Union Labor Bulletin

League for Industrial Democracy
70 Fifth Avenue,
New York City

By NORMAN THOMAS

BRITISH CONSERVATIVES ON THE ROAD TO APPLIED SOCIALISM

Great Britain has temporarily averted a coal strike by the extraordinary expedient of making the taxpayers shoulder a subsidy to the coal owners in return, for which they promise not to lower wages, pending an investigation into the coal industry. The only thing which justifies such a course was the gravity of the emergency.

But see what it proves. You have a conservative government throwing over the old conservative belief that private property managed by the profit motive infallibly gives the best economic results with which government must not interfere. Private management has woefully broken down when the government has to subsidize it on this scale. With this breakdown has come an admission by a Conservative government of the radical doctrine that wages must have something to do with cost of living. These admissions must logically lead to nationalization. It is absurd to assume that a nation can or ought indefinitely to subsidize broken-down private operation of coal mines. Once more England will probably give us an example of a Conservative government putting in force liberal or socialistic legislation.

THOUGHTS ON AMERICA'S COAL PROBLEM.

The coal situation in our own country is not as serious as in England, but both miners and consumers know that it is bad enough. In the anthracite field we believe that the miners can prove, first, that annual wages are by no means as high as the operators state them to be, and, second, that in most cases, even higher wages could be paid out of profits without raising the price of coal. We look to them to give statistical evidence on both points.

We believe, also, that the miners are right in rejecting arbitration of the usual sort. The arbitrator called in would doubtless be honest, but he would be utterly unfamiliar with the coal industry. He would belong to the same social and economic class as the coal operators and would share their presuppositions. He would be peculiarly susceptible to the figures furnished by the elaborately financed propaganda bureaus of the operators.

So far we are emphatically with the miners in the anthracite field. In the bituminous field, where an immediate general strike is less likely, the miners are worse off and we have repeatedly reiterated our sympathy with them.

On the other hand, we believe that the farmers and workers of America who are dependent upon coal as a necessary commodity have a right to ask the miners and their leaders to give us a constructive coal program. What do they propose in the privately monopolized anthracite industry? Obviously, merely asking more wages on a daily or tonnage basis is not solving the problem. Neither can any program of regulation of mines by a government commission. That might limit, but it would not get rid of the extortionate private profits now taken by owners of the coal fields that no man made. It could not deal with the problem of the "marginal mine."

What is the problem of the marginal mine? Simply this. Most of the anthracite needed by the public in any given year can be produced at a profit substantially below the average wholesale price. The average wholesale price is fixed by the marginal mine; that is, the mine where costs of production are higher than the average, but not so high that the public will not purchase its coal.

Suppose, by way of illustration, that 90 per cent of the coal (or iron, or other similar commodities) for which there is an effective demand can be produced at a wholesale price of $3 a ton, but the other 10 per cent for not less than $4, the general wholesale price will be $4. No regulatory commission can fix rates that will make the marginal mine owner operate at a loss or can compel wholesalers to have two prices for the same grade of coal. The only answer is a kind of pooling to which competitive operators or even a near private monopoly such as exists in the anthracite field will not permit. The public must own its own coal to solve the problem of the marginal mine as well as to eliminate excessive profit and restore order in a chaotic industry.

But this answer of nationalization with democratic administration, in spite of the demands of previous miners' conventions, is not being urged by their own spokesmen. It is easy to see why some leaders are silent on nationalization. They can appear to the operators, to high public officials, and to the public generally in the congenial role of conservatives and saviors of society. They can say "you better settle with us or the 'reds' will push this nationalization issue."

What is harder to understand is the indifference of the rank and file to nationalization. They have declared for it but they have not pushed it vigorously. Partly, we imagine, they have been intimidated by anti-red propaganda. More largely, their own experience with government has given them little confidence in it. In their own mining camps the visible agents of government have rarely seemed to be their friends and what they have heard about bureaucracy in the Post Office Department does not add to their enthusiasm.

They are right in some of these fears. Nationalization, we are convinced, is the only road to decent conditions in the coal industry for workers and consumers. But nationalization by a hard-boiled business government on a bureaucratic plan would be a doubtful benefit. The remedy is largely in the hands of the workers themselves. Let them organize politically as well as industrially. Let them insist on a democratic rather than bureaucratic administration with leadership in the hands of experts (as it was in the building of the Panama Canal) rather than politicians. Then they can make nationalization a powerful tool for their own betterment and the well being of consumers.