Vol. 71/No. 41      November 5, 2007

The Grand Jury refused to return indictments against 30 county residents who had signed the nominating petitions for the socialist candidates and also voted in the primary elections.

In West Virginia, an unconstitutional law makes this a “crime” punishable by one year in jail and a $1,000 fine. Seventeen thousand West Virginians had signed petitions to put two socialist coal miners on the November ballot. Bill Hovland is running for U.S. Senate, and Adrienne Benjamin, for U.S. Congress in the 3rd District. Both are members of the United Mine Workers of America.  
 
November 4, 1957
A mounting wave of militancy sweeping through the French working class showed its power on Oct. 25 in a 24-hour general strike.

An unusual feature of the strike was that it came in the midst of a prolonged cabinet crisis. The Bourges-Maunoury cabinet fell Sept. 30. Since then there has been only a “caretaker” government while the French capitalists have juggled parties and politicians in unsuccessful attempts to piece together a new cabinet to cope with the highly expensive and unpopular war against the Algerian people.

As an article headlined “Strike Warns Paris Officialdom” in the Christian Science Monitor observes, French “workers are not only impatient, they are growing more conscious of their power.”  
 
November 5, 1932
Andrew Ganis is the latest victim of the Illinois coal mine class war. Shot to death by a National Guardsman after being pointed out by a strikebreaker as a militant member of the Progressive Miners of America.

A double tragedy in the same family was but slightly averted. Mrs. Ganis was on the picket line at Taylorville and narrowly escaped death with a score of other picketers as the truck in which the National Guard was conveying them to the county line capsized.

In the funeral procession there were 5,000 automobiles with four people in every car.

Gunmen ambushed and wounded Pat Ansbury as he was returning from the funeral. Ansbury managed to crawl from the car and escape through fields with bullet wounds in the neck.  
 
 
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