Senators Afield

Four earnest, weary, middle-aged men motored and trudged hither and yon through muddy snow of the Monongahela Valley last week. At moments they were self-important, at others selfconscious.

They were the U. S. Senators appointed to investigate strike conditions in bituminous Pennsylvania under the Johnson resolution (TIME, Feb. 27)--Idaho's English-born Gooding, Montana's long-nosed Wheeler, chunky Wagner of New York (born in Germany) and Oklahoma's quiet little Pine. Senator Metcalf of Rhode Island was supposed to have been with them but he fell ill.

The investigation began with the setting up of headquarters at the William Penn hotel in Pittsburgh. Presidents J. D. A. Morrow of the Pittsburgh Coal Co. and Horace W. Baker of the Pittsburgh Terminal Coal Co. called, to request that the Senators would make their tour without any escort from the United Mine Workers whose officials, insisted the operators, would be sure to distort conditions. Philip Murray, the Mine Workers' vice president, was more persuasive, however, and a union delegation accompanied the tourists, on the understanding that Mr. Murray was to be kept away from the operators' superintendents at the mines.

The first part of the tour was dedicated to getting the strikers' viewpoint. A tabloid newspaper's representative was appointed official photographer. He snapped his shutter delightedly as the four dignitaries played Santa-Claus-taking-orders among the dishevelled strike barracks--shaking horny hands, patting grimy little heads, listening to angry women who had lost husbands or health or unborn babies, or who complained that they had been insulted, assaulted, injured by Governor Fisher's Coal & Iron Police or the operator's "scabs," many of whom are Negroes.

The Senators asked about bootlegging and harlots. They smelled at drinking water and tried not to smell other moistures. They quizzed miners, both striking and strikebreaking, about wages and the cost of living, warning vigilant mine officials to keep quiet during the questioning.

At the Moon Run Mine, near Crafton, Pa., it occurred to them to find out how much it actually costs to mine one ton of coal. Division Manager Harry M. White of the Pittsburgh Coal Co., close-lipped subordinate, refused to reveal the pertinent figures.

Senator Wheeler (snappishly): "Do you mean to say that you refuse to answer?"

Manager White: "It isn't customary to give the costs out."

Senator Gooding (with unintentional ambiguity): "Neither is it customary for the Senate to make an investigation of this kind."

When the operators got their innings, they dressed the Senators up in mining togs and sent them riding on little cars through long, damp, dark coal galleries but continued to refuse intimate information about their businesses until it could be delivered under oath, beside Labor's testimony, when the investigators sit in judgment.