the broad terms of the act creating the new federal Department of Labor. But there is another agency which may look into the situation. When fellow members of the lower house balked Congressman Wilson's proposal, he interested Senator Borah of Idaho and the latter promised to introduce into the Senate, at the coming spec-. ial session, a resolution calling for a full and complete investigation, by a committee of the Senate, of the whole situation in the West Virginia coal mines, including the question of peonage, the use of mine guards and other means of oppression. This would be a Senate resolution, it would not have to be concurred in by the House of Representatives, and it is understood that Secretary Wilson has votes enough pledged to pass it.

Even the close of the strike which has been rumored the past fortnight would not make such a fundamental inquiry during the spring and summer inopportune, but rather a measure of precaution in anticipation of future labor conflicts in the region. The fact that such an inquiry has been actively contemplated is not generally known; information about it has not been. published in the newspapers, but has been given me for use in THE SURVEY.

Backward View of the Trouble

The Kanawha trouble dates back about ten years. At that time the miners' condition was good, as things go for men in the coal fields, and the miners along Cabin Creek were organized. An ill-advised strike was called then, and it resulted in a disastrous defeat for the miners. This strike was ordered by officials of the union against the desire of the miners directly affected and it is charged by Cabin Creek miners that it was declared in the interest of the Ohio operators who desired to cripple their West Virginia competitors. Some of these operators have since admitted that they helped finance the strike. As long as the trouble lasted, operators in competitive fields could gobble the business of operators whose plants were shut down. Of course, after the men had been beaten and the strike broken and non-union conditions and wage scales went into effect, the competition was more bitter than it had been before, yet the pickings were good while they lasted. That, however, is all ancient history.

Ever since the strike of a decade ago the men on Cabin Creek have been restless. Conditions were burdensome although they were not so bad on Paint Creek which was organized. The operators were out after business and they cut prices on coal to the limit in order to meet the competition of Illinois, Ohio and western Pennsylvania operators and get a share of the lake trade." For the driving force behind this civil war in the hills of West Virginia is to

be found in the coal bins of 10,000 factories of the Middle West and beyond whose managers and workmen know little or nothing of the struggle.

By "lake trade" is meant the coal that goes to ports on Lake Erie for transportation by steamer and barge to Detroit and as far as Duluth and Superior for distribution throughout the Northwest. All the trade that passes over the lakes, no matter what its ultimate destination, is known as the "lake trade." The Pittsburgh operators have held that the opening of the West Virginia fields was an economic blunder, that the lake demand was no greater than Pittsburgh and Ohio could supply, and that it was a mistake for the West Virginia operators to enter that field. The latter took the position that they had the coal, and did not propose to let it remain undeveloped because it would interfere with the market of the operators of other fields. They would mine their coal and would sell it wherever they could, and if they could grab a big share of the lake trade they proposed to do it. It has been a battle of millions.

To strengthen their position the Pennsylvania operators have bought large blocks of West Virginia coal lands. The Lackawanna Coal Company has, for example, secured control of the principal operations on Paint Creek.

The operators in the Ohio, Illinois, and most of the Pennsylvania fields, get out their coal under terms as to hours and wages imposed by their agreements with the United Mine Workers. In order to be in a position to meet the growing competition of the West Virginia fields on an even footing in the matter of labor, it is an open secret, that they have given aid and comfort to the union in the effort to organize the West Virginia field. They have been fighting on the other hand for a reduction in their own freight rates or an increase in those of their West Virginia competitors, they did not care which, as the consumer finally pays the bill. Until a comparatively recent time, the rate from the Pittsburgh district to Ashtabula and Cleveland has been 88 cents a ton, while to Toledo and Sandusky, the rates from the West Virginia field have been 97 cents and $1.12 a ton.

Something more than a year ago the pressure on the railroads became so great that a meeting of the officers of the coal carrying roads and the operators from the Pittsburgh and the West Virginia districts was held in New York in an effort to settle the difficulty. No agreement could be reached and the roads, unable to resist the pressure of the Pittsburgh operators advanced the rate from the West Virginia fields 94 cents, making the differential in favor of the Pittsburgh field 184 instead of 9 cents. April 5, 1913.

