Part 5

The management cheats the public through the employes, and logically the employes turn about and cheat the management, and in either event the public pays the bills.... A cheese is cut into pieces weighing about a pound each, and all are sold within an hour under four different names and at four different prices. Canned peas which cost ninety cents a dozen are sold at nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, and fifteen cents a can—all the same grade. The jobber was willing to put different labels on the same goods because he had an order for two carloads.

“Don’t want that pie; want your money back?” said Willie. “How much was it? Seven cents? I thought so. What do you expect? The higher-priced ones were beside it. If you want good stuff, why don’t you pay for it?”

Later I asked Willie what the difference was between the seven and the twelve-cent prune pie, and he told me that the stones were taken out of the twelve and put into the seven-cent lot. I counted the stones or pits in the pie that the angry woman returned. There were forty-three.

COMMUNICATIONS

THE WEST VIRGINIA COAL STRIKE

TO THE EDITOR:

I read with much interest the article by Mr. West in the April 5 number of THE SURVEY and I must raise my voice in protest against taking Mr. West too seriously. I have lived with the miners of West Virginia for the past four years and have made a pretty thorough study of the entire situation.

It is perhaps hardly to be expected that a newspaper reporter visiting the field during the struggle would get an unbiased view of the situation.

No one who is conversant with the situation would deny that there are two sides to the fight and that both have made their mistakes. The question of union or non-union has little to do with it. The worst living and working conditions are to be found in some of the union settlements along the Kanawha river; perhaps there are some equally bad ones in non-union fields. The best working and living conditions of West Virginia are found in non-union fields. Yet, I do not wish to be understood as arguing against unions, as I do not believe that the union question has much bearing on the real conditions.

It is simply the character of the operators and the men themselves that determines the conditions of any mining settlement. There is much mis-understanding and mis-information among the men themselves.

Mr. West mentions the company stores as being a source of contention. Now, it is true that in some of the stores some articles are priced too high, but, on the other hand, men are often mis-informed as to prices in other places. To illustrate, in the early days of the strike a miner on Cabin Creek told me he was paying $1.20 per bushel for potatoes at the company store that could be bought in Charleston for $.60. The next day I was in Charleston and meeting a farmer on the street, selling his own product, I learned that the price was $.30 per peck. My miner friend therefore had jumped at a conclusion that the facts would not justify, and yet that same man could, by this mis-information, stir up much dissatisfaction.

When I lived in Charleston, I used frequently to buy meat at the company store and take it home, a distance of thirty miles, because I could buy it from three to five cents per pound cheaper than in Charleston. On the other hand, I saw in two different stores in another district, bedsteads marked $7, the exact counterpart of which I have bought myself in Charleston for $4.50. Such a profit as this certainly is not justifiable. Taken all in all, the prices on necessities do not vary to any great extent between the company and the independent stores when one considers the additional cost of transportation.

Nothing is more dangerous than truth and error mixed. Mr. West says the operators have a larger number of men than they can make use of at each operation and that the reason of this is that they may have their houses filled. The real fact is that nearly every operation must have from 20 to 30 per cent more men than are needed in order to run the mine to the full capacity, as about that proportion will lay off work each day. I have tried to find the reason for this and have been told repeatedly by the miners themselves that since they could earn enough money in four or five days to support themselves for a week they could see no reason why they should work every day.

The “guard system” is certainly not an ideal one. Neither are all of the men serving as guards ideal citizens. They certainly have been guilty of many of the abuses which might be expected from so much authority with so little responsibility to the state. But there must be some method of policing the mining districts. Thus far the state and county have failed to provide police facilities, and an “absentee” police system would make crime easy to commit in such a country. Thus far, there has been no improvement suggested by those who are leading this insurrection.

