Biography
Adam Getto was a National Miners' Union organizer clubbed and arrested at a march on the Ellsworth mine in Pennsylvania during the National Miners' Union coal strike that swept Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia in the summer of 1931, when more than a thousand strikers, their wives and children were arrested. The May 20, 1933 Daily Worker reported that he had been released after serving two years in the Allegheny County Workhouse at Blawnox for strike activity at Ellsworth, Pennsylvania. The National Miners’ Union was arranging a welcome for him, Leo Thompson and Stella Rasefske. His exact admission and release dates remain unverified.
Labor Defender, October 1932 (PDF page 21): The Blawnox roster reports Getto currently under a nominal two-year sentence and alleges a severe beating with his head split open on the Ella mine picket line. The printed mine name differs from accounts using Ellsworth; this source wording is preserved without silently resolving the discrepancy. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1932/v08n10-oct-1932-LD.pdf#page=21
A Pittsburgh dispatch dated June 8 in the June 9, 1931 Daily Worker reports that National Miners’ Union organizer Adam Getto was clubbed during the Westland strike confrontation, suffered a head wound requiring six stitches, and was in serious condition under arrest. The page 3 continuation again reports his arrest and beating. These are attributed contemporary reports; the dispatch does not separately establish his arrest day. The relationship of this June observation to the existing Ellsworth prosecution remains uncertain. No admission, discharge or additional time-served interval is inferred.
A December 29, 1931 letter signed Adam Getto, Jr. asks that relief intended for him be sent instead to his dependent, elderly parents at Bentleyville, Pennsylvania, naming Adam Getto, Sr. The references to fellow prisoners and relief document correspondence during the existing confinement. The parents’ reported ages do not establish the younger Getto’s birth year, and the letter supplies no first admission or final release date.
