Fog in Bentleyville

It was a queer day for the tidy, twisty mining town of Bentleyville, Pa. (pop. 4,000). Over the deserted tipple of the nearby Hillman Coal & Coke Co. the Stars & Stripes dropped wanly. Bentleyville's miners, already in their second day of idleness (they had walked out early), were underfoot everywhere, painting and patching their boxlike houses on the still-green hills, playing catch in the streets, window-shopping, lounging in front of the Methodist Church. On sunny Main Street, Bentleyville's housewives hustled through their marketing with a troubled air. Unless Mr. Lewis won or called off the strike in a hurry, Christmas might be merely one of the year's colder days.

In the weathered Citizens' National Bank, Banker W. A. Hampson put Bentleyville's main problem this way: when the miners walked out last April, they had the OPA and plenty of savings and war bonds to fall back on. But that 59-day strike had burned off the fat, and put most of them, back on a payday to payday existence. "Now, with prices up--" he said, and let his voice trail away.

In Andy Harchar's all-tile Slavia Bar, on street corners and outside Capy's Lunch, the responsible heads talked it over. Would a long strike fail?

"Well," said grizzled old Bozo Damich, the U.M.W.'s International Representative, "there's a saying which goes that the miner will spend $10 a day if he has it, or he can live 100 days on $10 if he has to. If things get hard our men will be buying a barrel of mush and living on it three meals a day."

But the boys themselves were mighty uneasy. Would they fink on Old John? Miner Joe Grizo laughed at that one. "This may be a hell of a time to strike," he said. "But the union's gotta have a contract, and what's the use of having a union if we don't stick together? John's the leader. . . . He ain't ever been wrong yet. . . ."

But what about striking against the Government? A big, stooped Pole slammed down one of Andy Harchar's beer glasses--"Who the hell's the govamint? It's us, ain't it? We're the govamint."

What if the Army comes in? "Who's the Army?" said the Pole. "There's more miners than soldiers."

What about the court injunction? Old Bozo Damich had part of the answer: "You can't give a court order to make a man think the way you want him to think. . . ."

That about did for the talk. Around sundown, the miners drifted home for an early meal. Then they drifted back downtown to take in bank night at the Roosevelt Theatre (prize, $180), or even the P.T.A. benefit which the Pittsburgh Civic Ballet was putting on at the high school.

After these pleasures, they walked out into the brooding night fog. Quietly, the mine people turned up their collars and started for home--past the fuzzy street lamps, past Harchar's saloon, past the tinseled toy window at Duval's hardware store. In two hours the strike became official.

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