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Show : i Home Life of the Coal Mine Laborer Visits to the Cabins of the Strikers at Wilkesbarre Two j Types of Coal Miners There is No Hatred Towards Operators. i . - " : S I "miner" and "laborer" separately, but ! as employes in the same calling, and their home life as one. And here, as you will find in all other classes of labor, la-bor, by taking the extremes, you will have very different pictures, indeed, but in this, as in other thing3, the extremes seldom lead us to form a candid judgment judg-ment of the facts in the case. You may find miners who are expert, earn good wages, but whoe homes are as bare of the ordinary comforts of life as the extremist would care to picture, j while his laborer has as good or better home than the average laborer in this "home of the free" (?) What makes the difference? The former has more friendship for. and a greater interest in, the family of the saloonkeeper, and it is but natural that he should spend the greater part of hi3 earnings upon those who interest him most, and this leaves but little for his own wife and children. His own flesh and blood must suffer that the family of the saloonkeeper may have every comfort. Now. it is very evident that a fair picture of the home of the miner would not be presented by giving the details of this home. Truth is more usually found between the extremes. And y.ou will also find that the average will greatly vary in different centers. What might be true generally in Wilkesbarre could not be accepted as true in other places: therefore, to be definite, to candidly describe an average home in a -certain mining section, it must be remembered that that section alone is being treated. This letter will deal entirely en-tirely with the residents of Wilkesbarre, Wilkes-barre, a beautiful little city, but with far too many saloons for the good of the miner and operator alike, as well as all other classes with the sole ex ception oi tne Haionvi't-pci...- In Wilkesbarre you will find the gen- eral condition of the miner fair to good. 'There is not so large a proportion "of I them living in "houses of the operators j as at some other points. 'Many own ! their own homes, and as you enter you will note an air of refinement throughout. through-out. The house well furnished, children chil-dren well dressed, well behaved in fact, just sUch a home as one could spend a vacation in and not miss so very much the atmosphere of the home life in the "City of Brotherly Love." I visited homes there where I found everything as comfortable as one would expect to find in the home of one of the average to better classes of railroad or express employe, salesman, clerk, carpenter or machinist. But this was taking the best view possible, . and the conditions here .could not be taken as an average. Right here I discovered certain facts that will soon have a hearing on mining operations. The men who live in these homes, and are bringing up their children in a way to make useful citizens in the future, are the very men who would never give any reasonable operator trouble, and their children would follow in their footsteps, but. unfortunately for the operators, the children of these families are not being taken into the mines, but fitted - for other callings. This means emphatically that the very better class of miners will soon disappear dis-appear from the mines, and their, places will have to be filled by a less , responsible class and one that will j cause the management more trouble, and in the end will prove more- ex- j pensive. The more intelligent the ; better satisfied a class of laborers, the better the results, the least trouble, and the cheapest in- the long run. ft would be c;n easy thing for any operator to contract for reliable millers mill-ers in Germany at $1 a day for a year, but there would be fun after that. They would be the very men . that would want 53 a day the next year. Not getting get-ting it, they would strike and then form a union, and the operator would be just where he is today. The interests inter-ests of the operator demands that his help shall be advanced in intelligence i honor and thus become more and more i reliable as the years go by. Only by the accomplishment of this will these troubles disappear. To lose the better class of miners and expect favorable results by retaining the poorer element, j is not reasonable." Neither. is it fair, to I expect a labor union to average up to ' a certain standard. If conditions are such, no matter what the cause, that the better element will constantly keep drifting away. The away movement from the mines' today may be a more serious thing for operators in the near j future than they think. In the homes ; of the better class of miners their chil-! chil-! dren are being kept from entering the mines. I met with many men in this field possessed of that fairness as between be-tween man and man who, were they constituted members of a trial board, any fair operator would make no mistake mis-take in referring to them for adjustment adjust-ment anv case of infraction or dis charge for cause. .They are men. but men who will not' suffer wrong after fully persuaded there ' is no hope for redress. : Why am I sure that I correctly judged these men? Because I was enabled en-abled to get at them in their home life before their families where there was no excitement, no heated discussion, discus-sion, where there seemed to be no worry.: wor-ry.: touching results, but a confident expectation that some things would be changed for the better if mining was to be done by them. There was not an indication in this home life that -a great strike was on hand. . One might naturally expect that it would be the all-absorbing topic of conversation, but not so. I do not recall an instance where it was not left for m to introduce intro-duce the subject of the strike. When out with a guide I did this at once, but , when out alone , would