Labor: 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 after Massey and several other firms rejected an industry agreement, hundreds of injuries have resulted from rock throwings, dynamitings and assaults. West Virginia state police have spent about $750,000 in extra manpower to try to keep peace. Said a miner in the picket line at Massey’s Sprouse Creek processing plant in Lobata, W. Va.: “If something isn’t done real soon to end the strike, there is going to be a lot more violence.”