The producers news. [volume] (Plentywood, Mont.) 1918-1937, 1924-01-18
Twentieth Century
Feudalism Soon Due

There is no doubt that beginning
February the employing class press
the country over will launch an ener-
getic propaganda campaign to prove
that the bituminOus miners are over
paid and are living better than the
kings of yesterday lived. Wage and
working conditions negotiations will
soon be opened between the miners
and the operators. The paid press
can be counted upon to do its bit
for the capitalists.
But In the meanwhile it will not be
cut of place to shed some light ON the
glorious conditions in which the hun
dreds Of thousands of bituminous
miners find themselves.
In the year 1923 to the end of No
vember there was a total of 2,254 coal
mine fatalities and an output of 500
million tons of coal. The conditions
under which the miners worked were
intOlerable. We need not go to any
working class or radical sources for
eur evidence. We can call upon the
most pronounced enemies of the work
mgman to state our case for us-the
case that the mass of miners live and
work under a captalist-feudalist re-
CINE.
Recently the American Constitu-
tional Association, one of the most
rabid anti-union cliques in West Vir-
ginia, issued a pamphlet on the coal
industry in which it boosted in this
fashion: "The So towns covered in
this report are necessarily unincor-
pOrated. Fer this reason the officials
of the coal companies must, to a
large extent, look over the matter of
law enforcement and the protection of
citizens living in their communities.
Here we have it. The coal barrons
look after the proper school facilities,
churches, Sunday schools, amusement
halls, and community activities" The
pamphlet also is proud of the fact
that the mine superintendent eXer-
else the function of a chief of police
and are 'mcre effective in maintain
ing order than will country official"
Of course little need be said that the
coal capitalists also control the wages
and homes of the workers.
What this feudalism means in
practice is shown by a recent report
of the Pittsburg Conference of the
Methodist Church No one could ac-
49, VIC AtACO4AOu1oGo VI preaching IdQ-
zeal doctrines or propaganda subver-
Size of the present capitalist system.
Yet the employers would take no
chances even with the church as the
following statement indicates: eve
view with apprehension the conditions
which exist in some of the mining
and industrial towns of our state as
illustrated by the inability of the
Methodist church to secure a clear
and unconditional title to a site for
the erection of a church building. The
only available lease prohibits the
use of the church building for any
purpose. not strictly religious and is
subject to cancellation with the allow
ance of ninety days for the removal
of the building. One of cur pastors
has been forced out of the field for
simply having expressed himself as
believing in the cause of the en-
ployees and another is threatened with
election for the same reason"
From the above We can Judge what
the miners are really up against if
even the church is gagged and bound.
We feel sure that in painting this
glorious picture of the miners's lives
the capitalist press will not say a
word about this tyranny.