COAL: Devil’s Stew

Out of the mouths of smutty holes in the earth at Scranton, Pa., came forth mules, blinking, tottering. Terrified by the sun, not to be pacified by the raucous calls of miners, they stampeded toward the Appalachian heights.

It was an all-day’s work to recapture them, and so ended the only disorder attendant upon the first week and week-end of the anthracite suspension.

Mules never leave their subterranean coal-faced galleries except when their masters, the operators, expect long idleness. When, therefore, it was observed that most of the mulish multitude had been brought to the surface (including the mules of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Co., whose head, Samuel D. Warriner, is also head of the Anthracite Operators Association), the implication was obvious.

Meanwhile, there was little progress in determining when the mules should be reinterred. John Hays Hammond kept close to Swampscott, reminding the President of a long list of recommendations made by him two years ago. Typical of these were:

1) Endless fact-finding, endless publicity.

2) Creation of a coal-division in the Interstate Commerce Commission.

3) In case of a failure to agree a report to the President should be made not later than 60 days before the expiration of the agreement. If with continuous investigation and publicity a disagreement should be still carried to the point of threatening a stoppage of work, then a special report should be made to the President, who should designate a person or persons to inquire into the situation and to make to him a special report and award before the expiration of the agreement.

John L. Lewis was quick to seize the chance to put himself on the non-socialist side of the argument. Said he:

“Responsibility for the talk about nationalization lies with John Hays Hammond, who has been haunting the halls of White Court, pestering the President to breathe life into the recommendations of Hammond’s defunct coal commission.

“It is Mr. Hammond, and not the mine workers, who proposes that the Federal Administration shall cast overboard its policy of non-interference with business. It is Mr. Hammond who proposes that the Republican majority in Congress shall depart from its traditional policy and, through legislation, establish a semi-regulation of the anthracite industry.

“Surely the astute Mr. Hammond should appreciate that the investment bankers of New York and Philadelphia who control the anthracite industry do not desire the prying hand of Congress to bare to a scornful public gaze the amazing profits which they are taking from a monopoly of a public necessity.

“It is obvious that any legislation enacted by Congress dealing with anthracite must be similarly superimposed upon the bituminous industry. Such a contingency would be decidedly embarrassing to such friends of Mr. Hammond as the Pittsburgh Coal Company, the Consolidation Coal Company, the Bethlehem Mines Corporation and the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh Railway coal interests, all of which have torn up their agreements with the United Mine Workers of America with the same abandon that William the Absolute destroyed the treaty which protected the neutrality of Belgium. Mr. Hammond, by his vain mutterings, has brought the present controversy into the realm of political equations. By the same token he has mixed ‘the devil’s stew for the forthcoming Congress to sup.” From Hazelton, Pa., it was reported that rats in schoolhouses were annoying women and girls. The explanation: when mules are taken from the mines, rats are deprived of grain and consequently come to the surface.