The Connecticut labor news., 1923-01-12
COAL MINERS AWFUL PLIGHT IS REVEALED| EGYPTIAN SLAVES WERE TREATED BETTER


 Pharaoh rearing for his glory a tow ering monument, ever drove his slaves harder than these miners were driven. No czar was more autocratic than this big business"
 The above is part ot a report of a committee appointed by Mayor Hylan to investigate labor conditions in the Berwind coal mines in Somerset and Cambria counties, Pennsylvania, which supply the Interborough Rapid Tran Sit Company with coal.
 The report states ~that E. J. Der wind president of the Berwind-W White company, as chairman of the board of directors of the 1nterborough, con tro1s the coal supply policy of the transit company, which has made it possible for him Ito purchase from his own company coal mined under un- fair and heartbreaking conditions and reap therefrom eormous profits, amounting in 1921 to over $1,6oo, ,oOo with corresponding financial detri- ment to the tax and rent payers in the city of New York" The report rec ommends that the government take over the coal fields.
 "Instead of receiving assistance to get the truth" the report said, "the committee met insults at almost ev- cry turn from the Berwind- White mining company. The officials of the company refused the committees in vitation to attend the hearings, but endeavored to entrap it behind closed doors, the favorite method of soul less corporations.
 "The committee heard narrowing tales of suffering and deprivation, and saw in tents, hen houses, stables and in other. improvised homes, women and children whose feet were bare and bleeding and whose bodies were thin ly, clad.
 "It did not take long to learn that the Berwnid-White company officials treated their employees as beasts of burden and sacrificed the lives and limbs of thousands of men and the happiness and future of thousands of women and children to build for themselves an industrial autocracy.
 Sad as it is, the charges of un- derpaying, short weighing and over-- charging for food and clothing against the company by it's striking employees are only too true. The dejected con- dition of the miners, the wasted bodies of their wives and the sad faces of their undersized children tes- tifed III the strongest terms to their helpless and poverty-stricked condi- ton.
 "The stories of these poverty stricken people were such as would melt any heart except that in the stony bosom of coal baron.
 At all the mines which the com mittee visited, it found most of the women and children barefooted and scantily clad. The feet and limbs of most of these unfortunates, partcu- larly those of the children, were scared and bleeding from walking on hard ice, through underbrush and over stones.
 Tt appears that the company main tained force of armed guards at each of its mines, and the miners com plained that these guards would come over to the camps daily and endeavor to pick quarrels with the strikers and treat their women in a disrespectful manner. Your committee was in- formed that two days before it's arr rival these guards disappeared. -
 "It is sad, but seems true, never theless, that once miner is brought to work in one of these mines he Is unable ever to leave again. A proper motto at the entrance to the various hollows where their mining camps are located would be, Abandon sope, all ye who enter here' According to the tales of horror recited before the committee, the 1iv- ing and working conditions of the miners employed by the company are slaves prior to the Civil War"