Coal beds are scarcely more antediluvian and resistant to change than the corporate interests that control them. Opportunely in Miners and Management, Mary van Kleeck of the Sage Foundation has analyzed the national problem and run a deep shaft in her study of union-management cooperation in the Rocky Mountain Fuel Co. Its former vice-president in turn reviews the NRA stalemate in the light of her findings.

The bituminous coal industry has so far failed to meet its responsibility or utilize the opportunity to govern itself which was afforded by the code approved by the President last October. By January, continued destructive price-cutting practices by coal operators so threatened the wage structure that General Johnson summoned the National Bituminous Coal Industrial Board to an emergency conference on code market violations. Speaking just previously on the subject of price-cutting, he said:

Price-cutting by one device or another is paid for by wage-cutting and unemployment, and the inevitable result is a descent into an economic hell.

Since then Washington news reports have carried new proposals of control, including an increasingly frequent suggestion by operators of that modern refuge of those who are incapable of self-government—a price-czar or board of control of their own selection. Obviously this suggestion disregards the more fundamental need of a self-operating system which operators were granted liberty to create. In the interval no new plans have been announced by the National Bituminous Coal Industrial Board, although a comprehensive statistical survey by the NRA is understood to be near completion.

A brief backward glance will help us to understand this situation for what it is—an old, uncompromising struggle for power to utilize coal as a cheap source of raw material and of service to other industries. We can get an accurate preview in brief space by drawing upon the historical survey of coal contained in Miners and Management, by Mary van Kleeck, director of industrial studies of the Russell Sage Foundation, which is just off the press.

Back in October 1885 a group of miners and operators got together in Pittsburgh and agreed upon and published the following statement:

The widespread depression of business, the overproduction of coal and the consequent severe competition have caused the capital invested to yield little or no profitable returns. The constant reductions of wages that have lately taken place have afforded no relief to capital, and, indeed, have but tended to increase its embarrassments.

But that was all they did about it except to continue an internal warfare for nearly fifty years more. Operators continued to fight among themselves by cutting prices. They fought with miners to keep wages down to cover the losses resulting from price-cutting. There was an interval during the World War when the government gave them a price-fixing shot in the arm, which raised prices and wages to new high levels. When the War ended, coal resumed its own majestic riot of waste, as the United States Coal Commission found and reported to Congress in 1923. The effect of this career of self-destruction was recently described, by the Supreme Court of the United States in October 1932 in dissolving a writ of injunction issued against Appalachian Coals, Inc., as an association of operators in restraint of trade, when it declared:

The interests of producers and consumers are interlinked. When industry is grievously hurt, when producing concerns fail, when unemployment mounts and communities dependent upon profitable production are prostrated, the wells of commerce go dry.

By March 1933 the coal industry, by over-expansion, price-cutting, broken-down wage rates and living standards, and a mounting number of unemployed miners, had contributed more than its share to creating the crisis which confronted the incoming Roosevelt administration. Then followed the enactment of the NIRA, which gave to coal, as to other industries, the long-desired legalized trade association franchise for collective action, the opportunity if it would to put its own house in order.

BY the NIRA, Uncle Sam said to coal: "Here is your trade association right to self-government. What kind of a code do you want?" Coal operators, big and little, indicated that they wanted a lot of codes and actually dumped thirty different ones into General Johnson's hopper. He gave them only one, but in view of the widely distributed regional locations of coal fields, they were able to wangle a lot of separate regional authorities to administer the code, each in its own way and territory. The new year 1934 saw these code authorities, true to coal tradition, presiding over operators engaged in a price-war revival in every regional market; moreover certain powerful industrial consumer-operators of captive mines were renewing with the NRA the old battle against recognizing the miners' union.

In Chaotic Coal in the November issue of Survey Graphic the writer said:

What can the NRA do for coal? Perhaps we should also ask, what can coal do to the NRA? If the purpose and provisions of the law are actually accepted and observed by the industry it may do much to stabilize coal. But though the old order may be dying it is not surrendering. And this fact makes coal the primary problem of the NRA.

If the coal industry, in a national emergency which Congress and the President declare to be disorganizing industry and undermining living standards of the American people, is unconscious of its share of responsibility "to rehabilitate industry and to conserve natural resources," it is quite time for the government to check up the cause of its incapacity or unwillingness to organize itself on a sound economic basis. Time also to definitely determine the probable effect of this default upon other industries and the probable consequences to our national economy. Such an inquiry is not too broad, because coal is inextricably interrelated to most other industries, many of which are wholly dependent upon it.

