TABLE 128.

WAGE SCALE OF EMPLOYEES IN THE COAL MINES OF ONE STEEL COMPANY IN PENNSYLVANIA, 1895-1908.1

and per 1000 ratios computed from "80 or more males reporting," are of no value for comparative purposes. The fact that the Mexican earns $2.44 per day, whereas the American of native parentage earns only $2.31,2 does not mean that the Mexican has a higher standard of living and therefore "insists" upon a higher wage, whereas the American, with his lower standard of living, is "content" to accept a lower wage. The higher average of the Mexican is simply the result of a different distribution of the Mexicans by locality and grade of work. A selection of race groups graded according to percentage earning each specified amount per day is presented in Table 129. It clearly

Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 8, Table 322.

2 Ibid., vol. 6, p. 50.

shows that the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe are often earning more than native Americans of native stock and English-speaking immigrants.

TABLE 129.

PER CENT OF ADULT BITUMINOUS COAL MINE WORKERS OF SELECTED RACES EARNING EACH SPECIFIED AMOUNT PER DAY, BY LOCALITY.1

Comparable data on the earnings of employees engaged in the same class of work are available only for West Virginia. The average earnings of pick-miners for one month were as follows: American, white, $78.18; Magyar

I

Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, Tables 34-35, pp.

and Slovak, $76.68; South Italian, $69.11. There is no substantial difference between the Magyar and Slovaks, on the one hand, and the white Americans, on the other; their wages averaged about $3.00 a day. The earnings of the Italians were lower, but this may have been due to the fact that some of them did not work every day in the month.2

The conclusion of the Commission with regard to the Virginia and West Virginia coal fields is that "although it is not clear that the employment of the immigrant has reduced wages . . . it is obvious that if immigrant labor had not been available either a much higher wage would have been paid, more labor-saving devices used, or less development would have been possible."3 In other words, wages have not been reduced, but had there been no immigrants on hand, either wages would have been higher, or they would not have been higher. The conclusion is indisputable.

The Immigration Commission holds the recent immigrants responsible for the evils of the company houses and the company stores. It is the usual method of reasoning: the company house and the company store exist only because the recent immigrants "consent" to accept them.* This is a consistent application of the theory of "freedom of contract": wages are low, because wage-earners "consent" to accept low wages; hours of labor are long, because laborers "consent" to work long hours; factories are unsanitary, because operatives "consent" to work in unsanitary factories. Every problem involved in the relation between labor and capital finds an easy solution in this philosophy.

The fact is that the real estate and the mercantile end of a mining company's business are often no less important, as sources of income, than the mine. There are mining companies whose sales of coal do not cover their operati

I

1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, p. 202. 3 Ibid., p. 223.

2 Ibid.

4 Ibid., pp. 659, 666.

expenses, but the renting of houses to employees and the profits of the commissary store yield enough to pay dividends on the entire investment. This system is much older than immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe.

An item in the Pottsville Miners' Journal for January, 1850, states that there were 42,000 houses rented by the operators in the anthracite coal fields. From the earliest records of mining, operators have erected abodes for their employees, and the practice has been continued until very recent times among all the companies.1

Company houses are as usual in the South, where the white miners are mostly of old American stock, as in those fields where recent immigrants predominate.

The company store has also had a long history.

The Pottsville Miners' Journal states that in 1848 . . . men worked for $3.50 a week and took that out in orders. . . . In 1850, the laborer got from 60 cents to 65 cents a day and the miner from 80 cents to 90 cents. These were low wages but they were actually lower than the amounts specified, for the men were not paid in money. They had to take their earnings out in goods which made a difference of from 15 to 20 per cent against the wage-earner.2

Many and persistent attempts have been made to do away with this evil, all of which so far have come short of their object. It was an issue of the Bates strike of 1849. The Workingmen's Benevolent Association of 1868-75 attempted to remove it. It was one of the planks in the platform of the Knights of Labor who flourished in the Middle and Southern coal fields in 1886-88. And the labor organization which now flourishes in the anthracite coal fields has undertaken to correct this evil. What the employees could not do by labor unions their representatives have tried to do by legislative enactment. In June, 1881, a law was passed to enforce payment in lawful money of the United States or "any order or other paper whatsoever, redeemable for its face value in lawful money of the United States." This law was declared unconstitutional. . . . In June, 1891, another act was passed, making it unlawful for "any mining or manufacturing corporation of the commonwealth, or the officers or stockholders of any such corporation, to engage in or carry on any store known as company store." . . . Another attempt was made at the recommendation of an investigating committee in 1897 to abolish this evil. All these Peter Roberts: The Anthracite Coal Industry, p. 130.

a Ibid., p. 109.

legislative acts have come short of their objects. The company store still flourishes. . . . Their number is not as large as they once were; they are gradually dying out, but the institution dies hard.'

In West Virginia "every mining company has a company store, and the operatives are compelled to deal in the company store, because they are paid only once a month, but may between pay-days obtain trading scrip which is good only at the company stores." Nearly one half (46 per cent) of all mine workers in West Virginia are native white Americans, and only 30 per cent are immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe.3 It is clear that the recent immigrant is no more responsible for the company store than the native American miner.

It is a fair conclusion from all available facts that the terms of employment in the coal mines at present are in no respect less favorable to the mine worker, and that the wages are higher, than in the past, when the bulk of the mine workers were native Americans or immigrants from Northern and Western Europe.

The ability of the wage-earner to influence the terms of employment in large-scale industry finds full expression only in collective bargaining. The history of labor unions in the bituminous coal-mining industry, according to the Immigration Commission's version, has been a constant struggle on the part of the English-speaking mine workers. to organize the Southern and Eastern Europeans and to hold them in line.

In the Pennsylvania bituminous mining area the entire period from 1870 to 1894 was marked by a series of labor dissensions and strikes, each of which left the labor organizations in a weaker condition than did its predecessor, for the reason that the older employees, who were the leaders in the movement for higher wages and better working conditions, finding themselves unable to control the conditions imposed by the increasing employment of recent immigrants, and finally realizing that it

Peter Roberts: The Anthracite Coal Industry, pp. 129-130.

2 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 7, p. 201.

3 Ibid.,

P. 161.