Reasons for the Strike.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 31, 31 July 1902, Page 18

Reasons for the Strike.

The strike arose out of the old. old conditions — a heartless combination and a callous disregard of the condition of the toilers who produce the wealth. The president of the united mine workers of America has laid their case before the public with a calm convincingness and fidelity to detail that carry conviction. According to Mr, Mitchell's statement, says a contemporary, the miners work not more than 200 days in the year, at an average compensation of 5s lid per day. or less than £60 a year in the aggregate. Mr. Mitchell protests, and justly, that this is not a living wage for the workmen, nor enough to enable them to live decently and educate and support their families. Parents are not only not able to Bend their children to school, but they are compelled to put them, at a tender age. to work in the mines, that their little wages may go to help the family to live. The cost of living has materially increased during the la3t two years, so that the purchasing power of wages is really less than it was before the 10 per cent, advance of two years ago. Mr Mitchell shows from statistics that while the operators were mining coal at an increase of 13 cents per ton in 1901 over the cost in I'JOO they were selling at an increased profit of 39 cents per ton. This increased cost to the consumer has brought noincrease in the wages of the miner. The ride in the price of coal without any increase in the cost of production is a clear gain to the operators, The miners are right in thinking that if the price of coal is increased the wages of those who, at the constant rifck of their liyee, dig it out of the hills, should be increased.

The groesness of the pretext put forward byithe capitalists was easily exposed. Mr Mitchell points out that from 83 to 90 per cent, of all coal mined in the anthracite region is from mines owned and operated by the various coaJ carrying railroads. The owner?, acting as railroad managers, charge themselves extortionate rates for hauling their own coal, and then offer to show their own books and prove by the figures that they cannot increase the wages of the miners. In this way they are enabled to rob the miner at one end of the coal transactions, and the consumer at the other. And behind all this are the black pall of death and the moans of the maimed. Every day that the mines are in operation two men are killed and five are injured I In the year 1901 there were 481 fatal accidents, and 1,2i(5 which were non-tatal. Such

considerations as these must give pause to the most rabid advocate of the theory of individual bargaining. The bulk of the miners in the anthracite mines are poor foreigners, who have escaped from Continental conditions that seemed hard, but were merciful in oomparison with those imposed by the sordid corporations that regard human life and limbs as merely so many component parts of a soulless industrial machine. If it be conceded that the system of conciliation and arbitration in New Zealand does not meet ideal olaims, at all events it contains principles that make impossible the conditions thatoaußed the anthracite ooal strike, and this much having been gained, all that remains is to perfect it by removing the few anomalies it contains.