LABOR IN PENNSYLVANIA.

II.

Or the laws which have been enacted in Pennsylvania for the benefit of coal-miners, that which looks to the safety and sanitary condition of mines, and that which forbids the employment of women, have had the most satisfactory results-the former, because it provides for a corps of inspectors to enforce its provisions, and the latter, because the employment of women was confined to one class of immigrants and was opposed by a strong public opinion. As in the Clearfield case, the miners often complain that the inspectors have undue regard for the interests of employers, but I found no question among them of what is on every hand admitted that the effect of the inspection law has been to cause the mining companies to pay much more regard to ventilation, means of egress, etc., and largely to diminish the loss of lifethough that is still great. It may, however, be questioned whether the same end could not be better attained by making the companies pecuniarily responsible for loss of life or limb, except where carelessness on the part of the victim could be proved. There are other provisions of the mining law, such as that which requires that, when ten persons desirous of leaving the mine are collected at the bottom of a slope, they shall be hoisted up without delay; and that which requires that miners shall be furnished, free of charge, at the place where they are working, with such timbers as they call for the object of the one being to prevent men being left in impure air and wet clothes while coal is being hoisted, and that of the other to prevent any temptation to push work ahead without proper timbering-which, not coming directly under the purview of the inspectors, seem to be observed or not observed, according to the disposition of the operators and the organization of the men.

So it is with the provision authorizing the miners in the bitu

minous region to keep a man on the tipple to check the weighing of the coal. Where the miners have felt themselves strong they have taken advantage of this provision; but where they are weak it is of no use to them. The demands of miners for the employment of checkweighmen have in a number of cases led to contests, some of which have been carried into the courts, and some of which have caused strikes and lockouts. At the mines of W. L. Scott & Co., near Scott Haven, checkweighmen (which were one of the demands of a previous strike) have recently been put off the tipples, and the miners have struck again, and in several instances mines have been shut down to force the miners to give up their demand for checkweighmen. The opposition on the part of the companies to the employment of checkweighmen gives color to the miners' belief that they are commonly defrauded by light weight. In fact, there are cases in which operators have offered a somewhat higher rate of wages if checkweighmen were not employed than they were willing to pay if checkweighmen were insisted on.

As for the laws against the employment of children, they are a dead letter in Pennsylvania, except as they are to some extent enforced in the city of Philadelphia by the efforts of a Children's Protective Society, and I recently found in Pennsylvania papers, without any comment on the illegal age, an item recounting the cutting to pieces of a child of eleven in a Reading mill, by the starting of a machine it had been set to clean. In the coal mining region no one seems to pay any attention to the law prohibiting the employment of children under twelve, and boys of seven and eight may be found picking slate in anthracite coal breakers or trimming coke in the bituminous regions.

As to the work of these little slate-pickers this is what is said of it by Mr. Morgan Jones, formerly a mine boss in the Schuylkill region:

"I have witnessed the agony of wives and mothers and sisters, as victim after victim to the perils that constantly threaten the miner has been raised from the deadly depths, but the spectacle of a score or more of boys aged before their time, bent and stunted and worn, working their lives away in the black, dusty breaker, sweltering and suffocating in the summer and chilled to the bone in the winter, was something that brought perpetual heart-ache.

"In a room of these colliery buildings-not more than fifteen feet square— I have seen forty boys at work picking slate from the coal that passes swiftly down chutes in an endless stream. They are seated on hemlock boards

stretched across the room in rows. The windows are always open in winter and summer, in order that the dust may escape. In winter the wind whistles through the apartment, and the snow beats at the windows and doors. From seven o'clock in the morning until darkness compels work to cease, these boys sit on their benches, with backs bent almost double over the running coal, separating the slate from it. To do this requires great dexterity with the hands and a quick eye. The slate-pickers range from seven to fifteen years of age. At fifteen or sixteen they are old enough to enter the mines, and to reach that stage in their career is their only ambition. If any visitor will take the trouble to enter the miners' grave-yard near by he will not need to be told how many of these boys never reached the goal of their ambition. The tombstones are numerous, but the great majority bear the names of boys under the age of fifteen years-slate-pickers, who have succumbed to the overstrain of toil that has made them old, decrepit, and infirm before they had reached the freshness of youth.

"Sometimes these boys live long distances from the collieries where they are employed, and are carried to work in the morning and home again in the evening in the coal cars of the company. For this they are charged sometimes as much as ten cents a trip, the money being deducted from their wages. It is no uncommon thing for the boys to find, after reaching the colliery, that the works will be idle for some reason. In such cases they get no pay, and I have known it to happen that at the end of the month it would not only require all of a boy's wages to pay for his transportation, but that he would still be in debt to his employer. While I was in the coal regions I endeavored to awaken an interest among the miners on the subject of thus employing boys at collieries, but nine out of ten of them were willing to run the risk of their boys being equal to the hardship of the life of a slate-picker rather than lose the pittance each would contribute to the family income.”

