Church issued a long press statement explaining the truth about black lung benefits and what it would mean to cut them. It is so difficult to meet the eligibility requirements that it takes years to be certified. He reported on the common case of miners not being certified for black lung benefits until after their deaths—with their widows receiving some money.

Church explained that 4,000 miners a year die from black lung, that 70 percent of retired miners show black lung symptoms and cannot enjoy a healthy retirement.  
 
March 12, 1956
Twenty-six officials and members of Local 107, United Electrical Workers, independent, were railroaded to prison March 2 for an indefinite term on contempt of court charges. The local has been on strike against Westinghouse Corporation at the Lester, Pa., plant since Oct. 14 for higher wages and other contract changes.

The unionists had been ordered to pay $22,000 in fines for allegedly violating a court injunction against mass picketing, but refused to pay it. “We go to jail,” said Carl Gray, local president, “rather than permit our members to be deprived of a single bite of food of the modest relief aid we can give them from the contributions of area residents.”

Workers at nearby plants immediately pledged new support after the jailing.  
 
March 15, 1931
Following a session of Congress which failed to contribute one iota to solving the problems ravaging the economic life of the country and inflicting indescribable misery upon the working class—a Congress which not only marked the stark reaction of the Hoover administration but also the impotence of the “progressive group” in the Senate—the latter summoned a conference in Washington where the flower of American middle class liberal thought gathered to express themselves on the problems that Hoover’s Congress failed to solve.

The “progressive” leaders demonstrated their incapacity to rise above their source, their bloodless impotence, their inherent inability to break from the class of big business and big finance, behind which they are constantly trailing.  
 
 
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