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Senator TOWNSEND. You desire to wait, and will not object later to a chance to be interrogated?

Senator NEWLANDS. Certainly not. I wish to state that interrogation took place at the hearing last session, and that I have already submitted my views freely in reply to questions of members of the committee.

The CHAIRMAN. If there is nothing further before the committee, the committee will stand adjourned until to-morrow morning at 11 o'clock.

(Whereupon the committee adjourned until to-morrow, Thursday, November 16, 1911, at 11 o'clock a. m.)

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1911.

UNITED STATES SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON INTERSTATE COMMERCE.

The committee met at 11 o'clock a. m.

Present: Senators Clapp (chairman), Cummins, Brandegee, Oliver, Townsend, Newlands, Watson, and Pomerene.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. Mr. Vinson, you may proceed.

STATEMENT OF TAYLOR VINSON, ATTORNEY AT LAW, AND ALSO ENGAGED IN THE COAL BUSINESS, HUNTINGTON, W. VA.

Mr. VINSON. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I have prepared a bill for your consideration in your committee work, and this bill applies with particular, and I might say exclusive, reference to the bituminous-coal industry.

After quite an experience in the coal business, both as attorney and as a party in interest, I have come to the conclusion that the legislation that is needed in that industry is a constructive legislation that will enable the industry to live and prosper if it may. I have come to the further conclusion that the most efficient method or way by which that legislation may be brought about is the creation of a commission-a mining commission, if you please-having full authority to regulate the mining industry; I mean the coal-mining industry; a commission organized along the lines of the Interstate Commerce Commission, with certain powers vested in it. Those powers may be enumerated in three or four classes: First, the power to prescribe all the necessary rules and regulations by which all of the coal may be mined out, and in that respect it would be a step toward the conservation of the natural resources. From the best statistics that we can get, the present mining conditions leave in the mine fully 25 per cent of the coal unrecovered, and when the mine is abandoned that quantity of coal becomes a total loss. It is simply deducting from our fuel supply 25 per cent of it that ought to go into the industry. Of course, this coal is left in the mine from various causes. There are squeezes and breakdowns that are expensive to mine through and get to the coal beyond from the other side. Then there are faults that come in most mines. Then the washing and various causes operate to make a part of the coal much more expensive to produce than other parts of it, and consequently

under very sharp competition in the market, and the particularly low margin of profit, it is not profitable to mine this coal and it is left in the ground. A commission would require that coal to be brought out and go into the commerce of the country.

Another feature of the bill which I have prepared is to give the commission the power to prescribe the necessary rules and regulations for the proper mining of the coal so that the safety of the miner may be secured as far as it is possible to do so, and particularly the cause of explosion and accidents may be minimized as far as possible.

Now, it may be thought that the State administration of the mining system in each State would be more effective than a national commission. The trouble with the State administration of that feature of coal mining is that each State passes a law applicable to the whole subject. They can not specify that a certain mine or a certain district will have to be regulated by mandatory provisions, but the law is general, and necessarily has to be under most of the constitutions in many of the States.

To illustrate: In West Virginia we have mines in Fairmont district, which is in the northern part of the State, and we have mines in the extreme lower end of the State, which are known as the Pocahontas and Norfolk & Western districts. We have a general mining law passed by the legislature. Now, the conditions that prevail in the Fairmont mine might be met by the local State law, whereas the conditions that prevail in the mines in the southern part of the State would not be met if the local law were in force. The fact is, that in some instances a strict enforcement of the State law would operate well to prevent explosions, when as applied to other parts of the State it would enhance the chance or increase the chance of explosions. So the only way to minimize the chance of explosion in mines is to have each mine studied and known so that when the conditions that pertain to that particular mine-and they are all different; there are no two exactly alike-so when those conditions are known the proper remedies may be applied. In one mine you may want so much air put in, whereas in the mines in the neighboring district, or maybe in the same territory, the same quantity of air applied would hasten an explosion; so much moisture should go in one mine and in another much less moisture.