And here is what another well-informed man, a district master workman of Knights of Labor in the anthracite district, and who, though not now working at coal mining, has passed through all its grades, writes me on the subject:

"The lot of the slate-picker, though still hard, has been much improved in this quarter. Since the advent of organized labor, the slate-picker's taskmaster, the 'chute boss,' does not whip and abuse the children as was the custom before. There is more or less of the lash, the club, the fist and the boot administered to the slate-picker, in many places yet, but it is not so common a custom, and the practice of washing the coal, though adopted without intention of benefiting the slate-picker, works for his good by keeping down the dust. There are some places yet where the coal is not washed, and the life of a slate-picker there is indeed deplorable. Choking with dust, bending over the running coal, weak, weary and suffering from what we used to call 'heart-burn,' and emitting sour, bitter water-brash, the slate-picker is often unable to eat when meal-time at last arrives. That the coal breaker and the coal mine fill premature graves and make premature old men is true. Morgan

Jones has not put it too strongly. The grave-yards are overfull, and the numerous asthmatic consumptives abounding in these coal fields are walking corroborations.

"I went to picking slate when nine years old, and weighed thirty-five pounds a year after, and on the dusty breaker and in the mine did man's work for boy's pay for years, as hundreds of boys are doing it now. I will be thirty-eight next September, and am, as you know, gray and old. But though I have been myself a slate-picker, and filled all the grades of manual labor in and about a coal mine, I must confess I have given no thought before to the wrong done these boys; it is so common we have got used to it.

But as I write my mind goes back to the hundreds of boys who with me were little slate-pickers. I recall lots of them who are in the grave-yards, and those yet among the living whom I occasionally meet are gray-headed, old young men, worn out before their time. Asthma, consumption, weak-back, gravel and rheumatism follow the breaker and mine work."

The Pennsylvania Bureau of Industrial Statistics has secured a photograph of the little slate-pickers of a typical breaker, seated at their work, the "chute boss" with his long stick in their midst. It is ocular demonstration of how the law concerning child labor is disregarded.

The difficulty with laws that prohibit the undue employment of children is that they are merely repressive, and do not touch the cause the poverty of the parents. Where the natural breadwinner can with difficulty support his family, any pittance that the children can earn becomes important. Still more is this the case where the natural bread-winner is disabled or taken away, and many of the little fellows employed in the mines are the sons of such men. How little support the law against the employment of young children in collieries has in public opinion among the miners was illustrated by a miner who was complaining to me of the neglect of a mining company to perform some work required for proper ventilation. "They gave us to understand," said he, "that if we complained about it to the inspector, they would retaliate by enforcing the law against the employment of children."

The same day I met this man I read in a Pennsylvania paper "Twelve Reasons why we want a Protective Tariff," of which the sixth and seventh were as follows:

"6. Because children at a tender age and women of Europe are required to perform the servile labor in manufactories and out-doors at a mere pittance for pay, being degraded to the servile condition of prison labor of this country. Our aim should be to so protect the labor of America as to shield it from a like serfdom condition.

"7. Because desiring to set an example of universal education and prevent any growing up in ignorance, the wages of workingmen should not be brought into competition with the pay of children and women who work in Europe for a mere pittance."

One of the peculiar institutions of Pennsylvania is the Coal and Iron Police. These should not be confounded, as they sometimes are, with that private army organized by the Pinkertons, and sent hither and thither to the aid of those who will pay for their services. The Coal and Iron Police of Pennsylvania are not a force in the sense of having any organization, being under the control of nobody save the individuals, companies or combinations * who employ them. Under the Act of April 11, 1866, the provisions of the Act of February 27, 1865, relating to railway policemen were extended to all "corporations, firms or individuals, owning, leasing or being in possession of any colliery, furnace or rolling-mill within this commonwealth." Under this act any such firm, company or individual may apply to the governor to commission as a coal and iron policeman any person named by them. There is no restriction as to number, no examination as to character, no guaranty as to behavior, no requirement of report, no stipulation as to pay or employment. These private employees are clothed by the law with all the powers of a policeman of the city of Philadelphia, and the keepers of all jails and station houses are required to receive and keep all persons arrested by them; but they pass no examination, give no bonds, and are amenable to no discipline. The only requirement of the law is that they shall, when not upon detective duty, wear a badge marked "Coal and Iron Police;" but this, if worn at all, seems to be worn inside the coat. The Governor is empowered to cancel a commission for cause, or it may be canceled upon application of the owner or operator who applied for its issuance, but the commission bears no term, and practically once a coal and iron policeman always a coal and iron policeman, so long as the favor of the employer is retained. Thus the very largest powers with which the commonwealth clothes its peace officers are put at the unrestrained disposal of Pennsylvania coal and iron owners and operators. Whoever has

* In the case of the smaller operators the Coal and Iron Police are generally paid by the "coal exchanges," or other combinations of operators, an assessment based upon the amount of coal mined being levied for police protection.