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Beckley Post-Herald from Beckley, West Virginia • Page 4

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Beckley, West Virginia
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4
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hage Four UciuUei tatg BECKLEY POST-HERALD A MKMUCAN 75 YEARS rUWSHn IVHY WSINESS DAY HCKtiY NfWVAHK COXPOKAltON 339-343 Mnw W. Vo. 75101 All 253-3321 Second-Class mail privileges authorized at post office at BecMey, W. Vo. ond Hinloo.

W. Vo. i. 1. HOOK HHTOt Industrial Guerrillas Behind Coal Strike? This is the saga of Crab Orchard, W.Va.

a long way from San Francisco's Maoist milieu and the Peninsula Red Guard. But no critical area of America is too far from the neo-radicals of the string of peoples' army cells; no coal field, no power plants, no food distribution centers, no massive steel or auto mills or factories. Not even Boone County, in the gut of the soft coal area. Several of the Revolutionary Union operatives found it, helped whip up a strike which may throw sections of America into short coal supply this winter. a i a eoaldiggers strike which now appears to have cost the industry over S100 million, over eight million tons in undug payrolls, money needed for the youngsters about to return to school after the August-long illegal stoppage.

So lest wo forget, there is a profile of an "agit-prop" meaning an agitation- who now would call himself or herself an "industrial guerrilla." Or a radicalization activist. And who would make certain you don't know they are Maoist always loudly declaiming they have "nothing to do with the Communist Party (USA)." Naturally, the latter is Moscow's, not Peking's. There is the Revolutionary Union (RU) agit-prop of Crab Orchard, W.Va. He is Robert Stephen Tanner, who once was almost strung up by angry anti- Communist miners. He has many counterparts in many industries, though semi-skilled intellectual cynics disbelieve until scores of thousands of jnen go wildcat in a critical industry and a defecting deviationist tells authorities the RU people want to crack America's economy as dp the British Maoist coal- digging unionists.

So take the trail awindlng with Robert Stephen Tanner good early education in St. Thomas Grade School, Palo Alto, Calif. Good high school (Bellarmine) in San Jose, Calif. And then in 1966 a degree in government and English at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor- All this led to his seeking unskilled work. That's the teaching of Comrade Bergman (who did his stint in Peking)and Prof.

Franklin, formerly of Sanford and the Red Guards. After three manual jobs, each more proletarian than the other, each giving Ihe 28-year-old Bob Tanner a deeper working class background, he applied in 1973 for a coal pit job in U.S. Steel Corp's Gary mine 50: a i a maintenance work specifically says his occupational preference is not oHice work. He gets the job. Soon he is agitating.

He is a member of the miners' pit com- mitteq in a few months. Soon he is urging the men not to dig coal for one reason or another. Soon he gets a foreman's warning to take his gripes to the official grievance committee. But soon enough, now 30, Robert Stephen Tanner gets his chance. Early in August there's a wildcat at a local pit some months after his speeches.

And he gets into the Miners' Committee to Defend the Right to Strike. Such stoppages are prohibited under the 1974 collective bargaining contract. This is a fabulous pact. The coal operators paid heavily to get the no-strike clause included. And on the other flank comes Lewis (Skip) Delano.

He too is a sort of com- "mittee man. He is in his late 20s. He, like Tanner, is educated. He too is big'(both six He too is of the i a Union cult. He too agitates.

Skip Delano is as expert as Tanner in getting to the news media, popping up in front of the camera, shouting for the "right to strike." Screaming against the capitalists. He too travelled a long way. First he was in the Army. He was let go for distributing anit-war leaflets on the grounds. Then he linked up with the Vietnam Vets Against the War.

Then in 1973 he shows up in New York City's General Post Office. Articulate, he wins a union steward's spot shortly enough. Mighty tough. Quick with his fists. Soon, he's agit-propping in the bulk mail section.

Talking strike. Is labelled by fellow unionists a member of the cSiucus known as the "Outlaws" which is publicized and praised by the RU's tabloid. "Revolution." Disappears from the Big Apple in December 1974. Then like Tanner, he pops up in the coal fields Suddenly he's working for the Eastern company. Though at the mines for a few months, he too bellows for "the right to strike." At his side is a tough, educated politico, Bruce Miller.

