The Rock Island Argus and daily union. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1920-1923, 1922-04-07
LEWIS ATTACKS
STATEMENTS OF
COAL OPERATOR
Charges That Wat
kirs Intensifes
Bitterness.

New York, April Statements
defending bituminous coal opera
tors in refusing to negotiate a CEN
trail agreement with the miners
union, made by T. H. Watkins, a
bituminous mine operator OF Penn
sylvania, before the house labor
committee at Washington, yester-
DAY, were attacked here today by
John l.. Lewis, president of the
united Mine Workers of America.
Mr.. Lewis said Mr.. Watkins dec
larations served merely ito intensi-
fy the confusion and bitterness
now existing"
Mr.. Watkins was quoted as hav-
ing said that 1t would be financial
suicide" for operators to enter any
conference with the miners not
based on condition in each district;
that consumers have grown dis
gusted with the constant failure to
get deliveries from union mines;
that Mr.. Lewis testimony before
the house body had been very mis-
leading" and that in the anthra-
cite field, these labor lords have
been guilty of an abuse of power in
calling a strike when the mine
owners were meeting their very
call for meeting and negotiation"
Operators in Quarrel
To these charges Mr.. Lewis re-
piled:
Statements of Mr.. Watkins were
characteristic and typical of a pol
inN hi e.
some time. He is engaged in a fac
tional quarrel with the other opera
tors of central Pennsylvania, the
other faction being headed by Ben
Clark The loss of tonnage of
which Mr.. Watkins so bitterly COM
plains, is largely due to a fierce
competitive warfare with his COM
peting rivals"
The miners chief declared that
Mr.. Watkins, for some time has
been engaged in a frantic effort 70
destroy the relationship between
operators and miners in central
Pennsylvania"
His utterances," Mr.. Lewis said,
"are dictated solely by his selfish
personal interests
His testimony and his attitude
are of a dangerous nature and
serve merely to intensity the con-
fusion and bitterness now existing"
asserted Mr.. Lewis. THE reac-
tionary attitude of such men is
largely responsible for the arbi-
trary attitude of coal operators in
refusing TO meet representatives of
the mine workers and causing them
to assume their indefensible policy
of repudiating their contract obli-
gations.1
Mr.. Lewis answered Mr.. Wat
kins' plea for negotiations of sepa-
rate wage contracts by districts
when he said last night before the
Central Trades and Labor Council:
ut is not a far cry from sepa-
rate agreements between groups of
operators and district unions to the
feudal system of individual con-
tracts between operator and work
er. Organized labor would then
become helpless, for it would have
relinquished the principle on which
it was founded, that in union
there is strength
With Mr.. Lewis as their chief
spokesman, union members of the
anthracite miners and operators
committee on wage contract nego-
tiations today expect to finish pre-
sentation of testimony in support
of their 10 demands for increased
wages.
The committee now has been in
session for three weeks. A similar
time will be required by the opera
of 40
mands for a wage reduction, it is
predicted, after which the miners
expect to ask further time to argue
in rebuttal Members of both sides
to the controversy today freely
granted that settlement of the an
thracite strike within another
month was highly improbable"