terstate conference.

In 1912, after repeated conferences, the net result was the restoration
of the Interstate agreement as it existed before 1906. The special
burden of which the Illinois operators had been complaining was not
removed; yet they were compelled by the union to remain a party to the
Interstate agreement. The union justified its special treatment of the
operators in Illinois on the ground that the run-of-mine rates were 40
percent below the screened coal rates, thus compensating them amply for
the "slack" for which they had to pay under this system. The Federal
report on "Restriction of Output" of 1904 substantiated the union's
contention. Ultimately, the United Mine Workers unquestionably hoped to
establish the run-of-mine system throughout the central competitive
field.

The union, incidentally to its policy of protecting the miners, has
considerably affected the market or business structure of the industry.
An outstanding policy of the union has been to equalize competitive
costs over the entire area of a market by means of a system of grading
tonnage rates paid to the miner, whereby competitive advantages of
location, thickness of vein, and the like were absorbed in higher labor
costs. This doubtless tended to eliminate cut-throat competition and
thus stabilize the industry. On the other hand, it may have hindered the
process of elimination of unprofitable mines, and therefore may be in
some measure responsible for the present-day overdevelopment in the
bituminous mining industry, which results in periodic unemployment and
in idle mines.

In the anthracite coal field in Eastern Pennsylvania the difficulties
met by the United Mine Workers were at first far greater than in the
bituminous branch of the industry. First, the working population was
nearly all foreign-speaking, and the union thus lacked the fulcrum which
it found in Illinois with its large proportion of English-speaking
miners accustomed to organization and to carrying on a common purpose.
Secondly, the employers, instead of being numerous and united only for
joint dealing with labor, as in bituminous mining, were few in number
besides being cemented together by a common selling policy on top of a
common labor policy. In consequence, the union encountered a stone wall
of opposition, which its loose ranks found for many years well-nigh
impossible to overcome.

During the general strike of 1897 the United Mine Workers made a
beginning in