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Show FEDERATION HOLDS MIME STRIKE JUST EXECUTIVE COUNCIL CONDEMNS GOVERNMENT INJUNCTION AS INVASION OF RIGHTS. Statement Made Public After Long Session Declares Tactics of Government Gov-ernment Are So Autocratic As to Stagger Human Mind. Washington. Holding that She action ac-tion of the government in injunction proceedings ugainst striking bituminous bitumin-ous coal miners Is "so autocratic as to stagger the human mind," the executive exec-utive council of the American Federation Federa-tion of Labor declared Sunday, in a statement Issued after a four-hour meeting, that the miners' walkout was Justified, promised for the strike the entire support of organized labor, and asked aid and indorsement for it from the general public. The council began its session at 2 o'clock, after Us members had been hastily summoned together, and the statement which formulated its action was carefully revised and rewritten by Samuel Gompers and Frank Morrison, Morri-son, president and secretary, respectively, respec-tively, of the federation. The council, In its statement, presented pre-sented at length the history of the negotiations ne-gotiations which led up to and precipitated precip-itated the coal strike, declaring almost al-most In the first sentence that officers of the United Mine Workers did everything every-thing in their power to avert this great industrial struggle. It reserved its bitterest bit-terest words for comment on the government's gov-ernment's action. There were 2200 delegates, representing repre-senting 500,000 miners, seated in the convention which called the strike, the statement said, after briefly sketching in complaints of working conditions in the industry, which, It is asserted, the miners seek to remedy by striking. The instructions of the convention were taken through the usual committees commit-tees into conference with the operators, operat-ors, and then, the statement puts it, "our government interjected itself and applied for an injunction." The statement characterized the action ac-tion as "invasion of the rights of miners," min-ers," intended to starve the miners Into submission by cutting off their strike benefits, and demanded the withdrawal of the injunction secured Saturday at Indianapolis "to restore confidence in the institutions of our country and respect for courts." |