i STEAM COAL - Clpdigital.org

34 THE COAL TRADE BULLETIN.
nage, but those obligations are all done, those contracts
have expired, have been completed. We
start in this year to compete with a clean slate.
comparatively speaking, with the other regions,
and if we are going to get business we must get
it on the basis of competition or else let it alone.
If we don't get much and can't compete, the idleness
that Central Pennsylvania saw last year will
hardly be a circumstance to what it will see this
year. That is what you want to think about.
Naturally we, as operators, want to do business;
we want to run the plants in which our money
is invested, and we want to show a reasonable
return. You men want all the wage you can get.
That is right, right from your standpoint and it
is right from ours, but you can't sell two dollars
worth of labor for two dollars and a half. You
may do it for a little while, you may pinch the
operator until he goes and gets the money or
takes what he has saved up to pay it to you, but,
as your own leader will tell you, that is not good
business; that can't continue; that has been going
on and you are faced with the problem now of
either getting down and meeting this or sitting
still in idleness or getting work somewhere else.
We had an instance last summer, we shut up a
colliery. Your own men thought it was all a bluff.
We talked to them. We reasoned with them. We
OPENED THE BOOKS
and showed it to them the coal cost us from 25
to 50 cents a ton more than we were getting. We
shut it up. We said, men, we don't know when
we will start again, maybe in six months, maybe
never, we don't know; we want to show you the
whole story, it can't go on. In the end you saw it,
after you had made a great deal of trouble, and
your own men did just what you condemn, came
to us and asked us to put three men in two men's
places, and we reasoned with them and showed
them that couldn't be done and after considerable
trouble they were convinced. We showed them
everything there was about it. We want to show
you all the cards right on the table. It is either
work in competition or it is quit. Now let us
look at it in a reasonable cold business-like way.
Don't mind these stories that come out in the
newspapers. Takeew word for some of it. We
are not here to deceive you. It is to our interest
to run, as I just told you, but it isn't to our interest
to run at a loss. We run at a loss to hold
business, up to a certain point, and then we have
got to quit. I don't say every operator lost—
don't misunderstand. We talk for the region as
a whole and that is what you are faced with.
Now, think of it carefully and remember we are
telling you the exact condition of affairs. We don't
want to put up the South as any bugaboo. We
don't want to say to you somebody is doing this
and that, and therefore you have got to work for
nothing. We don't want to do that. It isn't
necessary, but it is necessary to come
WITHIN REACH OF COMPETITION.
The debate in the joint committee was resumed
on March 17, a considerable portion of the day
being devoted to a discussion of reports showing
the cost of production in various competitive
fields during the past six months. The data
gathered came from 234 mines, and showed the
extreme figures at which these coals were sold in
the Eastern and line markets. No progress
was apparently made at the three joint scale committee
sessions, the miners' representatives being
willing only to concede one point to maintain the
old scale of wages at 62 cents, providing the operators
would accept clauses 6, 7, S, 9, 10 and 11 of
the new scale agreement, but this was emphatically
refused, being reported back to the convention
and a joint session of all operators and delegates
was asked for.
James Kerr and Frank H. Wigton presented the
operators' side of the facts to the convention
held in the evening, in a full and lucid manner.
contending that their
POSITION WAS UNBEARABLE
with the actual total cost of 95 cents per ton
for coal on the cars, as against 60 and 70 cents in
other fields. The miners were promised reasonably
fair work, covering over $2.50 per day if
they agreed to accept a reduction in wages and
were urged by the operators not to insist on a
rate of wages that would be liable to lay the
mines idle as was the case last year. Mr. Kerr
said:
"Mr. Chairman: The scale committee beg leave
to report that they have been discussing since
they met here yesterday the different scales presented
by the miners and operators. The discussion
has brought no conclusion. The scale
committee seem unable to agree. We thought
that possibly it was better for us to come back
to the joint convention and report to you our
difficulties, giving you some of the reasons therefor,
so that you might understand more fully the
difficulties we have to contend with in reaching
an agreement, and once your knowledge of those
difficulties was increased somewhat by the information
we had on this subject, that our future
deliberations as a scale conimittee might be conducted
with knowledge of the fact that you were
at least in possession of some of the information
that we had on this subject. Some comment was
made in the joint convention that the operators
failed to give a reason for the scale they asked
the convention to adopt. There are many reasons
why operators might hesitate to get up before
the general public and discuss these trade
questions. Many of them are in a sense secret
to us and are not for the information of the gen-