He admits to nothing but fighting for the "right to strike." Court injunctions are issued againsi the illegal month-long walkout as i sucks in some 75,000 to 80,000 soft-coa miners. Railroad workers and some steel hands are being laid off for lack special coal right on the spot and for lack of tonnage. Delano and Miller are haule( into court. Federal judge Hall of the Charleston W.Va., U.S. district court says, "I don' want to keep you in jail, but for the safe ty of the coal industry and the miner themselves, you have to either be placed in prison or quit what you're doing." Judge Hall fined them J500 each anc sentenced them to 179 days for civi contempt.

Later they go free. The strike ha whimpered to a halt. The agit-prop melt into the soft-coal background Slowly, if they follow the pattern, move on to another industry for mor agit-prop work as industrial guerrilla 'of the neo-Maoism. This is the new radicalism. It may no crumble our government, but it sure ca tumble some industries and fuel pile and wages and profits.

Victor Riesel in the Northern Virginia Sun op ike Morning-'he Past Weekend Pure Disaster By EMILE i. HODEL We are indebted to a former Beckley resident, W.W. "Buck" Vines who is now i i in Arlington, for the Victor Riesel commentary on the recent vildcat coal strike which we are reprinting in the editorial column it left this morning. The column by Riesct appeared Sept. 27 in the Arlington newspaper ind Vines sent us a clipping of it.

For those whose memory may je vague on the matter, Riesel is a amous columnist on labor whose biting insights got to be so hated by he mobsters within the labor novement that they tried to put Diesel owl of the business. He was ittacked and acid thrown into his eyes years ago. He was stopped for awhile and still partially blind but he has courageously continued to tell it as is about the events in the labor novement in this nation. -0- On a personal note, the weekend ve just went through appeared to be about the most disastrous of our ifetime! It's a a we irobably could dwell upon for the lext week or so and we hardly where to begin with telling he story. On Friday afternoon we 'were expecting our younger son Alan to return from Morgantown for the weekend at home from his studies.

tVe knew that his last class for the day ended at 1 p.m. and he was ex-' icctlng to get home around 5:30 or i p.m. About 5:15 p.m. we received a call and the lady on the line mispronounced our name as hough it rhymed with the word 'hotel" instead of with "total." The latter is the way It has been pronounced ever since before it came from Switzerland. We Threaten Nancy She told us not to get upset but our son Alan was a patient in Jie Emergency Room of the Stonewall Jackson Hospital at Weston following an accident in ivhich his car had left the road on Interstate 79.

She said that he was conscious and appeared not to be .00 seriously injured but that they ivould be taking x-rays and could tell.me more after the x-rays were taken in about 30 or 40 minutes. Needless to say our blood pressure had shot up and the adrenalin was working while she talked. However, we were able to keep control and wondered how to break the bad news to Nancy without her off the deep end, so to speak. Fortunately, Nancy is inclined to lold on in the beginning and only go to pieces later after she has done everything she can and then has nothing left to do but worry and begin weeping. That's when we threaten her -as at no other time in our entire relationship that is she'does not dry up we will give her something real to cry about, pointing out that crying helps nothing and only makes things harder for everyone.

Often, it works. -0(Man has had two sets of x-rays now, one in Weston and another liere at the Raleigh General Hospital, where he is and has been since, about 9 p.m. Friday. He has been quite sore and uncomfortable when not under sedatives, but they have found only one cracked rib and no other broken bones thus far. Of course, a are scheduled later this week when they say they will be able to tell more.

The Braxton County area was having a whale of a rainstorm Friday when Alan drove through. We were told Saturday they had better than an inch of rain in less than 45 minutes. His car apparently hydroplaned on the wet 1-79. It began skidding and pumping the brakes had no effect. It went off the road, flipped over, and landed down in a ditch that was like a creek at the time.

