Telegram To Governor Horner

Here's a 1934 telegram from the Taylorville Women's Auxiliary of the Progressive Miners of America to Illinois Governor Horner. They were protesting the ceaseless violence in their community.


The Progressives frequently implored state, local and federal government to protect their right to assemble, speak and organize. Typically these pleas were ignored or resulted in government intervention on behalf of the United Mine Workers and the coal companies. And when the federal government chose to act, it indicted 41 members of the Progressive Miners in 1936. Subsequently 34 were sent to federal prison.

The source of this image is the State's Hard Times in Illinois. It's an interesting site, but the claim that "as time passed the Progressive Miners increasingly became influenced by communist interests" is unsubstantiated. In fact, both the Progressives and the United Mine Workers often engaged in paranoid red-baiting.