those poor unfortunate souls who are dependent upon it assurance that they will live just live.

Senator COUZENS. May I ask a question right there?

Mr. MURRAY. Certainly.

Senator COUZENS. This morning you testified that the wage rate for experts was $7.50 a day.

Mr. MURRAY. Yes, sir.

Senator COUZENS. Prior to the strike, how many days a week did the mine worker average?

Mr. MURRAY. Well, the average working time throughout the United States

Senator COUZENS (interposing). I mean in the Pennsylvania coal district.

Mr. MURRAY. Well, in the Pennsylvania district prior to the strike it averaged about 175 days.

Senator COUZENS. Do you mean 175 days per year?

Mr. MURRAY. Yes, sir.

Senator COUZENS. What was it throughout the country?

Mr. MURRAY. About the same as an average proposition, except in isolated instances you will find where they get more work than in other places. But as an average proposition throughout the country I think it is about that.

Senator COUZENS. So that the average income per year for the workers in the Pennsylvania district prior to the agreement being broken was somewhere about $1,400 or $1,500 a year?

Mr. MURRAY. Well, it would not reach that amount.
Senator CouZENS. It would not?

Mr. MURRAY. No; because out of that maximum rate based on $7.50 a day-and remember that that is the high rate-there must be purchased supplies, such as tools, equipment, incidentals, in order to maintain the miner's job. That represents his possible gross earning power, but there are deductions you understand. His gross annual earnings may approximate $1,300, but if you want the net that he really gets it is about $1,050 a year, or $1,000 after these incidentals and supplies have been taken out.

The CHAIRMAN. Was the 175 days a year all that the miner wanted to work, or all that he could work, or was that all the mine owner could keep his mine going?

Mr. MURRAY. That was the largest number of days the company could open up the mines to give the men work and no more.

Senator JOHNSON. What does a miner buy in the nature of supplies?

Mr. MURRAY. In the nature of supplies they have to buy their powder, their tools which are sometimes very costly, and they have to pay for the maintenance of the lamps, that is the electric hat lamps that they use for underground work, at the rate of about 5 cents to 8 cents a day, and many other little incidentals.

Senator WHEELER. Why does not the company furnish those things?

Mr. MURRAY. No; the company does not furnish them. The men have to buy them out of their wages.

Senator JOHNSON. So that when the miners have worked the maximum time the mine operator could afford to have them work, the average income per year was something between $1,000 and $1,100?

Mr. MURRAY. Something like that.

Senator COUZENS. I think it is well that that has been brought out, because I believe there is a misapprehension throughout the country that because these men get $7.50 a day, they get that for say 300 days in the year.

Mr. MURRAY. Oh, yes; and not only that, but there is a misconception as to what the miner actually gets in wages. He does not get that in his pay-roll envelope at the end of the week. His taxes are taken out, and supplies, and so on, and that cuts it down a good deal.

The CHAIRMAN. Is the business of mining coal so strenuous and hard that a miner could not work eight hours a day six days in the week!

Mr. MURRAY. Well, I think that is so as a general proposition.
The CHAIRMAN. That is the situation, then?

Mr. MURRAY. Yes, sir. It is a very arduous task, and ofttimes they are working in badly ventilated sections.

Senator JOHNSON. Are a large proportion of the miners married? Mr. MURRAY. A very large proportion of them.

Senator JOHNSON. And I imagine that there is no race suicide there.

Mr. MURRAY. No, sir; the most of them have large families.

Senator WHEELER. I should judge by the groups I saw that they range all the way from 4 to 10 or 12 children.

Mr. MURRAY. Yes, sir. I might add that we have had a number of very distinguished observers to come to the city of Pittsburgh, not miners, persons who could not be termed in any way sympathetic with the mine workers' viewpoint. The Hearst Newspaper Syndicate invited Fannie Hurst, the writer of fame, to come to western Pennsylvania several weeks ago and conduct an investigation of her own into the causes of the strike and the conditions that have grown out of the strike. Miss Hurst ran a series of four articles, and perhaps some of you read them, giving her viewpoint of the strike situation. And her position is substantially this: That the miner is not getting enough, has not been getting enough, and that the coal operator can not hope to make good citizens out of people who are already underpaid by taking from them something that they now get. In addition to that we had Mr. Basil Manly, who is an authority on economic questions, and has a most complete and comprehensive and thorough knowledge of coal mining, and who was associated with Mr. Taft on the War Labor Board during the World War, and whose word upon questions such as these is given most serious consideration by the American people, particularly the captains of industry.

Senator COUZENS. How many unemployed are there in your district right now?

Mr. MURRAY. In the western Pennsylvania district?

