The advocate., 1895-03-27

men, earning on an average the year
round q cents day! In the other, the
representatives ofrailrOad corporations
owning these mines and controlling
the output, endowed by public with
the control of the public highways,
forming pool to keep up the prices to
the consumer, to keep down the pro.
duction of coal so that the prices may
be kept up, and to determine the wages
of the men, and in so doing, to decree
life or death to women and children
famiShing for foodl
Tell US that God Almighty, who
made these coal[elds, storing away in
them centuries of sunlight and heat
for the use of mankind, looks down
with complacency upon these pictures!
Tell us that the risen Christ, He Of the
passionate heart, whom the poor
heard gladly, and from whom the
money changers fled in dismay, views
these things without indignatiOnl 1t
Is inconCeivable. If the cry of these
victims of natural monopoly does not
reach heaven, there is no heaven to be
reached.
The fault is not with God. It is not
with the miners. 1t is not even with
these operators, who are themselves as
much the victims of q system as the
miners are. The fault is with the Sys.
tenn itself, which gives over to the few
the control of the bounties of nature
and of the public highways, and grants
them power to enslave their fellows, or
worse still, requires them to enslaVe
their fellows, or themselves go to the
wall,
Is it not trueP Are these men not
enslaVedP Read the following account
of their condition given in 1888 by a
congressional committee, whose report
is summarized by Henry d. Lloyd in
his book on "Wealth Against Com.
monWealth." The committee said:
The coal companies in the anthracite re-.
glon5 keep thousands OF surplus laborers on
hand to undeIbid each other for employment
and for Submission to oil exertiOn7; hold
them purposely ignorant when the mines are
to be worked and when closed, so that they
cannot seek employment elsewhere; bind
them as tenants by compul.ion in the com.
panies houses. so that rent shall run against
them whether wages run on or not, and under
leases by which they can be tnrned out, with
their wives and children, on the mountain
side in midwinter II they strike; compel them
to fill cars of larger capacity than agreed
upon: make them buy their powder and other
working outfit OF the companies at an enor
NOUS advance on The Co.'S; compel them TO
buy coal OF the company at the COmpanys
price, and In many cases to buy fixed quan.
tlty, more Than they need; compel them TO
employ the doctor named by the company,
and to pay him whether sick or well ;"pluck"
them at the companys stores, so that when
payday co mes around the company owes the
men nothing, there being authentic cases
whero sober, hard-wOrking miners lolled for
years or even lifetime without having been
able to draw single dollar in actual cash" in
"debt until The day they died refuse to fix the
wages in advance, but pay them upon some
hocus.pOcus sliding scale, varying with the
selling price In New York, which the railroad
slides to suit itself; and, most extraordinary
OF all, refuse 10 let the miners know the prices
on which their living slides--a fraud, says the
report Of congress Of 1883, on its face.
The companies dock the minerS output ar
tllrarily for slate and other impurities, and
SO can take from their men FIVE to fifty tons
more in every hundred than they pay for