It is true that some of the things sold in the company stores are sold at prices no higher than those which prevail in Charleston. Some of the prices may even be lower. That is really not the point. It is the fact that men are compelled, by one means or another, to deal at the company stores. That has always been a grievance among miners. I reported the Frostburg strike in the George’s Creek region of Maryland twenty years ago for the Baltimore Sun. While the conditions there were ideal as compared with those now existing in the Kanawha valley, the company store was one of the greatest grievances of the men.
I stand by what I have said about the crowding of the mines and the mine guard system. I know the miners are not all they should be, but they are not to be measured by the standards among men whose opportunities have been greater. Theirs is a skilled occupation and a dangerous one. Yet they have few if any of the advantages of the men of other skilled occupations and live under conditions that are oppressive and brutalizing. The stock argument that they can earn anywhere from $3 to $6 a day if they work steadily is idle. No set of men who could earn from $18 to $36 a week would live under such conditions as prevail in the mines. Mr. Shaw says there is no calling which requires so little investment on the part of the worker that has such returns in money. That is a very broad statement. Investment in what, in tools or in time spent in learning the trade? How about the bricklayer, the Belgian block paver, the stone-mason, the plasterer or any one of a dozen trades that might be mentioned?
As for the desire of the operators for an investigation. I stated that the operators opposed such an investigation. Mr. Shaw has his belief that the operators would welcome one. I have the statement of the representative of the operators that they would oppose any investigation, state or federal, because of “its unsettling effect on the men.” And the letter of the operators opposing an investigation on the part of the state, proposed by the then Governor Classcock, and refusing to become a party to it, is on file among the records in the capitol of West Virginia.
My statements were conservative and most of them even at this late date are susceptible of proof by any commission of investigation. Finally it is up to the Survey readers whether they take the article seriously or not. If the criticisms of Mr. Shaw are the most serious that can be brought against my article, I do not fear that my reputation for accuracy will be greatly damaged.
Harold E. West.
[Staff of the Baltimore Sun.]
Baltimore.
THE SHOPPERS’ PUZZLE
To the Editor:
The excuses of the St. Louis firms quoted by the Consumers’ League of that city are all too familiar to those who have been interested in the Saturday half-holiday elsewhere. There is always one department at least under the roof of every reluctant merchant which positively cannot be closed on Saturday afternoon and evenings for the two summer months, either because of the heavy trade on that day, or because competitors among the single-line stores keep open. Then there is the alleged hardship to working people in that their only shopping time would be taken away.