The New York herald., 1922-07-17
MONDAY. JULY II. 1922.
Now Mine the Coal.

When the leaders of the coal strike
reject President HARDINGs plan OF
arbitration to settle their dispute,
with a commission to investigate
conditions in the industry, they be-
tray their hand. They have pre-
tended to want that very thing for
their unions, but that is not what
they really have wanted. So when
the chance comes to get what they
said they wanted they viii not
take it.
The coal strike leaders don't want,
never have wanted, an arbitration
commission to fix the wage scale only
for union mines. What they want,
and. what they have been driving at
ih all their Government maneu-
vers, is to have wage scale fixed
for all mines, union and non-union.
They know that even if an arbitra-
tion award did give them their old
scale that thing of itself would not
and could not give the union men
jobs, permanent jobs, at such a
scale. They did not have the jobs
before the strike; they would not
have the jobs after the strike
! The union leaders know, as the
mine owners know, that with the
Eon-union mines labor cost down
where it is the union mine, with its
labor cost up where it is, cannot
meet the non-union mine in the COM
petitive market for the SO per cent.
of the country's soft coal needs now
supplied by the cheaper non-union
mine product. They know that when
the union mine cannot sell its coal
the union mine cannot keep union
miners at work.
1t is true that owing to the present
shortage of supply there probably
would be a market for all the coal
that could be offered before winter
comes with its difficulties of fuel
TRANSPORTATION. But after this first
rush to fill the store yards and the
bins price would again assert its de-
termining influence on what coal
could sell and what coal could not
sell.
The non-union mines which are
row able to supply 60 per cent. OF
the countrys soft coal needs would
go right on selling their product
after the strike settlement, as they
had sold it before, for the good and
suficient reason that they can get 1t
out and do get it out at that lower
production cost than the union mines
can get theirs out. The non-union
mines production cost is lower be-
cause not only is their wage scale
lower but the workers produce more
coal with given plant and in a
given time.
And this means that if the union
strike had been called off, but the
old scale continued, the nnion men
could not all have found work after
the first burst of digging to supply
the country's needs before winter.
Not three-quarters of them could get
work. Perhaps not one-half Of them
could get work.
On the basis of that higher produc-
tion cost for their mines half of the
union men would have to be more or
less permanently out of work, or all
of their men would have to be content
with two or three days of work and
pay week. because. arbitration or no
arbitration, there would be twice as
many union miners dividing among
themselves the production to supply
only 40 per cent. Of the country
needs as there are non-union miners
dividing among themselves the pro-
duction to supply go per cent. of the
country's needs.
No arbitration commission, no ex-
ecutive power, no human law could
ever make work for the tens of thou
sands OF superfuous union miners on
ashigh labor cost basis so long as the
non-union mines on a low labor cost
basis were left free to sell their full
product to consumers at lower prices
than union mines could meet Indeed
some of the non-union mines can sell
their coal. and sell IL at profit for
less than It costs the union mines
with their high labor costs to ge'
their coal out OF the ground.
And that is why the coal strike
leaders win not take their case tt
arbitration with the non-union mines
left out.
The coal strike leaders have played
their game to get the Government
somehow into the trap of jacking W
the labor cost and the market price