The Daily News TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1928. AMERICA’S COAL WAR.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 February 1928, Page 6

The Daily News TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1928. AMERICA’S COAL WAR.

In demanding a Congressional inquiry into the soft coal strike in certain parts of the United States, Senator Johnson presented a lurid and harrowing sketch of the terrible condition of affairs which has now been going on for some months, and virtually amounts to a state of war, the details of which appear to be almost beyond conception. The facts however, leave no doubt that in the entire world of industry there cannot be found any conflict between capital and labour which can be compared, in magnitude and ferocity, with the hostilities which have been raging over the eoal-mining districts of Colorado, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. It is said there are mining areas of West Virginia in which guerilla fighting has been as customary and continuous as in certain Balkan valleys. For the greater part of last year the miners have been idle, and though their grievances seemed at one time to approach a settlement, hostilities were renewed with exceptional rancour, by reason of the fact that the companies, . true to the tradition of American mining—outside the anthracite coalfield, which is fully unionised —have maintained an implacable front against the unions, and made use of every available weapon, legal and illegal, for the destruction of the unions. It will be noticed that, in corroboration of Senator Johnson’s statements, Senator Reed quoted the charges made by exGovernor Pinchot against the companies, to the effect that they employed four thousand thugs and felons as private policemen in Pennsylvania, where the coal war has exhibited features not to be found anywhere in the world outside the United States. The mines in that area have since 1924 been operated under what is known as the Jacksonville agreement, relating to wages and other conditions. Some months ago, however, one of the leading coal companies of Pittsburg resolved to treat the agreement as determinable at will. They made drastic cuts in wages and put an end to relations between the miners and their union. This example was followed by other companies, with the result that Western Pennsylvania became, as so often before, a land of merciless conflict and organised terror. The owners imported strikebreakers from the South, one estimate giving the number of these hired desperadoes as 175,000. It would naturally be thought that the authorities would have suppressed the lawlessness which has been so ruthless, and inflicted such cruelty and suffering upon the miners and their families. There appears, however, to be peculiar methods whereby the companies can bend the authorities to their bidding. They hare at their command a force of armed mine guards which, strangely enough, are commissioned by the State though recruited and paid by the mine-owners. This special armed force is supplemented by the State Constabulary, and • by a large body of deputy sheriffs, who, although nominally public servants, ara partly in the pay of the companies, and wholly at their service. It is not surprising, therefore, to learn that charges of reckless shooting, bludgeoning and brutally harrying the strikers out of their homes are brought by the miners and their friends against these mercenaries. Senator Johnson stated that miners and their families were being ejected in thousands from their homes and left freezing in the streets. This treatment is rendered possible owing to large numbers of the miners living in houses owned by the companies. Moreover, the inhuman policy is effectually aided by the law courts issuing injunctions of the most drastic character against the miners as well as against the unions, one court going so far as to rule that the relation of miners occupying company houses is the relation, not of tenant and landlord, but of servant to master. Evidently the mine-owners are able to mobilise the entire .Iflfioui'efla of both cani-

tai and armed force, together with those of the legal institutions of the Republic, for the avowed purpose of destroying the United Mine Workers. Well may the question be asked: How is it that American industry, which in other departments has achieved triumphs of organisation and cooperation that arouse the admiration of the world, can at the same time tolerate or support in the coalfields an example of wastefulness and bitterness, of corruption and cruelty, so staggering and so merciless as the state of affairs evidences? Unfortunately the inherent troubles of the industry have in the United States been immeasurably augmented by the racial difficulty, the crowding into the mines of alien immigrants from every land. It is not surprising, therefore, that a demand has at last been made for a Congressional inquiry, but whether compliance with the demand would result in ridding America of the existing industrial feudalism, brutal and unashamed, is by no means certain, as the mineowners are bound to fight with their backs to the wall in defence of their powers, which have been so shockingly illustrated in the Pennsylvanian coalfields. American citizens freely and fully boast of their freedom, hence there is the. strongest moral obligation on their part to eradicate such barbaric feudalism as that in evidence at the coalfields.