Let us see first if we understand exactly what is this thing we call the coal industry. In its broader aspects it is, as we all know, a basic natural-resource industry, affected with a public interest and involved in the general welfare because the whole people and much of their business, including a large section of interstate commerce, are so dependent upon it. Nevertheless it is privately owned and operated, and it is the set-up of this private ownership and operation which we too often speak of as the industry, and which in reality regards itself as the industry. Inasmuch as private owners speak and act for the industry, we should understand exactly what this represents and the motives behind their policies. Are the owner-operators who are similarly situated, like competing manufacturers in some trades, engaged in a natural rivalry in the open coal markets? An answer to this question will reveal the source of attempts to defeat NRA control.

Coal operators are not a group of similarly motivated competitors in coal markets. They may be roughly divided into two distinct groups. In one group are the so-called independents, whose primary business is the production and marketing of coal. They sell all their product in the open market and by contract to industrial consumers. They have no other business dependent upon their coal operations. They desire prices that will produce profits.

The other group is made up of consumer-operators. Their mines are owned or controlled by railroads, the steel, electric power and other manufacturing industries, which consume somewhat more than one half of the total bituminous coal production of the United States.

The production and sale of coal is not the primary business of this latter group. It produces coal for its own use as a service to its primary business of operating railroads, steel, power and other manufacturing plants, which desire cheap coal for themselves. Cheap coal is possible only with cheap labor. The lowest wages are obtainable under a non-union, open-shop labor policy. The ultimate objective is a low-cost raw material so that a wider profit margin may be maintained to strengthen the values of securities issued by railroads, steel, utilities and other manufacturing corporations. It is not in their interest, as they conceive it, to stabilize coal prices at levels so that independent coal operations may be profitable and wage-rates and living standards raised in the coal fields. Incidentally, these consumer-operators desire to maintain a low price in the open markets for that part of their coal requirements which they buy from the independent operators.

These are the hostile group divisions and conflicting motives and interests found in the industry.

The consumer-operators are the dominating group. They are standing pat and trying to weasel themselves out from under NRA control. This need cause no surprise. At the NRA coal hearings in Washington in August 1933 this group did not offer to cooperate. On the contrary, its spokesman, Mr. O'Neil, in suave but uncompromising language stated that his association desired representatives of their own choosing upon any administrative board created by the NRA to supervise the industry, free from the government's veto power or control. "We are not concerned," he said, "in what other operators may desire in their relations to the government." Moreover, he also stated that his group would not recognize an independent trade union of miners.

Speaking of costs and wages, he said that a survey indicated that a miner's family of five persons could live on $14.89 a week.

The recent attempt of large-scale consumer-operators to put responsibility for price-cutting since the Code was adopted on the small so-called "snowbird" operator is a fictitious alibi. The small operator is trying to live in a competitive market dominated by destructive forces which he is powerless to remove or modify.

So we come to the question: Can the instruments of control found in the NIRA change the motive and reform the policy of this powerful and controlling group? Or more specifically, can these antagonistic groups be fused into cooperation in the trade associations authorized by the NIRA so long as domination by the consumer-operator group is, like the Missourian's fence, "horse-high, bull-strong and pig-tight?" Surely anyone who believes that railroad management and the steel and electric-power industries will voluntarily raise coal prices, miners' wages and their own coal fuel cost, thereby increasing the production cost of their own services and manufactured products, has the faith which is required to move mountains.

As things stand both groups are represented by memberships on the regional Code Authorities, which reflect the old contradictions of interest. But as a matter of fact in Kentucky the North America Company, a power-utility concern, dominates coal production. In Colorado it is the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, a Rockefeller steel and coal operator. In Pennsylvania and West Virginia the industry is under the thumbs of steel and the Mellon and Rockefeller interests. The Insull utilities alone in Illinois control enough mines to perpetuate the old order in that state down to this writing.

These concerns continue under the code as in the past to sell to themselves at low prices, to cut prices in the open market and short circuit the New Deal by opposing shorter hours of work and higher wage-rates which would increase their own fuel cost. The old picture has not changed. In some fields miners are still paid with company scrip, cashable only at company stores where they must purchase food and other supplies at higher prices than prevail elsewhere. In many captive-mine operations no real progress has been made toward collective bargaining. Labor law is either ignored or defied. These things are all parts of the process by which coal stabilization is defeated.

