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26 THE COAL TRADE BULLETIN.
output last year of 1,480,000 tons. The combined
output of the mines of the Pittsburgh Coal Co.
and its subsidiary companies, including the Monongahela
River Consolidated Coal & Coke Co., is
upwards of 20,000,000 tons of bituminous coal per
annum, which is about 26 per cent, of the total
bituminous output of the state of Pennsylvania,
greater by 3,000,000 tons than the bituminous output
of Ohio, equal to the output of West Virginia,
about 85 per cent, of the output of Illinois, and
about one-ninth of the total bituminous output of
the United States. In addition to this its docks
on the Great Lakes handle about a million tons of
anthracite and a half million tons of bituminous
coals from other fields. The total number of employes
paid over the rolls of the Pittsburgh Coal
Co. and its subsidiary companies averages about
46,000.
At the time of the organization of this large
company and for many years previous the relations
between mine operators and mine operatives.
in what is known as the Pittsburgh district, were
not cordial and pleasant; they were far from being
so. It seemed very easy for either class to impute
to the other the most selfish and unworthy
motives and it seemed very difficult indeed, on the
other hand, to convince either class that the other
might possibly sometimes mean to be fair and
honorable. Of course, there were individual exceptions
but the prevailing attitude of employer
and employe in the Pittsburgh district coal fields
was that of suspicion and hostility. I quote from
an article by Mr. A. R. Hamilton, proprietor and
editor of Tin: COAL TRADE BULLETIN', who took
• part in the scenes which he describes and has at
all times been an important factor in bringing
about better conditions:
"Prior to the centralization of the coal business
in the Pittsburgh district five years ago entailing
as it did a readjustment of the attitude of employer
and employe toward each other, this field
was the center of labor disturbances in what is
known as the great central competitive district,
embracing Western and Central Pennsylvania,
West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. This
was inevitable as-the-Pi-t-t-aburgh district was the
basing point for wage rates throughout this vast
central territory. The general wage rate approximately
was as high as the miners in the
Pittsburgh district could force it or as low as the
Pittsburgh operators could depress it. Without
a general organization of the operators and practically
no unamimity of action on their part, even
within district lines, the other fields held back
until the Pittsburgh miners and operators literally
fought it out. Necessarily this meant constant
confusion in the Pittsburgh district. There wa 5
a savage competition, which strangled the trade
and bore more and more heavily on those in the
business until there was no profit in mining coal
and the operator was forced as a general rule to
depend upon his company store for whatever
profit could be wrung from his investment.
"The warfare was so bitter that unfair advantage
was taken in instances of the miner in his
relation to the company store. There was an
endless wrangle, a constant suspicion, unflagging
antagonism, and almost incessant open breach.
Inevitably the conditions in the Pittsburgh district,
the basing point, exercised its influence on
competing fields. So acute and widespread was
the strife that it culminated in 1894 in a general
strike which affected particularly the Pittsburgh,
Ohio and Indiana fields.
"The suspension of work was attended with open
disorder, arson and bloodshed, and culminated in
the Stick Hollow riots in the Pittsburgh district,
in which a fierce fight between armed guards and
strikers resulted in deaths on both sides. It was
a battle without decisive results. It brought no
relief but exaggerated the ill feeling and sharpened
the industrial hardships for both sides. The
years of 1895 and 1896 were given over to a
guerilla warfare in the Pittsburgh district in
which the number of local stoppages per annum
would tax the credulity of the general public were
they presented in statistical array.
"In 1S95 the miners of the Millers and Toms
Run regions of the Pittsburgh district after a long
period of heart-breaking business depression, without
capable leadership and fairly desperate with
hunger, delivered blindly a blow against every
visible aspect of the employing interest that came
within reach. They assembled at Carnegie, nearly
3,000 strong and inflamed by the oratory of agitators,
started on a march across the coal producing
district, armed with torch and bludgeon.
They left in their wake smoking ruins of tipples
and strewed the way with bruised and beaten
victims, who refused to join their strike. It took
a band of determined men with Winchesters to
stop that march, but the anarchistic outburst was
not allayed until there had been a woeful loss of
human life and the jails were choked and rioters
gathered in by scores of sheriff's deputies.
"In 1897 there followed another general strike
wider in scope than the first. This time the
miners were successful in obtaining a higher wage
rate and both miners and operators met to weld
their respective bodies more closely together and
to arrange some system of joint conference by
which a business discussion would take the place
of a strike as a means to substantiate wage claims.
Following firm establishment of this joint conference
system came the centralization of the
companies of the Pittsburgh district and almost
immediately a readjustment of the attitude of
both operator and miners' leader on the labor