The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-04-29
FEDERAL TROOPS ORDERED TO MINE DISTRICT TO QUELL
 LABOR DISORDERS
(Contfnued from Page One)

of the Colorado Fuel and Iron company, had taken regarding the Colorado mine strike, which has cost the lives of many men, women and children and
 caused large property loss.
 The statement. winch was given out after MT. Rockefeller and his personal attorney, Starr J. Murphy, had worked
 over it all afternoon, read:
 Tn view of the inaccurate accounts in the press regarding my interview with Congressman Foster, chairman Of the congressional committee on mines and mining, l think it proper to make | the following statement:
 Tn that interview, at which Starr | ]. Murphy, one of the directors of
 the Colorado Fuel and Iron company, was present, we pointed out that of | the many coal companies in southern Colorado, we were interested solely and as minority stockholders in the Colo
 rado Fuel and Iron company, which controls only about one-third of the
 output of that state. After long and full discussion of the question In | all its aspects, pr. Foster was unable
 to make any suggestion which did not involve the unionizing of the mines or
 the submission of that question to ar Fbitration We stated to him that if employees of the Colorado Fuel and Iron company had any grievances, we felt sure that the officers of the company | Wouiu pc WllllHB now, dS they dlWdyS l have been in the. past. to make every | effort to adjust them satisfactorily. 1 We showed the doctor that all of the points which are claimed to be at is- sue. with the exception of unionizing I the camps. the Colorado Fuel and Iron | company had granted voluntarily to I its employees long before the strike
 was called or talked oi. These points | are:
 "1. The eight hour day./ This was l established by the fuel company for
 all of its coal miners sometime ago.
 Semi- Monthly Pay
 1 '2 Semi-monthly pay. When this ques | tion was raised by one or two miners l in one of the camps of the company,
 the officers immediately studied the
 question and without delay decided to
 pay not only the miners in that par l ticular camp twice a month, but all of
 the miners employed by the company. 1 8. Check weighmen. For several years the fuel company has raised no objection to the employment by the
 employment by the miners of their own
 check weighmen, as Is done in eastern miners were union labor is em-
 ployed. In order that new men might
 understand their rights in this matter, l sometime since the officers of the com l pany gave instructions that circulars should be posted in all the mines, stat ing that the company had always en- 1 couraged its miners to employ their own check weighmen.
 "A Company stores It has been charged that the employees of the fuel company are obliged to buy at the com- | panys stores. The storekeepers are un- der strict instructions to say to all that they are at liberty to trade where they | pleased; that the company is glad of | their patronage, but that. their standing xr-in l,a ,ff cfl l,at by their action in the matter. As a re-
 suit of a study made in one of the mining camps of the company 1t was found that only p per cent of the wages of the men was spent in the company's stores. Regarding Wages
 ''5 Wages Despite the fact that no dividends have been paid on the com mon stock of the company since our con nection with it, a matter of at least 10 or 12 years, and only $7s00O0 has been paid on the preferred stock, of which the greater portion represented payment on account of an accrued dividend which had
 accumulated during many years, the com- pany voluntarily increased the wages of It's miners last year by total amounting to $SO0,00O a year, and of it's steel em-
 ployes by 8 total of s250,000 a year. The wage scale compares favorably with that of any similar mines, whether union or
  Tn addition to the above, the only mat ter which has been raised by the union is the unionizing of the companys camps. On this question of the open shop, name- ly, the right of every American citizen to work terms satisfactory to himself without securing the consent of the union, reiterated to Dr. Foster what said in my examination before the com mittee on mines and mining in Washing ton a few weeks ago-that we regarded this as matter of principle which could not be arbitrated. Tn reply to his request for some sug- gestion as to how the strike could be terminated, we said to Dr. Foster that if the President would make public state-
 ment that the federal troops were being sent to Colorado for the purpose of en- forcing obedience to the law and secur- ing to every citizen the right guaran- teed to him by the constitution to be he chooses to work as Q member of a
 union or not, 1t would so far to termi- nate the deplorable conditions which TOW
 exist.
 Source of Regret
 Tt was . source of profound regret to us that our conference with Dr, Eos ter did not result in any suggestion lock- ing toward 6 solution of the difficulty.
 'The effort has been made to place the responsibility for tho continuation of this strike upon us as individual owners of stock in one of the mining companies in-
 voived. As outlined above in our talk
 with pr. Poster, tho record of tho CojO-
 rado Fuel and Iron company in pFovid- ing for its employees, long before the strike. the VaYY thinRs fop Whi0in tho