The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-04-27
Miners Officials Called
"AgitatOrs' , "DemagOgues"
BY Capitalists in 1874.
BY J. LOUIS ENGDAHL

A
n Roosevelt April (By Mail from Plymouth, Eng
land).-Ths in oil burning ship. There ever
busy shoves down in the bowels of the liner, shifting
coal from the bunkers into hungry furnaces. Instead
the liquid fuel flows easily and increasingly to keep
alive the fires beneath power-generating boilers.
That that back in "The States" coal mines are
thrown idle by the diminishing demand for COAL thus
aggravatng the problem of overprOducton and under
employment in this basic industry.
But this has never been the biggest problem of the
coal miners. The greatest concern of the workers IN
the industry since the desire for organization first
tered the minds of the coal dgger has been how to
develop the union a national scale to function eff
fectively nationwide front, thus ensurng victory
for all their demands. The periods of greatest pro-
ress by the union have been characterized by national
centralized disciplined action Periods of setback have
been featured by decentralization, separate action
against the employers by district subdistrct and
local organizations always leading to disintegration
and decay, sometimes even to humiliation.
Thus the policies invoked by the regime of President
John L. Lewis in the present struggle, merely repeat
the mistaken policies in the past when, numerous
occasions, the miners union presented broken dis
organized front to the employers.
There big differences, however, between the pres
emit and the past, which constitute black indictment
against the Lewis regime. Some of these are as fol
lows;
First:The first national organization of the miners
for instance The American Miners Association, organ
lied January g. 1861, disappeared in 1863 largely
result of the general depression following the Civil War
The Lewis administration has crippled the Miners Union
and made it wellngh helpless in the years 1851 two
of the prosperous years in the whole history OF
American capitalism.
Second:-In 1868 industrialism in America just
beginning to find itself. Capitalism only getting
foothold with competition prevailing extensively, espe
cially in the coal industry The machine age just
beginning to throb audiby the land Under these
conditions the necessity of national organization anC
national action could not have been clear to the coal
miners should be today with indusrialism at it;
highest stage of development anywhere in the world
with competition well-ngh eliminated among the EN-
nfo who in ersl
Associations
It only when these facts rightly understood that
the monstrous crime committed by President Lewis anG
his administration in failing prepare for the present
struggle thu the adoption and carrying out of correct
policies can be clearly vsualized.
It is such misleaders John L. Lewis, Phil Murray
Van Bttner and Others to mention the recently dis
credited Frank harrington that have made it difficult
to build the miners union and make it function an
effective organization of the mine workers. That such
has existed in the past it exists today, has
made it possible for Arthur E. Suffern in his book The
Coal Miners Struggle for Industrial Status, to say
that:
"Aho the idea of extending organization coextensive
with the needing control conceived relatively
early, the path of development to 1885 land up to
present tmeLE) is strewn with the wrecks of organ
izatons to attain that end Indeed the attainment of
such end remains to this day major problem for
organized labor in the coal industry
This should be warning, if it does from a
nOn-worng class There gift of god that
viii make it possible for the miners union to live in
spite of Lewis, Murray and Bittner If the coal miners
will look around in the other great industries the STEEL
automobile, rubber textile SHOE metal mining and even
the railroad industry, they help but how the
craft viewpoint aided by the policy of local
struggle against nationwide action, has wrought
havoc with all attempts to build powerful unions in these
industries
1t is of the period 1860 to 1884 that Suffern writes
"Four years of Civil War, four years of bust
depression from 1866 to 1870 six years of acute
a
1SS3s4 nterspersed by relatively brief but intense
periods of prosperity in the early Seventies and the
early Eighties; such the general industrial setting
in which the struggle for collective bargaining in the
coal industry took place."
When the American Miners Association was destroyed
in 1863 the local union had carry their struggles
individually. This they did, of course, best they
could in both the btumnous and the anthracite fields,
awaiting the building of another national organization
The weakness of the miners that developed thru nd
vdual action the strength of the mine The
employers refused to recognize the union negotiate
wage scales When the miners resorted to strikes they
were faced by the imported strkebreakers and gunner
of the mine owners bacisted forced to signed dec
laratons of non-affiation with the union.
The miners gradually thoroly realized their helpless
condition and efforts made to extend the
ganzation over larger The Miners and Laborers
Association organized in 1872 established branches
among anthracite and btuminous miners in Pennsyva-
MIA and extended its activities to Ohio West Virginia,
Maryland, Kentucky and Michigan. About the same
time the Miners Benevolent and Protective Association
was organized in Illinois, Indiana and Missouri.
In the following year, 1878, number of prominent
miners from Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania requested
the local unions to send representatives to convention
October 18TH The purpose of the convention was,
az consolidate the entire body of miners for self
projections (2) to afford pecuniary and moral support
the districts forced to the alternative of strike
and go to discuss their grievances and advocate the
passage Of laws in the several states which would pro-
Al. 10. 81