Evening star., 1937-05-31
Nv.
BY IRA WOLFERT.


(copyrisht. 1887. by the North American
Newspaper Alliance, lncJ
Vt WAS "enlightened' capital. &C
cording TO w. Jett Lauck, econ
omist of the United Mine Workers
i Union, that started the union on
It's way while John L. Lewis was still
roaring runs home on base ball lot
In Lucas. Iowa, and the portly, frock-
coated preSident-maker, Mark Hanna
was the first to see the light"
Boss Hanna ran coal mines in Ohio
In the ripped-up heart of the central
bituminous field. Coal was a good
business in those days, except that
every man in it thought the best way
to get the business was to take it
away from his competitor. Hanna
changed that.
He brought to the industry rough
and-tumble philosophy-if you can't
kill your enemy, make him partner.
Just before the turn of the century,
when the country was down in Cuba
remembering the Maine, when the
frontier had disappeared and mass pro-
duction and justification of industry
had taken it's place as the molder of
the new American life, Hanna called
his enemies in and made them
partners. In words that have been
lost to posterity. he preached the wis
dom of spreading the cake around.
That way everybody could eat without
getting indigestion.
Unions Pegged Labor Cost.
These were willy men that Hanna
was preaching to. and if some of them
took pleasure in loving humanity they
did not let pleasure come before busi-
ness. So the text of Hanna's sermon
ran something like this:
Labor is so per cent of the cost Of
a ton of coal If We peg that cost
at known point and arrange that
there will be no Chiseling, then We
can all be gentlemen together and
epend our time selling coal instead
of cutting each others throats."
To peg the major cost item and
arrange that there should be no chisel-
ing, the field went union with a bang
and signed wage contract. Now, if
any individual started to chisel he'd
have to take skin off labor's back
The field felt it could rely on the
union-voice of labor-to howl about
that and throw the individual back
Into line.
In those days bituminous coal was
localized and the problems Of one
mine were pretty much the problems
of all mines. So Hanna's plan worked
fine for a few years and everybody
had more or less equal leverage on the
handle Of the cake knife. Then, once
again, the knife disappeared into the
hack Of the operators. The South
had come in and was roaring like
an Oklahoma gusher. New fields,
restless, striving operators, hungry for
business. The South had a longer
haul to the big consumers in the
North They had to do something
about that, and the old throat cutting
started
Long and Short Hauls.
With the feverish blessing Of the
central field in the North, the United
Mine Workers went plunging down
below the Mason and Dixon Line,
and from 1908 to 1915 fought battle
that-its veterans will tell you-makes
the trigger-fingered deputies of today's
Harlan County look like croQuet
players.
While cracked skulls and lacerated
skins (the operators were fighting for
their lives, the miners for theirs
Eprouted thick in the gri1ny land
Ecape, the railroads were waging their
own war for business. Long hauls
were what they grew rich on and
from their desire for long hauls de-
Eeloped the fantastic haulage differ
sntials. Kentucky found it could lay
5ts coal into New Orleans cheaper
than nearby Alabama could and found
also that Pennsylvania could cross
two States into Illinois for less money
than Kentucky could go next door
to the same market. The South could
haul 1000 miles to New England's fac
tories for less than the North could
haul 300 miles And the North could
haul 500 miles to the Middle West
for less than the South could haul
400 miles to this huge market.
When enlightenment" returned to
the industry and coal men began to
realize that war may be all right
for a quick speculation, but Is rotten
for investment purposes, it was this
congeries of freight rates that gave
them their most violent headache.
And it is these freight rates that
played an important part in the tidal
wave OF strikes that engulfed bitumin-
Gus coal In the l920s, while strictly
localized anthracite remained nearly
peaceful.
A Peaceful Quiet.
But soon, under the impetus Of
the European war, everything shud-
dered into profitable quiet. AS
long as the wartime control boards
held and, more important, as long as
the sellers market continued to alb
sorb the rising cost of labor, the
South accepted unionization, however
tentatively. With unionization all
over the map to keep the operators
In the same boat, with money every
where to remove the temptation to
rock the boat, the era OF the merry