Coulee City dispatch. [volume] (Coulee City, Wash.) 19??-19??, 1937-05-20

% regions or sections. The United
States coal commission is empow-
cred to prescribe the prices, both
minimum and maximum, to which
coal from each of these areas or re-
gions may be sold. In that man.
ner, the law guarantees that the soft
coal producers shall gain an accept
able rate on their investments. Since
labor costs enter directly into pro-
duction costs-indeed, they consti-
tute a major factor-it becomes
plain that whatever wages labor de-
mands and obtains influences the
level of the production costs and the
result is a change in the selling
price to the consuming public.
Thus, when John L. Lewis, presi-
dent of the United Mine Workers of
America and head of the c. L. O.,
determines that the mine workers
are not being paid sufficiently high
wages, he demands an increase
from the mine owners The mine
owners or producers, now that the
Guffey-Vinson monopoly law has
passed, simply submit the new costs
to the coal commission and it has no
alternative but to approve an in
crease in the selling price. In conse-
quence, therefore, every bucketful
of coal going into your stove and
every shovelful that goes into the
furnace of a home or the fire box
of a factory carries an additional
tax that has been 1egaIized by law.
So, we e the bulk of the coal in
dustry pass from the field of free
competition into the form of a mo-
nopoly under government control.
If that can be described otherwise
than as fascism, I am ignorant of
what constitutes fascism.
There remains the question
whether the law promoted by
o- Senator Guffey of
question Pennsylvania and
Validity Repre- sentative
Vinson of Ken
lucky is constitutional.
1t will be remembered that the
Supreme court once threw out the
original Guffey-Vinson law. It threw
out that law because it held that the
original legislation attempted to fix
hours and wages for workers and
that, in accordance with the unani-
nous decision of the court when it
invalidated the MIRA, was an illegal
act by congress. The labor pro
visions alone were discussed in the
litigation at that time. But in the
current Guffey-Vinson law, those OBJ
jectionable factors have been omit
ted. There is no way to discover
whether the Supreme court will find
the monopolistic practice authorized
in the current legislation to be i'm
proper except the bunch that such a
declaration of policy by the con-
gress is not in conflict with the con-
stitution directly.
Some members of the congress
opposed the Guffey-Vinson bill be-
cause they believed it to be uncon-
stitutional. There were so few of
those, however, that the house of
representatives debated the bill
only a day and a half and the SEN
ate debated it only a few hours.
Some sections of the soft coal in
dustry objected to the bill but they
p-.l were quickly re-
D"cReo signed to the in
by LeUis tangible fact that
it would become a
law because of the power that John
L. Lewis welded over congressional
leadership. The chief reason for
the division of sentiment among the
coal producers was that there is a
wide range of costs among the pro-
ducers. There r many mines
which have low production costs and
consequently they are able. or were