It being a convertible, all the windows were shattered and the frame- around the windshield held it up ofl of him even though it was bent back by the weight of the car. He was unconscious for awhile- half through the windshield after it had been shattered. -0- a Emergency Squad got him out and took him first to Weston and then later, to Beckley. He is very sore but had hardl any cuts and was considered lucky lo be alive by all those who saw the car. We saw it Saturday which was also a terrible day about which more later.

And top of the morning to you! Will "There are twenty million baseball fans that listen to the World Series that know every play made, and why, and how it was made, but still don't know whether Harvard is a town or a mouth wash, whether Yale is a yell or a lock, and who think Notre Dame is all churches. "So Viva baseball! It's for us unfortunate ones who have no alma mater." October 15,1029. Hangover! Andrew TuUy-- festerday And Tpday-- Greenbrier County Ghost Described Its Own Death By SHIRLEY DONNELLY Yesterday this column related in part the murder case that was tried at the 1897 term of court at Lewisburg. Edward Shue was tried for the murder of his wife, the former Miss Zona Heaster of Meadow Bluff in Greenbrier County. After Mrs.

Zona Shue was buried her mother, Mrs a a a i i woman, swore that: her dead daughter! appeared to her four different times and recited the circumstances in connection with her murder. Not only did the dead daughter of Mrs. Heaster appear to her mother, but the ghost talked at length to the distraught parent. ONE NIGHT after her daughter had been laid in her grave, Mrs. Heaster was praying in her room.

She heard a rustling noise, such as the rustling of a garment arid turned from praying to see what it There stood an apparition. The dead girl's lips parted as if to speak but when she neared the mother in an apparent effort to embrace her, the ghostly form vanished. Mrs. Heaster knew she had seen her dead daughter. No doubt about it.

The mother prayed for the form to reappear and tell her what the mother needed to know. SOME NIGHTS later the ghost returned again. The second time the supernatural body spoke. "I must go! But I shall return and tell you about my death!" Instantly the ghost disappeared. A second and a third time the strange form returned.

In all, four were the times the ghostly form appeared to Mrs. Heaster. When Mrs. Heaster divulged the strange happening to her neighbors the story spread all over the neighborhood. It was believed by ail who heard it, as Mary Heaster was a a known for her veracity.

On the third and fourth nightly visit of the dead girl's ghost, it told the bereaved mother the whole story of how her husband had killed her. Particulars of the death were given the waiting mother. When the mother asked the ghost to come to be with her as the girl used to do when she was single, the ghost stood and talked instead. It told the of the premises of where she had lived. Mrs.

Heaster went and found matters as her daughter's ghost 'said they were. This was a month after the daughter had been buried. The ghost told the mother to go down by a fence in a rocky place. The mother was told to go to that spot and look but she did not say she would find anything, just to go there and look. IT TOOK the jury that tried the case of Edward Shue just one hour to find the man guilty.

The verdict recommended mercy on the part of Judge McWhorter, who sentenced the man to life imprisonment. The sentence did not set well with men in Greenbrier Count who had a low boiling point. A mob formed, a new rope and the mob met at a point eight miles from Lewisburg. Sheriff Hill Nickell averted the. lynching, gun in hand.

THE GHOST of the dead girl told the mother how her husband had killed her. She said Shue quarrelled with her Zona Shue about what she had prepared for' supper the evening of Jan. 22,1897. The supper consisted of butter, 1 apple butter, three kinds of pear, cherry, and raspberry, but no 1 meat. It was meat that Shue wanted, so he quarrelled with Zonai about the missing meat.

was mad. In his rage, Shue took his 1 wife's face in his strong hands and wrenched her neck, breaking it. The examination of the dead body took three days. No poison was found in the stomach but the neck was found fractured. That sealed the doom of the man who was reported to have caused the death of two previous wives.

A Meadow Bluff community from. Pocahontas Mrs. Mary Heaster, mother of Zona, lived on 1 the other side of Sewell mountain from where her daughter was Shue' admitted on the witness stand that he was an ex-convict. Henry Gilmer was the assisting prosecuting attorney who aided John Preston in prosecuting Shue That trial began on June 30, 1897. before a packed courtroom in the old courthouse at Lewisburg.

