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Show STRIKE OF MINE WORKERS LOOMS OPERATION OF WALKOUT ON APRIL 1st PROBABLY TO BE DECIDED THIS WEEK Half Million Miners Are Affected; Operators Decline to Meet Union Men; Railway Workers Discuss Alliance Indianapolis Ind. Whether the 500, 000 union coal miners of the country will walk out on strike April 1 next probably will be decided here within the coming week. The miners' national organization, or-ganization, the United Mine Workers of America, meets here with delegates from every union field in the country present, to frame its wage demands, On the eve of the meeting, regarded as the most monentous ever faced by the largest labor union of the , country, coun-try, the situation shapes up as follows fol-lows : 1 The miners will vote probibly unanimously .against accepting the wage cuts proposed by operators. 2 A counter-demand of a 20 per cent wage incerase porbably will be made. 3 Secretary Hoover has made a preliminary pre-liminary move looking to the prevention preven-tion of a nation-wide coal strike, and this move probably will be placed before be-fore the convention for action. 4 John L. Lewis, president of the miners' organization, has received replies re-plies from virtually all the railroad union presidents, to whom he proposed an offensive and defensive allinace of rail and coal employees. 5 The railroad workers are willing to meet with the miners to discuss such an alliance as Lewis proposes, but have not committed themselves to the alliance. 6 There probably will be an offensive offen-sive alliance of the two classes of workers in time to bring about a Joint coal and railroad workers' strike. Among the possibilities is one that the miners will make no wage demands whatever, but vest the Bcale committee commit-tee with full power to act in negotiating negotia-ting with the operators. Such action, if taken, would be a complete reversal of form for more than twenty years, would upset to greater or less degree some of the operators' plans and would shift from labor to capital the responsibility respon-sibility for making the first advance. "The miners' scale committee, consisting con-sisting of the presidents of all the district dis-trict organizations and the three national na-tional officers, has been in session here since last Tuesday formulating its proposals pro-posals to the convention. These proposals, pro-posals, which are the only business scheduled to come before the convention, conven-tion, probably will be ready for presentation pre-sentation the first day of the meeting. The advance of 20 per cent in wages, proposed by nieniTiers of the committee, if adopted, would place the bituminous miners on an equal footing with the antlwaclte workers, who recently voted to make such a demand in their field. Both anthracite and bitminous wage agreements expire simultaneously this year for the tirst time in many years, and negotiations, therefore, will find the miners presenting a united front. |