Show 0 1 on no L C 3 ac t washington during the recent bitter campaigning both national po lotical parties en the 1 he coal in a good industry deal of palaver about the coal in austry As usual the politicians were patting the miners on the back telling ahm what wonderful assets to the nation they are and carrying their demagoguery further by crit of the mine owners every now and then because it was popular with labor to attack employers Alt ogeth er it was a rather sorry spectacle and I 1 think did not do credit to either side to any extent but in this report I 1 want to stress a very mach less obvious phase of the problem than was made apparent in any of the electioneer ing with all of the verbiage cast aside with all of the political hood winking forgotten there is a very deep and difficult problem in the coal industry I 1 think it can be sum manned in one question what is the future of coal the coal industry and the thousands of men who know no other source of livelihood than that which they eke out in t the h e bowels of the earth this question if proper analysis is encompasses more than the usual factors that operate in economics it does that because of policies of the federal government among states and among municipal aties because of the attempts to influence votes the whole question has got into politics and that of itself is ruinous an obstacle to a fie fic solution not so many years ago coal mine owners and coal labor units had what amounted to a monopoly on our fuel supply then came oil oil with all of the scientific development that followed in its wake despite this operators and labor leaders continued to take their toll from the hapless user of coal for fuel be that user a great factory or an individual consumer in furnace or round oak stove but that was not all electric ity came along with its constantly increasing automatic control first of course in the larger communities and later it came to villages and farm homes still the mine owners and the coal labor leaders followed an unwise course still they con linued to take their toll and before they fully realized what the circum stance was they had succeeded by their acts in building up a desire on the part of millions of people to use some other sort of fuel the end is not yet and that is why the subject is most important at this stage of our history during the roosevelt tra tao tion n we have seen an impetus given to public owner public ship of power ownership plants never equalled equal led I 1 11 t h i n k much of thi this s development has gone on in a hit and n iss fashion and that eventually the public will pay for the shiftless methods employed in development but that is beside the point the present question is whether our nation is going to con dinue to expand public ownership in such a way as to ruin an industry that is as much a part of our basic economic structure as any other unit of our natural life I 1 think some times it goes beyond that for the reason that unless people awaken to the fact that they are being hood winked to a considerable extent by public ownership propaganda it is likely to spread and public owner ship will become a frankenstei franken stem a parasite on our ady public when I 1 referred to the destruction of a great industry I 1 had in mind the thought that the consequences will run in two directions yet para toxically as it may seem they t h e y constitute a cycle it works out like this As the demand for coal de dines clines it is quite natural that production costs go up when production costs go up they eventually reach the point where a further dimina tion occurs in demand when that decline in demand occurs there is only one answer labor is thrown out of work because you cannot produce and have those products piled high in storage it takes money to keep labor and machinery mccu pied the coal itself after being removed from the mines represents money and it is subject as well to deterioration so the ultimate to be expected on this side of the pic ture is an industry dying of dry rot on the other side of the problem is an equally important factor at work it takes an immense amount of cap itai massed in corporate form to maintain a going concern whether that concern be coal mining rail reading or any other of our great industries these industries operate largely on funds obtained through the sale of stocks and bonds of the corporation but it has always been true and human nature shows no signs of changing that capital is not attracted to it does not seek investment in a declining industry there you have a possibility at least of insufficient funds to carry through for the coal mining industry until it can readjust itself to the new place it must occupy in m our economic structure it will occupy a new place because it will readjust itself but it has not done so yet and the con sequence of this condition is in my opinion coal mine labor is due for some very hard sledding in the next decade notwithstanding the honeyed words of the politicians now to turn to the part that gov plays in bringing about present conditions klame blame i have attempted demagogues to show how yow greed on the part of both capital and labor was responsible in a measure for building up what amounts to ill will among many coal consumers but the industry it self is not wholly responsible in deed I 1 rather hold the opinion that government is as much responsible for conditions as the industry itself and when I 1 say government I 1 must limit my reference to political demagogues they always have been shortsighted and they are still short sighted they have been and they are now willing to sacrifice great masses of men and money for personal political gain of an entirely transitory character I 1 have said before in these col aunins that the country is being sadly kidded it is almost tragic by the wonders of such parasitic eions as TVA the public ownership crowd have had a willing leader in president roosevelt and his hangers on have promoted his policies of public ownership without being honest as to the ultimate goal or the eventual effect it is not alone that there have been millions wasted in the development of the tennessee valley electrical mirage it is not so much that taxpayers throughout the country will be paying a bill and paying it over and over again that causes me to complain it is not so much that the tennessee valley authority will never be economically operated or become self sustaining that brings this outburst it is the fact that that when a government national state or local leads the way in this diorec tion it wields an influence upon a certain percentage of our tion since public ownership advocates in many instances plain so where in control of these agencies such as TVA it is perfectly natural that they present to the taxpayers only the most rosy side of the story they do not dis close to the taxpayers the adverse the costly side of the situation na aurally then hundreds of thousands of people believe that government can do this sort of thing better than private enterprise they be come convinced that private initia tive has been turned into a spigot through which individual pocket books are drained they do not realize that their pocketbooks are being drained much more heavily through public ownership by means of the taxes they take from you and me and everyone else that is the sad story made worse by the fact that through nearly four years the washington government has been encouraging people to believe public own enship propaganda and distrust and destroy private investment recent treasury figures show that he the resettlement administration has P paid aid approximate expensive ay y 27 of dream its total appropriation of for administrative expenses that is the organization which is the pride and joy of professor rexford guy tugwell has paid that amount of money to job ob holders in trying to carry out the professor professors s impossible dream while the sum shown as used for administrative expenses by probes sor tugwell is small compared to the billions of total waste in the roosevelt administration the prop er way to consider this cir circumstance cum is on a percentage basis if you take your pencil you can cal calate that about 20 per cent or one fifth of all the funds appropriated to professor tugwell for resettlement has been used in management of his plan it may be a fraction under at per cent but it is so close that even the fastidious mr tugwell would not quarrel about the difference one fifth of an appropriation that is designed theoretically at least to serve for relief purposes is entirely too much it is not as great perhaps as has happened with one or two other relief appropriations but it has always been claimed that the tugwell scheme was planned to reestablish those who have been re settled on a permanent basis that is to say it was planned that the bulk of the money should be used in providing those people with a fresh start in life but I 1 cannot see where they are getting the full measure of help intended if a lot of job holders sit around in washington offices or in offices in various states using up one fifth of the total layout of cash 0 western newspaper URI umon |