1900 - Coalmininghistorypa.org

1 ANNUAL, REPORT OF THE Off. Doc.
ferences in
a friendly and peaceable manner, they must go to the
State, which will provide the machinery for doing so.
Although so eminent an authority as Samuel Gompers has expressed
himself as being opposed to compulsory arbitration in these
vigorous terms: "Arbitration between two parties in dispute implies
their voluntary submission of the controversy to disinterested
persons. This is invariably organized labor's proposition when
efforts at conciliation have failed, but it is submitted that the terms
'arbitration' and 'compulsory' are the very antitheses of each other.
We have come to advocate arbitration, and many men, yes, and some
very well meaning men, have used it as a phrase so often that they
have confounded voluntary action with the desire to enforce compulsion,
without understanding its full significance. 'Compulsory arbitration'
as the term is generally understood, implies even more
than appears upon the surface. If the workers and their employers
disagree as to the terms and conditions under which labor shall be
performed, it is presupposed by the term 'compulsory arbitration'
that both parties shall be summoned before some tribunal created by
the state for the purpose of hearing and determining the question at
issue and to make an award. The logical sequence of an award made
by such tribunal implies its legal enforcement. Let us suppose a
case not difficult to conceive.
If the award is in favor of the workers,
and the employers to abide thereby, the state would then exert its
power to legally enforce the award and decree. Would this act not
in itself be confiscation, or its alternative punishment, imprisonment?
On the other hand, if the award should be in favor of the
employers, and the workers refuse to abide by the decision, would
they not be compelled by the state to work against their will and
judgment, under conditions which they regard as unjust and burdensome,
or suffer incarceration in jail?"
Still I am inclined to rather favor the views cited of the New
Zealand political economist. Without expressing myself at all as to
the value of a State Board of Arbitration in labor disputes, other
than those in the field of coal mining, I firmly believe that the
creation of such a Board for a settlement of disputes between operators
and mine workers would be of incalculable benefit to the State,
to the business men of the localities affected and to the people in
general. In the mining of coal as it is carried on at present, experience
has shown that the manner of compensation of the mine
workers by their employers, is bound to create differences of opinion
as to its
justice or injustice, and strikes innumerable have been resorted
to by the men in an endeavor to obtain adjustment.
As it is at present, the results have been arrived at only by the
respective "staying powers" of the parties in contention, rather than
by the merits of the question at issue. It will ever be thus, unless an