Original Document

David Hirshfield, New York City, Committee on Labor Conditions at the Berwind-White Company's Coal Mines in Somerset and Other Counties, Pennsylvania, Statement of Facts and Summary of Committee Appointed by Honorable John F. Hylan, Mayor of the City of New York, to Investigate the Labor Conditions of the Berwind-White Company's Coal Mines in Somerset and Other Counties, Pennsylvania.

New York City Committee's Report on Conditions,

Conditions Found at the Coal Fields
Miners Slaves of Coal Corporation
Berwind-White Owns Windber
Interborough Rapid Transit Pays High Prices

Summary : Conditions Found at the Coal Fields

On Sunday, October 29, 1922, your Committee, accompanied by representatives of the mine workers, visited the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company's coal fields at Windber, Scalp Level and Seanor. The day was cold and blustery and ice was evident everywhere from the heavy frost of the night before.

At the Windber mine, the Committee found no strikers, and, according to information, those who had been evicted at this mine had moved to other fields nearby.

At Mine No. 40, located at Scalp Level, about thirty-two families, including one hundred and eighty children, were found living in tents on the bare ground, without stoves or other protection from the cold. These families, it was stated, were the remainder of a group of 200 families who had been evicted from their homes at this mine by the Berwind-White Coal and Iron Police, shortly after the commencement of the strike in April, 1922. Some of the evicted families had been taken care of in barracks erected by the union and in the homes of relatives, while others who, in some manner, had secured sufficient funds to move away, had obtained employment in union mines. The families without funds and without friends could not leave the district but were compelled to stay where they were and depend for their subsistence upon the meagre sum advanced them by the union.

At Mine No. 38, located at Seanor, only ten families were found out of the original 150 families evicted from their homes at this mine. Some of these famillies were living in hen-houses, cow sheds, cellars and under tents. Here also, the union supplied these people with enough food to keep them existing.

The Committee was informed that the funds of the union available for assisting the striking miners and their families to keep them from starvation, were rapidly becoming exhausted. That being so, the future of these people for coming winter is very dark indeed.

At all the mines which the Committee visited, it found most of the women and children barefooted and scantily clad. The feet and limbs of most of these unfortunates, particularly those of the children, were scarred and bleeding from walking on hard ice, through underbrush and over stone. The picture was most depressing.

The influences of all the years of meagre living and struggle for mere existence among these barren hills, had left an imprint on these miners and their families, that amounted almost to despair. Their women folks become old and hollow-eyed before their time. The children were found undersized, and with supplicating eyes begging for help.

Most of the miners in Somerset County are Poles, Russians, Slovaks, Hungarians, with a few Welsh and very few Irish. Many of them have been there for many years. In some instances, two generations have been working in these mines and the second generation is just as poor as was the first.

The customs and habits of the various people from their native lands are being preserved. The older women wear kerchiefs on their heads and the young women, on special occasions, adorn themselves with various bright-colored boudoir caps.

The children, besides attending the local public schools, are also educated in the tongue of the native land of their parents. Seeing one of these mining camps is about the same as visiting a village in Hungary, Czecho-Slovakia or Russia.

No matter from what land they came, these people are all blessed with large families, averaging from five to six children. To their credit, however, it must be said that no matter under what conditions these people were found living, whether in a hen house, cow shed, cellar or tent, a picture of the Saviour, properly framed, had the conspicuous place in the improvised home, and cleanliness reigned everywhere. In every instance where a housewife could boast of a stove, it was found shining mirrorlike.
Everywhere the Committee was met by the smell of boiling cabbage. In former years, the Committee was informed, when the men worked more steadily and the cost of living was cheaper, their families could afford meat about every other day, but now they were lucky to get meat once a week. The man when working gets meat oftener, to take along in his dinner pail. The average daily diet for the men, women and children, young and old, consists of bread and coffee for breakfast, cabbage and potatoes for dinner, bean soup and potatoes for supper.

It appears that the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company maintained a force of armed guards at each of its mines and the miners complained that these armed guards come over to the camps daily and endeavor to pick quarrels with the strikers and treat their women in a disrespectful manner. Your Committee was informed that two days before its arrival, these guards disappeared from view and, with the exception of the Windber mines, no armed guards were visible at any of the mines.

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Miners Slaves of Coal Corporations

According to the tales of horror recited before the Committee, the living and working conditions of the miners employed in the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company's mines were worse than the conditions of the slaves prior to the Civil War. This circumstance caused the Chairman to remark at one of the hearings, that Uncle Tom, as portrayed by Harriet Beecher Stowe in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," was far better off than were these miners, for while Uncle Tom conceded his body belonged to his master, he claimed his soul for God. The Berwind-White Coal Mining Company seems to own its miner body and soul. One of the miners present supplemented the Chairman's statement by claiming that Uncle Tom was far better off than were the Berwind-White Company's coal miners, because the slave owners housed, fed and clothed their slaves, while at Windber, if the miner does not do as he is bid by the Coal Company, he and his family are kicked out of their home and are left to starve and freeze to death like dogs.

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The Berwind-White Coal Mining Company Owns Windber and Controls Its Officials and Their Election
The center of the Berwind-White coal mining activities is the Borough of Windber. "Windber" is the largest community in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, and derives its name from reversing the two syllables of the name "Berwind."

