Coal miners -- United States -- Fiction; Coal mines and mining -- United States -- Fiction; Labor movement -- United States -- Fiction
So much for the court opinion upon coal-camp politics. In relation
thereto, the writer has only one comment to offer. Let the reader not
drop the matter with the idea that because one set of corrupt officials
have been turned out of office in one American county, therefore justice
has been vindicated, and there is no longer need to be concerned about
the conditions portrayed in “King Coal.” The defeat of the “King of
Huerfano County” is but one step in a long road which the miners of
Colorado have to travel if ever they are to be free men. The industrial
power of the great corporations remains untouched by this decision; and
this power is greater than any political power ever wielded by the
government of Huerfano County, or even of the state of Colorado. This
industrial power is a deep, far-spreading root; and so long as it is
allowed to thrive, it will send up again and again the poisonous plant
of political “malconduct, fraud and corruption.” The citizens and
workers of such industrial communities, whether in Colorado, in West
Virginia, Alabama, Michigan or Minnesota, in the Chicago stock-yards,
the steel-mills of Pittsburg, the woollen-mills of Lawrence or the
silk-mills of Paterson, will find that they have neither peace nor
freedom, until they have abolished the system of production for profit,
and established in the field of industry what they are supposed to have
already in the field of politics--a government of the people, by the
people, for the people.
NOTE: On the day that the author finished the reading of the proofs of
“King Coal,” the following item appeared in his daily newspaper:
COLORADO MINE WORKERS ASK LEAVE TO STRIKE
[BY A. P. NIGHT WIRE]
DENVER (Colo.), June 14.--Officers of the United Mine Workers
representing members of that organisation employed by the Colorado Fuel
and Iron Company, have telegraphed their national officers asking
permission to strike.
At the morning session a resolution was adopted expressing
disapprobation of the action of J. F. Welborn, president of the fuel
company, for failure to attend the meeting, which was a part of the
“peace programme” to prevent industrial differences in the State during
the war.
The grievances of the men, according to John McLennan, spokesman for
them, centre about the operation of the so-called “Rockefeller plan” at
the mines. McLennan said the failure of Mr. Welborn to attend the
meeting and discuss these grievances with the men precipitated the
strike agitation.
THE END
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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