wait for some ! minutes for them to introduce some-j some-j thing akin to the trouble, but it was seldom done. I ; in this connection I wish it were pos- sible for me to lay before the operators ! every conversation I held with the bet- ' f ter class of their workmen. There was no hatred expressed toward operators ; i in a single instance that I recall, no f threats against them, no anger in either action or expression. It was not j always thus when speaking, of some of '' i j the "bosses," for some of these do not ' ' i have the friendship or the confidence j of the men. One man, who had been j in the mines for some twenty years, s said: "I have no doubt but the own- ers of our mine would grant us every- I thing reasonable could they but make . a personal canvass of the entire situ- ' j I ation. but many ot them know nothing about it but by report of their agents, and it is but natural that they should accept their reports instead of ours." ; Here, again, I am glad to say to any i operator who may chance to read this ' i that among the better class of the em- j ployes there was no desire to gain more than what they honestly consider their j rights. ! One of the main contentions seems to j be as to weight mined and paid for. I j am not willing to believe that the op- j erators actually ask a man to mine 2.500 to 3,000 pounds, and pay for the j same but the price agreed upon for a ! tone. If they do they are certainly in j the wrong, and the country at large j can be depended upon to stand by the I miner till this wrong be righted. A ; just weight can be easily arrived at, . and in a manner that will entirely sat- ! isfy the miner, without weighing the coal at the breaker. Now, you have one class of these , miners presented a class that the op- I erators cannot afford to lose, but will I lose under present conditions. The dif- ' ! ferences are part fact, part imaginary. j The latter ought to be easily eliminated I as a factor in the trouble, and the for- J mer fairly, squarely, honestly adjusted. I Either party desiring more than this j j will' soon find public sentiment against ' i them, and the cause a lost one. Let j actual justice be the motive, and the j masses will stand by you. But we have another class of homes that must be taken into consideration before we strike the "average." A foreign, cheap labor element, that has : by some means been planted here, con- j stitute a very important factor in the j present trouble. Many of these men ' ' are practically ignorant of our insti- tutions. laws aod Americanism In gen- j eraL They have been classed and i dealt with largely as mules. Treated . as such and worked together with them, under like rules and regula- j 1 tions, they may be more nearly re- i lated to them today in their natures than they ought, but what has been done for these men to raise them above' their present condition? In their i homes you will not find comforts, as a ' j rule. There are exceptions, and these I exceptions prove possibilities. These ' ! men must be educated ud to become '. s intelligent, efficient workmen. Is it , fair to expect the union to which thj- l belong to do this, and at the same time f ignore the union? I may discuss thi3 ; phase later on. One naturally asks ! . upon entering some of these homes, what have these people -worth living I for? Homes drear and desolate of all ' that makes the American home the best ir. all the. world. Shall the Amer- lean homes go and these take their place? As an American people we j ought to be ashamed to allow such jj homes to exist in a land that boasts more millionaires than all the rest of I the world. Every home ought to have 1 something about the bare building it- self to lead manward instead of hog-ward. hog-ward. The barns of many a Pennsyl- . vania Dutchman would be palaces to t many a mine laborer. If a foreigner comes here, ignorant of our ways, and is treated as a mule, why should he be anything more than a mule? That scenes to be all required of him. Now, we have enough intelligence to expect mules to be mulish at times. Can we expect more or th'se we treat similarly? sim-ilarly? Why should we? ' A discarded piece of matting wouM look out of place in a mule stabie, and in some of these human mul; ' stables as well. A neat cottage, nicely nice-ly painted, would seem like a mansion to some of these foreigners and would make them proud of their home, and it would be cared for. kept clean and neat, carpets would b"gin to appear, flowers, better furnishings, better clothing in fact, it would become a "home," and many a man would spend his evenings at home instead of at the saloon. Think of a home without a light in the evening. Many of this class that I entered had none, and i after the lamp was lighted well, if j you could see them, you would not ; . j blame the men for' going to a v eil ' lighted saloon. Read in these homes ! at night? Impossible. I And yet and yet I found love, and tenderness duu r-jr mdiny fuuw ii liic I children in these homes as well as I those on the hill. The toothache was f just as painful here as there. Here the little feet had nothing to protect j them from the sharpness of the "black diamonds" scattered everywhere. And j I even heard singing gospel songs, - I songs of the homeland across the sea. waiting perhaps that they might leave this "home of the free" and again set foot in their native land. It proved to me that they were really human beings be-ings after all. and I could but ask the question, who among us in all the so-called so-called Christian land have "done unto these" as the master requires his followers fol-lowers to do? Where is our boasted humanity? Where our boasted Chris- j tiar.ity? America cannot afford to f treat her horses, as a class, better ! thn the men whose labor has made J this, of all the world, a nation of j wealth, whose millionaires outnumber those of the rest of the world. D. S. Mnifoid in Philadelphia North Amer- ican. . ' ...... 1 i |