On with the Truce

Before 3,000 convention delegates last week, the United Mine Workers' Chief John L. Lewis angrily laid down the law on wildcat strikes in the coal industry. Rumbled Lewis, citing 170 local walkouts from January through April this year: "Carry this message back to your members : don't do it again. The time has gone when half a dozen men can decide not to work." Mine Boss Lewis had good reason to want peace. He had just negotiated another one-year contract with Edward Fox, representing the bituminous coal operators, for a pay increase that would keep Lewis' 180,000 miners well up at the top of the U.S. industrial wage scale.

Miners will get a pay raise of $1.20 a day, bringing their basic daily wage to $21.45. Next April the industry will tack on another 80-c-, bringing the total package, with fringe benefits, to $2.40 more a day and miners' daily wages to $22.25. All told, it would add close to 60-c- per ton to the industry's cost of mining coal, and make another round of price increases inevitable. Appalachian Coals Inc., marketing agent for southern producers handling 25 million tons annually, started it off by hiking soft coal prices 35-c- per ton.

Actually, the coal industry might well be able to make up a good bit of the wage increase next year by doing more business with the help of John L. Lewis. After five years of debate, the Federal Maritime Board finally agreed last week to allow American Coal Shipping Inc., an export company formed by Lewis' U.M.W., seven coal producers and three coal-hauling railroads (Chesapeake & Ohio, Norfolk & Western, the Virginian) to lease 30 surplus Government-owned Liberty ships at an annual charter of $127,282 per vessel. They will use them to boost U.S. coal exports to Europe, South America and Japan. Though many shipping lines protested bitterly, Lewis and friends argued that the fleet will be able to carry 2,500,000 tons more coal each year, thus provide more jobs for U.S. seamen besides helping the coal industry. Lewis, who will soon ask the Government for a second fleet of 50 ships, predicted that U.S. coal exports will rise 10% to 45 million tons this year, hit 100 million tons annually by 1960.

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