The people's voice., 1941-02-19
HOUSE SPEAKER
REFUSES SPIEGEL
RECOGNITION
BY SAM sPIEGEL

| In a hectic session of the house
Tuesday evening, during which the
Speaker welded the gavel in. czar-
istic and discriminatory manner; sew
eral important revenue measures were
killed. Among these measures was a
bill to tax the enormous tonnage of
coal put out by the Northwestern I'M
provement Company, subsidiary Of
the Northern Pacific Railroad Com
pany. The bill merely provided for a
tax of soc per ton on all coal re-
moved by strip mining methods. The
body of coal involved lies within the
boundaries Of Rosebud county and is
part of coal bed covering approx
mately $50 square miles and esti-
mated to contain about 1880, 100000
tons of coal.
The coal is mined and loaded in
one operation by means of large
electric shovel which can load fifty
ton gondola type railroad car in two
bites. The number of men employed
in the operation is about 65 to 80
which includes those who handle the
trains of coal. The actual mining of
this coal is done by contract to Foley
Bros. at contract price ranging from
s51S, 900 to $750,000 per year. 1t is
reported that this coal can be laid
down at the railroad sidings at a
cost of less than 3Sc ton. A COM
parison can be made between the
costs herein involved and the costs
of mining coal by underground mining
methods. In that operation many
more men are employed and the cost
of producing ton of coal is from
$168 to $212 per ton The only taxes
that are paid at the present time on
any coal production is five cents per
ton, which goes to the state. Then
of course there are royalties of ten
cents per ton which are supposed to
go to the federal government.
AS the Rosebud field is owned who'll
ly by the Northern Pacific railroad
this royalty goes to them and amounts
to about $4,000 annually. They pay
to the state, taxes on this royalty,
which amounts to about $4,000. Com
pairing the cost of producing coal and
the cost of producing a ton of copper,
rather mining a ton of copper ore,
it can be readily seen that the North
ern Pacific railway is exploiting the
natural resources of Montana without
leaving an appreciable amount in the
state treasury. Before this field was
opened there were thousands OF coal
miners used in underground mining
methods. Since this field has been
developed these men have been put
on relief and the cost of this relief
being borne by the state welfare
department. We deem 1t no more
than fair that the Northern Pacific
railway should assist in keep up this
fund.
The committee on revenue and tax
alton brought in an adverse report.
The bill was introduced by Spiegel,
and he was ready to arise and move
on general orders so that the merits
could be considered by the house un-
der general orders but after the ORR
ginal motion was made to adopt the
adverse report of the committee,
Spiegel was not recognized by the
Speaker although he was on his feet
in sufficient time to make the substi-
tute motion. The arbitrary action of
the Speaker, no doubt lost to the
state from 100000 to 100000 de-
pending of course, upon the figure
which the house would have taxed
each ton of coal.
In as much as the entire member
ship of mine operators association
were there with the intent of killing
the bill, and in as much as by his
previous actions there was no doubt
in anyones mind that he was influ
enced by such organization, it can be
readily seen that some undue influ-
ence, more than personal friendship,
the arbitrary action on the
part of the Speaker
The loss of this revenue will un-
mean that relief clients and
old age pensioners will undoubtedly
receive no more than the miserable
pittance that they have received in
the past.
The people Of the state at large
should bear this in mind and at sue
ceeding elections they should be very
careful who they send to the state
legislature to pass laws on their be-
half.