The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1900-10-07
THE TRUTH.

AT the beginning of the present coal
strike the miners and their grievances
were grossly misrepresented, a fact
which is now plain, thanks to the enter
prise of the Chicago Times Herald, a.
newspaper. which has, often in the past
proved itself large enough to ignore po-
lftie8l eNpe6Liencye.~or possible partisan
advantage for its ":party;rsin publishing
the truth. In this instance it has put
to confusion a great independent" con-.
temporary, whoset representative was The
first on the scene, of the STRIKE, aiid, w5ho,
Wife prett@slnding u Be irnp5rtiai. gave the.
operators an q advantage Inc his reports
(which they did not .ldeaarvEza Ephe only
conclusion tffats scoutS'ebe drawn : from
those Carly reports was that the miners
did not have much to kick about
The-wage question has been puzzle.
{ fof5 while the miners and their spokes-
men claimed an average of only $3.50 to
$Soe in wages, per man annually, the
operators have. asserted4 that, tbes pay
was as high as from 81. to 81 a. dag. This
at once gave opportunities to. politicians
to both deny and affirm the full dinner
pail claims made by the Republicans.
and in the confusion 1T became evident
to the great reading puhlic that some
body was wrong. The first well known
correspondent or the ground, in whom
the public had confidence, underworld
to show, by a vast array of figures, that
the miners were wrong, that they
were receiving from $500 TO 5000 a
year. The miners. protested against such
representations 1t did appear unreason-
able to suppose that they were earning
such amounts without knowing it. and
the fact that all OF them agreed that
they never received much mere than ha.f
of the average indicated, proved that
the truth had not been arrived at. Then
the Times Herald ordered its Washington
correspondent, Walter Wellman, to 60 to
the coal field, find the truth and report
Il.
This work Mr.. Welman has just com
there was such a thing as politics, some
thing his predecessor on the ground had
not been able to get away from. lie
has told the truth from first TO last, and
his conclusions are all against the coal
trust and in favor of the men, particular
ly with respect to wages Taking all the
mines of the great anthracite region into
account, Mr.. WellnaI. strikes the fol-
lowing average for 1899:
Worked Per Year.
Jaborers .............l75 301
Mechanics ..................225 450
This includes the bosses, foremen, en-
gineers and superintendent who are not
striking, and if the pay of these is taken
out, the average for the actual miners is
not over $3.50 a year, substantial cor
roboration Of the original statement
Can the coal trust afford TO grant the
demands of the men? The answer to
this Mr.. Wellman gives in concluding his
series of reports. as follows: Ito grant
all the demands made by the men
through the miners organization, and in
| addition thereto to give the miners them
selves an average advance of 10 per cent
upon their earnings, substituting a
/ straight per ton rate for the clumsy and
unsatisfactory sliding scale, would add
not more than from to 10 cents ton
to the cost of mining and marketing the
|
anthracite coal. The advance in the
wholesale selling price during the last
five years, up TO the beginning of the
strike, has been about 55 cents
The situation is now so clear that the
public can render a just verdict The
operators are not holding back on ac-
count of the cost of conceding the de
mands of the men, but because they dc
not want to recognize the miners union
They love their men as individuals
independent Individuals, as one orer
ator has lofdly staled--but, really. the,
cannot be dictated TO by an organization
which takes In thousands of men not /.