While the U.S. warily eyed the storm clouds over the steel industry last week, the storm hit from another direction. John L. Lewis gestured with majestic arrogance to his 480,000 United Mine Workers and they knew what to do. This week the nation's coal mines were shut down by strike.
In West Virginia, striking soft-coal miners roamed the countryside in automobile caravans to make sure the mines stayed closed. In Glenridge, Ill., 145 miners showed up briefly but did not even change into work clothes. A few Pennsylvania hard-coal miners turned up at tipples, chatted awhile and then headed back home; most...
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