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Article scanned from The Independent, 1902.
This article comes from an American miner, resident all his life
in the mining district of Pennsylvania. He has worked in the mines
from his boyhood. His comparatively brief education in the public
schools of the Commonwealth has been supplemented, like that of many
other Americans in his walk of life, by a close reading of the daily
papers, and particularly of those portions of the daily papers which
bore directly upon his own interests. The facts which he gives about
himself are true; the opinions he expresses are those which he, individually,
has formed. By temperament he may be said to be conservative rather
than radical; by habit he has always been a law-abiding citizen. He
is, in effect, the typical American who is employed in the anthracite
coal regions in the State of Pennsylvania -EDITOR.
I am thirty-five years old, married; the father of four children, and
have lived in the coal region all my life. Twenty-three of these years
have been spent working in and around the mines. My father was a miner.
He died ten years ago from "miners' asthma."
Three of my brothers are miners; none of us had any opportunities to
acquire an education. We were sent to school (such a school as there
was in those days) until we were about twelve years of age, and then
we were put into the screen room of a breaker to pick slate. From there
we went inside the mines as driver boys. As we grew stronger we were
taken on as laborers, where we served until able to call ourselves miners.
We were given work in the breasts and gangsways. There were five of
us boys. One lies in the cemetery- fifty tons of top rock dropped on
him. He was killed three weeks after he got his job as a miner- a month
before he was to be married.
In the fifteen years I have worked as a miner I have earned the average
rate of wages any of us coal heavers get. Today I am little better off
then when I started to do for myself. I have $100 on hand; I am not
in debt; I hope to be able to weather the strike without going hungry.
I am only one of the hundreds you see on the street every day. The
muscles on my arms are no harder, the callous on my palms no deeper
than my neighbors' whose entire life has been spent in the coal region.
By years I am only thirty-five. But look at the marks on my body; look
at the lines of worriment on my forehead; see the gray hairs on my-head
and in my mustache; take my general appearance, and you'll think I'm
ten years older.
You need not wonder why. Day in and day out, from Monday morning to
Saturday evening, between the rising and the setting of the sun, I am
in the underground workings of the coal mines. From the seams water
trickles into the ditches along the gangways; if not water, it is the
gas which hurls us to eternity and the props and timbers to a chaos.
Our daily life is not a pleasant one. When we put on our oil soaked
suit in the morning we can't guess all the dangers which threaten our
lives. We walk sometimes miles to the place- to the man way or traveling
way, or to the mouth of the shaft on top of the slope. Add then we enter
the darkened chambers of the mines. On our right and on our left we
see the logs that keep up the top and support the sides which may crush
us into shapeless masses, as they have done to many of our comrades.
We get old quickly. Powder, smoke, after-damp, bad air- all combine
to bring furrows to our faces and asthma to our lungs.
I did not strike because I wanted to; I struck because I had to. A
miner- the same as any other workman- must earn fair living wages, or
he can't live. And it is not how much you get that counts. It is how
much what you get will buy. I have gone through it all, and I think
my case is a good sample.
I was married in 1890, when I was 23 years old- quite a bit above the
age when we miner boys get into double hardness. The woman I married
is like myself. She was born beneath the shadow of a dirt bank; her
chances for school weren't any better than mine; but she did have to
learn how to keep house on a certain amount of money. After we paid
the preacher for tying the knot we had just $185 in cash, good health
and the good wishes of many friends to start us off.
Our cash was exhausted in buying furniture for housekeeping. In 1890
work was not so plentiful, and by the time our first baby came there
was room for much doubt as to how we would pull out. Low wages, and
not much over half time in those years, made us hustle. In 1890-91,from
June to May, I earned $368.72 That represented eleven months' work,
or an average of $33.52 per month. Our rent was $10 per month; store
not less than $20. And then I had my oil suits and gum boots to pay
for. The result was that after the first year and a half of our married
life we were in' debt. Not much, of course, and not as much as many
of my neighbors, men of larger families, and some who made less money,
or in whose case there had been sickness or accident or death. These
are all things which a miner must provide for.
I have had fairly good work since was married. I made the average of
what we contract miners are paid; but, as I said before, I am not much
better off than when I started.
In 1896 my wife was sick eleven weeks. The doctor came to my house
almost every day. He charged me $20 for his services. There was medicine
to buy. I paid the drug store $18 in that time. Her mother nursed her,
and we kept a girl in the kitchen at $1.50 a week, which-cost me $15
for ten weeks, besides the additional living expenses.
In 1897, just a year afterward, I had a severer trial. And mind, in
those years, we were only working about half time. But in the fall of
that year one of my brothers struck a gas feeder. There was a terrible
explosion. He was hurled downward in the breast and covered with the
rush of coal and rock. I was working only three breasts away from him
and for a moment was unable to realize what had occurred. Myself and
a hundred others were soon at work, however, and in a short while we
found him, horribly burned over his whole body, his laborer dead alongside
of him.
He was my brother. He was single and had been boarding He had no home
of his own. I didn't want him taken to the hospital, so I directed the
driver of the ambulance to take him to my house. Besides being burned,
his right arm and left leg were broken, and he was hurt internally.
