The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1880-05-29

7upport of these miners and their
raiiioren; and while it would be hard
~ paint them on the outside any
s2'acKer than they are, one is very
n uch out OF his bearings if he thinks
,'taey are a rough. quarrelsome and
uFunken set of fellows, spelling for a
saght and making themselves a terror
~ the neighborhood. They are lust
nle opposite. They are men who
sNehtto school in their younger days
Just as their boys and girls are go.
9 to school to oday-and who have
s'lo1 forgotten what they learned. In
nus region they are, as rule, men
pi lar more intelligence than the av.
cage laborin G men of Baltimore or
am other city and more than this,
- .s.se men, who, IN many II not ma
l0rity OF INSTANCES, have homes Of
their own and a neat little nest egg
iald away in the bank, for rainy
day. They are permanent residents
here. Some of them have lived here
for twenty five years and more, and
the migratory class is but very
small factor in this mining commu-
nifty. 1t is, perhaps, the more on ac-
connt of their stability and perma
nency that they are so successful IN
their strikes, which have become so
frequent of late years that a season
without one would be a novelty in
deed. Ask the agent or superinten-
dent of one of these coal companies
the cause of these troubles, and he
will tell you instantly that it is the
dictatory position of the knights of
Laber, to which guild every miner
in this whole region, with one soli
tary exception belongs. Turn around
and ask the miners for the cause and
with exhibitions of intelligence of
no mean order, they will tell you
that it is nothing but the gl eed of the
coal companies. who, they claim,
have nothing which in any way
bears the smallest resemblance to a
soul. Yet, one is surprised to find
what state of apparent harmony
exists here among the miners and
their employers. A strike does
not take on the nature of a
fight, and there is rarely any dem
onstration; it is purely, it would
seem, matter of business in which,
as rule, tine miners working thro'
the medium of this terribly power-
ful, but undemonstrative Knights oil
Labor come out at far the biggest end
of the horn. Take this season for
example. The miners began work at
fifty cents per ton, which was an in
crease of 10 cents over the closing
price of last season. They struck by
order of the association, and now get
IS cents per ton. But this association
does more than this, 1t says that no
miner shall mine more than tons,
or two and a-half of the mine cars a
day, and that he shall begin work at
7 o'clock in the morning and end at
5 O'Clock at night, and he does it. To
all these orders the company have to
submit, and now this season, which
at the start promised to be the most
successful for years, will at the end
prove little if any better, than its
predecessors. Such, in fact, have be-
come the power of these knights of
Labor, that they have taken away all
immediate authority from the hands
of the companies, their agents and
superinteBdents, and have assumed
to themselves the working control of
the mines, and the companies know
that, under the present circumstan-
ces, they are unable to make any
successful resistance. An agent of
one of the leading companies here
said to me to-day "Why, if one of
the drivers in our mines killed a
horse from sheer carelessness L
wouldn't dare to discharge him the
Knights of Labor wouldn't let me do
it, All | could do would be to buy
him new horse. The association
knows its power, and, it may be fair
ly said, sometimes abuses it.
AS | have said. the miners now
get 60 cents per ton for the coal they
mine, and are allowed by the Knights
of Labor to mine no more than FIVE
tons day. This would put the
maximum daily wages at 1925,
and there are some miners of this re-
gion who last month made every
cent of this daily for twentv-five or
twenty-six days. l saw to-day the
pay roll of one of the companies TOR
the month of April, and among a
various lot of totals | saw one of $40.
But this man had two sons, and the
knights of Labor dictated to the
that boys of fourteen or
thereabouts shall be allowed two and
"A half ton. nr ono COR load a daV and