Mr. WELSH. Well, our police force was a striking looking outfit some wearing uniforms and some not, and their unforms were not al uniform.

Senator WAGNER. Who furnished those uniforms?

Mr. WELSH. The deputies themselves.

Senator WHEELER. To whom did the deputy sheriffs report?
Mr. WELSH. To the sheriff.

Senator WHEELER. And not to your company?

Mr. WELSH. Except to the superintendent.

Senator WHEELER. I have found in some instances that the deputy sheriffs, and of course all of the coal and iron police, reported to the coal company rather than to the sheriff of the county.

Mr. WELSH. Well, they did not report to us, except if one discovered anything that he thought should be brought to our attention, then he reported to the local superintendent.

Senator WHEELER. In a case of an arrest or anything of that kind, to whom did he report? To the sheriff? And did he turn the party over to the sheriff or to your company?

Mr. WELSH. Oh, no; I never knew of it until afterwards.

Senator WHEELER. You did not know anything about it at the time, and the man was turned over to the sheriff and was taken to the county jail, rather than being turned over to the company and put in the company jail.

Mr. MUSSER. We do not maintain a company jail, do we, Mr. Welsh?

Mr. WELSH. No, sir.

Senator GOODING. Are your present deputy sheriffs reporting to some company officer or the sheriff?

Mr. MUSSER. No, sir.

Senator GOODING. Is it not a fact that they are reporting to Major Taylor at the present time?

Mr. MUSSER. No; I do not think the deputies are reporting to Major Taylor, except some man he furnishes, probably 40 men. Senator GOODING. Do you know who Major Taylor is?

Mr. MUSSER. Yes, sir; Major Taylor is a man who had done considerable work in the Government service, I believe, and I think some up in Alaska in connection with the United States mails. And then he was for a time employed in the Pittsburgh district doing police duty, and then he came to the central

Senator GOODING (interposing). By whom employed?

Mr. MUSSER. I do not know whether he was employed by one operator or a group of operators. But he came to central Pennsylvania from the Pittsburgh region. Some one has suggested here that he was employed by a group of operators to recruit a police force and to have more or less supervision of it, particularly in counties where the sheriff's did not take that responsibility. That was not true in this county.

Senator GOODING. What was his military experience before he went to work here?

Mr. MUSSER. I can not tell you in detail. I have heard it, but I know that a part of it was up in Alaska in the Government service. But his reputation and record is that of a very experienced man in that line of work.

Senator WHEELER. Summing up, Mr. Musser, you believe that the Jacksonville agreement was just as binding upon you as any other agreement you made with other individuals?

Mr. MUSSER. We do, and we took that position repeatedly.

Senator WHEELER. And as I understand it the only reason you terminated that wage scale was because of the fact that other coal companies terminated it previously, and in order to meet their competition you felt that you had to do it?

Mr. MUSSER. Other companies had terminated it previously, and many other companies never had been bound by that, and had worked as open-shop mines. I think I have made it quite clear that we had no fight with organized labor. We were in this game before organized labor came into Pittsburgh, and we were among the first to make an agreement with them.

Senator WHEELER. You recognized the union for many years?

Mr. MUSSER. Almost 30 years. I will frankly say, and have told the officers of the union, that we prefer to operate union mines, and have gone out of our way to make an agreement with them. We went to the very extreme limit the last time.

Senator WHEELER. You feel that organized labor is necessary and that it is beneficial, generally speaking, do you not?

Mr. MUSSER. As to organized labor properly conducted, I will

say yes.

Senator WHEELER. You feel, do you not, that organized labor has helped to raise the standard of living of the American workingman generally throughout the country?

Mr. MUSSER. I presume that it has.

Senator WHEELER. And it has bettered their condition?

Mr. MUSSER. Yes; I think we may grant that.

Senator WHEELER. As a matter of fact, they would be working longer hours in the United States, and would not have the same standard of working conditions had it not been for organized labor. Mr. MUSSER. That is generally true. It is also true that Judge Gary reduced the steel mills from a 12-hour day to an 8-hour day without the pressure of organized labor back of him.

