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across it.
    That afternoon Hunter, Thaxton, State Senator William J. Sneed (president of the United Mine Workers’ subdistrict that embraced Williamson County), and several newspapermen made another inspection of the mine. McDowell took Hunter aside and renewed his plea for troops. This time he made his “interesting proposition”: fifty dollars a day to the officer if he would send troops to guard the property. Hunter told the superintendent to keep his money, and urged him again to close the mine. Again McDowell refused. If there should be trouble, he argued, the state would have to send in troops sooner or later, and he was prepared to hold out until they came.
    In the evening Hunter telephoned the Adjutant General—his second report of the day—to say that the sheriff had not sworn in additional deputies, as he had urged him to do, and to reiterate his own belief that the local officer could not be depended upon to get the nonunion men out of the county.
    On the following day, Tuesday, June 20, Hunter spoke before the Herrin Lions Club. After the meeting he walked about town, talking with the idle men who loitered on the streets. From them he learned that that very morning hundreds of union miners had held a mass meeting at the Sunnyside Mine nearHerrin. Apprehensive, he asked Senator Sneed what the meeting was about. Sneed dodged the question, but assured him that he need not be alarmed. The sheriff, informed of the gathering, promised to investigate.
    That same day the telegraph wires injected another explosive element into the situation. On Monday, after his visit to the Lester mine, Sneed had wired to John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers of America, to ask whether the American Federation of Labor had given the Steam Shovelmen’s Union permission to strip and load coal. In his reply Lewis stated that no such agreement existed, that “this outlaw organization” was furnishing strikebreakers at strip mines in Ohio, and that its officers had paid no attention to remonstrances made by the United Mine Workers. “Representatives of our organization,” he concluded, “are justified in treating this crowd as an outlaw organization and in viewing its members in the same light as they do any other common strikebreakers.”
    Sneed’s telegram and Lewis’s answer were published in the local newspapers on the afternoon of the 20th.
    On the morning of the 21st, Hunter decided that something must be done. Once more he called at the office of the sheriff to urge that impassive official to swear in additional deputies. Thaxton was out, but a deputy said that all was quiet at the mine, and that no new men had been deputized. Hunter, aware that tensions were perilously close to the breaking-point, appealed to the State’s Attorney. Duty sent for the sheriff and added his appeal to Hunter’s. Thaxton remained noncommittal.
    As a last resort Hunter, with the sheriff, called on C. R. Edrington, secretary of the Greater Marion Association, as the local chamber of commerce was known. Edrington proposed that a local citizens’ committee be formed to avert violence at the mine, and named the men who should be its members. Thaxton assented.
    At noon they assembled in Edrington’s office: R. B. Mitchell, a mine manager; William H. Warder, attorney; William Rix,president of the Marion Trades Council; Oldham Paisley of the
Marion Republican;
A. B. McLaren, the coal operator who had been present at the first conference Hunter had held; Hunter; and Edrington. But Thaxton, who by virtue of his position held the key to the whole situation, failed to appear. His office was closed, and no one could locate him.
    The conferees agreed that there would be violence if Lester persisted in operating with nonunion labor and mine guards. But before a plan to stop him could be devised, an ominous report came in. That morning a truck carrying a new contingent of strikebreakers had been ambushed between Carbondale and Herrin. Three of