Anthracite Efforts

" Meet again; talk again; quarrel again; leave again. Meet again . . ." continued to be an accurate history of the attempts to arrive at a new wage agreement to prevent an anthracite strike on Sept. 1.

The U. S. Coal Commission, entering the situation for the first time, invited the Joint Scale Committee of the anthracite miners and operators to meet with it at the Pennsylvania Hotel, Manhattan. The invitations were accepted. After both sides had talked with the Commission the miners made two offers: 1) That the operators accept all their demands; 2) that the miners would give up their demands for the check-off (whereby the operators would collect dues, assessments and fines for the union out of miners' wages) provided the operators would stop their practice of checking off from miners' wages debts contracted by miners to the companies for rent, fuel, etc. The operators agreed to this proposal, saying that their stores would be put upon a cash basis.

Peace threatened. But it was a false alarm. Apparently the operators had misunderstood the miners. Attached to the check-off demand were provisions for full recognition of the United Mine Workers and a two-year wage contract. The operators assumed that in waiving the check-off demand the miners had waived these conditions, too. President Lewis of the miners said that when he waived the checkoff, he waived the checkoff, and nothing else. He further made it plain that when he asked the operators to stop checking off rent and supplies, from the miners' wages he did not mean putting such business on a cash basis --he meant that the miners should receive just as much credit as before, but that the operators should find other means of collecting their bills. The operators saw nothing constructive in these suggestions, and the conference broke up. It took two days to reach this misunderstanding. Thereupon the Coal Commission called in John L. Lewis for the miners and Samuel D. Warriner for the operators, " urging" them to go into a joint conference with their associates and report whether they could not come to an agreement, permanent or tentative, such as would avert a strike. A reply was requested before evening. The miners and operators met again in joint conference. The operators renewed their request that there be an agreement against a strike on Sept. 1, providing that any later agreement be retroactive to that date. The operators also asked that any fact of the eleven demands of the miners not agreed on be submitted to arbitration. The miners refused both offers successively. A reply was then sent to the Coal Commission: The miners and operators would meet again jointly at Atlantic City three days later to resume their conference. The salubrious climate of Atlantic City brought about a temporary truce on the question of the checkoff. Miners and operators turned to a discussion of wage rates, and found themselves equally able to disagree on the new subject. The miners asked for a $2 increase for men working by the day, and a 20% increase for men working on contract. The operators declared that this would add $85,000,000 or $90,000,000 a year to the cost of producing and that the public would not tolerate the resulting increase in coal prices. The miners answered that the steel workers and bituminous miners were getting more than they. John L. Lewis characterized the discussions as "neither amicable nor heated." Reports from the Schuylkill region asserted that almost half of the local unions were in revolt against the check-off demand of John L. Lewis and the miners' representatives in the joint wage conference. The reason given for this attitude by the Schuylkill miners is the fear that under the check-off the union might make excessive assessments and fines against their wages. John L. Lewis laughed at this idea and declared that private detectives employed by the operatives were responsible for the report.