The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1935-07-11
The Hard Road of Soft Coal
CONGRESS TRIES ONCE MORE TO STABILIZE
A BATTERED INDUSTRY
RODNEY CROWTHER, In The Sunday Sun, July 7.

Efforts Of Congress to stabilize the
bituminous coal industry by way of
the Guffey Snyder bill-a modified
form of NRA which received some ju-
dicious pruning following the Schech-
ter decision, but still retains some
features over which constitutional law
yers shake their heads obviously
brings up to date a struggle to do
something for a patient that has been
ailing almost continuously for half a
century. 1t had its first attack of grow
ing pains more than fifty years ago,
and has been suffering from various
manifestations of that sickness ever
since
Labor troubles have persistently
Rugged the heels of this industry since
the depression days after the Civil
War. A capacity to produce in any one
year vastly more coal than consumers
have usually undertaken to use up in
that space of time has made it alter
nate beteween periods of high pros
perity and abject poverty. 1t has al
most always had more than its need of
miners willing to go down into the
dark earth to bring out coal, and in
most years there have been too many
mines trying to operate at a profit.
A few periods in the past half CEN
fury have seen all the mines make
money, but there have been many
years when the operators as a whole
were hard put to it to make ends
meet, and some of them threw up the
sponge. But seldom have the miners
themselves been able to do more than
exc out bare living. For the most
part they have been harried and I'M
happy people, and in times of depres-
sion their lot has been grievous. The
industry's present woes are not new.
AS long ago as 1883 soft coal faced
economic disaster and the miners were
pressing for what has since become
almost a perennial demand, an ad-
vantageous wage agreement. In 1886,
at the end of that panic and the be-
ginning Of brief period of prosperity,
came the first important bituminous
wage scale ever agreed to. Operators
in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Western
Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Vir-
ginia entered into compact with the
miners in what was known as the Co.
lumbus agreement.
A moderate stability followed, but
it did not last long. By the early 1905
the nation was again in the grip of
panic, and the bituminous industry
forgot all about the Columbus COM
pact. Price and wage slashing were
common and operators, as we'll as
miners, suffered keenly in the ensuing
conflict. Each cut in price in any one
field was followed by a competitive
slash in another field, but demand
failed to be revived by any expedient.
In the face of this chaos the United
Mine Workers, in move for self-de-
Tense, called for general soft coal
strike in 1894, and succeeded, in 1897,
in forcing complete shutdown. That
dark year of clash and combat-fre-
quently referred to as a landmark in
American mining industry-brough
into being method of collective bar
gaining which has endured, with the
occasional Intervention of strike,
from then until now. Mark Hanna, an
important leader among the coal oper-
ators, as we'll as a powerful factor in
Republican politics, played leading
role in 1898 in bringing about an
agreement between the producers and
the union miners of the central COM
petitive feld-roughly the region be-
tween Pittsburgh and Illinois.
By that bargain the miners got an
elght-hour day, a uniform day rate
for their labor and a standard tonnage
rate, with special differentials for diff
ferent fields. A vital feature of the
| agreement was provision for the check
off, union dictation plan by which the
| operators collect the union dues of
members by deducting them from the
pay envelopes. This step, probably
more than any other, contributed to the
success of the agreement for a num-
Der of years, for it gave the unions
cash with which to fight their battles.
But the pact did not buttress the in
dustry against periods of overproduc-