Evening star., 1927-11-09

specisl nssrs,>a SO ire S&xr
CLEVELAND, oasa, November p
~Cnion or acr -aateeS asked q
broad minded ard aAxnsN respected
coal expert. ~N e>ta wtn * he TIVE
years sreea ,rsw Ant what Will II
mean 20 us sper coal tsSefS
Just as hArd- holseG. he replied
"as the operators or the miners
that's what Nou users are. 80 ionI
as You SET all the coal you want and
get il cheap, YOU say What dNa
mean. coal strike All the same,
you must understand this:
Though ! have no dealings win
the union myself, still / know just
IS everybody else in the business
knows that the moment the union
ceases to be factor, then literally
hell is going to break loose in coal
Every mine in the country will try
to cut the throat of every other
with no fixed wage scale any
where. every operator will stop SELL
ing coal and start selling nothing but
flesh and blood. the flesh and blood
of our workers. Every time the low
est bidder gets his contract, he Will
go back to his mine town and tell his
people that, of course, he's got to
cut their wages, hut that he figured
they'd rather work at any price than
sit and starve.
''Of course. that will mean cheap
coal. but all the time you users will
be paying for your coal through the
nose--1 mean in the way of about
five years of poverty, misery, radi-
calism and industrial warfare every
where among our million and a half
or so of mine folk in our coal towns.
I. I, IL
form. properly enough, another union.
And the leader of that union. you can
bet. will be more radical and revolu-
tionary than John Lewis ever dreamed
Of AS matter of fact, exactly this is
happening already in the l. w. w.
outbreaks now reported in the mines
OF Colorado"
Is he right? Can nothing be done
by us of the public to cure an indus
try admitted everywhere to be so
grievously afflicted?
War Partly Responsible.
Certainly the remedy is not easy, IT,
indeed, it exists at all. But one of sew
eral facts every coal user should know
is that the most difficult factor be-
hind the coal war is furnished by the
Great War.
Its hurry-up call for more coal"
gives us today a thousand or two
mines and 100000 or more miners who
would not be needed if the pits were
to provide, say 290 in place Of the
present 200 days of work a year. This
1t is, of course, that chiefly causes
that war-making $3.50 base rate.
To date nobody has found way of
curing this exaggerated case of over
expansion, because nobody has yet
figured how to say. with proper JUS
tice to all, that your pit must close
down while my pit stays open.
When the Jacksonville scale was
signed in 1924 it was largely because
Washington exerted pressure in the
belief that this would automatically
eliminate the socalled high-cost mines
and thus leave the field free for the
more efficient.
The plan put plenty of individuals
out of business. but the mines them
selves remained, to make even worse
than before because oper-
ated at-bankrupt valuation.
Hopeful mines will always mean
hopeful miners. With these mines
running, those extra 100000 miners
also continued to stick around. One
reason for that Is the surprising way
coal miner hates like the dickens to
work anywhere else. That's not be-
cause of the high pay; mainly, it's his
freedom from supervision. his inde.
pendence.
Prefer Working i'm Mines.
Hundreds Of miners also have told me
how they tried a job up outside, but
there was too damn much weather"
A mine changes hardly degrees in
a year and is ordinarily much better