At the request of employers and of organized labor—including the United Mine Workers—the War Labor Board was set up for settling any disputes which could not be adjusted through collective bargaining. The War Labor Board is a tribunal on which workers, employers and the general public are equally represented.
In the present coal crisis, conciliation and mediation were tried unsuccessfully.
In accordance with the law, the case was then certified to the War Labor Board, the agency created for this express purpose with the approval of organized labor. The members of the Board followed the usual practice which has proved successful in other disputes. Acting promptly, they undertook to get all the facts of this case from both the miners and the operators.
The national officers of the United Mine Workers, however, declined to have anything to do with the fact-finding of the War Labor Board. The only excuse that they offer is that the War Labor Board is prejudiced.
The War Labor Board has been and is ready to give this case a fair and impartial hearing. And I have given my assurance that if any adjustment of wages is made by the Board, it will be made retroactive to April first. But the national officers of the United Mine Workers refused to participate in the hearing, when asked to do so last Monday.
On Wednesday of this past week, while the Board was proceeding with the case, stoppages began to occur in some mines. On Thursday morning I telegraphed to the officers of the United Mine Workers asking that the miners continue mining coal on Saturday morning. However, a general strike throughout the industry became effective on Friday night.
The responsibility for the crisis that we now face rests squarely on these national officers of the United Mine Workers, and not on the government of the United States. But the consequences of this arbitrary action threaten all of us everywhere.
At ten o'clock yesterday morning the government took over the mines. I called upon the miners to return to work for their government. The government needs their services just as surely as it needs the services of our soldiers, and sailors, and marines— and the services of the millions who are turning out the munitions of war.
You miners have sons in the Army and Navy and Marine Corps. You have sons who at this very minute—this split second—may be fighting in New Guinea, or in the Aleutian Islands, or Guadalcanal, or Tunisia, or China, or protecting troop ships and supplies against submarines on the high seas. We have already received telegrams from some of our fighting men overseas, and I only wish they could tell you what they think of the stoppage of work in the coal mines.
Some of your own sons have come back from the fighting fronts, wounded. A number of them, for example, are now here in an Army hospital in Washington. Several of them have been decorated by their government.