Shue and Zona were married at the old i church at Livesay's Mill. They went to housekeeping in a small two-story i a residence of William Livesay, who gave the settlement the name of Livesay. Moynihan Tells UN Group Amin Is Racist Murderer "uncivil at- WASHINGTON Speaking for all 46 members of the African bloc, Tiamiou Adjibade of Dahomey shrieked that Daniel P. Moynihan, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, had launched tacks" on Idi Amin, the lunatic president of Uganda.

I'm glad those got the point. Short of bringing on the firing squad, there is no other way to address a madman of Amin's ilk. Moynihan laid it on the line in a San Francisco speech when he borrowed a phrase from a New York Times editorial to describe Amin as a "racist murderer." Well, what else? A report by the I a i a Commission of Jurists, a respectably liberal outfit, says that 25,000 to 250.000 Ugandans have been murdered since Amin seized power in 1971. AT ANY RATE, Moynihan call- ed a racist murderer a racist murderer only in an offhand reference to Amin's recent demand that Israel be expelled from the UN and that the Jewish nation be demolished as a state. "It is no accident, I fear," said Moynihan, that Amin is head of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), and he called upon that confused assembly to disavow Amin's remarks.

Moynihan's speech was not cleared with Washington, but at this writing there is no sign of administration displeasure with his comment. "I said what had to be said," Moynihan told reporters. "I' do not mean to go on talking about it." He doesn't have to. He's got Clarence Mitchell', director, of the Washington Bureau of the NAACP, on the U.S. Delegation.

And Mitchell, perhaps the most lobbyist for black causes on Capitol'Hill, used language almost as tough as Moynihan's in.replying a A i a Emphasizing that he was speaking for the U.S. government, Mitchell called Amin's speech "an affront to millions of citizens of the United States." INDEED, Mitchell managed both to compare Amin to Hitler and to sternly tease Adjibade about his concern for civility. "If we had been less courteous with that dictator (Hitler) in the beginning, immense human suffering would have been avoided," Mitchell told the General Assembly. He also reminded his audience that Amin's words were the kind used through centuries to persecute minorities, especially Jews. For Americans, the stand taken by-Moynihan and Mitchell is cause for rejoicing, if not dancing in the streets.

We have taken a lot-- of vicious nonsense from too many fourth-rate "nations" in the UN, and at last a couple of our boys now have reminded that gaggle of elegant and hedonistic half-wits that there is a limit to our patience. Forget the Israeli cause for a moment. A nut like Amin is not going to be heeded when he calls.for I a i i a Moynihan pointed out at a reception a his San Francisco speech, Amin had "slandered" all the American people by saying that the U.S. was "run by Zionists." We don't have to take that kind of insulting drivel, and the reaction of the Moynihan-Mitchell team should be read as a rebuke to the General Assembly itself, which gave Amin standing ovations both before and after his slanderous speech. HOWEVER, I do not plan to hang by my thumbs waiting for our i allies to embrace integrity and a single standard.

Fifteen European countries recalled or kept home their ambassadors to Spain when Franco executed five terrorists for cop-killing. If any of those governments has officially denounced Amin for the wholesale slaughter of his own people, it has not come to my attention. Very well. We can stand alone as a country that opposes repression everywhere in Communist and in leftist Uganda as a i a i a i a i i a a figuratively dropped Idi Amin into the garbage can. "We are not here," said Moynihan, "to hear totalitarian dictators lecture to us on how to run a democracy." Let's hear it for a diplomat who can still speak plain English.

My Answer By BILLY GRAHAM A friend of mine says he is a Christian but does not attend church services. Can one be a Christian without going to church? D.S. My answer will have to be in two parts. First, neither your friend nor anyone else is a Christian because he attends church. Church attendance does not make Christians.

