There has been less trouble between the coal miners' union and the I. W. W. because the United Mine Workers have always been much less radical than the Western Federation and the I. W. W. has really never succeeded in making inroads of any consequence among the United Mine Workers. Max Hayes, International Vice President of the U. M. W., told the United States Commission on Industrial Relations that the I. W. W. was "rather an unknown quantity among the coal miners. In fact," he said, "we do not let them propagate their doctrines; at least, we try to prevent their ideas from becoming accepted by our people.... There is nothing constructive about their philosophy: it is all destructive."[656]
The Mine Workers' Union is perhaps the most constructively business-like, and certainly one of the most successful, unions in the world. Their hard-headed constructive work is most of all evidences in the business agreements which they negotiate with the operators at regular intervals.
To the I. W. W., agreements—particularly all time agreements—are in themselves evil. Consequently the friction between the world's smallest and most revolutionary industrial union and its largest and most conservative industrial union was experienced primarily in connection with these agreements. "Wherever the bona fide labor unions have succeeded in effecting a satisfactory agreement with the employers," declares the Miners' Magazine, "... there will be found the I. W. W. organizer, attempting to create dissension."[657]
The Wobblies justified their attacks upon the Mine Workers [said President John Mitchell at the U. M. W. convention in 1906] by saying that we make trade agreements which so tie the hands of our members as to render us unable to strike at any time during the year when conditions would seem propitious. They lost sight of the fact that if we ... were ... at liberty to strike at our own sweet will, the operators would have precisely the same right and could lock us out whenever trade was dull....[658]
The most recent conflict between the I. W. W. and the Mine Workers was in the anthracite region around Scranton, Pennsylvania. In April, 1916, entirely against the will of the United Mine Workers, according to a conservative writer,
the I. W. W. leaders decided to close down certain of the collieries about Scranton. The method ... was to picket the collieries in the early morning hours, from four o'clock until seven, to urge the men not to go to work, and then, if unsuccessful by that means, to drive them off by force.[659]
At about this time (1914) Eugene Debs, one of the founders of the I. W. W., was again urging the formation of a great revolutionary industrial union. He proposed to begin with the two big miners' unions—the Western Federation and the United Mine Workers—which organizations were to form the head and center of the new union.
It is vain to talk about the I. W. W. [he said]; the Chicago faction, it now seems plain, stands for anarchy. So be it. Let all who oppose political action and favor sabotage and the program of anarchism join that faction. The Detroit faction, for reasons not necessary to discuss here, will never amount to more than it does today. A new organization must be built with the miners, the leading industrial body, at the head of the movement.[660]