Senator COUZENS. Yes.

Mr. MURRAY. When the strike commenced we had 45,000 employees to strike in that district, and up until I left my home last we had approximately 44,400 men still on strike.

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Senator COUZENS. And the union is supporting them?

Mr. MURRAY. It much find some means of support for them. Senator COUZENS. Have you any schedule that you dole out to those men, based on their economic needs?

Mr. MURRAY. No; that is, we have no fixed basis for their economic needs. But where there is a case of real destitution, of a man with a big family, we give out a little more to him than to a neighboring family which is not that bad off.

Senator COUZENS. But you have no schedule for that?

Mr. MURRAY. We can not operate on any particular schedule in the distribution of relief where we have such a tremendous relief problem to take care of.

What I was about to say was that Mr. Basil Manly made an impartial investigation of the situation in Pennsylvania, and wrote a series of articles, which were taken over by the newspapers throughout the country, some 3,000,000 readers, as I understand it, in the different States of the Union. His observations of the strike, which I read in the newspapers, were substantially such as indorsed the viewpoint of the mine worker.

Mr. B. C. Forbes, who, as you know, is an expert on industrial and economic questions, addressed the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce at the largest meeting, I think, the chamber of commerce ever had in its history some two months ago, and during the course of his address he took occasion to refer to the condition of affairs in the mining industry in Pennsylvania. He condemned the practices of the coal companies. He said that they gave no consideration to human standards, and that a correction of the abuses prevailing within the mining industry lay absolutely in the laps of those coal men who own the mines, and that they ought to see to it that the mine worker and his family were given a better living than he now has.

Nobody can charge that Mr. Forbes is a miner, or a member of the mine workers' organization, or that he has any sympathy with them. I never met the gentleman in my life, and do not know that any of the officers of the organization ever did. But that was his observation.

The New York Daily News has had Mr. Lucas and Mr. McCory for a period of three and a half months in the mining fields of Pennsylvania, making a thorough investigation of conditions in the strike field and the economic phases of the situation, and the living conditions of the people in the strike zone. These gentlemen have no special contact with the mine workers' organization, and yet they have been running a series of daily articles for a period of over three months on the strike situation, and the trend of their articles as I get them would indicate that, in their opinion at least, the position of the mine worker in this strike is absolutely right.

As a matter of fact, every disinterested observer, I mean outside. observer, who may be interested in the situation enough to take the time to investigate the mining situation in the States of Pennsylvania. and Ohio and northern West Virginia, has invariably indorsed the viewpoint of the mine worker in the present coal strike.

I wish it were possible for you gentlemen of this committee to visit. our mining communities, to talk to our priests and ministers of the gospel, to talk to the presidents of our Rotary Clubs and Kiwanis

Clubs, and to the local chambers of commerce in the heart of our mining region. I wish you could ask them what they think of this coal strike. They will tell you, each and every one of them, from their own personal daily contact and knowledge of the situation, that the mine worker is absolutely right.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask a question for my own information and perhaps for the information of other members of the committee: What wages were you getting before the Pittsburgh Coal Co. abrogated its contract, and what wages did they want you to come to? Mr. MURRAY. When the Pittsburgh Coal Co. abrogated its contract they were paying this maximum rate that I was talking about, $7,50 a day.

Senator JOHNSON. That is, they were paying the Jacksonville agreement rates?

Mr. MURRAY. Yes, sir; but they lowered that rate, Senator Watson, to $6 on the 10th day of August, 1925, and they have cut that rate twice since that time.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, gentlemen, there is a call for a vote and we will have to go down to the floor and will come back as soon as

we can.

(Thereupon, at 3.45 p. m., the committee ordered a brief recess to go to the floor of the Senate and vote, and returned at 4.30 p. m.) The CHAIRMAN. In my judgment, and the judgment of these two Senators who are here, I think you concur, Senators, there is no necessity for any further testimony being offered.

Senator HAWES. I would like to ask the witness just one question. In order to bring this under our jurisdiction there must be some interstate character. Your contention is that the coal companies are interstate in character, and that the railroad companies are? Mr. MURRAY. Yes, sir; quite so.

Senator WAGNER. May I answer that question, Senator Hawes, if I may?

Senator HAWES. Yes.

Senator WAGNER. The applications made by these companies to the Federal courts for injunctions were on the theory that the action of the strikers was an interference with interstate commerce, therefore, they themselves recognize it. Am I right about that, Mr. Murray?

Mr. MURRAY. Quite right, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. The hearings are adjourned, gentlemen. I want an executive session with the members of the committee who are here. (Whereupon, at 4.32 o'clock p. m., the hearings were adjourned, and the committee went into executive session.)