The Jersey City news., 1906-04-06
why Have Several Millions
Of Workers Quilted the
Mines to the Injury Of the
Whels Country
PRICES ARE ALREADY UP
GENERAL TIEUP IN THE COAL
FIELDS CAN ONLY BIZ PRE-
VENTED BY FORCING THE
RAILROADS OUT OF THE COAL
BUSINESS

RAILROADS OUT 0F THE COAL.
BUSINESS
WASHINGTON, April ., 1806.-Sev-
sras millions OF workers IN the coal dis
rricts are confronted with prospect OF
being out of work fer months and pos
abby many Of them being eventually
obliged 10 seek other employment, says
the Newark News" correspondent.
&ozne Of them have been making fairly
good wages in the coal mines, but less
wages than are made by workingmen IN
the building trades. The only thing
lNihich. ia the event of a long strike,
stanss between them and starvation for
iSAsm and their families are the small
savings they have been enabled to put
aside and anioa strike fund, which, al
hheugh apparently big, amounts to only
about a dollar apiece for all the men,
svonen and children who have depended
upon coal mining for a living. Yet the
reports from the mining districts are that
hoAody is worrying.
What does it mean?
Ten years ago such condition OF at
fairs would have brought widespread
q \ =
panic. Labor would have been hysteri-
cal. The mining and railroad lords, the
waIl street gamblers, would have ere
this become vfctime of violent dementia.
Now the men who live by their wits go
on taking profits with smiling faces, and
the men who live by the sweat of their
brow in the mines are enjoying pleas
ant holiday with their families.
There is one other side. The railroad
and coal men, who are one and the same,
have been advertising widely the great
quantities of fuel they had stored in an
ticipa ton of strike They supposedly
have that coal now on hand. The object
of boarding it was to tide the country
over a shortage in case of strike. This
stored coal cost them just the same to
mine as the ceal We have been buying
right along. 1t doesn't cost them cent
a ton more to transport and deliver it
now than it did six months ago.
But the price of soft coal went uD
fifty cents q ton in Washington yester-
day. The price of anthracite jumped
twenty-five cents With the millions of
tons the railroads. the illegal operators
of the coal mines, have stored for just
this emergency, the capital city is threat
ened with a coal famine. In the face of
the promises of the coal and railroad
kings that the country would not suffer
from the slight suspension of work while
they were settling difference with their
employees, Washington dealers are to-day
unable to supply enough coal to meet
the daily consumption of the city.
That fftyecent jump in coal prices is
about the gravest problem this country
is facing. 1t is the visible demonstra-
tion of the power of the railroad-coal
trust.
Getting down to the bottom facs. Mr..
Baer and his associates have a monopoly
of the coal and the means for getting it
to market. Mr. Mitchell's organization
has monopoly of the labsr needed to
mine the eoa land put it on the cars. 1t
doesn't matter to the rest of us, the
other seventy cry eighty millions of peo-
pie in the country, whether the present
tie-up is due to an understanding and
compact between the two monopolies, or
q r6a tight over prices and hours. That
is entirely their own business. What
cpneerns the rest of US 10 that here are
two trusts which control absolutely the
fuel supply OF the country, and that
whether the present situation be due to
collusion OF collision between them, we
are paying the bill.
1t is just an occasional incident of this
sort, in which the public is gouged and
the coal trust fattened by the creation
of some such excuse for the boosting of
prioes that Is fastening the destruction
of the whole trust system.
Force the railroads to obey the law
and get out 0 fthe coal business, either by
the government condemning and taking
title to the mines and lands the Supreme
Court has declared they now hold and
operate illegally, or by putting them up
at auction, and a general tie-up in the
coal fields would be impossible.