THE appointment to the National Bituminous Coal Industrial Board of John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers, does not affect the situation. Notwithstanding his acknowledged forcefulness as a labor executive, Mr. Lewis has put forth no new program except that of an offer to cooperate with coal operators. This in itself indicates his failure to visualize the contradictory forces which prevent coal operators from cooperating, even among themselves.

Naturally the administration may be expected to exhaust the powers granted it by the NIRA before considering other plans and procedures to halter, break and harness coal for teamwork Certainly it did not intend to exempt that industry from contributing its share toward stabilization by spreading work and raising wages and purchasing power. Since the adoption of the Code, the five-day week has increased employment, but the shorter working-time has actually reduced monthly earnings of mine workers in many fields. This is especially true in those fields in which wage-rates were not increased. Moreover, the lower wage-rates still prevailing in West Virginia and Kentucky leave independent operators in the higher wage fields under severe handicaps. So whether measured in terms of wage-earning or prices the sum total of coal's contribution to date to the New Deal is an added degree of demoralization within the industry.

Brief illustrations will show how this dishevelment occurs. operators in Indiana and Illinois pay a basic day wage of $5. Just across the Ohio River in Kentucky the wage scale is only $3.86 per day, where most of the production is by the West Kentucky Coal Company, controlled by the North America Company, which consumes in its power plants a large coal tonnage, but which sells its surplus, mined at a low labor cost, on the open northern markets at prices with rich independents in Indiana and Illinois cannot compete. As this is written, a wage reduction in Indiana is being discussed.

In Pennsylvania both independents and consumer-operators have cut coal prices, each charging the other with responsibility and both pointing an accusing finger at Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky. Since the Coal Code was adopted the largest consumer of industrial coal from one western field flatly refused to pay the very moderate price of $1.75 per ton quoted by the members of the coal-trade association. The pot says the kettle is blacker.

If coal can get away with this "hands off" policy of the old regime, it will be an invitation to other industries to resist governmental control. The widespread success of such distance can knock out development of purchasing-power which is the keystone in the recovery arch.

What further steps could NRA take? It could abolish the effective regional code authorities, create a single National Code Authority, deal with regional questions through its own field representatives, and through one central body seek unity and consistency in code rules and interpretations.

It could impose upon coal a uniform accounting system of its own design, to obtain exact cost data; adjust wage differentials which now unfairly favor some fields; reduce hours of work to correspond with those in other heavy industries; shorten the work week; insist upon acceptance by operators of the labor provisions of NIRA, with increased wage-rates; and forbid the sale of any size or grade of coal to either industrial consumers or retail dealers below the ascertained and defined production cost of a district.

Whether such steps can be taken with the hope of any substantial degree of success, in the face of the powerful economic forces which will oppose them, may well be questioned by those familiar with coal history. If they are not taken, or fall short, what then?

At the Washington coal hearings in August 1933 Alexander Sachs, as economist for the NRA, made a searching survey of coal-operating history, including the causes of overexpansion, destructive market practices and their effects. He concluded his statement by stepping out of his official role as advisor to the government and saying:

Speaking in a personal capacity, it seems to me indisputably clear that the only solution lies in organizing and planning for the industry as a whole, and not through continuing the laissez-faire cutthroat competition.

One assumes Dr. Sachs was expressing his personal convictions after thorough analysis; while avoiding the question whether NRA powers are equal to the demands of his conclusions. He did not outline procedures, but left the course to his solution still to be charted.

"Organizing and planning for the coal industry as a whole" leads directly to inclusion of the oil industry, because that industry's competing fuels are an outstanding coal-marketing problem. Coal and oil products are inseparably interrelated and in turn are interrelated with other American industries. That this relationship makes solution engineered by private operators quite improbable if not impossible, and industry-wide organizing and planning as Dr. Sachs suggested quite necessary, is obvious. Coal and oil are competitors; yet while labor cost is a large part of coal-production cost, in the production of oil labor cost is a relatively small item. The oil industry's large operating profits have been due in part to this low labor cost, and are vastly greater than the profit realization in coal. Indirectly coal has made large profits, but in the form of a cheap raw material to other industrial beneficiaries. It is therefore quite obvious that code authorities in the oil and coal industries will not see eye to eye. They administer or fail to administer private interests which conflict at so many points within each industry, and as between the two industries, that it appears quite impossible for a final solution to ripen under auspices so at cross-purposes. If this is the situation, certainly the solution lies in organization and planning of a quite different nature.