Mr. E. J. Berwind, said to be the largest individual stockholder in the Interborough Rapid Transit Company of New York, is chairman of that company's board of directors, and, as such chairman, controls the purchasing of coal by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company. The same Mr. E. J. Berwind is the principal owner of the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company, and as such coal mine owner sells his coal to the Interborough Rapid Transit Company. Mr. E. J. Berwind is also a director in the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks run to the several Berwind-White coal mines in Pennsylvania, and the coal mined in the Berwind-White mines is loaded from the tipple at the mine into the Pennsylvania Railroad's cars for direct shipment to New York.

The Berwind-White Coal Mining Company controls absolutely the Borough of Windber and the other towns wherein its miners are located. It owns the banks, the theatre, a number of public halls, the town newspaper and all the public service plants in Windber. All public officials in Windber, including the burgess, squires, councilmen and the police, are either employees of, or in some way connected with the Berwind-White Company. That coal corporation also seeks to control, and most of the time does control, the election of county judges and of other county officers, as does the Interborough Company attempt to establish control over the Mayor and other officials in the City of New York, and in former years often succeeded in so doing.

The following extract from the testimony of Bert Thompson, a former employee [an assistant foreman at Mine No. 36] of the Berwind-White Coal Company, is illuminative of the political acitivities of that coal mining company and its methods:

Q. What is the political relation between the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company and the officials of the town of Windber?

A. It is a well-known fact that the company controls every office in the Borough of Windber.

Q. Did the men have to vote as they were told?

A. There was pressure brought to bear on every man. On Election Day, we always had the men come out and sent them down to the polling place, and in lots of cases brought them back to finish the day's work. And we always presented them with a marked ballot.

Joseph Foster, a former employee of the Berwind-White Company, and a former resident of Windber, testified that he was "chased" out of Windber three times, because he had once advocated the election of a man for county judge who had been opposed by the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company. That as a consequence of his said political activity, he not only lost his job with the Berwind-White Company but no other coal company in the county would employ him, and he was compelled to leave the Borough and secure employment elsewhere.

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Interborough Rapid Transit Company Pays Higher Prices for Coal in 1922 Than in 1921

Apparently, not caring any more for the people of The City of New York than it seems to care for its miners, the Berwind-White Coal Company last April not only decreased its cost of mining coal by lowering the wages of its miners and abolishing payment for "dead work," but increased the price of the coal to the consumer by one dollar per ton.

When the strike in the Berwind coal mines occurred, and that corporation by reason thereof was unable to supply the Interborough Rapid Transit Company not only decreased its cost of mining coal by lowering the wages of its miners and still purchases coal in West Virginia, England and elsewhere, for delivery to the Interborough Rapid Transit Company. The sliding scale permits the coal company to charge the transit company much higher prices for the coal so delivered that it could have charged if there had not been a strike in its mines.

In fact, the Subway Sun advertised last summer that because of the strike in the Berwind-White Coal Company's mines, the Interborough has spent a million dollars more for coal during a given time this year than it did for a similar period last year and, from all appearances, the increased expenditure of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company for fuel this year, will be at least two million dollars over last year.

Here also the managers of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company and of the Berwind-White Coal Company have shown their political power, when, because of the coal shortage created by their own doing, the McAneny Transit Commission gave the Interborough permission to reduce the number of trains in the subways by ten per cent.

If Mr. E. J. Berwind's coal company's unjustified fight against its miners and the coal miners' union were conducted at the expense of that company, that corporation's official could, perhaps, talk of so-called fight for principle. When, however, the expenses incidental to fighting the coal miners are reflected in the increase of the price of coal to the Interborough, and the Transit Company in turn charges that increase as an operating expense against the City of New York, the talk of fighting strikers as a matter of principle, becomes mere prattle to hide greed.

It does not require an expert mathematician to show that if the Berwind-White Coal Company's profit from its sale of coal to the Interborough Rapid Transit Co. was $1,617,000 in 1921, that with the increased expenditure by the Interborough of $2,000,000 for coal this year, the Berwind-White Coal Company's profit for the year 1922 will be at least $2,500,000.
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Summary

As hereinbefore stated, this Committee, appointed by his Honor, Mayor John F. Hylan, went to the bituminous coal district with open mind and with the sincere desire of gaining first hand information of a situation that had been characterized as deplorable.

Instead of receiving assistance to get the truth, the Committee met insults at almost every turn from the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company. The officials of the Company refused the Committee's invitation to attend the hearings, but endeavored to entrap it behind closed doors, the favorite method of soulless corporations.

The refusal to attend the hearings of your Committee and meet its striking employees who had grievances, can only be interpreted to mean that the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company, being unable to refute the charges of its striking employees, attempted to hide from the public the true facts of its method of dealing with its miners and other employees. . . .

The stories of the conditions which compelled the workers in the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company's mines to strike and organize for self-protection were amazing, while that corporation's refusal to give employment to their former employees because they had joined the miners' union, stamped it as being heartless and un-American. . . .

In fact, coal plays such an important part and is so vital to our lives and comfort and to the development and prosperity of the nation, that, in the opinion of your Committee, it is the duty of the national government to take over the coal fields, utilize them for the benefit of the people and place it beyond the possibility of any man, or group of men, to restrict coal production or its distribution. ...

There is no question in the minds of your Committee that so long as the City subways continue to be operated by private corporations, the manipulators of these corporations will purchase coal from their business associates at exorbitant prices and charge the excessive costs in the operating expenses.

Only when the City of New York takes over and operates these transit lines for the benefit of its people will the City receive a return on its enormous investment in those lines and be in a position to purchase coal from operators who pay their employees a living wage and treat them like human beings.


Credit: Courtesy Archives Department, Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal Company Records, Indiana University of Pennsylvania.