The West Virginia operators appealed to the Interstate Commerce Commission for an inves tigation, and an order suspending the rate was granted. Then John W. Boilleau, a big operator in Pennsylvania, demanded a reduction of 50 or 55 cents a ton from the Pittsburgh district, further complicating the situation. Early last year, the Interstate Commerce Commission handed down a decision reducing the rate from the Pittsburgh district 10 cents and held that the Chesapeake and Ohio and the Kanawha and Michigan rates should remain as they had been but that the Norfolk and Western rate might be increased. This decision resulted in increasing the differential in favor of Pittsburgh to

19 cents.

With this handicap in freight rates, the operators on Paint and Cabin creeks say that it is impossible for them to pay the union scale and submit to union conditions and keep going. It is a fact that although the average price of coal in West Virginia for 1911 was a cent above the price in 1910, many coal companies failed. Some mines have been operated by receivers while others have been closed down on the ground that coal cannot be produced at the mouth of the mines and put on the cars at the price it brings in the market. Others are just about coming out even while some are making

money.

April 5, 1913.

Profits from Mine or Men?

The strikers answer by charging that the losses and difficulties incident to competition. are many of them paper losses and paper difficulties, that the mines would pay well under union conditions and rates of pay if the mines. were not working on an inflated capitalization and were not endeavoring to earn money on a lot of watered stock.

In one of the talks which I had with Neil Robinson, secretary of the West Virginia Mining Association, he went into the cost of production and told of the efforts of the Pittsburg operators to shut the West Virginia coals out of the lake trade. He produced the calculations of G. W. Schleuderberg, general manager of the Pittsburgh Coal Company, which were given in the lake rate cases before the Interstate Commerce Commission, showing that the average cost of production in 52 mines, including general office expenses, depreciation, royalty, fuel, supplies, and labor, was 99.09 cents per ton of coal on cars.

As against this, he showed a generalized statement, which he said was based on actual working conditions in the Kanawha splint coal mines indicating a cost of 99.11 cents on cars, a difference of two hundredths of a cent in favor of the Pittsburgh operators.

The Schleuderberg figures showed a total labor

39

A Cabin Creek riflewoman before her tent cost of 72.16 cents a ton while Mr. Robinson's figures showed for the Kanawha fields a labor cost of 65.66 cents a ton, a difference in favor of the Kanawha fields of 6.5 cents, and if superintendence and certain other costs be included, a cost of 68.78 cents, which is a per ton difference in favor of the Kanawha fields of 3.38 cents. This would more than cover the increase asked by the miners which is half of the Cleveland compromise scale or approximately 21⁄2

Icents a ton.

In

Of course, there is the railroad differential in favor of Pittsburgh to be considered. spite of the differential of 9 cents against the West Virginia field, which existed up to the time of the settlement of the lake trade cases by the Interstate Commerce Commission, the West Virginia operators shipped in 1910 to lake ports more than six million tons of coal, a growth of over four million tons since 1906; or 125 per cent and even with the differential spread to 19 cents, they are shipping coal as rapidly as they can mine it.

The explanation of the Kanawa Valley miners is that in their efforts to capture the Lake Trade the West Virginia operators in competing with the Pittsburgh district operators have been selling coal at less than cost and making their profits out of their men.

The miners told me that ever since the fight began their condition has been becoming harder and harder to bear. One of the men, answering my statement that the operators said they were barely meeting expenses said: "Damn it, I know there is no money in coal at 80 cents at the tipple; any fool knows that, but by God, they've got no right to take it out of us."

And that in my judgment is about the truth of the situation. Or, as Neil Robinson explained to me in all seriousness: "Labor is simply a pawn in the game."

Yet the game has cost the state, the operators and the miners millions of dollars and many lives, has caused untold hardship to women and their children, has engendered a bitterness that a generation in time will not heal and hatreds that will last a lifetime.

In making that statement, I am convinced that Mr. Robinson did not know how it would sound to one who puts the well being of men, women and children above the necessity of capital for dividends. He was simply stating a business fact. I had several talks with him in the course of my stay in the mine region and found him a cultivated, courteous man. I think I got his point of view which coincides with that of the operators generally. They seem to look upon labor as material, to be bought as cheaply as possible and to be utilized in the manner which will be most profitable to the mine investments.

