Some time ago I said that John Mitchell, president of the United Mine Workers, and Francis L. Robbins, president of the Pittsburg Coal Company, understood each other perfectly in reference to the settlement of the threatened coal strike which reduced the miners’ wages; and that Mr. Robbins and the operators had the assistance of Mr. Mitchell in enforcing the reduction and were able to predict it with accuracy long before it was finally agreed to by the rank and file of the miners. Mr. Mitchell denied this over his signature and Mr. Robbins, according to the Pittsburg Labor World, said it was a “contemptible lie.”
The Pittsburg Dispatch of June 7 has an extended account of an incident that may not be corroborative but it is certainly significant, and, like the proverbial straw, shows which way the wind blows.
Mr. Mitchell has gone to Europe and it is not my purpose to attack him in his absence but simply to put this incident on record for future reference.
The article in question is headed with a five-column cut of an elaborate banquet scene, the guests consisting of mine owners, mine workers and capitalist politicians. At the table of honor are Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Robbins, with Patrick Dolan, district president, between them as the central figure and toastmaster of the evening.
Mr. Dolan’s boast is that he has never read a book on economics and he proves it daily in his works. In a recent action for libel brought against a local paper by a couple of organizers for the Socialist Labor Party, Mr. Dolan testified for the defendant. In answer to a question he said that Socialism and anarchy were one and the same thing. Asked how that was he said: “They are both against the flag.” If the rearmost straggler in the rank and file were as far advanced as Mr. Dolan, his leader, the darkness would be complete and the cause of labor all but hopeless.
Such a leader is conclusive evidence that there are vast stretches between his followers and daylight.
What Mr. Dolan does not know about labor makes him hate Socialism and fits him to preside at a banquet where workers are used as dummies to renew allegiance to the reign of their masters.
The Dispatch article has the following double-column headlines:
“MINERS START A BOOM FOR COMBINE LEADER”—“F. L. ROBBINS APPROVED FOR UNITED STATES SENATOR AT DINNER IN HONOR OF LABOR OFFICIALS”—“THEIR GRACEFUL COMPLIMENT.”
The account in part follows: