In response to the proposals for nationalization of coal mines developed by the U.M.W.A., the Communist Party released this statement of their position as a leaflet printed in 100s of thousands of copies.

‘Let the Miners Run the Mines!! Nationalize the Mines–Establish Workers Control and a Workers Government’ from The Worker. Vol. 4 No. 266. March 17, 1923.

The private ownership of the mines by the coal companies has proven a colossal failure. Under control of the coal barons the mines produce big profits for the owners, but that is all.

The miners who dig the coal at the daily risk of their lives receive low wages and are compelled to work under bad working conditions. Prices charged the consumers for coal are exorbitant.

If there was no other reason for declaring the private ownership of the mines a failure, the fact that in three years the miners have been obliged to go on strike twice to defend their standard of living would be enough.

Every miner knows that a strike means hardships and suffering for himself and his family. A strike brings in its wake violence and bloodshed when the armed thugs employed by the coal barons get in their dirty work. A strike means long legal struggles to save the workers upon whom the bosses try to put the blame for the work of their own plug-uglies, as in Herrin and in West Virginia.

In 1919 the half-million miners of this country were obliged to go on strike to fight the greedy bosses. In 1922 the same half-million miners had to go out again to defend themselves against a wage-cut and to save their organization.

A system of producing coal which twice in three years compels a half-million miners to go thru such struggles has proven itself a failure and should, be swept into the discard.

The coal companies have proven themselves unfit to carry on the work of the mines in other ways. Their management of production is wasteful and inefficient. Because of their inefficiency the miners have work only about half the time.

The coal companies try to make the miners pay for their inefficiency by keeping down wages. They endeavor to make up for their wastefulness by saving on the safe-guarding of the miners. They charge exorbitant prices to pay for their wastefulness and to grab enormous profits, and then try to put the responsibility on the “high wages” of the miners.

The only way out of this situation is thru nationalization of the mines. The mine must cease to be the private property of the coal companies.

The United Mine Workers and Nationalization

The 1921 National Convention of the United Mine Workers instructed President Lewis to appoint a Nationalization Research Committee to draft a plan for the nationalization of the mines. This committee has recently made public a report containing a plan for nationalization.

This plan proposes that the government purchase the mines at a cost of $4,500,000,000; that a government commission control the budget and policies; and that a coal mining council be established in which the coal miners, technicians of the coal industry and consumers will be represented.

This moderate plan for nationalization has met with the united opposition of the reactionaries in the United Mine Workers. President Lewis and his handyman, Editor Searles, is bitterly denouncing the proposal. The struggle over this plan has become a struggle between the Lewis machine and the progressives in the miners union.

In this struggle every rank and file member of the union. every progressive should line up, in support of the nationalization program. It is the same Lewis machine which stands in the way of the United Mine Workers becoming a more effective fighting organization, the same Lewis machine which betrayed the miners of Fayette and Somerset Counties after their splendid fight in support of last year’s strike, which is now trying to stop the movement for nationalization of the mines.

The Workers Party and Nationalization

The Workers Party does not believe that nationalization of the mines will solve the problem of the coal miners while a capitalist government is in power at Washington.

A government that called upon the governors of all the states to fill the coal fields with soldiers so that scabs could get out coal, which uses courts, injunctions and soldiers against strikers would make the lot of the miners even worse if it owned the mines.

Nationalization of the mines with a capitalist government in power is not enough. The workers must become the government. They must be the government which carries thru the plan of nationalization.

The Nationalization Research Committee has pointed out the need of a strong labor representation in the government if the nationalization plan is to mean anything. It has pointed out the need of a Labor Party to carry on the political struggles of the miners and other workers.

Altho convention after convention of the United Mine Workers has declared for independent political action by the workers the representatives of the United Mine Workers sent to the Cleveland Conference last December by the Lewis machine voted against the formation of a Labor Party, betraying the instructions of the convention.

The Workers Party is for nationalization and for the formation of a Labor Party. It urges the members of the United Mine Workers’ Union to give their support to both these proposals, which the reactionary Lewis machine is fighting. But the Workers Party would be remiss in its duty if it did not point out that nationalization and a Labor Party can only be steps toward the real means of relieving themselves from the evils under which they now suffer.

WORKERS’ CONTROL

Nationalization of the mines must be accompanied by Workers’ Control. The workers who do the work of the coal industry must take over the management of that industry.

The union must have power to decide upon wages, hours and working conditions. It must have absolute power over the safe-guarding of the mines. Modern science can eliminate most of the dangers of coal mining. It is only the greed of the employers which makes necessary the yearly toll of lives lost in mine “accidents.”

Workers’ Control means that the workers in the coal industry, those who actually dig the coal and those who perform the technical work of the industry will themselves direct the work of the industry, with only such supervision as is needed to safeguard the interests of other groups of workers.

THE WORKERS’ GOVERNMENT

The only means of achieving the nationalization of the mines and Workers’ Control is thru a Workers’ Government.

As long as the coal barons have the power of the government at Washington behind them there can be no relief from the present intolerable conditions in the mining industry.

It is the government which upholds and supports the present system of private ownership of the mines. It is the government which uses its power against the union when it is fighting for better things for the mine workers.

If the mines could be nationalized with the present government in power the government would use its power even more directly against the workers. It is a capitalist government and would do that in the interest of the capitalist class as a whole.

The government in power must be as completely a workers’ government as the present government is a capitalist government before the mine workers can emancipate themselves from the low wages and bad working conditions which exist at present in the mining industry.

Such a government would make the mines the property of the workers as a whole and establish workers’ control.

MINE WORKERS!

FIGHT FOR NATIONALIZATION AND A LABOR PARTY!

BUT REMEMBER THAT IS ONLY A BEGINNING: THE GOAL MUST BE A WORKERS’ GOVERNMENT AND WORKERS’ CONTROL OF INDUSTRY.

Central Executive Committee, Workers Party of America,

C.E. Ruthenberg, Executive Secretary.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/theworker/v4n266-mar-17-1923-Worker.pdf