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an arrest for the murders, that there has not been an indictment by the grand jury, that there has not been a charge of murder placed against any living man, means nothing but justification in such a community.
    But it means more than that outside the community. It means that here in the heart of the state a community has set itself above the law, and that those within it, who are not party to the massacre, are so intimidated that they ignore the crime and attribute the guilt only to those outside the circle.
    “Shall unionism be set above the laws of God and of man?” the
St. Louis Times
asked. “Can any red-handed murderer defend himself by saying: ‘If this had not been done, I would not have slit this helpless captive’s throat?’ ” Others saw in the coroner’s inquest “a travesty of justice … as appalling and as menacing as the crime itself,” “a piece of callous shamelessness and a deliberate taunt flung at the United States,” which “would be regarded as a joke if any humor could attach to the butchery at Herrin.”
    In Williamson County many deplored the killings, but outsiders saw only sympathy for the rioters and scorn for the victims. At the funeral of Jordie Henderson a twenty-piece band, two thousand men on foot, and a row of automobiles more than a mile long followed the hearse. Four thousand mourners awaited the casket at the Herrin cemetery. A similar throng attended the last rites for Joe Pitkewicius, * also killed by strikebreakers’ bullets on the afternoon of June 21.
    (While the funerals of Henderson and Pitkewicius were being held, sixteen bodies were buried in the potter’s field of the Herrin cemetery. As the rough boxes were lowered into graves dugby union miners, three of Herrin’s four Protestant ministers sang a hymn, and then each said a prayer. A few spectators looked on impassively. After the yellow clay had been piled on top of the caskets, the sexton marked each mound with a plain board bearing the simple inscription: “Died, June 22, 1922.”) †
    More striking evidence of local approbation came from certain southern Illinois newspapers, which incautiously printed stories of the massacre before the nationwide revulsion had become evident. The following eyewitness account, by Editor Robert Drobeck of the
Williamson County Miner
, shocked millions when they read it in a pamphlet circulated by the National Coal Association:
    At daybreak the 3,000 armed citizens [surrounding the mine] realizing that the future peace of their county was at stake, formed what has been termed by many, one of the neatest columns of troops ever seen in the vicinity, worked their way into the stronghold of the outlaws and captured those that remained alive. Several of those that were taken from the pit alive were taken to the woods near Herrin, where later they were found dead and dying. There were no riots, merely the citizens of the county acting in the only way left them for the safety of their homes. The faces of the men who were killed in the disturbance are horrible sights. Uncouth, as all crooks must be at the beginning, they were doubly unattractive as seen after justice had triumphed and the county had again resumed its normal peace-time behavior.
    Visiting the region in mid-August, George E. Lyndon, Jr., representing the
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
, found Herrin and Marion “sullenly ashamed, but not repentant.” By local standards, as he interpreted them, the victims were outcasts. “They committed the cardinal crime, the unforgiveable treachery of selling their labor without the sanction of unionism. Theirs was a treason in the eyes of organized labor above and beyond the treason tocountry, even as the terrible vengeance of organized labor was above and beyond the majesty of the law.”
    From the beginning, editorials condemning the Herrin killings had been salted with demands that the authorities—county, state, or national—bring the participants to justice. Day after day