The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1925-05-16
BY ALEX REID.

ny fNEEN nElGs
5OUT of S74 shipping coal mines in
~ Illinois 800 or more are at stand
5still, and the large majority Of those
4for over year, and many of them
two years This condition in Illinois
is duplicated proportionately thruout
America, and the conditions of the
miners, their wives and families, as
result beggars description.
The writer has seen many miners
grown old in the industry, after life
spent in the bowels of the earth, con-
tributing to the wealth of the nation,
gray and feeble, pass into the county
poor farm to spend their few remain
ing years. / attended a funeral of
miner a short time ago who died as
a result of undernourishment and
whose family is on the verge of physi-
cal collapse.
Scores of miners thruout the state
who deprived themselves even of GER
tain mere necessities to be able to
buy their own home, have been forced
to abandon same and seek employ
ment elsewhere, and their shacks have
gone to wreck, "a total loss" and
turnout Illinois today in the mining
camps black despair is met on every
hand and some villages are complete
ly deserted.
A ND this in America, the wealthiest
L nation in the world, with its unlim-
tied natural resources and perfected
machinery of production. Sixty-fve
sthousand miners in Illinois alone idle
thru no fault Of their own, willing and
wanting to work and none to be had.
A surplus of coal has been produced
in Illinois as in other states, and this
coupled with the decline of industrial
activity in other lines for the past two
years, coupled with the increased use
of oil as fuel, and water power, has
produced this appalling situation, and
with 1t the fact that the workers have
not been paid in wages enough to buy
back their production now face starva-
ton and unemployment.
The present annual productive ca
pacity of the coal mining industry is
1000, 10000 tons and the annual con-
sumptive capacity is 500,000,000 tons,
or so per cent less. The productive
capacity includes many uneconomical
mines that probably will never again
be opened up and which is calculated
to reach 25 per cent of the mines in
existence, which reduces the produc-
tive capacity to S0.000,0O0 tons annu-
ally.
During the war 100000 men were
in the industry, but since that time
they have been rapidly thinned out.
The industry today is employing ap-
proximately 70 per cent of that figure.
The industry is so per cent overdevel-
oped. Fifty per cent of the miners
working full time or 100 per cent OF
the men working 80 per cent Of the
time will produce the average con
sumptive capacity.
THE miners not only Of Illinois, but
i turnout the organized field, are de
manding Of the union leaders that
stems be taken Immediately to remedy
the unemployment situation and ale
viate the suffering among the miners
and their families, and well do the
miners know that the only possible
relief under this economic system that
can be given them must come in the
form Of work, and therefore they are
demanding Of their leaders that divi
sion of the available work be given
them, and they are demanding now
to know why three-year contract was
signed without fight for division
of work being made. and in this re
spect they don't forget their former
demands, and the statements Of their
leaders that it was the only remedy
for unemployment
Why did the miners leaders refuse