Underground economy

“ But even more than all these considerations, the facility of obtaining labourers who would work in the daylight, and the difficulty, or even impossibility, of procuring those who would work in a pit, combined with the ease of inspection and measurement in the one case, and the cost and difficulty in the other, all led to the vast extension of open-work quarrying of coal, and, consequently, to the economy with which the mineral could be obtained and sold. ”

“ More mines were opened than the nation could possibly use. There was a gluttonous overdevelopment of the industry which swung up and down in high peaks and low plunges of prosperity and depression, high prices and “no market,” feverish employment and long stretches of intermittent work, which for hundreds of thousands of miners meant no work at all, and for many operators meant bankruptcy. The level of government in the industry was in all essential respects the level of hunting tribes. ”

“ The dynamite and railway monopolies, the heavy expense of the transit of machinery from the coast, the absence of subsidiary local industries to feed the gold industry, forced the work into the hands of a small circle of rich firms who could provide the large capital and face the heavy risks of a new enterprise. It is clear, therefore, that mining on the Rand, while a notable enterprise, has necessarily been a slow one, since the two natural factors, the amount of gold in the soil and the labour of working it, have been complicated by many artificial hindrances. ”

“ For capital can indeed deprive alien social associations of their means of production by force, it can compel the workers to submit to capitalist exploitation, but it cannot force them to buy its commodities or to realise its surplus value. In districts where natural economy formerly prevailed, the introduction of means of transport—railways, navigation, canals—is vital for the spreading of commodity economy, a further hopeful sign. ”

“ A mine owner in Cripple Creek, pointing to the words on the union card, said to me: "You see now why they are stealing hundreds of thousands from us every year. They read 'that Labor produces all wealth,' and they take that rogue's gospel straight into the gold mine, stowing away in their clothing the choicest bits of ore, and there is an organized market to buy it. ”

“ Had these mines been on appropriated land, or had they been immediately monopolized so that rent could have arisen, it would have been land values that would have leaped upward, not wages. The Comstock lode has been richer than the placers, but the Comstock lode was readily monopolized, and it is only by virtue of the strong organization of the Miners’ Association and the fears of the damage which it might do, that enables men to get four dollars a day for parboiling themselves two thousand feet underground, where the air that they breathe must be pumped down to them. ”

“ Owing to a strike which then took place in our mine, we found that, in order to complete our assessment work, we must get in another crew or do the job ourselves. Owing to scarcity of help and a feeling of antagonism on the part of the laboring classes toward our giant enterprise, a feeling of hostility which naturally exists between labor and capital, we had to go out to the mine ourselves. We had heard of other men who had shoveled in their own mines and were afterward worth millions of dollars, so we took some bacon and other delicacies and hied us to the Aladdin. ”

“ I looked about me to see what new work He wished me to undertake, how He wished me to invest His profits. And I saw the coal industry and the coal-carrying railroads in confusion, with waste on every side, and godless competition. Thousands of widows and orphans who had invested in coal railways and mines were getting no returns. Labor was fitfully employed, owing to alternations of over-production and no production at all. ”

“ Overproduction and savage, competitive warfare wasted the industry. Labor and capital alike were the victims. Financial distress among operators and acute poverty among miners prevailed even during periods of general prosperity. This history of the bituminous coal industry is written in blood as well as in ink. ”

“ The mere discovery of new and richer mines need not, of itself, lower the price of the precious metals. Their price depends on their cost of production; and it may be very much increased, even under the most favorable natural conditions, by the unskillfulness of labor, the dearness of the means of [pg 412] subsistence, of machinery and of auxiliary substances, by insecurity to property or to the person ”

“ The metal produced from the poorest mine that is worked, must at least have an exchangeable value, not only sufficient to procure all the clothes, food, and other necessaries consumed by those employed in working it, and bringing the produce to market, but also to afford the common and ordinary profits to him who advances the stock necessary to carry on the undertaking. The return for capital from the poorest mine paying no rent, would regulate the rent of all the other more productive mines. ”

“ These deposits are naturally the first to fail in productiveness, but the neighboring hills are formed of a gold-bearing quartz which is being crushed, night and day, by hundreds of powerful machines; and the works still pay ten thousand miners fair day-wages, besides giving the organized companies who employ them satisfactory dividends. Thus mining has been largely robbed of its adventurous character in this neighborhood, and perhaps also of most of its alluring charm, having become a sort of regular industry, like coal-mining, or even brick-making. ”

“ To the men who did the actual labor of working in the mines—the coal miners—this change of ownership was not regarded with alarm. Indeed, they at first cherished the pathetic hope that it might benefit their condition, which had been desperate and intolerable enough under the old company system. The small coal-owning capitalists, who had emitted such wailings at their own oppression by the railroads, had long relentlessly exploited their tens of thousands of workers. ”

“ There was a police force, but it was composed of Boers, it was furnished by the State Government, and the city had no control over it. Mining was very costly; the government enormously increased the cost by putting burdensome taxes upon the mines, the output, the machinery, the buildings; by burdensome imposts upon incoming materials; by burdensome railway-freight-charges. Hardest of all to bear, the government reserved to itself a monopoly in that essential thing, dynamite, and burdened it with an extravagant price. ”

“ Until about thirty or forty years ago, mining was the most prominent interest in the state, but wars and political disturbances caused the abandonment of the mines, and the works fell into decay, after which there was neither enterprise, capital, nor skill to restore them. ”

