Of course, there is the railroad differential in favor of Pittsburgh to be considered. In spite of the differential of 9 cents against the West Virginia field, which existed up to the time of the settlement of the lake trade cases by the Interstate Commerce Commission, the West Virginia operators shipped in 1910 to lake ports more than six million tons of coal, a growth of over four million tons since 1906; or 125 per cent and even with the differential spread to 19 cents, they are shipping coal as rapidly as they can mine it.
The explanation of the Kanawa Valley miners is that in their efforts to capture the Lake Trade the West Virginia operators in competing with the Pittsburgh district operators have been selling coal at less than cost and making their profits out of their men.
The miners told me that ever since the fight began their condition has been becoming harder and harder to bear. One of the men, answering my statement that the operators said they were barely meeting expenses said: "Damn it, I know there is no money in coal at 80 cents at the tipple; any fool knows that, but by God, they've got no right to take it out of us."
And that in my judgment is about the truth of the situation. Or, as Neil Robinson explained to me in all seriousness: "Labor is simply a pawn in the game."
Yet the game has cost the state, the operators and the miners millions of dollars and many lives, has caused untold hardship to women and their children, has engendered a bitterness that a generation in time will not heal and hatreds that will last a lifetime.
In making that statement, I am convinced that Mr. Robinson did not know how it would sound to one who puts the well-being of men, women and children above the necessity of capital for dividends. He was simply stating a business fact. I had several talks with him in the course of my stay in the mine region and found him a cultivated, courteous man. I think I got his point of view which coincides with that of the operators generally. They seem to look upon labor as material, to be bought as cheaply as possible and to be utilized in the manner which will be most profitable to the mine investments.
Whenever I went in to see him to discuss the situation he immediately produced account books, and books of statistics and began giving me figures. The whole case of the operators, he seemed to think, could be shown by the books and the balance sheet. He told me of tonnage, cost of production, railroad freight rates, yield on investment, the yield of competitive fields and the cost of operation in those fields, capitalization and rates of dividends. But of the human side, he had substantially nothing to say. Of the outrages of the miners—and they have been numerous—he spoke with bitterness, but of the outrages committed upon them he was silent.
Of course, figures such as Mr. Robinson produced are important but they are not everything. The trouble is that the operators do not seem to be able to see beyond them into those desolate little cabins under the everlasting hills, to the rights of men, to the causes that make for anarchy—that have made for anarchy, in this very region.
The State at Stake
It is hard to tell just how many men have been out in recent months. Five thousand would be a fair estimate. And remarkable as it is, these men have been able to hold out through a winter—and winters are severe in those West Virginia mountains—and they enter the spring and the long season, when cold does not fight them from the ranks of their opponents, full of cheer and determined to continue the industrial war in which they have engaged.