The Detroit times. [volume] (Detroit, Mich.) 1903-1920, 1917-08-23
"A Great Victory for
Coal Consumers; Greater
/, One for the Miners

A..
First. we want TO have n voice in the
three cheers that are being sounded over
the country at this hour for President
Wilson, for the way he has taken the
coal price bull by the horns and jul
jitsued the beast into a harmless posi-
ton in a far fence corner.
The president has. indeed, made war
bit easier TO take and many fellow VIII
step off 10 it with a much better heart
In the thing he is supposed 70 DO.
Washington advices are that a profit
of 70 cents go cents 20 the wholesaler
and so cents 10 the retailer IS all the
government intends to allow, 50 TINS
profit. added to the mine price. plus cost
of transportation. viii represent what
coal will cost in Detroit
Anticipating the further government
action, fixing the retail schedule the
price dropped yesterday in Chicago IRON
81 to $1.50 per ton.
The best of it is, the president IS con
WINGED that nobody is TO suffer
The rest of us know that whole lot
of us are going to be benefited.
However. We hear some protest raised
and this protest calls our attention to
thing the president put over that is quite
as important in a way as the reduction
in the price of coal
For many. many years men have been
engaged, far down in the earth. IN the
most hazardous pursuit Of digging out
coal
Now and then mine has caved in or
gas has exploded. and we have been
made acquainted with the fact that these
men have families to support, children
to feed and buy clothes and shoes for
We know they have families 10 look
after because we have seen these fami-
lies standing about the mines as they
have brought out the dead bodies.
eagerly waiting and hoping that the hus-
band and father will show up alive.
Time after time. We have come across
newspaper accounts of many lives lost
in our mine disasters. and have said 70
ourselves, THAT was me risk they
took
Then we forgot all about il.
President Wilson has suddenly aroused
an interest in our miners that these
miners never had before.
And the striking feature in connection
with the fact of this interest is that il
comes from the very ones who first
should have considered these workers
but who never did so.
"These lower coal prices will work a
hardship to the miners we read in con-
nection with the announcement from
Washington of the war schedules.
And we read. also, that there is dan
ger of strikes by the miners
We won't worry.
The government will see that the
miners remain at their jobs at fair pay.
That stuff is inspired by the very in
terests who have denied the miner a
wage commensurate with his needs and
the risks he runs in his occupation; by
the very men who have kept the miners
down; by men whose greed and whose
SLAVE-DRIVING have constituted THE
hardship with which the miner has had
to contend.
These interests do not care about the
welfare of the miners today any more
than they did year ago.
They have in mind, just as they al
ways had in mind, their own unreason.
able profits.
But they have served to call the at
tention of the American people 70 the
man who is entitled to the first and
most consideration in the matter Of coal
prices, that man being the man who
mines it; who takes all the risks; who
does all the work: who has all to lose
and nothing to gain.
And having been reminded, maybe we
will keep the miner in mind and see that
he fares better after the war