Bituminous

Van A. Bittner, representative of the United Mine Workers in West Virginia, wired Secretary of Commerce Hoover that soft-coal producing companies were attempting to break their wage contract (negotiated at Jacksonville, Fla., a year ago last spring). He said that attempts were being made to lower wages 50%, that armed gunmen were being employed to intimidate the miners, that hundreds of miners were being evicted from their homes by their employer landlords, that, if the Federal Government did not take a stand against the breaking of the wage contract by soft-coal miners, the Union miners of hard and soft coal would all go out on strike together.

What he said is just another complication of the coal-mining situation. The cause of the trouble is that production of bituminous coal is quite different from that of anthracite. There are far too many soft-coal mines and miners in comparison with the demand for coal. The result is tremendous competition, cutting of prices and a tendency to reduce wages. The soft-coal industry, unlike the hard-coal industry, is only partly Unionized. A year ago last spring at Jacksonville, the soft-coal operators in Union fields accepted a high wage contract, thinking perhaps that it would force high-cost mines to close and reduce competition. Instead, it resulted in closing down most of the Unionized soft-coal mines and diverting business to the non-Union fields of Kentucky, Tennessee and part of West Virginia--where operators cut prices by reducing wages. Now Union operators want to get back in business by cutting wages in competition--but their wage contract runs 18 months more (until Mar. 31, 1927). Hence the soft-coal trouble.