New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1870-07-07
THE MINING TONS0N COME AGAIN.

THE MINING TONS0N COME AGAIN.
History repeats itself even in the most triv-
| ial details in the Pennsylvania cOal-felds.
The miners strike in Schuyllill County hav-
| ing failed, as always before to produce an
advance in prices it is to be followed, as in
previous years. by a forced suspension of labor
throughout the anthracite regions. The real
object of these strikes is invariably to en-
nance prices in NewYOrk but other pretenses
are always found, and this year it is osten-
sibly in behalf of the eight-hour system that
the General Council of the Miners Union has
ordered a general suspension to begin the
10Th inst, and we presume has prepared, as
usual, to enforce the order wherever it may
be resisted Although nearly all of the 10000
anthracite miners are members of the Union,
the DEGREES of the leaders are sometimes dis
puted by those who instinctively know that
the General Council is the natural ally of the
Schuylkill operators, to whom a natural mar
ket is fatal, because of the extortiOnate tolls
of the Reading Railroad. Having no other
outlet, they have no recourse but to force
consumers to pay these tolls by depletion of
supply, as a consequence of the suspension of
production brought about by the ready agency
of the Miners Union.
This operation has been repeated so often
that it is beginning to be thoroughly understood.
The strikes invariably result in benefit TO the
operators struggling against this rapacous rail-
road, and in disaster to the miners in whose
behalf they purpOrt to be undertaken. Mining
should be the most remunerative of industrial
pursuits, because of the fact that it can be pur-
sued at all seasons but as a consequence of
these strikes the miners are generally behind
hand with the world. Travellers in the coal
counties are astonished and panied by the
squalOr of the labOring classes everywhere,
and, ignorant of the peculiar trouble which
atfiicts the region, are apt to consider them
the most impTovident of people. The truth is,
however, that they are not wasteful nor I'M
duly inclined to idleness but, owing to the
natural clannishness of labor as against capt.
tai they are the ready instruments of the
Schuylkil operators in their hopeless struggle
with the Lackawanna companies which own
their lines of transportation. When depression
comes Schuylkill which pays unreasonable
tolls for transportation, produces only at an
enormous loss on every tun, and must stop ;
the natural sympathes of labor then make a
general suspension inevitable.
There is but one way to avoid these con-
stantly recurring strikes which cause so much
suffering not only to the miners but to mil
lions of coal consumers. The Schuylkill re-
gion must be released from its present thrall-
dom by the completion of the new coal rail-
road, the construction of which we do not
now advocate for the first time. No public
work is more imperatively demanded by the
public needs, and none, as we have had occa-
sion to show, is more feasible, or more eer-
tain to return large interest upon the cost
of construction. The building of the new out
let has been long thwarted by the Reading
Railroad, but with the impetus which will be
given the enterprise by another general sus-
pension, we hope that its completion can
not be much longer delayed