All the preventive conditions that are now known to the mining business are not applicable to each mine in the same ratio, and to get the best results each mine must be studied and it must be known and its own conditions must be provided for. That can be done by a commission having full power and authority to apply rules and regulations applicable to each one of those mines. Of course, the loss of life in most explosions and mining accidents is appalling. For every thousand men employed last year we had four and one-half deaths. For every million tons of coal mined we had five and a half deaths-thirteen serious injuries occurred-and that is the price in human life and human energy that is exacted from the operation of those mines when the local authorities are doing the best they can to minimize those accidents and explosions.

Now that can be administered so much better and so much more effectively if some tribunal, some commission, if you please, who

knew those things could send their men into each mine and inspect it and apply the remedy to that particular mine, which, I think, all mining men will fully agree upon.

Another feature of the bill that I want to present to your committee is a provision for a workingman's compensation. Almost in every State in the United States there is an agitation looking to the best laws that will give workingmen compensation for injuries received while in the course of their employment. A great many of those bills have been passed, and I take it that in most of the States they will be passed, if not all of them. Those bills run along two lines: One is forcing the employer to be responsible for all the injuries, and forcing the employer to make compensation to the injured employee out of his own resources. Bills have been passed and are being passed, and investigations are being made along that line. Another line is along the compulsory-insurance law, so that when a man is injured the employer pays for an insurance for him. The plan that I propose and which is embodied into this bill, it seems to me, is much more efficient and a good deal simpler and much more easily administered. It is this: Have each mining operation pay a cent a ton on the coal mined into the treasury of the commission and have the operatives, the employees, pay 1 per cent of the pay roll, which would ordinarily amount to 40 cents or 50 cents a month on the part of the employees. That fund, based upon last year's production, would amount in round numbers to $8.000,000. Now, the practical administration or application of that fund would be that when a man is injured in a mine he is at once taken into the hands of competent physicians. Each mine, of course, has its local physician, and the commission would have its district physician take care of him and treat him and give him whatever medical attention was necessary. In the meantime his wages would go on, and he would get the benefit of that. After he has recovered, if he has a permanent disability, if the injury results in bringing disability of any kind, or a modified disability, then the commission, out of that fund so created, would make him a fair, reasonable, and just compensation to the extent of his injuries. Of course, if he is killed, the compensation would go to his wife or children, as the case may be, or those dependent upon him.

Now, the advantage that this system has over any of the others, is that there is no lawsuit; there is no jury trial; there is no delay. The very minute the man is injured he begins to get a compensation then and there, in the way of medical attendance. As soon as he has recovered, if he is injured at all, he is provided with this sum of money without even a demand. He does not have to employ lawyers and divide up practically half of what he may get after a long litigation-and maybe get nothing at all-with his counsel. There is no economic waste, either to the company employing him, or to the man; the fund is there ready and provided for and is immediate, and it is to be administered by men who are thoroughly impartial, and who have no other reason in the world in his case but to do full and complete justice and give him all his injuries entitle him to.

Now, unless something like that is done, gentleman of the committee, what is going to be the result? You take the employers' liability law-and that seems to be the most popular in some of the

States; what does that mean? You take a small coal company with a capital of $75,000 or $100,000, and that represents the capital, generally speaking, of the smaller concerns, and that money that is invested in that coal plant is practically all the money that the men who own that plant can raise and put into it. They have their all in it. Now, then, if our legislation will put upon that coal company an employer's liability for the injuries and take away the defenses, which they all do, then a very small explosion that would cause five or six deaths, or serious injuries, to that extent it would take the whole of that plant to pay it absolutely; consequently the whole of that investment would be wiped and exhausted in paying the damages, and as a consequence the small man in the business, now, as well as those who contemplate going in, would simply have to retire; the risk would be so great that their business would be destroyed in that way.

Now, if you have a general fund that is created and embodied by the whole industry all over the country, then, if the explosion does come to the small man, and he does have death and injuries in his mine, it costs him nothing in the world except his contribution to that fund; the industry pays the penalty for the explosion and gives a compensation to those who are injured.

