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Show ATTACK IS MYSTERY: inn Unable To Identify Assailants Or Victims, CHEROKEE, Iowa, Aug. ,31 (U.R) Farmers striking for higher prices were fired upon as they picketed the highways leading to Cherokee last midnight. Fifteen were wounded as the farm strike reached new stages of violence after having been started as a peaceful effort to boost farm prices to what ws termed the .cost of production. The identity of the wounded farmers and of the men who shot them remained a mystery. So complex com-plex and delicate was the situation '. that authorities refused to italic about it. Car Is Riddled At the scene of the violence near this small northwestern Iowa town today there remained only an abandoned aban-doned automobile, its tires an4 body riddled with bullet holea. Tha car bore the registration .card ot Ben Archer. In a nearby residence lives Mrs. Frank Phipps, Who told the United Press that "about 15 injured men were brought to my home at mid- 1 night after having been Fwounded while picketing." The violence likewise was con-firmed con-firmed by Dr. William Wise, who treated the wounded men and de- ! clared one was so badly -hurt he 1 mignt die. Dr. Wise would noi identify any of the victims. Picketing had been in progress here for more than a week in connection con-nection with the Farmers Holiday. By last night the pickets had become be-come so numerous and enthusiastic that they were stopping almost every car approaching the city, whether it was a truck or passenger passen-ger vehicle. Reports of the events leading up to the shooting were conflicting, and the sheriff's office refused to confirm there had been any violence. vio-lence. From farmers who refused to identify themselves, came the re port that yesterday afternoon a man from Peterson in Clay county was halted by pickets on his way to a funeral. He was reported to have left the scene in a rage. Then after dark an automobile approached a picket camp at the Lasky garage and when a log waa thrown across the road, a tear ga bomb was thrown from the car, which bolted over the log and sped away. Reports said the gassing spread rapidly through the picket camps surrounding the town, and when a passenger car approached a picket group near the stockyards stock-yards a mile south of Cherokee sometime later, the picket blockaded block-aded the road. It was here that the shooting occurred. At Des Moines the governor's secretary said the governor had received no report of the affair. |