The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1919-05-09
NEW MINERS SLOGAN:
''6-HOUR WORKDAY AND
GOVT OWNERSHIP
(By Martin j. Flyzik.


workday was recognized in the coal
industry of the United States. The
outside men worked from nine to
eleven hours per day, while the coal
diggers were stealing into and
creeping out of the mines at all
hours of the day.
In addition to this every con-
ceivable mechanical device that the
ingenuity of man could invent was
installed at the mine tipples to less
en- the earnings of the coal miners.
! Heavy penalties we're also levied
against their daily output through
improper weighing of coal and
through the pernicious docking and
screening systems that were in
vogue.
In those days the workmen had
no voice in the regulation of the
lours Of toll, nor were they ever
consulted by the mine owners re-
garding the remuneration they
were to receive for labor performed,
and to question the masters author
| ity to dictate the terms under which
they were compelled to work was
considered not only preposterous,
but wholly un-American. To abol-
ish these obnoxious practices ap-
parently seemed to the major por-
ton of the mine workers an impos-
sible task. To place check weigh
men on the mine tipples, to replace
the ten-hour shifts by universal
eight-hour day, and to substitute a
mine-run for the pernicious screen
ing system, which would guarantee
to the mine workers full pay for all
of the coal that came out of the
mine, was looked upon as empty
platitudes or, to be more explicit,
as meaningless phrase of a labor
agitator.
Much credit is due John Sine an
old-time coal digger, and recog-
ni2ed leader among his men in the
early Sixties for his earnest pro-
mitigation of the eight-hour day
He tramped the highways and by
ways of Eastern Pennsylvania in an
effort to arouse his fellow workmen
to true realization of the POSSIBLE
tiles for improvement and if pos
sible get them to revolt against
those intolerable conditions. Sine,
| like many other advanced thinkers
of his day, fully realized that in or
der to remedy these evil conditions
the miners of the country would
have to marshal their forces togeth-
err into one solid organization and
thus work out their own destiny
through a medium of collective bar
gaining.
From 1860 to 1898 repeated eff
forts were made by the various
miners organizations to secure
these fundamental reforms, but
through Lack of proper solidarity on
the part of the men employed in the
coal industry during this period
very little of these abhorrent condi-
fionc woro ohoOUod
The United Mine Workers Of
America was the first organization
that succeeded in writing into their
Joint wage agreement in 1898 the
first uniform eight-hour workday
in what is known as the central
competitive field, which comprises
the state of Illinois, Ohio, Indiana
and Western Pennsylvania. The
representative of these four States
considered themselves fortunate,
indeed, when they first secured
from the mine workers this funda-
mental concession, which, to my
mind, was predicated upon the phys
iCal condition of the mines of that
day. For several years following
its application was simple and prov
ed to be advantageous to the dig
gers, principally because the mines
were new and close to the surface,
thereby requiring but little time to
descend into and ascend out of
them at the close of each shift.
After twenty-one years of expert
ence and the operation of the eight
hour workday at the face we have
apparently awakened to the fact
that the mine worker is spending
practically as much time beneath
the surface with an eighthour
workday as he did twenty-one years
ago with a ten-hour workday, due
principally to the tremendous depth
and expansion of the underground
workings of the present day.
While we are thus far exceeding
| ly proud Of our achievements, we
L