Arizona republican., 1919-09-12
Witnesses Before Senate Investigating Committee Assert That Prompt and Effective Co-Operation From the U. s. Railroad Administration Is
 Essential if Coal Problem Is to Be Solved
ATTITUDE OF RADICALS IN LABOR
 RANKS ALSO IS DISCUSSED
Public Will Face Cold Winter if Miners Decide on Nation-W Wide Strike and Shut Down Mines
 in the Bituminous Districts.

Senate subcommittee during the first day of the coal hearing. But all agreed with him that it would take the most intelligent kind of CO operation on the part of the Rail- road Administration and an imme- diate reduction of the car shortage that is holding up production at the mines to save that part of the pub lie which has delayed in buying it's coal from suffering from the cold this winter. All agreed, too, that if the radical element which is att tempting to stir up trouble among the organized bituminous coal miners of the country succeeds in calling a general strike this fall or winter the result would be calami- tous.
 Miners to Meet.
 The bituminous miners have call ed convention in September at Cleveland and according to Mir. Taylor they plan to formulate de- mands there similar to the demands made by the English miners on the English coal operators. According to the proposed demands the pres ent contract for an eight hour day should be cut down to 8 six hour day and instead of working six days a week they intend only to work five days q week. A substantial in crease in the present wage will also be included in the demands.
 In compliance with 6 request from the Committee concerning the present wages paid to the coal miners of this country, Mir. Taylor said that the day wage scale paid to the man who drives mule is prac- tically uniform all over the country and that the men who work by the day, who are known around the coal mines as day men," get a fixed rate per day of eight hours.
 "The miner, however" said Mir. Taylor, "gets a fixed number of cents per ton for producing the coal at his working place, and that naturally varies in accordance with his ability and according to the thickness of the seam. That is, in the thickest seams where he can get down more coal with less endeavor he gets paid less number of cents per ton, and in the thinner seams the rate per ton is higher, because the endeavor to get the coal is greater. Those men are supposed to work eight hours day, the same as the day men work, but ire quently it is almost impossible to keep a man working eight hours. Tn fact, I would say, that the miners do not work eight hours regularly because they regulate their own earnings on what they produce"
 The Wage Scale.
 What do the miners make on an average?" asked Senator Myers of Montana.
 Well" said MT. Taylor, "as the seams range up their wages range up. There are some miners that make as much as fifteen dollars a day and there are other miners that make as low as five dollars a day because they are the type that could not make any more money in mine digging coal than they could pick ing slate of a car, and they get five dollars day doing that"
 In response to a question con- corning the nationality of the men employed in the mines MT. Taylor said:
 "That varies in different sections of the country. We have almost all nationalities. There are great many Italians, Austrians, Slovaks, Lithuanians, English and Scotch.
 Are any of them what you would call distinctivelv American, with out a hyphenf" asked Senator Frelinghuysen.
 Yes" answered MT. Taylor, "and I want to say this-that some of the brainiest and most upright men I have ever known were coal miners-men of the best American instincts. In fact, the great ma- iority of the coal miners are Amer ican citizens"
 Operators Troubles.
 Asked by the committee as to whether the combination of car shortage and possible labor troubles would produce an advance in the price of coal this winter, Mir. Tay- Tor said:
 I've are confronted in the coal business with this condition. The miners organization is entirely ..-...a f-~-. &1- CT, J,-x, o~I