Now, if that is applied to all alike in all the States, that compensation does not ultimately come from either the employer or the employee, but it comes from the consumer; but if it is applicable only in one State, then it must come from the employer, and the individual employer who is least able to bear it, and, of course, that involves some litigation and loss, both to the employer and the employee.

Now, as to the insurance plan. It is shown by the statistics, both of this country and Germany, from which country we get our idea of the insurance plan, that for every dollar that is contributed and paid into the insurance company for the benefit of the injured employee it takes in this country 60 cents of that dollar to distribute the other 46. As a consequence, out of every $100 paid into the insurance fund out of the industry the man who is entitled to it and for whose benefit the payment is made only gets 46 cents. In Germany it is a little over 55 cents. So that the insurance plan is too expensive and too little too small in amount when money that is paid into that fund finally reaches the object for which it was intended. So that under this plan the man who is hurt does not feel that he is a pensioner: he does not feel that he is an object of charity, as he does in many instances where there is compulsory insurance and pensions; but he is contributing a small mite of his wages-40 or 50 cents a month, if you please-something that he does not feel and does not notice, and then when he is injured he feels that he is simply getting only what he is justly and honestly entitled to.

One more advantage in this would be doing away with the lawsuits; doing away with that animosity that always springs up between an injured employee and the employer when an action for damages is contemplated. Now, that is a feature that ought to commend itself to every man in the country, whether he be employer or employee, or whether he be legislator or judge, because it does provide a fund that does make compensation, and an actual compensation, and a real compensation, inimediately paid the man entitled to

it. That is the advantage that this suggestion has over either the employers' liability or the insurance feature.

Another provision of the bill is the power that would be vested in this commission to regulate and approve trade agreements. Let me illustrate in respect to the coal-mining industry in West Virginia, and I am speaking now more particularly with reference to West Virginia, and I think the conditions apply to all the other States: Under the operation of existing law the small coal operator, and we have 335 of them in West Virginia producing 18,000,000 tons of coal, while we have 9 operators in that State that produce an equal amount, so the capacity to produce coal upon the part of the combined effort of 335 operators is practically the same to produce the same amount of coal during the year as 5 of the larger companies produce.

Now, all of these companies are in not only direct and immediate competition, but the competition, gentlemen of the committee, is of the fiercest kind.

Now, let me illustrate by a concrete case. I represent a large coal company. That company bought its land. It bought 30,000 acres of land and built its plant upon it. It had what you might call unlimited capital, so far as it was required to build a most modern and up-to-date mill. In order to economize-it was their purpose to economize and indulge in a legitimate economy-they took their own sawmills and cut up trees on the land and built their houses and their tipples and mining plants, so they paid no, profits to the middleman or retail dealer. They made their machinery of the most approved kind and a most effective kind and installed it in that plant. They have 10 or 12 mines that they operate on this one piece of property. They have one central power plant that runs all of these mines and furnishes all the power that is necessary to operate them. They have one organization of their clerical force; they have one manager and one superintendent; in other words, they have simply one organization to produce 2,500,000 tons of coal a year. In addition to that, they have their own selling agent. They are providing for now and have secured their docks and their boats and all of the facilities that are necessary to take their coal directly from the mine and give it immediately to the consumer.

Now, the tremendous advantage that that company has over its neighbors and its friends-because I have personal interest in coal mines within a mile or two of this mining operation, the same coal and the same seam-the advantage that that concern has over the smaller one is such that gradually and surely the smaller concerns are being driven into bankruptcy, and there are 335 of them in West Virginia. The same condition prevails, I am told, in Illinois.

Why is that so? Simply because of this concentrated power and the economies that the big company now exercises and uses in its business. It can produce its coal, actually mined, for from 6 to 8 cents a ton cheaper than the little one possibly can do, and particularly has it an advantage when it comes to selling that coal. It costs the small producer 10 cents per ton to sell his coal and get it delivered to the consumer-I mean that is what he pays as a compensation to the selling agent. The larger concerns can sell and deliver their coal-and they do do it-at from 3 to 5 cents a ton, so that by

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