Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 December 1902 — WANTED VINDICATION [ARTICLE]

WANTED VINDICATION

Hid the Independent Operators, and They Seem To Be Getting It Pretty Hard, Scranton, Pa., Dec. 10.—Tales of eviction from houses owned by G. B, Markle & Co., the narration of the death of a wife as a result of an enforced removal from her home, and the story of a mother, whose husband was killed in the Markle mines, of how she and her two boys struggled years to pay the Murkles the back rent and coal bill she owed them, were the principal features of yesterday’s sessions of the coal strike commission. The testimony as presented by some of the witnesses whose lives are given up to the coal mining Industry was at times pathetic and surprising to the commissioners, who listened to it with undivided attention. The miners yesterday afternoon concluded the calling of witnesses against the Markle company, and the cross-ex-amination has been only perfunctory. There has been considerable surprise expressed that the company has not made greater efforts to refute some of the seemingly damaging testimony that has been presented. One of the miners’ representatives, speaking of yesterday’s proceedings, said: “The independent operators in their meeting with the big companies in New' York two weeks ago when they succeeded In blocking the proposed settlement, said the whole matter should go before the commission so that the country at large would know who is right and thus vindicate the coal companies. We are willing to go ahead with the proceedings if they are satisfied with the ‘vindication’ they are now r getting.” After closing the Markle case, the representatives of the miners called witnesses who had formerly been employed in the mines of several companies to show that a blacklist exists and that some of the companies had broken the agreement which ended the strike and resulted in the appointment of the arbitration commission. Scranton. Fa.. Dec. 10.—An attempt to break the miners’ strike by bribery was told on the witness stand before, the coal strike commission by John I Early, a check weighman, employed atl the Gypsy Grove colliery of the Erie company, who was the president of the Gypsy Grove local union. He said he wns introduced to a former mine foreman named Michael Grimes in the Lackawanna Valley hotel in Scranton, Early and another miner named O’Hara, also the president of a local union, were each offered $2,500 to get ten men to pass a resolution sending the men from the two local unions back to work.