The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 11, 1926, Page 11

~~. oR ee oe: a aoe. ae Re wa ereuerre;sanertesse ee, ee ee ee Pee ee ee ee ey eee oe i Ee letter was sent by a South Wales er to a friend in the United States who was kind gh to let us have it for publication in this magazine. ough dealing with the first weeks of the great the letter represents a document of tremendous rtance for the understanding of the historic con- t taking place in England). s * e e Abersychan, So, Wales, May 9, 1926. ar Friend: ee e impossible’ seems to have happened. We are all strike over here. I have plenty of time to write , being’ we are locked out, @ are all out, besides sanitary workers and gas rkers. Safety men are allowed to work so far; but are abusing that concession. [If things are not ed square very soon, I can see & row about same; every man jack of them will have to stop. e are called a sporting nation, but when workers their children are the quarry, you won’t find much about them in our favor, The “higher-ups” are the most unsporting crowd that er drew breath. They are fine sports with our rights. ve m all and they are pleased. Give them a little to seat up, or a pheasant or deer to shoot down, y th y are the finest sports ever. They! believe in giving us about as square a deal as poor things they shoot down. They haven’t as much a] sport in them as a garden slug. Did they do their bit in the late war? No; they were soft jobs in safety, and having the best of wine, and song, and the first pick of everything. ere is another war on now and again they will try to dodge it by using our own brothers to shoot us down. But things like that are apt to recoil against them and I wouldn’t be in their shoes just now, for all their dirty blood-stained dough. The more they hit us, the more sullen and ready to hit back we feel. I am prepared to work hard, but intend to have the same chance in life as those who now batten on my work, We are all solid. We had a meeting this week, and om the platform were workers of all the trades around here. Railway men were there, transport, and in fact all the jolly lot in the one fight. Gee, I felt proud and reverent when I saw that. Nothing has been known like it in all the world before. If things don’t settle soon, everyone else that is left im work must come out, and that will about put the tin hat on things. We shall get their servants, cooks, etc., out. They will have to clean up their own dirty work and bathe their own children and kiss them goodnight (a thing seldom done by them—the nurse does it for them), and cook their own meals. I bet it will be some cooking, too. The servants have already left the house of commons. So you see we are out for a square deal this time. > s s s TF their pits don’t pay, why in all common sense don’t “ey give them up? No, it is only a gag to get more f us. { had a shop, or anything else, and it didn’t pay, ‘do you think I would hang on? No, I would cut my losses as soon as possible and clear—and more so with & big concern like a pit. No, that is all moonshine, but they are not putting their. moon-madness over on. us this time of day. Bust ‘em—I'’m not standing for it! Here we have what you haven’t got out there, name- ly: dukes, lords, sirs, etc., independent of the people who own industry. These lords were looked up to as such once upon a time. Now we look upon them with scorn, A lord to us is nothing but a scab upon the country. Well, these people are trying to put us back into the old days— put us in our place, as if we were “small fry.” So the people who own industry would like to please them, be- cause it would hit in with things for them also, but it is not coming off. Our eyes are opened too wide for that now. The sooner the bosses quit this country, the better it will be for all concerned. A lot of what is going on is making people very bitter. Even the women are waking up over here, and in- teresting themselves in public affairs. Our meetings now are mostly half women, and they are jammed full as arule. We never smoke now in public meetings out % _ to them, but they must get right in, and not will we have much better conditions, shall be pleased with the box of chocolates you “mentioned, if it lands here, but outward-bound parcel post is stopped. Well, we have just finished a bonny dinner and Mamie is asking me whether we shall be able to get one Hke it next week, Supplies are bound to be short, and many places have — to ration out. We have the dough to get some, but I'm afraid the shops won’t have much ¢o sell by Maybe after this struggle England will be a better Jand for the workers. I’m hoping so, anyway—if our @ are played right, it will be. All I hope ts, we cool and beat them by the justice of our their money won’t bake a loaf of bread or of coal. They can eat their money if they it won’t keep them alive. The worker is of every nation. If the bosses beat them, t themselves every time. Give the worker a eal he ts mostly happy. that in the end all this growth of barnacles of i apa pet a Te pies f A Letter from a British Miner. long standing years will be cleaned off thé bottom of the ship of state. All these old lords, etc., are nothing but scabs and fungus. To me they are the most useless jokers ever born. Blue blood, is it? Why, the rotten lot don’t see Eng- land three parts of every year. It is not good enough for them. “Beastly climate, you know.” Well, there are many hotter places, sure. You can bet there are attempts made to blacken our case in the eyes of the outside world. But don’t fall for them. Russia hag no more to do with this than the poor old man in the moon. _ The whole case rests upon. starvation wages versus the present position, and we have had no option but to accept this fight. The whole show has been played for by the other aide. i Ruseia has no hand in the making of this pie. The wages offered are too low to keep body and soul to- gether, and that ts why all the other workers are with us. They say pits don’t pay! A bigger He was never invented. They are paying as good as ever they did, but greed rules their brains. This is the agreement we have: So much for wages —#s0 much for profits—and