This is a point that confuses many people, and there are multitudes who rely upon church affiliation to get them in the Kingdom somehow, yet they do not realize that "the organized church" has no authority to grant to people an entrance into heaven or to save them from hell. It is only the individual's faith in Jesus Christ that will make the difference. Yes, your friend might be a Christian even though he is not affiliated with any church. But the second part of my answer to this question would be that even if your friend is a Christian, there is one area of his life in which he is not living fully the Christian life. Though a Chris- may exist in isolation or in separation from the church, he serve effectively; nor will he bear a witness to the community.

from perfectly selfish reasons he is depriving himself of the wonderful fellowship provided in the church of Jesus Christ. He is an unlightened Christian, and he is also a very disobedient Christian. But worst of all, he is a self- righteous Christian because he thinks he is better than all of the people who attend Churches and that no church is good enough- JachAnderson- Costly Tale Of The Truck That Wasn't WASHINGTON We have spent months, as part of our watch on waste, digging out the details of a $25 million Army boondoggle. i i a a squander the taxpayers' millions, i a i a spend more millions to cover it up. The misspending, i sometimes difficult to trace.

The story is complex. Let's call it the Anatomy of a Boondoggle. It began in 1968, when the Army awarded a $136 million multi-year contract to General Motors to'p'roduce a fleet of "super truck's." To win the contract, GM had to meet operating specifications for a truck far tougher than the commercial trucks that the Army had been using. The generals were sufficiently pleased with GM's offer that they ignored a study from Kaiser Jeep, which claimed the company could a a specifications and still save the taxpayers millions. REP.

JOHN Brademas, and the General Accounting Office, quite properly, demanded to know why the Army had overlooked a possible i to save So the A in 1971 belatedly agreed to conduct comparative tests of both the GM and Kaiser trucks under identical con- ditions at the Aberdeen, proving grounds. A grueling, test proved what the Army experts had already concluded. Although the initial cost of the Kaiser truck was slightly lower, the GM truck not only was sturdier but cost far less to maintain. The test results stated, for example, that the GM truck went more than twice as far between mechanical failures than the Kaiser model. One Army expert called the GM vehicle "the best truck of this type I've ever seen." Another Army analyst, who rode both trucks, said at the test's conclusion that the GM model was in "top condition" but the Kaiser model was "literally a i apart." The Army experts agreed emphatically that GM had the better truck.

THUS VINDICATED, the Army might have been expected to go ahead with the procurement. But 'this was too logical for the military mind. Instead, the Army inexplicably cancelled the GM contract in May, 1971. This was no simple matter, since GM had already geared up for production. GM demanded and received $12.9 million for disassembling the production line.

Another $12.4 million, which had already been invested in research and development, also went down ithe Pentagon drain. The GM cancellation, in other words, cost the taxpayers a a i $25.3 million. the. small society by brickman For this substantial sum, the Army received 27 prototype trucks, 1 a set of blueprints, and some- I special tools of no use for assembl- ing the truck that wasn't. A produce "more truck for the buck" wound up, instead, producing no trucks but costing a lot of bucks.

But this, unfortunately, isn't the end of the story. The Army is now preparing to spend $145 million for 33,000 commercial trucks. These are little different than the trucks that the Army in 1967 insisted a a for rugged military duty. INFLATION, meanwhile, has sent costs soaring. So the Army must now pay about the same for the inferior trucks as it would have cost to produce the superior GM models.

A a acknowledged to us privately that the commercial trucks will be woefully inadequate in the field. The Army ordered these trucks with fuel-eating V-8 engines and automatic transmissions. The Army could have saved $5 million by purchasing the simpler six-. cylinder model not to mention the gasoline savings of 5 million to 9 million gallons a year. An Army spokesman contended that the GM truck "exceeded i i requirements" and didn't fit into the Army's "life cycle costs" budget.

The waste, which we have carefully documented, doesn't include countless man hours that, a a i have investigating, compiling, and data for the super truck that was never built. THE ISLAND CREEK Coal Company, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, has reported an unbelievable profit increase of 12,000 percent since 1972 a feat unmatched by any other American firm. Us coal profits have gone up, acknowledged Occidental's president Joseph Baird, from 11 cents to $12.93 per ton. "We want the maxi i a investments," he told us frankly. "We would sell it higher if we i.

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About Beckley Post-Herald Archive

Pages Available:
124,252
Years Available:
1930-1977