People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 June 1894 — THE STRIKE. [ARTICLE]

THE STRIKE.

One Firm of Coal Operators Blocks Effort* at Settlement. Springfield, 111., May 29.—Illinois holds the key to the mining situation, and the Consolidated Coal company holds the key to Illinois. This is the sum and substance of the conference between the national officers of the United Mine Workers and the central and southern Illinois operators held here Monday. The executive committee expresses itself as willing and ready to settle and call off the strike whenever the Illinois operators can agree among themselves upon an amicable arrangement of differences existing, and the operators say they are willing to settle upon any reasonable basis whenever the Consolidated Coal company will agree to join with them, but otherwise they cannot make any overtures nor accept any proposition which will place them in competition with this powerful corporation. It is needless to say that the Consolidated Coal company was not represented at the conference, and the operators who were present from all parts of the state, but principally from the southern and central fields, were unanimous in their statements that the prices paid by this company, which controls eighty-three coal mines in southern Illinois, and the prices paid at I’ana . where 3,000,000 tons of coal are beingmined annually at twenty-nine cents per ton, must form the basis of wages unless these operators could be induced to subscribe to a more equitable schedule. The conference was largely attended, about 125 operators being present. The whole afternoon was spent in a lively discussion, and the result was a call for a meeting of operators to be held in this city Thursday of this week to consider the question of a scale of wages. The whole question of a speedy settlement of the strike seems now to hinge on whether or not the Consolidated Coal company shall consent to be present at the operators’ conference Thursday. The Pittsburgh Post telegraphs Gov. Altgeld to ask if he will join with the governors of Pennsylvania. West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and lowa as a board of arbitration to take measures to adjust the present coal strike. The proposition is said to have originated among heavy consumersand operators. Gov. Altgeld is in Chicago and the telegram has been forwarded to him.