Labor: War in the Coalfields

War in the Coalfields

So turbulent has been the long-running strike of mineworkers against the A.T. Massey Coal Co. that it recalls the Hatfield-McCoy feud in the same region, around the West Virginia-Kentucky line. Now the conflict, involving some 1,500 members of the United Mine Workers, is evoking even uglier images. "It's almost like a civil war," said ex-Mayor Robert McCoy of Matewan, W. Va. Hayes West, a nonunion truck driver, was killed and another driver wounded when snipers opened fire on a convoy on Coeburn Mountain in Kentucky; three other drivers have been wounded in similar ambushes.

Since the miners struck last Oct. 1...

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