The Rock Island Argus and daily union. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1920-1923, 1922-04-17
Frederick Haskin's Letter
King Coal Is Sick.
ESPECIAL Correspondents OF The ArEus.l

Dor to society as a whole must be in
excess of what the labor actually is
paid.
Three reasons are given for the
present over-developed condition
of the bituminous industry-first.
the wartime demand for coal which
led to the opening of many mines
and the extension of many others
that otherwise would not have been
opened or increased in capacity:
second, the seasonal demand for
coal; third, the dependence of the
industry upon transportation and
the system of allocating coal cars
on the basis of the productive ca
pacity of the mines.
The first of these reasons is 50
generally recognized that it needs
no explanation. The effect of the
seasonal demand for coal on the
development of the industry is ap-
parent when attention is called to
the fact that the demand ranges
from Is percent below normal to Is
per cent above, spread of 81 per
cent, and that the mines must be
prepared always to take care of the
maximum demand. That something
might beedone to stabilize and reg
ulate the demand for coal is indi-
Gated by what has already been ac-
complished in that direction in
England, where the spread is only
s per cent as compared with the 81
per cent in the United States.
The far PrOhlam
No industry is so dependent upon
transportation as is the soft coal
industry. Coal, when it comes out
of the mine, must be loaded direct
ly from the mine car into the rail-
road car and moved away from the
mine, for storage at the mines is
impractical and uneconomiCal.
Hence the operator is absolutely
dependent upon the number of cars
he can secure from the railroad for
the regularity and extent of his pro-
duction. In the ALLEGATION of cars
by the railroads the mines are rat
ed according to their maximum pro-
ductive capacity, and cars are as
signed on that basis.
Thus if a railroad on a given di-
vision has mines aggregating 100
cars daily capacity, and on a given
day has only so cars, each mine on
that day will get only so per cent
of its rating in cars. Naturally it
is to the interest of the operator to
have as high a rating as possible in
order that he may be assigned the
greatest possible number of cars at
the times when the demand for coal
is at the maximum. Therefore he
wants on call at his mine always d
force of miners sufficient to Oper-
ate his mine at the maximum ca
pacity, although he may actually
need such a large force rarely or
never and although in order to have
the miners constantly available the
basis wage rate must be sufficiently
high to enable the miner to live if
he is employed only three or four
days week at the most. Here
again is another big item added 70
the cost of coal that might be saved
if the industry were developed
along sound lines.
Chief among the organic ills of
the diseased industry is the varia-
ton in mining conditions. In one
mine the coal may be easy of aC-
cess, thick of vein, free of slate, ct
cetera, while in another-even in
one comparatively close at hand
these advantageous conditions are
reversed. Accordingly, in the same
field, and in contiguous properties
in the same field, one mine may be
able to produce coal much more
cheaply than another, although the
wage rates and other such items of
production costs are identical. ObYi-
ouSly, if there is no regulation of
the industry aside from the free
play of economic forces. the one
mine shortly will put the other out
of business, or, if its advantage is
not so decided, it will be garne-ing
the big end of the profits and hold
ing the more desirable and more Gf-
ficient miners because it can pay a
higher rate or offer more favorable
mining conditions
Thus it is that there is something
wrong with the coal industry be
sides and beyond wage qUarrels
between the operators and miners.
Agreement on u new wage scale, or
arbitration in event of failure TO
agree, will not cure ills which are
in no sense attributable to the re
lations of employer and employed,
for the public at last is learning
that something must be done to es-
tablish conditions under which the
nations fuel requirements are met
without somebody's paying for idle
mines and idle miners one-third OF
the time.