In regard to the housing, if Mr. West or any one else could build one of the four room cottages at a labor expense of $40., or even twice that, he would be in great demand as a contractor for house building. Moreover, any operator would be glad to get his houses built at a net expense of twice the figures given by Mr. West. One needs only to visit the houses vacated by miners to convince himself that the 10 per cent income on the actual investment will hardly pay for repairs. The average miner is not at all careful as to where he collects his kindling wood. I have seen many houses with from one to four doors and perhaps a quarter of the ceiling missing, having been used for this domestic purpose.

One real difficulty with the miners is a lack of constructive leadership. When they are taught such anarchistic ideas as that voiced by Mr. Houston at the investigation of the commission, it is no wonder that such men, under the leadership of individuals, whose past history will hardly bear the light of day, band themselves together for desperate purposes. Mr. Houston stated that the miner should be paid every cent that the coal brings in the market, except what the railroad gets for transportation, and there are many mine workers who actually believe this.

My sympathy is with the miner whose work is dangerous and who should have every consideration consistent with good order and business conditions. There is no calling which requires so little investment on the part of the worker that brings such returns in money. Any miner in the Cabin Creek or Paint Creek field who is willing to work steadily can earn anywhere from $3 to $6 per day and many earn more than this clear. The real difficulty with these men is that they need education and training as to how to care for their money after it has been earned. It is true that there are many days when the mines cannot run owing to breakdowns or lack of sufficient cars in which to load the coal. This latter reason is especially frequent in some sections.

I have hardly touched the subject but I do hope this matter will be thoroughly investigated and I personally believe no person is more anxious for a federal investigation than the operator himself, although Mr. West says the operators oppose such an investigation.

IRA D. SHAW.

[Industrial Department, the International Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association.]

Pittsburgh.

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TO THE EDITOR:

I went to the strike district unprejudiced. My instructions were to tell the truth about the situation. I did so to the best of my ability. I believe I was fair. In my article in THE SURVEY I simply told what I saw in the mines. I believe such conditions as exist there are brutalizing in the extreme. I believe they are responsible for much of the lawlessness that exists throughout West Virginia.

In regard to the cost of the houses, I was told in the mines by a well informed man that the labor cost on a certain set of the cottages erected some years before had been $40 each. That is not at all unreasonable. Two carpenters at $2.50 a day each could build one of them in eight days. As I happen to be somewhat familiar with building operations I am confident that my figures are not out of the way, especially when you consider that the land on which the buildings stand cost little or nothing. The expense for lumber was only the cost of sawing the timber already at hand, plus the cost of window frames and doors, bricks for the chimneys, composition roofing and the little hardware required.

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.

The one thing which is not heard from such employers in discussing the question is that Saturday is the day when clerks most need a respite, especially in cities where it is not only the weariest day, but the longest.

Has it occurred to the St. Louis League that the day of heaviest trade bears some relation to advertising? Their reactionary firm probably makes an advertising feature of Saturday bargain sales. This firm ought to realize that in cities where the Saturday half-holiday is most general and successful the Saturday trade has not been lost but has been readjusted by a shift of bargain sales to other days.

The argument based on the working-men’s need has a semblance of truth and might have more if the early closing were for more than the eight or nine Saturdays of July and August. Most working-men can arrange to do necessary shopping at some other time for those few weeks. Many of them in trades which have the eight hour day have the hour from five to six, in addition to the noon-hour daily—and in the case of family-buying there is the wife who is the natural shopper. When the matter came up in Syracuse labor leaders assured the Consumers’ League that the argument had no real basis.

Let us hope that the Consumers’ League of St. Louis may be able to convince its reactionary firm that the approval and consequent patronage of the public the year round is worth as much as its trade in men’s furnishings on Saturday afternoons of July and August.

EMILY LOVETT EATON.

[President Consumers’ League of Syracuse.]

Syracuse, N. Y.

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TO THE EDITOR:

It has always been a puzzle to me why the weekly half holiday, so strongly advocated for store and factory workers, should be Saturday rather than a mid-week afternoon and why all the stores in any city should close on the same afternoon.