“ Mines are opened, railways or bridges made, and many other works of uncertain profit commenced, and in these enterprises much capital is sunk which yields either no return, or none adequate to the outlay. ”

“ As I remember the past, the laboring people in coal and iron mines earned barely enough for subsistence and their hours of toil were so long that anything like self-improvement was impossible. They were in a continual row with their employers, who revelled in luxury and rebelled against a 10 per cent. increase in wages, and who in many instances, rather than pay it, would close down the mines until their workmen were starved into submission. I never could reconcile myself to the logic of the principle that it was lawful for capital to thus oppress labor. ”

“ The men who prospected and made locations in wild and distant regions were men of little means, and when their small stocks of money and provisions were exhausted, they were obliged to abandon their claims and return to the settlements, as men of capital could not be induced to invest their money in mines out in the wilderness far from any means of transportation. ”

“ In countries with an exclusively metallic circulation or where production is at a low stage of development, the hoards are endlessly split up and scattered all over the land, while in countries where the capitalist system is developed they are concentrated in bank reservoirs. ”

“ But when my house, when my so-called private property, became a great mine, and men went along dark corridors amidst every kind of danger in order to dig out of the bowels of the earth things necessary for the industries of a whole nation, and when it came about that no individual owned these mines, that they were owned by great stock companies, then all the old analogies absolutely collapsed, and it became the right of the government to go down into these mines to see whether human beings were properly treated in them or not ”

“ The mines, which represent the toil of centuries, and whose value is based solely on the needs of industry and the necessities of population, belong likewise to a few, and these few limit the mining of coal, or entirely forbid it when they find a better investment for their money. ”

“ Similarly, the white-collar classes, squirming under famine prices for anthracite and increases in railway commutation fares for which labor dictations are responsible, are the victims of economic insanity in praying for governmental operation of the coal mines and the railways, which is just what the labor organizations want and which would make conditions far worse for everybody, as would quickly appear in prices. ”

“ The day-laborers, who work the mines of this territory, receive for their labor from seventy-five cents to one dollar; but there is not a fixed number, neither is their occupation constant.
It is not necessary to speak of the existence of companies for exploring mines in a country where there is such a scarcity of population, and where there is not an accumulation of capital sufficient in order that a part of it might be employed in the hazardous enterprises of mineral industry. ”

“ The wages are not high, and only those in straitened circumstances, the dissolute, and profligate, who have no homes of their own, are inclined to let themselves to labor in gold mines.
Many works are extensive, and employ a thousand or more laborers each. The government grants mining privileges to individuals on certain conditions. ”

“ The tunnel or canal, as it is cut, becomes capital as much as the money spent in cutting it—or, if you please, the powder, drills, etc., used in the work, and the food, clothes, etc., used by the workmen—as is shown by the fact that the value of the capital stock of the company is not lessened as capital in these forms is gradually changed into capital in the form of tunnel or canal. On the contrary, it probably, and on the average, increases as the work progresses, just as the capital invested in a speedier mode of production would on the average increase. ”

“ It already appears from these considerations, that the conversion of circulating capital into fixed, whether by railways, or manufactories, or ships, or machinery, or canals, or mines, or works of drainage and irrigation, is not likely, in any rich country, to diminish the gross produce or the amount of employment for labour. ”

“ Under the influence of the protecting policy, many new towns have been built, and old ones enlarged. The population of these places draw their subsistence from the farming interest of our country, their fuel from our forests and coal mines, and the raw materials from which they fashion and fabricate, from the cotton planter and the mines of our country. These mutual exchanges, so animating and invigorating to the industry of the people of the United States, could not possibly be effected between America and Europe, if the latter enjoyed the monopoly of manufacturing. ”

“ In order to keep the miners disciplined and the coal-market under-supplied, the railroads restrict work so that the miners often have to live for a month on what they can earn in six or eight days; and these restrictions are enforced upon their miners by withholding cars from them to fill, as upon competitors by withholding cars to go to market. [20]
Labor organizations are forbidden, and the men intentionally provoked to strike, to affect the coal-market. ”

“ They also proceed to control subsidiary industries—as the Steel Trust controls not only rolling mills and furnaces, but iron ore quarries and steamship and railway lines required for the transport of its material. So the grip of capital upon industry tightens, and the empire of finance widens. ”

“ One half of all mining land is reserved for the crown, a quarter or more is gobbled by corrupt officials, and a meagre share left for the daring miners who, by braving hardship and death, develop the mines and open up the country.
"Any one going into the country has no right to cut wood for any purpose, or to kill any game or catch any fish, without a license for which a fee of ten dollars must be paid. ”

“ With coal-mining organized with due regard to national welfare, there would be no boys, fewer men, and more machines in the depths of our mines, while the employment of girls and women even in surface work would be unthinkable. It is true that private capital may not now, as it did in the 'forties, employ young girls and boys under ten in its "dens of darkness." ”

“ It would enable some of the smaller properties throughout the country to be worked at a profit, and so might in time redeem the gold industry from the capitalist monopoly, which it must remain under present conditions, and create a class of small mine-owners, on the analogy of the small coal-owners in England.
There is one final argument against imported labour which demands a short notice, for it has been used by many serious men who are not given to captious objections. ”