The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1925-06-21
Mellon Interests Lead
in Open Shop War on
the Coal Miners Union
BY J. LOUIS ENoDAHL.

TO-DAY, facts bring light the information that
Andy Mellon, the multi-milonaire banker of Pitts
burgh secretary of the treasury in Cal Coodges cabinet
at the head of the drive to wipe out the jacksonville wage
agreement between the mine workers and the mine
This again shows that the open shop" interests are
established in the very heart Of the government at WASH
ngton Coolidge had his of breaking the strike of the
policemen in Boston, Mellon has his way of beating down
the miners wage SCALE
The Mellon interests dominate the Pittsburgh Coal Com
pany capitalized at $4,000 O00 and the dominating power
in the soft coal fields of Pennsylvania. This coal
corporation, like others in Ohio Indiana Illinois and other
unionzed states insist that they cannot make satisfactory
profits under the jacksonville agreement has opened
on the miners union by closing down its 50 mines in the
Pittsburgh territory from which its workers brought forth
100000 tons of coal last year.
Now mines are closed Sixteen have been stripped
OF equipment and the mines allowed fill These abandoned
pits are in cannonsburg Fayette City, Bridgeve Mononga
shane Belle Vernon Elizabeth and Buena Vista In
their war on the miners union the coal barons proceed
lay waste this territory forcing the workers to seek jobs in
to travel with their high-prced automobiles.
That the whole community is dependent the work.
ers shown by the fact that Chambers of Commerce.
the organization of little business in the coal camps protest
to the great coal barons But the profit hunt Of great cap
a doesn't take into consideration the agcnes of the
little capitalist Merchants go into bankruptcy banks close
their DOORS and the general business sagnaon forces
middle class elements into the ranks of the proearat In
TACT these petty bourgeois much off than the
workers. since they easily adjust themselves
new conditions and find work place In industry
The propaganda of the coal barons all harps continual
" on the fact that the mine losing money Yet
these Mellon interests dominating the Pittsburgh Coal Com
pany admit earning 100000 railroad subsidiary, tell of
profits taken out of the nonunon fields in Kentucky and of
huge winnings 100000 tons of coal bought non
union mines in West Virginia and sold in the Great Lakes
territory is in this West Virginia field that force
OF the capitalist dictatorship from hired gunner bought
Judges being used to crush every effort of the miners
build their union.
In closing the Mines theirs under the capitalist system
OF private ownership the coal barons decara-
ons made by John l. Lewis president United Mine
Workers Unon published in the April list issue of the Mine
Workers Journal declaring that "coa operators should
sell their coal at profit they should not sell it ALL"
Lewis believes in captasnl-the profit system He is
helping the mine maintain it. The mine owners of
course, where they make the profits using the
non-union fields where Lewis has failed to establish min
ers' union, against the organized fields.
In their fight for existence the coal miners will graz
duay come to the conclusion that they not always
provide profits for their expoers that this will with the
capitalist system. They finding greater and greater
unity among the rank and file in the struggle against both
the mine owners and their henchmen within the miners
union, the reactionary offciaIdom.
Taking the profits out of coal but part of the strue-
gle tor the overthrow of the whole capitalist system Sec
rotary OF the Treasury Mellon and his Pittsburgh Coal Co.
may think that West Virginia and Kentucky offer an escape
from the union fields of Western Pennsylvania But the
Mellon interests will meet up with the Pennsylvania coal
miners again. battle field where the workers have adj
vanced another notch in revolutionary working class con-
seriousness Then they will be compelled and fight
And they will lose.