Peace Affair

Four weeks in July and August, two weeks in January, ran the negotiations. All were equally fruitless. Last week anthracite miners and operators closed their negotiations a second time with the anthracite strike unsettled. The war would have to continue further before peace could be achieved. The anthracite strife entered upon its fourth stage, for although the deadlock continues there has been progress of a kind.

The First Stage was the opening of negotiations last summer before the old anthracite wage contract expired at midnight Aug. 31. miners asked a 10% wage increase and the check-off (collection of union dues out of miners' pay envelopes by the operators), these demands the operators assumed a general attitude of negation. The negotiations from July 9 to Aug. 4 never reached even a bargaining stage. The deadlock was apparent and they were broken off.

The Second Stage was the strike. It covers roughly the period from Sept. 1 to Jan. 1. During this period the miners went without some $113,850,000 in pay, and the operators lost the profit on some 55,000,000 tons of anthracite that was not mined, meanwhile having to continue paying their fixed charges. Want began to stalk in the homes of 158,000 miners in Pennsylvania. Relief agencies had to help the miners. In Luzerne, Schuylkill, Lackawanna Counties, 125,000 of whose total population of 893,000 men, women and children are miners, in Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Hazleton, Pottsville, Shamokin, severe business depression grasped the entire communities. Meanwhile New England and the northeastern states to a large degree escaped suffering by learning to use substituteslvania legislators, businessmen and others. The period closed with the summoning of operators and miners to renew their negotiations on a call sent out by Chairman Alvan Markle of their joint conference.

The Third Stage was the renewed conference, which closed last week. The basis of negotiations was somewhat different from what it had been five months earlier. Several plans for settlement were offered and rejected by one side or the other. The attitude which dictated the plans offered by each and the reasons for their rejection may be briefly set down as follows: The miners wanted to make sure that there would be no reduction in wages and at least some chance of an increase in wages; that no system of arbitration would be set up which either now or later might reduce wages. Their check-off demand was retained, probably as a trading point. The length of the contract might so far as they were concerned be anything up to five years. But they were determined not to have arbitration, and suggested as an alternative having the operators open their books and having a board determine, on the basis of the operators' profits, how much wages should be raised (but not lowered). The operators apparently would have been willing to open their books to a committee and to agree to a revision of wages, including a provision that wages would not be lowered at present; they would probably have made these concessions provided they could have secured a satisfactory long-term agreement which would prevent further strikes. But the definition of a "satisfactory long-term agreement" was the sticking point. The operators wanted something that would last perhaps ten years, and realizing the futility of trying to fix wages for so long a period, felt it necessary to include a provision for periodic adjustment of wagesate resort in case negotiation failed. Right there was the centre of the disagreement. The miners demanded concessions. The operators would have been willing to grant most of these concessions, provided they could get arbitration for the future. But the miners answered it flatly: "No arbitration!" Each side tried to present its plan in such a guise that the other would accept it. Each time the other side refused to be "fooled." Finally one of the operators moved to adjourn sine die, subject to call. The miners refused to second the motion. So one of the operators seconded it. Then both miners and operators voted to adjourn.

The Fourth Stage began: the continuation of the economic war of attrition; the efforts of outside parties to bring peace. The Federal Government is for the present unlikely to intervene. The President told Congress in his message that he had no power to intervene. A number of coal bills have been introduced into Congresscratsates concerning the vending and distribution of anthracite. What prospect these measures have of success is still undetermined. Two opposition coal measures were also introduced in the legislature: 1) to abolish the state tax on anthracite, 2) to change the law granting licenses to miners. At present this law requires that a man must have worked two years underground in an anthracite mine before he can be licensed as a miner, giving the union miners a practical monopoly on the mine labor-market. The new bill would abolish this requirement and have licenses issued merely by examination. It is too early to predict the future of any of these measures.

Meanwhile the war goes on, both sides suffering in pocketbook but not noticeably in determination. The fate of the anthracite industry and perhaps of the United Mine Workers' union hangs on the outcome.