The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-04-27
MURRAY ATTACKS
COAL OWNERS AT
SENATE HEARING
UNIV. of A. Head Raps
Arbitration
BY LAURENCE TODD, Federated
Press.

~ 6fNOhGNOG AO16l SNSACh
Press.
WASHINGTON April % = If any
member Of congress really sympath-
ICES with the coal miners and wants
to do something to help them, he can
rise In his place and condemn John
D. Rockefeller, Jr., Andrew w. Mel
lon and Charles M. Schwab for their
violation OF the Jacksonville agree
ment with the union.
That was the challenge delivered to
Representative Lea of California by
Philip Murray, vice-president of the
United Mine Workers of America,
when Murray testified before the
house committee on interstate and for
eign commerce. Lea was tiresomely
insisting on his kindly intentions, and
demanding that the witness explain
just what congress could do to inn
prove the desperate conditions facing
the coal diggers.
No Arbitration.
Arbitration as a basis for settlement
of their wage scale will never be &C
cepted by the organized miners, Muir
ray declared, reading from a formal
brief presented in his name and that
of Thomas Kennedy, international
secretary-treasurer of the U. M. w.
A. He explained that a very bad
award" was made in 1920 by an arbi-
traitor in the anthracite dispute and
10000 miners and their dependents
suffered three years under the injus-
tice Of that decision.
Arbitration Weakens Union.
"The whole thot Of employers be-
hind arbitration proposals." he said,
lis to weaken, and if possible to check
mate for sure the ability Of the union
to do for its membership the essen
tial duties which the union is organ
lied to perform. Until the union be-
comes strong enuf to WELD economic
pressure sufficient to secure for its
membership Iong-denied consideration,
arbitration is never proposed either
by the employers or by the govern
ment."
The Three Giants.
The Pittsburgh Coal Company, rep
resenting the interest of Secretary of
the Treasury Mellon; the Consolida-
ton Coal Corporation, representing
Rockefeller, and the Bethlehem Mines
Company, owned by Schwab, these
three giants, he said, had deliberately
torn up their agreement with the
union, thereby breaking faith with the
United States government whose
commission had proposed the agree
ment. Forty-five thousand miners had
been thrown out by their act. The
union was contributing what it could
to support their needy families. Chill
dren Of tender years had been evicted
from company houses in the winter,
and had no houses into which to CO.
Yet congress had not done anything
about that.
The bad faith in the Mellon-Rocke-
fellerSchwab claim that they could
not produce coal at the union scale Of
wages was refuted by the fact that
small companies in the same field con-
tinue to pay the union scale to $4,000
union miners.
$3.50 a Day Wages.
In discussion with Representative
Mapes of Michigan, Murray declared
that wages as low as $3.50 day are
paid to nounnion men in certain West
Virginia mines. He endorsed the pro
posal of a federal fact-finding COM
mission, which the committee is con-
sidering, but insisted that the miners
union should have a representative on
that permanent body, to make sure
that facts essential to the defense OF
the miners right to living wage be
developed.