Statement by the President on the Wage Increase of the Coal Miners.

DEEP CONCERN is being expressed in many quarters over possible results of the recent settlement between the miners and the coal operators. It is widely feared that this settlement may lead to a substantial increase in the price of coal, which is an important factor on the cost sheets of American industry, and that this would in turn induce an increase in commodity prices and renew the inflationary spiral which we had much reason to hope had been halted.

This would be a serious blow to our economy and to the continuance of the present high level of production and employment. But such a blow need not fall upon us.

The effect of the wage settlement is badly misrepresented by the bare statement that it amounts to an increase of about 45 cents per hour in the wages of miners. It is unfortunate that the public does not yet fully understand, through the complicated details of the agreement, what is the actual impact of this settlement upon the cost of producing Coal.

The major features of the wage settlement are these: The miners receive a daily wage of $13.05 instead of $11.85, this being the $1.20 increase recently awarded in other major industries. The working day becomes 8 hours at straight rates instead of 9 hours, of which 7 hours have been at straight time rates and 2 hours have been at overtime premium rates. Overtime is paid for Saturday work only if it has been preceded by 5 days of work in that week, and the employers will no longer find their schedules disorganized by the inclination of some miners to work on the overtime Saturday and to lay off on some other day. The employers also pay an additional five cents per ton into the welfare fund.

When the most important coal operators and steel producers in the country made this settlement, they asserted that it would be of great benefit to the country by making it possible to continue full production and employment for a long period. We can all agree that a coal strike would have seriously endangered our prosperity. But whether this settlement does permit that prosperity to continue depends in very large degree upon the decisions of these business managers themselves as to how they will deal with their costs and prices in the light of this settlement.

In their explanation to the public and to their stockholders of the reasons which led them to make this contract, these business leaders have emphasized the desirability of certain provisions and conditions which they assert will increase productivity and offset a considerable part of the increase in money wage rates. It is quite impossible for them, they say, to make any estimate of the savings in costs which will accrue from the regularized workday and workweek, from the increased effort of workers who enjoy better wages and greater security, and from the improvement in plant efficiency which it is always the duty of management to create and in the present situation is even more emphatically the obligation of these managers to secure.

In view of the uncertainty as to whether or how much mine costs of coal may be raised, the people of the country have the right to demand that their prosperity shall not be imperiled by immediate increases in the price of coal and in the price of steel. It is only reasonable to ask coal and steel producers to wait until a fair test has been made of the actual effects of the wage advances under conditions of maximum production. If prices are raised at once and a wave of increases in related prices upsets our economy, we never will know what would have happened if the coal and steel managers had been willing to wait.

The risk involved by continuing present prices of coal and steel long enough to learn what the increased costs of production will actually be under the new wage agreement is not serious, especially in view of the fact that such action will greatly reduce the hazards of renewed inflation. The producers of coal and steel have been enjoying their full share of the high profits which are flowing to industry today in our present prosperous economy. I am sure that they, as responsible leaders of industry, will want to invest a portion of those profits in the maintenance of business stability and prosperity for all our people.