While there are coal deposits in many of the states of the union those shown in the accompanying map are the greats sources of supply and the ones which are affected chiefly by the strike of bituminous miners.

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer invoked the Lever Act, a wartime measure that made it a crime to interfere with the production or transportation of necessities.

Certain of united political backing and almost universal public support, Palmer obtained an injunction on October 31[2] and 400,000 coal workers struck the next day.

That infuriated Secretary of Labor Wilson who had opposed Palmer's plan and supported Gompers' view of the President's promises when the Act was under consideration.

[5] On November 2, 1919, the Great Falls Daily Tribune published that around 394,000 bituminous miners out of a total of 615,000 employed by the coal industry were on strike.

[8] The coal operators smeared the strikers with charges that Lenin and Trotsky had ordered the strike and were financing it, and some of the press echoed that language.