THE GREAT COAL STRIKE by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 17, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 38.

THE GREAT COAL STRIKE.

By Editor

THIS paper is not in politics, nor are its editors; but they do not need to be to have sympathy with the striking anthracite coal-miners of the Alleghany Mountains.

We do not sympathize with many of the methods which the unions adopt; we do not sympathize with their attacks upon the non-union laborer who has as good a right to earn his bread without let or hindrance as has the union laborer. We do not sympathize with the demagogic men who are endeavoring to make political capital out of the strike, and pluck the workmen in one way or another to feather their own nests, or lift themselves up into a little brief authority. With none of these things nor with some others do we sympathize.

Neither do we sympathize with the great coal and railway trusts against whom the miners are waging unequal warfare. We have no sympathy with their principles or methods. We do not believe that it is right to squeeze the laborer at one end of a line of operations for the last ounce of blood, and the consumer at the other end for the last ounce of gold. It was demonstrated that all the separate coal companies were making good profit before the trust or combination was formed. It has been shown that within a year after this the price of anthracite coal was raised $1.50 a ton, making millions of abnormal profits to the coal companies. Of this profit the miner has, in the years since, reaped little or no benefit.

The “store” system and “credit” system connected with the mines is conducted on an oppressive basis. A “company store,” rightly managed, ought to furnish better and fresher goods at less cost than any other; but it never does. This, we believe, has been discontinued in the coal districts, but it has its substitutes. Friends and relatives of mine officials conduct the stores, and work to do depends at times on the patronizing of the right store. Work is not continuous on the part of the greater number of men, and the average yearly wage is very low, while rent, and that for miserable cottages, tenements, and hovels, is exorbitant. As soon as a boy can go to work, he is put in the mine. The history of the miners and the hardships and exactions they have endured, make a black picture, as black as the coal they mine. Added to all this, there is probably no more dangerous employment in which so many men are engaged as coal-mining, abundantly attested by the frequent explosions and their sad results.

We sympathize with the miners. We do not wonder that men who do not know the grace of God do violent and desperate things sometimes, as they brood over their wrong. Many of them make as their friends their worst foes, tobacco and whisky. But their employers smoke Havana cigars, and drink costly champagne.

What a grand opportunity is offered these great capitalists to make a right use of their enormous profits? What better homes they could make for their employees, who are men as they! What improvements they could make as regards the education of not only the children, but the adults! How much more satisfactory to a true heart would be moderate profits and a raise of wages, not because any union or labor leader demanded it, but because justice required it! But infamous Greed seems to close the heart to all these opportunities.

God has written of these very things and times, and will hold responsible every man who might have made them better and did not. Read James 5:1-8; Habakkuk, chapters 1 and 2. God also regards the cry of the oppressed poor. He tells them to “be patient,” and trust Him, and He will, in His good time, gloriously deliver. But that excuses no man from his duty here. Great wealth is great opportunity for which God will hold responsible every one that possesses it. If not used aright, its canker will eat away the very soul, and will witness against its perverter before the great tribunal of God.