Half the number closed on Wednesday, the others closed on Thursday afternoons would necessitate a change in pay day, possibly in positions where members of the same family work in different stores. Open stores on Saturday afternoon ought to be a help to the class of people who never have anything ahead, to keep the Sunday ordinances.

S. P. QUIGLEY.

Ovid Center, N. Y.

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TO THE EDITOR:

THE SURVEY of March 29 printed a letter from me telling of a problem with regard to Saturday afternoon summer closing. A St. Louis department store (one of a chain of stores established in various cities under one firm) kept open all last summer on Saturday afternoons. The president of the corporation told representatives of the Consumers’ League that the stock-holders would never consent to Saturday closing because a great bulk of business was done in the men’s furnishing department at this time, the only time men have for shopping.

A few weeks ago the Consumers’ League laid their problem before the Central Council of Social Agencies. The trades unions sent the firm word of their objection to the custom of remaining open Saturday afternoons during the summer months. The Retailers’ Association added their protest.

A committee from the Central Council called on the corporation president. He gave this committee the same negative answer that the Consumers’ League Committee had received. But the dismissal was not final. Soon he sent for the Central Council Committee to return. He gave them the news that the store would close Saturday afternoons during the summer months, as is the custom of all other large St. Louis department stores. He said that the firm had always done all in its power for its employes and, as it was agreed that keeping open Saturday afternoons was not consistent with the best welfare of the employes, the store would close at that time. Of course the contention that closing Saturday afternoons would deprive men of their shopping time and would only increase night shopping remains unanswered.

At any rate, the fear that other department stores might follow the example set by this particular one is banished.

ALTHEA SOMERVILLE GROSSMAN.

St. Louis.

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SEX HYGIENE LECTURES

TO THE EDITOR:

In the health section of your issue for April 19, the writer saw your article on Courses on Sex Hygiene. Considering the fact that these lectures were given expressly for social workers, it was surprising to learn that only the first few were well attended. If there is any subject demanding the attention of social workers, it surely is this most important one.

About eighteen months ago a young woman, a member of the Factory Committee of the Wolf Company’s plant, incidentally mentioned the interest taken in a series of lectures on this subject given to members of a girls’ club in one of the main social houses on the East Side. The question of giving these lectures was immediately taken up with the management, with the result that four series of four lectures each were given to about 175 employes. This was the first time that many of these workers had the opportunity of learning, in a dignified and instructive manner, the interesting story of reproduction.

The lectures were given by Nellie M. Smith whose book containing these talks, The Three Gifts of Life[1] has recently been published, and many of those who attended the lectures purchased copies of this volume with the intention of giving them to their mothers or younger sisters to read.

Footnote 1:

The Three Gifts of Life. By Nellie M. Smith. Dodd, Mead & Co. 138 pp. Price $.50; by mail of THE SURVEY $.56.

These same lecturers are now being given by a large industrial corporation in this city which is always ready to investigate thoroughly, any work that makes for the betterment of the life of its workers. Furthermore, the question of giving these lectures to six other manufacturing establishments is now being seriously considered.

It might be well to mention that these lectures were merely announced to the workers and in no case was attendance compulsory. They were given without charge during regular working hours.

Our workers have surely benefited by the knowledge gained through this course and the writer trusts that many other manufacturing concerns will give this matter serious thought. It is an established fact that the worker cannot get full production from any power machine unless the human machinery is properly cared for, and but few persons thoroughly understand how to best care for themselves.

W. IRVING WOLF.

New York City.

SEGREGATING VICE

TO THE EDITOR:

It is not a little curious that in all the agitation on the vice question no one has suggested what has always seemed to me the evident solution of the whole matter. Without a second thought, if there were no men there would be no prostitutes; the men are the sole and only source of the whole evil. I am aware that segregation has its drawbacks. It does stimulate clandestine prostitution. It has the fault of legalizing a shameful business. Also under our present conditions it supplies an opportunity for graft. But overruling all these disadvantages is the fact that it facilitates the catching of the men. This is impossible in hotels and apartment houses, but if men found frequenting the segregated district were seized and submitted to compulsory examination, it would only be the blatant sinners who would ever run the risk, and the number of such customers would be greatly reduced.

