Statement to Management and Labor on Coal Production for Steel Manufacture.

I have asked you gentlemen to come here this morning to give you certain facts covering the business of the Government of the United States operating under the Constitution. I will ask you when I have finished to withdraw, either to the Cabinet room or some place of your own choice—in order to confer in a final effort to insure continued production of coal for the manufacture of steel.

In the first place, we all know that the United States is in a state of national emergency. The present and future defense of the United States and of this hemisphere is at stake. It is essential to national safety that we continue the defense production program without delay, and at top speed.

Coal for steel plants is a necessity because steel is an essential in the manufacture of munitions. Therefore, the cessation of production in the coal mine industry would create a further danger to American defense, because at this vital time it would slow up production of war materials.

I think that conclusion is unmistakable, and is approved by the overwhelming majority of Americans.

Because it is essential to national defense that the necessary coal production be continued and not stopped, it is therefore the indisputable obligation of the President to see that this is done.

In spite of what some people say, I seek always to be a constitutional President.

If legislation becomes necessary toward this end the Congress of the United States will without any question pass such legislation. And as some of you know, the pressure on me to ask for legislation during the past couple of months, for one reason or another, has been not only constant, but it has been very heavy.

I am telling you this with absolutely no element of threat. To this conference I am stating a simple fact. I hope, therefore, that you will work out some method for the continued production of coal.

In regard to the collective bargaining, which I am asking you to resume at the end of this meeting, I have two suggestions for you to consider.

The first is that you continue negotiations, with the hope that you can arrive at a conclusion, and that if you do not arrive at a conclusion, you will submit the point, or points, at issue to an arbiter, or arbiters, or anybody else with any other name, and that in the meantime coal production continue.

The second is that you consider other methods relating to employment. As I understand it, the wage question and the checkoff are not involved in this at all.

I tell you frankly that the Government of the United States will not order, nor will Congress pass legislation ordering, a so-called closed shop. It is true that by agreement between employers and employees in many plants of various industries the closed shop is now in operation. This is a result of the legal collective bargaining, and not of Government compulsion on employers or employees. It is also true that 95 percent or more of the employees in these particular mines belong to the United Mine Workers Union.

The Government will never compel this 5 percent to join the Union by a Government decree. That would be too much like the Hitler methods toward labor.

I must reiterate that because of the need of continuing and speeding up the defense needs of the United States, because they are so clearly involved, and because lack of coal for our steel plants would injure the defense of the Nation, it is a national necessity that the production of this coal be continued without delay.

And so I am asking you—I never threaten—I am asking you to please talk over this problem of continuing coal production. If you can't agree today, please keep on conferring tomorrow and Sunday. I don't want any action that is precipitate. I want every 'chance given.

And let me have some kind of report on Monday next— a report of agreement, or at the least a report that you are making progress.