Rocky Mountain Gesture

Unique among Colorado coal diggers is Rocky Mountain Fuel Co., second in production only to Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron Corp. Rocky Mountain is the only Colorado colliery to employ union labor. Last week Rocky Mountain became unique in another respect: 600 of its Union miners voted to go without half their wages for three months. Miss Josephine Roche, the company's 40-year-old, black-haired, thoroughly feminine president, gladly accepted their offer.

To most Colorado coal operators President Roche of Rocky Mountain Fuel Co. is a dangerous industrial radical who brought the United Mine Workers of America back into Colorado. Her father founded Rocky Mountain Fuel. His big customers were sugar beet factories. Miss Josephine was sent to Vassar (1908), did postgraduate work at Columbia, developed a consuming interest in progressive social causes. She did volunteer settlement work, researched the cost of living, helped locally with Belgian relief, returned to Denver to serve as chief probation officer of the Juvenile Court under Judge Benjamin Barr Lindsey (since ousted). For her liberal views her father had scant sympathy. He used to mock her efforts to reform Industry and Labor. When he died in 1927, Miss Josephine inherited a large block of Rocky Mountain stock. She bought more, bought control of the company in 1928. Soon thereafter Rocky Mountain Fuel began making Colorado industrial history.

Because she sincerely believed in union labor, President Roche invited the return of the United Mine Workers of America, which other operators had driven out of Colorado after the Ludlow uprising (1914). She gave her men a tip-top wage scale--$7 per day. She set up company welfare agencies. She created a cooperative form of management. She got rid of the thousands of dollars worth of machine guns, ammunition and barbed wire the company kept on hand for labor disturbances. She won the loyal affection of her workers, all of whom know her by sight, and the anxious distrust of her colleagues in the coal business.

Early last summer Rocky Mountain announced to the Colorado Industrial Commission that the 1929 wage scale would be maintained. Colorado Fuel & Iron followed suit with a similar pledge for its non-union miners. But late in July, C. F. & I. abruptly announced a 25% wage cut, with base pay cut to $5.22 per day. All other important companies in the State except Rocky Mountain made like reductions. Miss Roche publicly appealed to John Davison Rockefeller Jr., C. F. & I. owner: "One word from you can prevent a recurrence of the human and economic waste which will result from the action taken by your company. For 40 years industrial conflict has broken out in Colorado as a result of similar attempts to secure operating profits at the sole expense of workers."

John D. Rockefeller Jr. was unimpressed. C. F. & I. kept its wage cut, slashed its wholesale price of coal 75-c- per ton. That put Miss Roche's Rocky Mountain into a bad competitive hole. It was to help her out that her employes volunteered to take half pay. It was not a voluntary wage cut; the unpaid half is only postponed 90 days. But as a helpful gesture it caused glad Miss Roche to exclaim: "Just another example of their splendid cooperation! We are fighting for such tremendous things. We not only can but we must maintain wages."

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