This suggestion may appear Utopian, for do not the originators of prostitution themselves make the laws? However, there now seems some chance of the public conscience, male and female, being widely aroused and it is possible that the originators of the whole evil may not escape the dragnet.

H. MARTYN HART.

Denver.

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SEX HYGIENE AND YOUNG PEOPLE

TO THE EDITOR:

The present excessive demand for prostitution which comes largely from young boys is, I believe, caused by the nature of our present social organism which abnormally emphasizes the sex relation and puts it before every other influence a boy meets. Women’s dress, current literature, musical comedies and problem plays, “smutty” stories told by boys among themselves, even our advertisements—all combine to throw a fascinating glamor around sex indulgence and develop an abnormal instinct in our boys, which takes command of their nervous system and insists that sex indulgence is necessary.

The average boy of eighteen cannot think of marriage for economic reasons, but his nature craves action, and under these ever-present influences he comes to believe that the perfect “good time” is sex indulgence—and he will exercise all his ingenuity, when with a girl, to attain his goal. No one, who is not in the confidences of young people, has the least idea of the pressure thus brought to bear on girls. The girl finds it necessary in order to hold a boy’s attention, with the amusements and companionship that goes with it, to do as he wants; many girls fall through their perfectly natural desire for healthful recreation which they can get more plentifully by giving in—or through a sentimental desire to retain the favor of boys who are satisfied with nothing short of intercourse.

The ultimate remedy must be to put against this “prevailing spirit of the times” a powerful combatting influence, which will establish in our boys a high ideal of womanhood and marriage.

E. C. S.

Swissvale, Pa.

FREE ACRES COLONY

TO THE EDITOR:

Many persons interested in social betterment work, have written to me enquiring about the Free Acres Colony at Berkeley Heights, N. J.

If you can get along without gas and a janitor and plumbing and a land lord and other modern improvements, you can build your own one room tent-shaped bungalow for $40 there, and make your own clothes and be as respected as you are respectable. Later, you may make it your residence. Any handy man or woman might make a living chopping wood, or gardening, and so forth, and no one there will either give you anything or try to take anything away from you; for in this co-operative land-ownership there is no speculative element.

On a co-operative basis, Free Acres affords an opportunity to own a rural home without having to buy land. But it is as secure as buying, for the lease is a perpetual lease and can be transferred. At present it is pioneering; there are no established industries there as yet, but opportunity is open to anyone to establish them. You can lose yourself in the woods which surround the farm, although it’s only twenty-seven miles from the City Hall in New York.

BOLTON HALL.

New York City.

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THE BALKAN WAR AND ARMENIA

TO THE EDITOR:

In 1908 when, after a revolution, Turkey proclaimed a constitutional government someone had to pay the penalty for the disturbance. As usual the Armenians paid it with the massacre of 25,000 Christians at Adana. Now that the Turk is being driven out of Europe upon whom is his wrath going to fall?

Greeks, Bulgarians, Servians and Roumanians all have served their time under the Turkish rule of massacre and oppression but they were fortunate. Geographical conditions helped them to free themselves. The Armenians revolted, too, although isolated from Christian neighbors and surrounded by ten Turks and Kurds to one Armenian.

The Armenian is the tiller of the land in Asia Minor. During the old regime because of the systematic oppression, some of the Armenians had to emigrate to earn a living. Others could not work their lands for the government had sold their oxen for taxes. The lands of these unfortunates, were grabbed by force by the Turks. For four years during the constitutional government this question was before the Turkish Parliament and was never settled. The Ottoman government can never realize that the poverty of the public means the poverty of the government.