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—L _ On PAID 14 PW MEMBERS DURING, MINE B DISPUTE ‘Payroll Was Secret, With. | Progressives Getting Cash From Edmund- son’s District 12. | | B.I. INQUIRY BEIN | MADE ON PAYMENTS, Agency Looking Into | Charges That Conspira | ey Existed to Violat | Labor Act. i a Staff Correspondent of the Post-Dispatch. | | SHRINGFIELD, IL, Aug. 7. | | if li i , Foumeen members of the Progr sive [Mine Workers of Ameri wer@ om a secret payroll of the “|}United Mine Workers of America . during most of the time that the «two unions were disputing control ; | O&Mine B here at Springfield, the ' Post-Dispatch has learned from a | reliable source. The 14 Progressives were paid in cash out of funds of UMW pis trict 12, which embraces Ilifois. ‘| Their names were never cagried ‘lon the books of District 17 for sifear ‘that they might become kfown. Disclosure would have ant immediate reprisal by loyal | Paogressives, who have engaged in a jong and bloody warfare with the powerful UMW. ST, LOUIS POST DISPATCH Dated &-Say,F St. Louis, Missouri. s Inguiry by F. BL i ‘These secret payments are unker quiry by the Federal Bureauflof Avestigation which, on fnstruction of Attorney General Francis Hid- ate; iW'thvestigating charges that « | Sonapiracy €Kisted to violate the | National Labor Relations Act. The Inquiry is under the dMrectiog of || Frank Coleman of the crimingy di- vision of the Department of fuse ice. As has been told in the Poat- ‘Pispatch, the Treasury prepared | case involving come tax @harges against Car! tshoff, les- see of Mine B, and Ray“€dmund-|: ,aon, head of UMW’s District 12 land often referred to as John L. |. A Bureau |' Lewis's “hatchet man,” 1of Internal Revenye report was sent to the Department of tice for action after it had b i seen by President Roosevelt, i gave it his endorsement, i Biddle thought far less of e tax case than Secretary of the yj Treasury Morgenthau, and put the F. B. L to work investigating the Wagner Act conspiracy phase. The | Treasury was ot aN not con- rned with e. reasur € Ton ee gation centered ‘around 2 “Joan” of between £200,- 000 and $300,000 which Edmund- eon is reported to have made to Elshoff just before Mine B was closed down for nearly two and a | Box years, That followed a Labbr oard election in whic jeressives overmhetmite majority, When the mine reopened t the end of the two and a half period, the Progresgive majority I 4 i a- 44 a i won an wen 8 | ad dwindled almost to nothing iand the UMW won control, #4 - 94S 1afo Significance of Inq Investigation of the conspi harges has especial significance w in the light of John L. Lewis's abplicetion to re-enter the Ameri c Federation of Labor. The exec- y}utive council of the AFL is meet- jing lon the Lewis application following in Chicago tomorrow to pass a session in Washington a month go with a special committee | named to consider the question. At the time Lewis walked out, ithe AFL in retaliation gave the Progressives a charter providing clusive jurisdiction in th coal ining field. Recently rush, PMW president, went Washington to protest to William Green, AFL president, and others against consideration of the UMW application for reinstatement Thrush has said that he would ‘reave the AFL and affiliate with Pihe CIO if Lewis were readmitted. Latest information here is that the UMW will not go back into the AFL fold. The executive coun- ‘cil will announce terms for read- mission following the meeting In "Chicago next week. Lewila, it is will find these terms leo ed now DeneévVea How, Ting unacceptable and will withdraw his atplication before the AFL Yoo- veRtion this fall :