396 The National Geographic Magazine 



any district where weighing coal would 

 be practicable and to those miners who 

 are paid by the quantitj-, and not to 

 those paid by the day. 



These are the specific demands formu- 

 lated from alleged grievances existing 

 in many ways at many of the collieries. 

 They have been sources of increasing 

 irritation between the miners and their 

 employers for many years. Many of 

 them have actually resulted from efforts 

 of mine managers to devise the most 

 intelligent means to make the amount 

 of money earned the same in different 

 mines for the same amount of work. 

 Owing to the varying conditions in the 

 different mines, particularly the varying 

 thickness of the veins in which the 

 miners work, different rates of pay are 

 necessary where the miner is paid ac- 

 cording to the amount mined. The 

 amount which a miner should receive 

 for a ton of coal is further complicated 

 by the proportion of slate which he 

 sends to the surface in the coal. Rank 

 carelessness in this respect on the part 

 of the miner has led to much irritation 

 with the company. It has led to the 

 practice of guessing as to how much 

 worthless slate is contained in every 

 car of coal which is sent to the sur- 

 face. Although the guessing is usually 

 close, it is recognized as guess-work, 

 and the miners are never contented with 

 any system of book-keeping in which 

 guess-work forms part. Guess-work 

 and irritation will alwa3^s be intimately 

 associated in the anthracite mines. 



Among the different plans for adjust- 

 ing the amount of wages to be paid in 

 mining different seams of coal, the very 

 intelligent method has frequently been 

 used of paying a uniform price per car- 

 load, and then varying the size of the 

 car so as to fit the thickness of the vein 

 in which the miner worked, so that the 

 thinner the vein and the more difficult 

 the mining, the less coal required to 

 constitute a car-load. This varying 

 car-load has always been looked upon 



with suspicion by the miner and has 

 added to the general irritation. 



The coal strike of 1900 raised the 

 general wages 10 per cent and did away 

 with the artificial price charged for 

 powder. The other sources of irritation 

 remained and formed a considerable in- 

 centive for continuing the efforts for 

 further discussion of the whole wage 

 question with the operators at the first 

 convenient opportunity. It must be 

 pointed out also that beside the question 

 of an arbitrary docking of the miner for 

 slate in his coal, and the variable size of 

 the car used, some change in the rate of 

 pay, or, what is the same thing, the length 

 of a day's labor, must be made in favor of 

 the men who work by day's labor, if the 

 newly made alliance of the anthracite 

 miners with the United Mine Workers of 

 America should be continued. There- 

 fore, to hold all the day laborers, the 

 engineers, pumpmen, etc., in the organi- 

 zation, the other claims were added to the 

 formal demands on the operators. The 

 strike promptly resulted on the 12th of 

 May, when the operators refused even 

 to consider these grievances, claiming 

 with considerable justice that the settle- 

 ment after the strike of 1900 had been 

 accepted by the miners as satisfactory. 

 On May 22 even the so-called " washer- 

 ies," where the finer sizes of anthracite 

 are separated from the old refuse dumps 

 which have accumulated for many years, 

 closed down. On June 2 the union, rec- 

 ognizing that the engineers and pump- 

 men were prospective gainers by the 

 strike, called on the men to abandon the 

 pumps and join in the strike. These 

 men have heretofore been exempt from 

 striking. They are emplo3 r ed perma- 

 nently by the companies, and their work 

 must go on, day and night, perma- 

 nently, in order that the mines may be 

 kept in good condition for future work. 

 Calling them out involved a radical 

 change in the attitude of the strikers. 

 The irritation between the strikers and 

 employers was manifestly increased , with 