Senator WHEELER. But was it not the result of pressure on other industries that forced that sort of thing?

Mr. MUSSER. I do not know that it was, Senator. I rather doubt that?.

Senator GOODING. Don't you think that the Government, itself, in the Adamson law, changed the basis of labor from 10 hours to 8 hours for a day? That that was done through legislation, and had much to do with bringing about the 8-hour day all over the country? Mr. MUSSER. Perhaps so.

Senator GOODING. Two million men were employed at that time. Mr. MUSSER. Yes, sir.

Senator GOODING. Eight hours in a day is enough for men generally and certainly for coal men.

Mr. MUSSER. I do think so, and in a practical way it works out that way. At some outlying point we are tempted to do it, perhaps, but we do not work men 12 hours as a general thing, although they would do it if we allowed them to do so. put on three shifts of eight hours each. we are inclined to think that the men render better service. We were

We feel that it is better to Of course it costs more but

not interested in getting more hours per day, or in pounding down wages; we were only taking care of ourselves in a competitive way. If this district in central Pennsylvania had been 50 per cent or more union we could have gone along that way, and we would not have had any objection to $7.50 a day or any other rate.

Senator WAGNER. As a matter of fact, I made a study of that question some time ago, of reduced hours, and found that it actually increased the productivity of labor and was also a great benefit to the employer in the number of accidents, because experience and statistics show that accidents usually occur during the last two or three hours when the men are tired and worn out.

Mr. MUSSER. Yes; perhaps so.

Senator GOODING. I heard a remarkable statement on that in regard to the traffic in New York; that the most of the accidents there occur in the evening when the people are tired.

Senator WAGNER. Yes; when the driver is tired. That shows the effect on the man.

Mr. MUSSER. I quite agree with that.

Senator GOODING. Will you be kind enough to tell us your Philadelphia scale? Your scale is $6 for men who work in the open. What is the scale for the miner?

Mr. MUSSER. It is practically 70 cents, that is, for loading with machines.

Senator GOODING. What is it for the pick and shovel man?

Mr. MUSSER. That is loading. Here is our statement and the rate. The machine loading rate is 64.79 cents, and then there is added to it

Senator GOODING (interposing). What was it before?

Mr. MUSSER. There has been added to that 5 cents for pushing cars, which makes it practically 70 cents. Before, and it was made up in the same way, it was 92 cents; 92 cents as against 70

cents.

Senator GOODING. Do your pick and shovel men get the same as your machine men?

Mr. WELSH. No; they get $1.06 instead of 70 cents.

Mr. MUSSER. The men who do the whole operation, of undercutting coal with a pick and loading it, get $1.06. And these men for whom the cutting is done by machines get 70 cents.

Senator WHEELER. If the other coal companies in this district would agree to pay the Jacksonville scale, your company would be perfectly willing do do so?

Mr. MUSSER. I would not attempt to sanwer that question. That is a matter that is beyond my authority. I would have to be gov erned by the policy of our president and board of directors on that

matter.

Senator WAGNER. I wish to ask you in this process of fixation of prices at which coal is carried on your books and sold to your parent company, is that done by conference between you or does the competitive price upon the market influence it?

Mr. MUSSER. The competitive market does influence it.

Senator WAGNER. Who fixes the price? Do you fix that here or is it done in New York?

Mr. MUSSER. No, sir; it is fixed in the purchasing department in New York, in our president's office.

Senator WHEELER. Did I understand you to say that your company would prefer to deal with organized labor rather than not to deal with it?

Mr. MUSSER. Well, I would not want to say that we are in that position now, but we were in that position and we kept ourselves in that position up to the very bitter end. Two years ago we appealed to the people here, and attempted to appeal to Mr. Lewis, and we continued that policy and appealed to Mr. Murray to do something to put this district on a competitive basis, saying that we could not go on indefinitely with a lot of other people around us producing coal at a very much lower wage rate; that we could not continue to go along in that way and pay this high wage scale.