Meanwhile, each passing day reveals more sharply the fact that among independent operators and miners confusion rules the roost. The executive secretary of the National Coal Association, speaking to the national convention of the United Mine Workers of America in Indianapolis in January, pointed with alarm to the increasing menace of competing oil and gas fuels and hydroelectric power. He followed with an appeal to the miners to join operators in a fight on this outside threat, as if coal and oil were two enemy countries. This private ownership philosophy quite ignores the identical public interest in the conservation and economic use of the products of these two indispensable natural resources. This coal spokesman's remedy was a new declaration of private warfare by the coal against the oil industry and against the government's plans for hydroelectric power in the Tennessee and Missouri Valleys.

The attitude of the United Mine Workers' convention was expressed in resolutions approving the NRA. Looking to it with high hope, yet conscious of their present in. security, delegates were inspired to say:

The roadway clearly is in view. We can travel toward government ownership or nationalization if the ability to regulate or control fails to solve the problems of our time.

AS if anticipating an impasse between the NRA and private interests in the coal industry and the collapse of efforts at self-government under the aegis of the Blue Eagle, the volume by Mary van Kleeck on Miners and Management, to which reference has been made, is especially opportune. Coming from a source so authoritative, it is entitled to the most careful consideration. It begins with a study of union-management cooperation, in the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company, undertaken in Miss van Kleeck's words, as a contribution to a national program for coal. The company's management is based upon a union contract declaring the mutual object of miners and management "to stabilize employment, production and markets, through cooperative endeavor and the aid of science." In the concluding Chapter IX the author states that:

out of this study of a single experiment in cooperation between miners and management, and out of a review of the present problem of coal in the light of the past, emerges the conclusion that socialization of all natural resources as part of a planned economy is the only solution for the breakdown of the coal industry in the United States, which for fifty years has caused continuous and widespread unemployment; waste of a non-restorable natural resource; and discrimination against the household consumer in favor of the steel industry, public utilities and other large industrial buyers. Yet at this point it is clear that it is not a problem of coal alone. Coal merely illustrates a general breakdown of industry which challenges the nation to a new policy.

Between these opening and concluding observations we find what is perhaps the most penetrating and comprehensive analysis of coal history and the relation coal economy to the national picture so far made. The proposed solution, if challenged, must be answered by persons who are more competent to speak than the present managers of coal. Objection is in part forestalled by Miss van Kleeck's stated purpose in defining " socialization" of the coal industry, in which she warns that:

this design for administration of a socialized industry in a planned economy is put forward as a definition, not as a recommendation. A mere description suggests the conclusion that no immediate, partial application of the idea is possible, since the immediate and the partial would not be the idea.... Governmental ownership substituted for private ownership, if undertaker as a desperate measure for a broken-down industry, would not make possible a planned economy.

In approaching this conclusion Miss van Kleeck points out that the industry is divided into:

separate units of management, each with its inherent object of securing as large as possible a proportion of a profitable market. In the nature of this system, the problem of planning and managing the industry as a whole is never envisaged. In contrast to this total objective is the purpose which the annual report of any coal company would reveal, namely, profitable operation for that particular company.

She finally sums up the situation as follows:

The nation in this economic crisis faces three paths-the old way, which has failed; a middle way, which is now being tried; and the ultimate way of complete socialization. The danger of the middle way is that the effort to maintain the old economic privileges leads step by step to the curtailment of the liberties of workers and the middle class and the extension of the powers of government, thereby increasing the dangers of selfish domination by private economic power.

How socialization will come, is not within the power of a research worker to forecast. Only one conclusion seems justified, namely, that insecurity and waste in the coal industry is a problem for workers' action. Of the three ways described, the first is the way of industry's own self-government, which has clearly failed. The second, the middle way, is an alliance between industry and government, giving governmental sanction to economic privilege. For the third way, the third group in the economic system—the workers—would be the logical leaders, since in its essence socialization is collective work; and the workers' objective, to establish security and raise standards of living, is the only control that can successfully achieve balance between production and consumption n an age of surplus.

To achieve this, Miss van Kleeck suggests that:

if the miners and other workers are to take the part here indicated, all workers' organizations must be strengthened. In the mining industry, the failures of leadership which show themselves in a dominating control of the union, and the lessening participation by the rank and file, taken in conjunction with the economic condition of the industry, have led to the development of independent unions, so that at present the miners' ranks are split....