so much for costs of produc- tion—on the coal produced. Now this is how the blind side of the business is worked, to show the outfits don’t pay. Here it is called C. O. P., 4. e., “Costs of Production.” Directors’ fees run into thousands of pounds, besides their gross profits on the money they have invested. Fighting for a Square Deal through your newspapers. They are not our terms. but theirs, I fought and ruined my health to my dying day to protect this ‘country and now I am back, it is a worse fight to live in it because our own kith and kin are in the lines fighting and suffering slow starvation and that is worse than real war. There it is mostly short, sharp and sweet, but here, you can see workers’ children fading before one’s own eyes, blighted by. poor food and suffering from shoddy clothes and foot-wear. We pay the top-most price, but even our food-stuffs are faked up, everything we. wear is shoddy and faked, We won't accept them—just as well starve above- ground as underground working for them. So now they say we are fighting the community! What a lie! If the coal owners are the community, then goodness help us in the next war. They haven’t the courage or heart of a field mouse. So don’t you fail for their. lies over there. We are not Bolshies or Communists, we are just workers fighting for a living wage; fighting for our women-folks and. children. The greatest call ever. heard was; “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” Why should the workers in the family of god get the worst upon his table every time? He doesn’t wish it that way,-I’m sure. He gave us brains as well as a place to put food, and ff we don’t use our brains what is the use of god giving them to us? A man who fights for bread for his children is all that is bad. He is a Bolshie, or, in other terms, a Red. Why, now, to me he is only a human being. For being The Priest to the Miner: “Be hunmble, my child, Each one of us has got to carry his cross.” Directors’ work is done in some nice villa in some nice climate, That means nil as regards producing a dram of coal. r } They have big villas here, and when, the weather {s nice they come home. Their servants: gardners, foot- men, chauffeurs, etc., @re classed on the pit books as producers of coal. Do they pay, out of their regular income, for the food they eat, wines they drink, cigars they smoke, rent, taxes, etc., clothes and what-nots? No, they call all that “stores, timber, etc.,” in other words, “costs of production,” and that is how they rob us; where the trouble is concealed. Even our Jocal bosses are supplied with gardners, motor cars, wire- less outfits, house, free coal, light, etc. They have ban- quets every so often; Xmas time they have a bonus, and a big fat turkey; also holidays with pay, and pay for sickness, Not satisfied with all that, they put their friends into “jammy” (soft) jobs, doing nothing, only hanging on. In the pit I work in, the waste is awful to see, and the Diant lying about ts enough to make one weep. They don’t put practical men in charge underground now, they are all mostly “paper men,” and they know no more about producing a ton of coal than a farm labor- er. To think clearly of it all is enough to send a true practical collier off his nut.. You should see mining now as it ts carried on here. Half-full drams are com- ‘ing up the pits now, owing to our present conveyor sys- ‘ But with all that, the pits are paying the owners very well indeed. I’m working harder seven hours than I did eight. Why? Because there is more speed and hustle, Again, there are here by-product-works on top.of the pit, the finest in the world; also the biggest power house in England, All this is run free of charge by the small coal we fill for nothing. The profits from these concerns are not counted in with the regular mine proceeds at all. Well, is this fair? ' The profits on the by-products alone will cover all pit expenses, out they tell us that is a separate indus- try, and does not come tnto our earnings, Gee, % fs jammy for them, isn’t it? ' The terms the mine owners offered us, you know | less he would be the biggest coward:known. Why, ever since nature* formed itself, the smallest thinks known will fight for their young. So we are not really so pad” ever here, oa. Cook is’ obeying our mandate and his own; and be- lieve me, he knows hig job. To the other side, ‘his one great fault is he will not name his price. He hits too straight for them, and he is beating them on tactics. I have spoken of this useless mob of lords, sirs, dukes, etc., over here, Since the war we have added a good many more, We have one to every. milestone now; the old coun- try is honeycombed with them—they bleed the land. They are useless ballast every time, with their deer parks and hunting grounds. They say, “Send the skilled men overseas, or use Canada, but our deer parks, Oh, no!” We are willing to work, and work hard for a square meal, but we can't expect it under the circumstances I have shown you. “What are we to do?” is the next question. what I would do if I had my way. You may have friends: calling and ‘talking about us, 80 don’t be afraid to show them my letter. Truth here ig a bugbear to many in high places. Our papers are mostly dictated lies, when anything affecting the work- ers is concerned. So don’t fall for those lies. The printed wage-scale issued by the Powell Duffryn Steam Coal Co., Ltd., and made up according to ‘the awards of Earl Buxton and Lord St. Aldwyn, will show you that the standard rate plus 5 per cent, and plus subsistance allowance, that is, the total wage, extends from a minimum of 5 shillings, 9d, for single men over 21 years of age, to a maximum of 7 shillings, 2d, for married men, per day. This would be, in U. 8. money, a daily wage of from $1.38 for single men, to $1.72 for married men. When you consider that we have to pay as much for almost everything here as you do in America, and more for some things, why you can see what this means to the workers’ families here. These wage-terms, so kindly offered to us by the company, we are supposed to accept, also, upon “day to day contracts,” ’ 3 Well, good luck and cherrio, I know Robert B. 0 ON “4