Because the West Virginia mining villages are nearly all on private property, the operators owning the highways as well as the houses of the miners, they can control their going and coming and determine who may or may not visit them and talk with them. It is idle to say that the men can come and go as they please, as the operators claim. Each individual among them has the right to go from his home to the mine and back again and to travel on the county road, which is merely an excuse for a highway. But he has not the right to go from his own home to that of a fellow workman nor has his wife and children. When they do so, it is by the sufferance of the mine owner, unless they go by the county road and then half the houses cannot be reached. It is idle to say that this power is not exercised by the operators. It is. I have seen it exercised, and this very fact contains a serious menace to the country. I talked it over one day with Governor Glasscock in the early days of the trouble.
"How can it be remedied?" he asked. "The whole situation bristles with problems like this. In this case you are up against a man's constitutional right to control his property as he sees fit and to keep trespassers off it."
Such a situation offers a serious problem in government. Take Cabin Creek alone, with its branches to Kayford and Decota. There are more than twenty square miles of territory in which live ordinarily about 12,000 persons. In all that territory there is scarcely a place in which a man may go without being under surveillance, and except at the little "free" or incorporated town of Eskdale, hardly a house into which a friend may be invited for a drink of water except by the grace of the coal companies.
The miners say that such a condition is un-American. They want it solved and they do not care how it is to be solved. While this matter is not put in the list of their demands, it is one of their serious grievances. Here are the things they are demanding:
Abolition of the mine guard system.
A reform in the system of docking.
The employment of check-weighmen on the tipples to represent the miners and to be paid by the miners. The law provides for these check-weighmen, but this law is ignored by the coal companies.
Permission for the men to trade where they please without discrimination against them for so doing.
The payment of wages in cash every two weeks and not in script or credit cards.
Improved sanitary conditions, with the requirement that the companies remove garbage and keep the houses in condition.
Payment for mining coal on the basis of the short ton on which the coal is sold and not on the basis of the long ton, on which it is at present mined.
Rentals of houses based on a fair return on their cost with allowance for upkeep and electric lights on the same basis.
The nine hour day—the men now work ten hours.
Recognition of the union. This implies, in the bituminous districts of the middle West, the check-off system by which the companies deduct from the pay envelopes of individual miners not only the charges for powder, rent, medical attention, store accounts, etc., but also for union dues which are turned over to the union treasuries direct. This method of recognizing the union has been most vigorously opposed by the operators in the anthracite district.
An increase in pay. This last the miners regard as the least vital of all their demands as a present issue.
Charges as to Peonage
It has been charged that a condition of peonage exists in some of the mining districts of the state. This is a subject on which the operators are very sensitive. They deny vehemently that such a thing is possible.
Peonage, as it is usually understood, means compelling men to work under duress until debts they may owe are paid. It is a violation of state and federal laws.
Men who come into the mines usually have little or no money. Sometimes their transportation into the mines is paid and they are charged with the cost of it on the books of the companies employing them. They are given a cabin to live in and if they have no money when they start and seem to want to go to work in good faith they are given credit for small amounts at the company stores. Accordingly, unless the miner is an unusually thrifty fellow, he is usually in debt at the start.
Miners have told me that in the Cabin Creek region they are paid only once a month, but when they start in, they are not paid any cash for sixty days, the first month's pay being held back. In the meantime, however, after they have earned sufficient money to pay the rent and other charges in connection with their cabins, their school tax, burial tax of twenty-five cents a month, their assessment for the maintenance of the mine physician, and sometimes an item for "protection" which is an assessment for the pay of the mine guards they will, "on application" be given a "script card" entitling them to purchase from the company store goods to the amount indicated on the card. On the edges of the card are figures and the amounts purchased are punched out very much as the waiters in a quick lunch restaurant punch out the amount of a customers order on his check.