She examines coal's relation to the land question, to labor, to security issues against potential yet undeveloped values of a natural resource, and the service as well as the raw-material value of the product. It is in her definition of scientific management that Miss van Kleeck disqualifies private ownership for the task of giving security to both workers and consumers. Indeed, those who may disagree with her exclusive procedure of applying her program only by a complete application of it to all natural-resource industries, rather than by gradual steps to one industry after another as they may qualify by demonstrating their incapacity for self-government, will find it difficult to defend continued private ownership of such industries, or to prove the ability of such ownership to carry out any plan based upon scientific management.

SPACE does not allow giving each specification of Miss van Kleeck's definition of scientific management. A few of-them will suffice to show their demands for among them (and concerning them there can scarcely be disagreement), is the regularization of production and employment. This of course calls for the collective use and enjoyment of profits which private-ownership claims for itself exclusively. Again, the definition specifies that coal must be related to all other industries in a planned economy designed to raise standards of living to correspond with productive capacity of industry as a whole. It calls for giving free scope to the cooperation and skill of workers, technicians and scientists, by giving them responsibility for local mine management, and to utilize increased mechanization to reduce hours of work, provide lighter work and higher wages, and to consumers lower prices. Nor can private management say, from the actual results of its own management, that the exclusion of the skill, experience and cooperative ability of workers, technicians and scientists from a share in planning policy and in management has produced anything but waste for which worker and consumer have had to pay in debased standards of living and needlessly high prices for fuel.

Early in her interpretation of union-management cooperation in Colorado Miss van Kleeck points out that, whatever such cooperation may achieve, its objectives are limited because there is, first, a division of interest between the necessity of making profits and the desire to give security of employment and better wages and working conditions. Next are the impassable limitations created by the vast number of individual companies or units engaged in over-expanding the industry and in destructive competitive practices. Nevertheless she found in the policy of the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company the demonstrated capacity of miners to cooperate when given the opportunity, and a resulting increase in efficiency when their skill and experience were utilized.

The policy of this Company is defined in a mutual declaration of principles contained in the wage contract between the Company and the Miners Union. The spirit of it is expressed in the previous brief quotation from Miners and Management. The first development was a genuinely natural human relationship which displaced the old master-and-servant idea. The hard-boiled boss was listed as a liability, to be reeducated or, that failing, released to apply his destructive talents in other operations employing that brand of technical skill. Efficiency was not preached but left to develop out of the new relation. The men knew they could not share in profits under the company's financial structure. They did understand nevertheless that the controlling stockholder, Josephine Roche, considered herself a trustee of her holdings under the new policy, and that the highest wage income would be paid which the company's fixed bond charges and economic conditions permitted. Moreover, that working conditions and mining practice were subjects for mutual conference and consideration. Out of this policy actual cooperation ripened into the outstanding example which Miners and Management reports.

THERE was an immediate and continued improvement in working conditions, quality of work, observance of safety rules and use of safety provisions. Interest in effective mine operations was mutual. Daily output per man was greatly increased until it was far above the average in the state, and the production cost per ton, under the highest miners' wage scale paid in the state, was correspondingly reduced. The new relation realized upon the maximum values of skill, experience and judgment of the workers.

Opportunity makes such a result inevitable. Industrial operations are rarely actually performed by owners, but by technicians and workers, who bring their expert skill and disciplined experience to bear upon the job. The present system does not (save in such exceptional instances) utilize these abilities to the utmost, because managers, technicians and workers are not permitted to plan and cooperatively execute a policy. Private ownership creates two opposing groups, by separating the manager and technician from the workers. Not infrequently it holds out to the technician and manager the lure of a participating interest, which is rarely realized. Experienced and capable managers and skilled technicians found themselves dismissed early in the present depression, notwithstanding many of them had given their best years to their employers' business. They were insensibly junked, as if they were obsolete machines.

It is easy to believe that the conclusions of Miss van Kleeck's report will have constructive influence upon future national action. Her statement that a planned economy based upon a socialized industry is put forward as a definition, not as a recommendation, and that its adoption must be as a whole and not partial, will present a difficulty to many whose experience is that scientific ways and means to apply new plans and processes also develop by experimental steps. Certainly the American mental pattern seems geared to a step-by-step habit in its approach to new policies. We need not be startled either by the necessity to extend NRA control, or by the suggestion of government-owned and operated utilities and natural-resource industries, nor yet by the proposed socialized or collective operation of these industries. These steps are not so startling as was the collapse of our banking system and the necessary bank holiday last March, or the derangement of industrial management and normal living conditions of numerous of our citizens. Moreover, our government has already blazed the trail of authority for adopting necessary safeguarding measures when circumstances require public action.

