Prolonged Abstention

In Fairmount, W. Va., a certain John Albericon visited his doctor. He then went to see the district president of the United Mine Workers of America, who referred him to pickets at one of the little "wagon mines" which supply the odd-lot coal trade in northern West Virginia. The pickets let the mine supply Mr. Albericon after reading this entry on a medical prescription blank (as noted last week by Scripps-Howard Reporter Fred W. Perkins) :

"Mrs. Albericon is ill. Give them coal, please. G. V. Morgan, M.D."

Coal-bearing West Virginia was getting its coal on prescription (as other States had to get liquor during Prohibition) because John Llewellyn Lewis and operators in the great Appalachian coal fields had been unable to agree to a new wage contract. There had been no "strike." There was simply an "abstention from work." Day after day in Manhattan's Hotel Biltmore, Messrs. Lewis, Charles O'Neill of the operators and three other negotiators for each side swapped stories, cussed Hitler, disagreed about Roosevelt, issued futile counterblasts to the press. They had been doing approximately this since their last agreement expired on April Fools' Day. Two Department of Labor conciliators, after trying to arrange a settlement, indicated that the story-telling was likely to go on until Franklin Roosevelt took a hand.

Lewis, O'Neill & associates were not simply wasting time. Each side waited for the other to crack under increasing pressure from U. S. coal consumers. John Lewis hoped the operators would crack to the point of giving him a closed shop,* or a contract clause permitting him to strike whenever A. F. of L.'s unions, particularly the small Progressive Miners of America, may try to encroach on U. M. W. preserves. Many an operator was willing to surrender by last week, but as a group they still hung together for renewal of the old contract, including a clause which makes U. M. W. pay penalties of $1-$2 per day per man during any strike called while a wage contract is in force.

Up to last week a coal crisis existed only in headlines. When 340,000 Appalachian miners first "abstained from work" April 2, big stocks were above ground; 28% of the U. S. soft-coal industry was still free to operate. But last week John Lewis ordered a shutdown May 4 in fields outside the Appalachians, unless the Appalachian operators capitulate. He likewise threatened to close down what is left of Pennsylvania's sick hard-coal industry, unless its operators quickly came to terms in separate negotiations.

Meanwhile coal reserves diminished to a point where industry would begin to feel a real shortage within a fortnight. Railroads in mining areas, deprived of their biggest traffic, laid off men by thousands. Big B. & 0., in worse plight for its own coal supplies than most, began to "confiscate" (and of course pay for) coal consigned to other users over its lines. Pennsylvania's Legislature at Harrisburg formally begged the negotiators to come to terms. Here and there union pickets dumped coal trucked from non-union mines, and police began to worry that prolonged abstention might turn into a bloody, old-fashioned coal strike. Nearly everywhere, company stores owned by the standpat operators continued to sell food on credit to John Lewis' abstaining miners.

Madam Secretary of Labor Perkins, often unfortunate in rubbing masculine Labor the wrong way, observed in Washington that "only words" lay between union and operators.

"Words!" snorted John Lewis. "Well, that's the only difference between Hitler and England."

* Soft-coal operators under contract to John Lewis "check off" the dues of his members from their payrolls, but do not require all their workers to belong to his union.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.