J
v ` Kentucky protest --— ---— page three. Q
later ’received minor bruises in falling as they alighted from the
{\ automobiles’ —- also to sustain the 'trumped—up' charges.
A lon; distance telephone call from the writers' committee
to the National Committee for the Defense of Political Erisoners in_
New York stated unequivocally that both men had been repeatedly struck
in the face and about the head with automobile jacks in the hands of
deputies. Hundreds of miners, union leaders, and relief agents have
received the same treatment.
Harry Simms, a nineteen-year—old mine organizer led a
group of strikers toward Pineville to receive their share of the relief.
At Brush Creek, a fen miles from Pineville he was shot in the stomach
by deputy sheriffs and has since died. »
g ( Early news dispatches carried the true story of the
  a
g beating and kidnapping, until “corrected" by one of the leaders of
i
2 the kidnapping mob. ln Evans' version the beating became a “fight among
~§ members of the committee" and the kidnapping a "safe transportation to
1 the state line". Eewspapers aware of the truth through their own news
sources, deliberately accepted Evans' distortion.
This whole proceedure proves again that the charges of a
reighn of terror in the coal fields maintained by a corps of ruthless
company—hired gunmen and plu3—uglies are true. The group of writers,
representing the Iational Qomnittee for the Defense of Political ‘
frisonors, who accompanied Theodore Dreiser into Kentucky last November
and were promptly indicted for criminal syndicalism made this clear
enough. Here is a second expedition, bent upon giving relief to
desperate, starving people; upon establishing simple human right of
holding a meeting —- and they immediately herded together, battered, _
and driven out of the community like criminals.