Evening star., 1925-03-15
SOFT COAL MINERS
FACING WAGE CUT
Thousands Idle in Union
Fields-High Scale Bars
Sale of Product.

Substantial cuts in union wages in
the soft coal industry, affecting ap-
proximately 350.000 men, are prob
able within the next two or three
months as the result of preliminary
moves made by both operators and
union officials. Both sides are re-
ported to be weary of idleness, while
non-union coal is romping away with
union markets, tying up purchasers
on long contracts and entrenching it
self in other ways in sections served
from time immemorial by the union
product.
Until a day or so ago, it had
seemed that both parties to the pres
ent wage scale, which continued war
time wages until March 81, 1927, were
about to enter preliminary sparring
incidental to a round the-table con-
ference over wage cut. Union OPP
orators had planned to get together
in Cleveland next Tuesday and frame
a formal request to President Lewis
of the miners union to meet with
them and discuss the proposal. Mr..
Lewis spent some time in Washing
ton in a reputed quest for informa-
ton as to how the Government
would look upon the calling of a Joint
conference to frame new scale.
Brought Before Coolidge.
II is understood that the proposal
was placed before President Coolidge.
What the President said has not been
authoritatively disclosed. The cur
rent report in the industry is that
the President took the view that the
Government should be requested by
fn
tract to call the proposed conference.
Neither side has formally made such
a request so far as can be learned.
Apparently neither operators nor
miners want to take the initiative.
For some reason not on the surface,
the Cleveland conference has been
postponed. It was to have been at
the output in western Pennsylvania.
Ohio, Indiana and Illinois-the old
central competitive field that has set
the standard for union wages in the
coal fields the country over.
The postponement is the second
one. Several weeks ago a date was
set for gathering of the union
operators, only to result in a post
ponement until March Il.
Secretary Hoover, whose interest
in keeping peace in the union coal
fields led a year ago to his being
termed, in some quarters of the in
dustry, as the daddy of the Jack
sonville agreement" is said to be in
close touch with the new develop
ments looking to a wage reduction.
The Jacksonville agreement is the
existing one which continues the 1920
wage scale.
Competitive Markets Lost.
Under that wage scale union mines
IN competition with non-union coal
have experienced and are still ex-
periencing a prolonged period of dull
ness. In the non union fields OF West
Virginia and central Pennsylvania.
where the pact does not apply, wages
are back to the 1917 level or con-
siderably below the union scale. The
result, according to union operators,
is that non union coal is being pro-
duced at a cost far below the cost
of mining union coal-so far below,
in fact, that non-union coal is under
selling the union product in all COM
petitive markets.
Geological survey reports show that
operators in the non union fields are
producing more coal this quarter than
they have ever mined before, while
tens of thousands of miners in nearby
union fields either are entirely out
of work or are working but from one
to three days a week. Thus is pre-
sented the spectacle of union miners
with handsome wage scale living
from hand to mouth, in semi-idleness.
while non-union miners, working for
far lower wages, are putting money
In the bank.
One of the largest coal companies
in the world, the Consolidation, re-
Gently felt the pinch of nearby non
union coal to such telling effect that
it placed before its miners pro-
posal to accept % per cent reduction
in wages so that the company could
compete with non-union coal. After
q vote the employees accepted. They
went back to work a day or SO ago
under the lower scale, but with the
prospect of steadier work. This ex-
pertinent was tried in the Somerset
field and may be extended to the COM
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