Whenever I went in to see him to discuss the situation he immediately produced account books, and books of statistics and began giving me figures. The whole case of the operators, he seemed to think, could be shown by the books and the balance sheet. He told me of tonnage, cost of production, railroad freight rates, yield on investment, the yield of competitive fields and the cost of operation in those fields, capitalization and rates of dividends. But of the human side, he had substantially nothing to say. Of the outrages of the miners-and they have been numerous-he spoke with bitterness, but of the outrages committed upon them he was silent.

Of course, figures such as Mr. Robinson produced are important but they are not everything. The trouble is that the operators do not seem to be able to see beyond them into those desolate little cabins under the everlasting hills, to the rights of men, to the causes that make for anarchy-that have made for anarchy, in this very region.

The State at Stake

It is hard to tell just how many men have been out in recent months. Five thousand would be a fair estimate. And remarkable as it is, these men have been able to hold out through a winter-and winters are severe in those West Virginia mountains-and they enter the spring and the long season, when cold does not fight them from the ranks of their opponents, full of cheer and determined to continue the industrial war in which they have engaged.

It must be remembered that this fight is not simply one between miners and operators on Paint and Cabin Creeks. It is localized there, but every miner and every operator in the state is involved more or less directly. It is really a fight for the unionizing of the entire coal fields of West Virginia, now largely non union.

1913

41

If the operators stamp out the effort to restore unionism on Paint and Cabin Creeks and prevent its going further than it has already gone on Coal River it will mean the checkmating of unionism in the coal fields of the state. Fights will be made, one after another, in places where the United Mine Workers have organizations and they will be broken up as they were broken up on Cabin Creek ten years ago. Once broken, they will not be permitted to be formed again.

If, on the other hand, the miners win, their organization will be pushed first into one field, then into another, until the whole state shall have been unionized. It will take them years 10 do this. This explains the extreme bitterness of the present fight, each side practically staking its all on this one throw. Of course, the operators do not admit that they are battling to crush out unionism in the state and the officials of the mine workers' organization do not talk much about extending the fight to other fields if they win in this. That is their purpose, nevertheless.

The miners are receiving assistance from other operators in non-union parts of the state. All the resources of the United Mine Workers of America are being thrown behind the miners. As explained to me by perhaps the most prominent man in the organization a few days ago, there is now no big fight on hand anywhere else in the country, and there has been none for a year. This has enabled the mine workers to collect a big fund and they are still collecting. The organization's war chest is kept in good shape by contributions from every mining district in the nation and all this will be poured into the Kanawha field if necessary. In addition to this, the miners again have the sympathy, if not the active co-operation, of the operators in the Pennsylvannia, Illinois and Ohio fields where the union scale is paid.

In fact, the operators in the fields which are organized look upon their brothers who have been able to prevent the union getting a hold in their operations very much as the union laborer looks upon the non-union laborer, although the operator is not so frank in expressing his opinion. He is perfectly willing to upset the labor conditions in his competitors' operations and aid the laborers in making their fights. And the operator in the unorganized field is perfectly willing to see his competitors' fields organized to the limit.

The country in which this war between the miners and the coal companies is taking place is as wild as any that lies out of doors. Cabin Creek Junction is sixteen miles east of Charleston and Paint Creek Junction is seven miles further east. On Cabin Creek the railroad runs south along the bed of the creek sixteen miles

to Kayford while on Paint Creek the road extends for twenty-two miles. These creeks are little streams, ordinarily, which sometimes reach the proportions of torrents, flowing along the bases of the mountains. The elevation of the creek beds above tide ranges from 800 to 1,000 feet, while the tops of the hills which rise abruptly on both sides of each creek are from 1,000 to 1,500 feet higher. The sides of these hills are so steep that only an experienced mountaineer can climb them, yet here and there near the creek beds the miners have raised little patches of corn and vegetables.

The workable veins of coal lie high up on the sides of these hills, and from each mine mouth a track leads to the coal tipple below from which the coal is dumped from the mine cars to the cars of the railroad which runs beneath the tipple. Here and there at the base of either of these ravines is a narrow strip of flat land, and on these flats, the mining villages are located. At places the bottom of the ravine is so narrow that there is not room for the railroad track, the creek bed and the county road, so the road runs along the bed of the creek and is impassable at times of high water and oftentimes in the winter.

It is estimated that before the strike began, there were approximately 10,000 men, women and children living along Cabin Creek and somewhat more than half that number along Paint Creek. A train runs up each creek in the morn