriff Don Chafin for use of the court house as a meeting place, but it was refused (Chafin being in the pay of the operators) and the meeting had to be held on private property.

Having spoken in the citadel of the coal barons, in the mining Mecca where no union man can show his face without danger of physical violence, and having spoken on the most forbidden of all subjects—coal and the rights of unionism—the Citizens Committee and the Civil Liberties

Union will bring to bear all the legal weapons in their power to have the union miners protected in their civil rights and to prosecute the operators who have denied those rights by force of arms.

Former Vice-President Marshall, a member of the United States Coal Commission in charge of investigation of civil rights in the coal fields, has been invited to send a representative to Logan to observe the test.

John J. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers of America, sailed for Europe to observe the coal situation in the Ruhr.