Public ownership of utilities is a long-established principle and practice. In 1920 Congress withdrew from private entry all remaining coal and oil deposits in the public domain. Private persons may lease but not acquire title to them, and may operate them only subject to conditions laid down by the government. Still earlier, forest lands were withdrawn from entry, and under conservation statutes the government is engaged in planting, growing and marketing timber and grazing forage. These natural resources are held and administered by the government as trustee for all the people, as it also now holds waterpower. Moreover, an act of Congress authorizes the Navy Department, when necessary for the common defense, to develop, produce, use and sell oil and its products from our naval reserves. The Tennessee Valley Authority is the outstanding extension in practice of this principle of a trusteeship in natural resources.

The Port Authority of New York is another example, in a different field. This authority finds its source in a compact between the states of New York and New Jersey, confirmed by act of Congress, under which this resource and public service is publicly owned and administered—and at a profit.

We found for these acts ample authority to conserve natural resources in order to provide for greater future security. If the defaults of private ownership in such resources make it necessary to enlarge the use of that authority so as to provide a higher degree of public and private security against a system which is impoverishing a large section of our population, that step must be boldly taken. Existing conditions in the coal industry are intolerable. No industrial ownership and management can be permitted to continue long which does not or will not share with those dependent upon it what, for need of a better name, we call prosperity, to the extent that the value of its utilized resources will provide such prosperity.

If private ownership of the coal industry will not submit to NRA control we can, within the framework of our government, extend the principle of public trusteeship to coal, and step by step, to oil and other related natural resource industries. The idea of such a trusteeship for coal was first developed by Miss van Kleeck in the course of her Colorado studies, but she later rejected it as impracticable so long as other basic industries remain in private hands and by their practices disrupt the efforts to set the coal industry in order She holds that political institutions as well as economic ownership must be changed to clear the way for a planned economy with control by workers, technicians and scientists.

Nationalization, or government ownership, she points out, as commonly understood and practiced, does not admit such groups as a matter of collective right to a direct participation in planning and management. Here I find myself in agreement with Miss van Kleeck but must differ with her when she rejects her own original proposal. In the principle and actual practice of public trusteeship, although as yet practiced only on a limited scale, we have the authority and practical means not only to take over but to socialize natural-resource industries and, as necessary, public-utility services. We can thus safeguard them from being subjected to a control that might both wipe out individual securities and hamstring democracy and civil liberty. Such a government trusteeship would extinguish private ownership upon terms of compensation for values created and existing by actual investment. It would convert these natural resources into a collective security for both civil and economic rights. In such a system of public trusteeship there would be opportunity for applying the principles of scientific management outlined in Miners and Management under a system of joint participation by workers, technicians and consumer. It would afford an opportunity to develop a mutuality of interest and obtain a concert of action between our industrial, agricultural and consumer groups which is not possible so long as workers and farmers (the two large consumer groups) are exploited as now by industrial management.

THAT these groups have capacity to cooperate, conserve resources and put production and distribution upon a mutual basis has been demonstrated by American cooperatives during this depression. These cooperatives penetrate more than twenty industries and include several hundred thousand members. Their operations extend into agricultural and industrial production, processing, distribution, and into public-utility service. They number more than four thousand. Fifteen hundred are in the oil industry alone, in which less than 1 percent have failed. Hundreds of credit unions stand out at this hour as a striking success in contrast to a banking system surviving only by grace of government support.

This but confirms the experience in union management cooperation reported in Miners and Management. Our people have capacity. What they need is opportunity, a planned national opportunity.

To summarize: The principle of a public interest in natural resources is established both in legislative action and judicial decrees under accepted constitutional authority. Public trusteeship and public operation have already been exercised in the public interest in conserving and using certain of our natural resources and in public-utility services. The right of public control over industrial operations and services which affect the public interest implies the extension of that power to the full limits of necessity in the execution of necessary public policy, which the Congress has power to declare. In national planning for industry, including collective participation, the use of such established and available powers seems a more certain means to bring about concerted action than to set up an entirely new system with which we have had no experience.

Meanwhile the public will watch for any change in the coal industry's truculent attitude toward the NRA's more than reasonable efforts to persuade it to organize and discipline itself.

This site was updated on 30-Apr-25.