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Show ARKANSAS RAIL HEARING BEGUN JUDGE EXPLAINS FORMATION OF COMMITTEE IN INVESTIGATION INVESTIGA-TION BY LEGISLATURE People of Section Dependent On Road Insulted and Intimidated, Intimid-ated, First Witness Tells Probers Harrison, Ark. The dependence of this section of Arkansas on the Missouri Mis-souri & Arkansas railroad, together with the increase in the number of depredatictas along the railroad started start-ed the movement which resulted in the formaton of the "citizens' committee" com-mittee" according to the testimony of County Judge B. Massingill, the first witness called Wednesday before the Arkansas legislative committee Investigating In-vestigating the disorders along the road. The legislative committee is inquiring in-quiring Into conditions along the road incident to a strike which began two years ago and the lynching several sev-eral months ago of E. C. Gregor, a striker. "For more than two years the people In this country were bulldozed, bull-dozed, bullragged, insulted, boycotted and intimidiated," Judge Massingill testified. "We got tired of it, and it seemed we had to take the matter In hand to stay where we are. We felt that these strikers could leave cheaper than we could. "We dug out this wilderness. They didn't. They left. The strikers imagined themselves a favored few. A brakeman walking out of our committee com-mittee room remarked: "I can't live on $0.S0 a day.' That Is more money than I ever made in a day. "Three or four hundred strikers felt they could run this country regardless regard-less of three or four hundred thousand thous-and rersons. "We cannot live without this railroad. rail-road. Without it we could have no Industries." |