Biography
Dan Slinger was a National Miners’ Union organizer from Eldorado, Illinois. He was jailed during the Illinois coal strike of 1929–30. In June 1930, he helped organize miners in the Pennsylvania anthracite fields. Police jailed him and other speakers when they broke up a miners’ meeting in Pittston on June 29. Slinger was released before police arrested him again on July 2 during a raid on the Communist Party’s Scranton headquarters. He was held on a sedition charge with bail set at $1,000.
The Daily Worker of July8,1930 reports that Slinger, identified in the article as Daniel Slinger, had been released on July3 on $1,000 bail after the July2 Scranton raid and sedition arrest.
The July 26, 1930 Militant reports him with four other Scranton sedition defendants still jailed for a fall grand jury. It describes Tash’s Dunmore-speech arrest and the following raid on the union and ILD offices, with fingerprinting and ten hours before charges. This conflicts with earlier July bail releases already documented in his case. Those earlier dates are preserved, while the full custody total remains uncertain; the vague later report does not prove a rearrest or twenty years actually served. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/1930/28jul1930.pdf#page=8
The July 3 dispatch describes the July 2 Scranton sedition raid and $1,000 bail and recalls an earlier Sunday Pittston meeting arrest. Five July defendants are not all individually named in this report. The Sunday arrests of Slinger, Little and Pollack were followed by release before the July raid; those earlier detentions are distinct from the sedition rearrests. Tash and Frankfeld are not assumed to share identical arrest circumstances. Daily Worker, July 4, 1930, page 1. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1930/v07-n160-NY-jul-04-1930-DW-LOC.pdf
A proposed federal prosecution, not a completed federal disposition
The July 10 Scranton dispatch names Sylvan Pollock, John and Joseph Lash, Dan Slinger and John Little in a proposed effort to turn their prosecution into a federal case. The report says district attorney J. J. Owens was consulting assistant U.S. district attorney A. A. Vosberg (also printed Vosburg) and a Justice Department agent identified only as Hickey. These are reported consultations, not proof of a federal indictment, conviction, sentence or the assignment of a formal prosecutor in an executed proceeding. Its “last Friday” arrest wording conflicts with the more specific July 2 arrests and July 3 or July 6 bail departures preserved from the July 8 issue. No new arrest date, readmission, continuous detention or numerical duration is inferred. Dan Slinger is matched through the existing Scranton organizing and co-defendant context; the printed Pollock variant is already cross-referenced in Pollack’s biography and is not newly installed as an alias.
Daily Worker, July 11, 1930, original pages 3. Accounts and allegations are attributed to the newspaper.
