THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JULY 6, 1925. AMERICAN COAL CRISIS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19062, 6 July 1925, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JULY 6, 1925. AMERICAN COAL CRISIS.

Threats of trouble in the anthracite coal area of the United States are being heard. On the face of it the dispute is over wages, but it is evident that the country is again to hear of the vendetta between mineowners and workers on the question of union and non-union labour. It needs to be realised at the outset that coalmining in the United States falls naturally into two sections. Almost all the anthracite coal is mined in Philadelphia. Bituminous coal is much more widely distributed. A number of States have well-developed fields, but if any one enjoys pre-eminence it is West Virginia where the deposits are enormous in quantity and rich in quality. Trouble in the •anthracite area need not necessarily affect the other fields, though, through the United Mine Workers of America, it may easily spread. The present dispute, so far as it is concerned with wages, will not touch the workers in the bituminous mines. Early last year they made an agreement with the mineowners covering wages and conditions with currency from April 1, 1924, for two years. Since the leading official of the mineworkers talks of a general strike covering both groups, it is evident there will be no effort by the union to localise any trouble that may occur. If the dispute really extends from wages to the issue of union and non-union labour, its spread among the organised miners generally would not be surprising, for it is among the men .in the bituminous pits of West Virginia that feeling in the past has run highest on this special issue. The labour struggle in the American coalfields has been long and bitter. It extends back for many years, and often an open rupture has been. closed by what was patently a truce rather than a settlement. On the issue of union versus non-union labour, mUch of what has been said and many of the thing 3 done have been ugly in complexion. A serious stoppage of recent times was that in 1922, when from April 1 to August 15 very many of the pits were idle and scenes of violence were witnessed. It began with a dispute over wages. More than 400,000 miners of soft coal ceased work, taking with them 115,000 from the anthracite fields. The wages did not hold the centre of the stage throughout the deadlock. Toward the end of June there was an outbreak of savagery and violence which horrified the whole country and attracted dismayed attention throughout the world. In the vicinity of Herrin and Marion, Illinois, strikers made an attack on miners who had taken their places. Nineteen of the non-union men were done to death, many in an utterly brutal manner. During the riots a mine owned by the Southern Illinois Coal Company was ruined by fire and explosives. Though no man in his senses could fail to reprobate, in the strongest possible terms, what the infuriated strikers did, it is significant that the finding of the Coroner's Court cast responsibility on the coal company for having employed provocative tactics. It is perfectly evident that when trouble starts on American coalfields the resort to violence is only too ready and too complete. Neither side, evidently is burdened with many scruples. From the circumstances of the upheaval of 1922, it cannot be wondered if any threat of trouble in the coalfields is regardied as serious by the people of the United States. To understand the height to which feeling runs between the parties on the question of union and nonunion labour, it is only necessary to follow some of the charges and counter-charges hurled back and forth before the trouble of 1922. On the side of the mineowners it was stated that the United Mine Workers of America, in the endeavour to unionise all the coalfields, had employed every imaginable method of terrorism. The organisation was alleged to have accepted subsidies from the competitors of the non-union collieries. An armed force was said to be maintained in the non-union fields simply to overawe and, in extreme cases, to murder the miners who refused to join. So for one side, which was able to cite definite instances of deaths or injuries. The mineworkers answered by accusing the owners of maintaining their own bands of "thugs" to drivo union miners away from the pits worked by non-union men. They in return quoted their lists of casualties. It is not possible or necessary to judge between the pa7-ties. The fact which stands is that when disputes occur in the American coal industry resort to force is speedily made. Whichever side is most provocative, neither appears much attached to pacific methods. It is a curious commentary on the American claim to progrcsstivcnes3 that there still exists an attitude toward the labourunion movement which was discarded many years ago in countries supposed to be much more backward. To bring the argument even nearer home, occurrences in the American coal regions should help to show that the method of arbitration, when the parties are represented by accredited organisations, has much to be said for it, in spito of the attacks made on it in recent years. The absence of any machinery of the kind has precipitated trouble in the American coalfields before. It may do so again if the crisis now threatening develops on the lines at present indicated