The doctors- there were two at the house when we got there- said he
would die. But he didn't. He is living and a miner to-day. But he lay
in bed just fourteen weeks, and was unable to work for seven weeks after
he got out of bed. He had no money when he was hurt except the amount
represented by his pay. All of the expenses for doctors, medicine, extra
help and his living were borne by me, except $25, which another brother
gave me. The last one had none to give. Poor work, low wages and a slickly
woman for a wife had kept him scratching for his own family.
It is nonsense to day I was not compelled to keep him, that I could
have sent him to a hospital or the almshouse. We are American citizens
and we don't go to hospitals and poorhouses.
Let us look at things as they are today, or as they were before this
strike commenced.
My last pay envelope shows my wages, after my laborer, powder, oil
and other expenses were taken off, were $29.47; that was my earnings
for two weeks, and that was extra good. The laborer for the same time
got some $21. His wages are a trifle over $10 a week for six full days.
Before the strike of 1900 he was paid in this region $1.70 per day,
or $10.20 a week. If the ten per cent raise had been given, as we expected,
his wages would be $1.87 per day, or $11.22 per week, or an increase
of $1.02 per week. But we all know that under the present system he
doesn't get any eleven dollars.
Well, as I said, my wages were $29.47 for the two weeks, or at the
rate of $58.94 per month. My rent is $10.50 per month. My coal costs
me almost $4 per month. We burn a little over a ton a month on an average
and it costs us over $3 per ton. Light does not cost so much; we use
coal oil altogether.
When it comes down to groceries is where you get hit the hardest. Everybody
knows the cost of living has been extremely high all winter. Butter
has been 32, 36 and 38 cents a pound; eggs as high as 32 cents a dozen;
ham, 12 and 16 cents a pound, potatoes away up to a dollar, and cabbage
not less than a cent a pound. Fresh meat need not be counted. FIour
and sugar did not advance, but they were about the only staples that
didn't. Anyhow, my store bill for those two weeks was $11. That makes
$22 per month. The butcher gets $6 per month. Add them all, and it costs
me, just to live, $42.50. That leaves me $17 per month to keep my family
in clothes, to pay my church dues and to keep the industrial insurance
going. My insurance alone costs me 55 cents a week, or $2.20 a month.
The coal president never allows his stable boss to cut the amount of
fodder allotted to his mules. He insists on so many quarts of oats and
corn to the meal and so much hay in the evening. The mule must be fed;
the miner may be, if he works hard enough and earns money to buy the
grub.
Company stores are of the time that has been. Their existence ended
two years ago. But we've got a system growing up that threatens to be
just as bad. Let me explain. Over a year ago I was given a breast to
drive at one of our mines and was glad to get it. My wife took her cash
and went around the different places to buy. When I went to the office
for my first pay the "super" met me and asked me if I didn't
know his wife's brother George kept a store. I answered, "Yes,"
and wanted to know what that had to do with it.
"Nothing, only I thought I'd call your attention to it,"
he answered.
No more was said then. But the next day I got a quiet tip that my breast
was to be abandoned. This set me thinking. I went to the boss and, after
a few words, told him my wife had found brother-in-law George's store
and that she liked it much better than where she had bought before.
I told him the other store didn't sell the right kind of silk waists,
and their patent leather shoes were away back. Brother-in-law George
had the right kind of stuff and, of course, we were willing to pay a
few cents more to get just what we wanted.
That was sarcastic, but it's the cash that has the influence. I have
had work at that colliery ever since. I know my living costs me from
10 to 15 per cent extra. But I kept my job, which meant a good deal.
Now you must take into consideration that I am a contract miner and
that my earnings are more than the wages of three-fourths of the other
fellows at the same colliery. It is not that I am a favorite with the
boss. I just struck a good breast. Maybe next month my wages would be
from two to six or seven dollars less.
In the days of Pardee, Coxe, Fagley, Fulton, Dewees, Paterson, Riley,
Repplier, Graeber and a hundred others, men were better paid than they
have ever been since the centralization ideas of the late Franklin B.
Gowen became fixed institutions in the anthracite counties. It may be
true that in the days of the individual operation the cost per ton of
mining coal was less than it is to-day. But it is not right that the
entire increase in the cost of mining should be charged to the miner.
That is what is being done, if you count the reductions made in wages.
We miners do not participate in the high prices of coal. The operators
try to prove otherwise by juggling with figures but their proving has
struck a fault, and the drill shows no coal in that section. One-half
of the price paid for a ton of coal in New York or Philadelphia goes
into the profit pocket of the mine owner, either as a carrier or miner.
We all know that the price of coal has advanced in in the past twenty
years. We also know that wages are less, that the cost of living is
higher. I remember the time, when I was a wee lad, my father used to
get his coal for $1 per ton. Now I pay $3. In those days we lads used
to go to the dirt banks and pick a load of coal, and it cost our parents
only a half a dollar to get it hauled home. We dare not do that now.
Then we did not need gum boots, safety lamps or any such things as that;
and for all of them we must now pay out of'wages that have been reduced.
Our condition can be no worse; it might and must be better. The luxuries
of the rich we do not ask; we do want butter for our bread and meat
for our soup. We do not want silk and laces for our wives and daughters.
But we want to earn enough to buy them a clean calico once in a while.
Our boys are not expecting automobiles and membership cards in clubs
of every city, but they want their fathers to earn enough to keep them
at school until they have a reasonably fair education.
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