The age-herald., 1899-06-21
WARNING TO MINERS
Negroes Being Carried Away to Tako
 Strikers Places

The following Warning to Miners is being generally distributed among the min CTS of the Birmingham district:
 ''The strike is still on in Kansas Mis- sour1, Indian Territory and Arkansas, is for the right to belong to an organization, the right to employ competent men to look after our business, and, see that we get justice
 We are also seeking to establish a sys- tenn of meeting our employers in confer ence annually, and settle prices by agree ments, or arbitration, eventually doing away with strikes.
 We, the undersigned members of the executive board of District IA, U. NJ W. of A, have tried all honorable means to ef- feet settlement with the operators, known as the Big 4, but they have at all times refused to meet us, but claim they will set tie with their men individually, thus ig- noring the union. The Central Coal and Coke company, and a committee of scabs from their mines at Weir City, Kansas, held conference at Kansas City, Mo-, June 6, 1899, and signed a scale of prices that was satisfactory to the Big Coal con- panies and their few scabs that they have at work This scale Is only a farce, and is for the purpose of inducing men here to work under a delusion that an agreeable settlement had been effected
 Now, miners everywhere please take warning and stear clear of this district II and district 21. as the fight is still on and that there only few scabs working under the new agreement All districts will be notified when a satisfactory agreement is made with the union.
 "Signed w. T. Wright district president; Harry Bousfield, vice presdent Robert Gill mour secretary; Hugh Bone. treasurer: John Manning, John G. Mclaughlin, Robert Williamson, members of board"
 This calls to mind the fact that the ex- portation of negro miners from this dis triet to the striking mines of the west is still going on, another large trainload of them having left the city last night.
 I've are not doing anything to induce the negroes to leave," said Captain Charley Jones, of the Kansas City, Memphis and Birmingham, over which route the negroes are leaving, "but as they seem determined to go, we may as well have the business as any other road; don't you think?'
 You can't imagine how badly these labor agents who are working around this dis trct taking off our men are hurting us and other companies of the district" said an official of the Tennessee company yester- day. At a great deal of trouble and eX pense we gather up negroes at Tuscaloosa, Centreville and many of the other non- mineral and rural towns and cities of the state, and teach them to be miners and furnacemen in the Birmingham district. Then these labor agents come along and by means of the rankest sort of false prom ises take the men we have trained away, and we are left in the lurch. Our company has lost over four hundred men in this manner during the past few months. The other day there were about sixty negroes working on the coke ovens at Jasper when the labor agents came and took all off ex- cept five. They went off leaving all the ovens burning and practically nobody to take care of them.
 "I think there ought to be rigid state and municipal law requiring agents who are trying to get laborers to go out of the state to pay heavy license for every days business It is beginning to be a serious question with the Tennessee company how hthey will keep some of their mines and fur naces in operation for want of laborers And yet they are paid better here in com parison to the cost of living, than in any other part of the United States