Mr. MURRAY. Is it not a fact that you are suffering more from a condition of internal competition in your own State than outside competition insofar as your particular business is concerned?

Mr. MUSSER. We are suffering from both, of course, but the more acute suffering comes from our immediate surroundings. Senator WHEELER. From your own district?

Mr. MUSSER. Undoubtedly.

Senator WHEELER. There was one operator who told me that the most of the troubles in this district came from cut-throat competition. in the Pittsburgh district itself.

Mr. MUSSER. Of course, speaking for ourselves, the Clearfield Bituminous Coal Corporation, if we are the only producer paying a scale like the Jacksonville scale, with everybody else paying either 20 per cent less than we are, or even more than that, we do not stand any show in running this property.

Senator GOODING. Now, Senator Wheeler, suppose you go ahead with the pay roll.

Senator WHEELER. This pay roll is for January, 1928.

Mr. WELSH. Yes, sir.

Senator WHEELER. Do your men live in company houses?

Mr. WELSH. Some of them do.

Senator WHEELER. And do they deal at the company's store?
Mr. WELSH. Some of them do and some do not.

Senator WHEELER. Do you have bunk houses for your men to live in?

Mr. WELSH. We do not. There are boarding houses, but no bunk houses or camp houses.

Mr. MUSSER. I should like for you gentlemen to get this information, because it is different from what you have read in the newspapers. You have been misled. It does not make any difference; if he elects to go to the store and spend some of his money, on the strength of what he has been told around, of course we give him that opportunity. And if he elects to come around and pay his rent in cash, that is entirely satisfactory. This smith work is a part of his legitimate expenses, and he pays it. But this amount here [indicating on pay roll, has nothing to do with his earnings.

Senator WAGNER. We heard that there were some very high prices in company stores because the men absorbed all the money they got in purchases of goods, and then there was a great discrepancy in some places we investigated between the earnings during the time of the Jacksonville agreement and afterwards. And also in the matter

of steadiness of working hours of the men; they seemed to be more steady in their work, as to the number of hours put in before than after the Jacksonville agreement; showing that there was a more shiftless lot afterwards, and that the men before that were putting in six days work.

Senator WHEELER. The situation so far as there beong work for them to do was this: They said it was during the period of 1925. We noticed any number that worked 10, 11, and 12 days in the two weeks, and even more, whereas afterwards there were some that worked three and four days a week.

Mr. MUSSER. It might be accounted for in this way: If labor is recruited through employment agencies, and those agencies pick up every fellow that comes along. But we are not trying to pick up that kind of men. We get our labor in a different way. We do not use the employment offices. We try to get our labor here. We do not bring in colored labor and inefficient people and men who do not know how to live. The coal commission, I think, determined that a miner's expenses did not exceed 6 per cent, that it varied from 2 per cent and 3 per cent to 6 per cent as a maximum. Here is information that Mr. Welsh just gave me on the 24th to the effect that miners' expenses, covering explosives, carbide and his smith work amounted to 30 cents per man, and that the average man here in that period received $6.19 per day, which means 5 per cent of their earnings.

Senator WHEELER. I will take this pay roll and read off the total debits and amounts drawn by the men:

Mr. MUSSER. This covers the first two weeks of January, which was interfered with by the January holiday. If you will take the last two weeks you will get a better statement.

Senator WAGNER. How many men did you employ here, take the last month or two as an approximation, during the time the Jacksonville agreement was in force?

Mr. MUSSER. In June, 1927, 664 men.

Senator WAGNER. You were still operating under the Jacksonville agreement?

Mr. MUSSER. Yes, sir; by reason of a temporary arrangement, until the 1st of July, 1927.

Senator WAGNER. How many men did you say you had then? Mr. MUSSER. Six hundred and sixty-four men.

Senator WAGNER. How many men did you have in February of this year?