een

Half our coal is imported
yet Canadian miners work

Crisis in our
coal industry

from U. S.
short time

By BEN SWANKEY

STERN Canada has virtually
inexhaustible resources of
Coal. Alberta’s reserves alone
have been calculated at 16 per-
Cent of the total world reserves.

This figure was arrived at long

before the big oil boom. Drill-

Ing for oil has revealed that

there is coal in unlimited quan-

tities practically everywhere. Al-

pte literally rests on a bed of
al,

Yet in the midst of this great
Wealth of coal, the coal mining
‘dustry in Alberta and the West

‘sin a slump worse than any-
Ing since the depression years.

Many mines have closed down
Permanently, among them the
“vg ed Cambrian and Rosedale
Q Drumheller Valley, Mountain
wa and Cadomin on the Coal
ech in Alberta, and No. 8 at
land rand on Vancouver Is-

inst of the mines still work-
hell have laid off men. Drum-
thinee Valley which had 2,000
si a not long ago now has
ber j oes quarter of that num-
still eft. Those miners who are
Se eaeored are on short time
week. ing one to three days a

Once thrivj
Ving and_ bustling
7 St}
ghamunities have become silent
Ost towns.

Cc : E 5
Doi adomin, Alberta, is a case in

fie Over 300 miners worked
ming Then two years ago the
“he closed down. Most of the

a and their families were
to move out and search
A few re-
ind secured work at the
t Ing mine at“Luscar. Now
00, have been laid off.

force
or Work

: elsew
Main sewhere.

Neigh
they» bor

The result? The two hotels,
bank, drug store, hardware and
grocery stores, coffee shop, pool
room have closed.. The hospital,
one of the best in mining camps,
was closed and there is now no
doctor, nurse or dentist. Only
one store remains. Almost all of
the houses are boarded up. The
modern school, built just a few
years ago and one of the most
modern, will be torn down. Elec-
tricity is to be cut off on June 30.

To scores of miners who have
sunk the savings of 20 to 25
years into a home, it means a
complete loss. A house normal-
ly worth several thousand dol-
lars now sells for an amount that
wouldn’t pay for the kitchen
sink,

And the miners — what will
happen to them? Most of them
are old. They are expected to
pick up and move and start all
over again. But where will they
go? They know only one occu-
pation, that of.coal miner, and
in all other mining camps men
are being laid off.

The coal bosses certainly don’t
care what happens to them.
Neither do the provincial or fed-
eral governments which haven't
lifted a finger to help them.

So now you see miners, their
belongings in a packsack on their
backs, trudging down the road,
thumbing their -way out .
This is their reward for a life-
time of toil.

What is the cause of the ghost
towns, the lay-offs, the short
time, of all this tragedy and suf-
fering?

The immediate cause is lack
of orders for coal. The coal op-

erators put men to work only
when they can make a high pro-
fit. During the war when pro-
duction of all kinds was booming,
we had a big market right here
in Western Canada. But since
then this market has been grad-
ually but surely shrinking. We
now have a situation where the
productivity of the miners is in-
creasing, but the market in the
West is decreasing.

One of the temporary factors
causing a drop in coal orders
was the past unusually mild win-
ter. Another more important
factor is the steady inroads on
the use of coal being made by
oil and natural gas — their in-
creased use in the home, in in-
dustry and by the railways.

But the main reason (and this
one the government keeps very
quiet about) is the inability of
Western coal to secure any sub-
stantial portion of the huge mar-
ket for coal that exists in On-
tario and Quebec. This is the
consequence of continually ris-
ing freight rates on coal and im-
portation of coal from the U.S.

Last year Canada consumed
some 42 million tons of coal. Of
this 1742 million tons was pro-
duced in Canada—in the West
and the Maritimes. The remain-
der, 24% million tons,half our
total consumption, was imported
from the U.S. Very little coal
from either Eastern or Western
Canada reaches Ontario—there
U.S. coal is used almost exclus-
ively.

The Annual Report of the Do-
minion Coal Board for 1951-52
admits:

“Ontario alone imports from
the United States between. 18
and 19 million tons of bitu-
minous coal each year which is
equivalent to the total amount
of coal produced in Canada, yet
less than three percent of the
Ontario market is supplied from
Canadian sources.”

So now we have a situation
where Canadian mines are clos-
ing, miners are being thrown on
the industrial scrap heap by the
hundreds, the rest work a couple
of days a week—all at a time
when millions of tons of coal are
being brought in from the US.,
and U.S. coal is being used by
Canadian railways right in West-
ern Canada.

Could anything be more ridicu-
lous—or criminal?

Doesn’t this strikingly prove
the anti-Canadian character of
the policies being pursued by
Canadian big business interests
and their political representa-
tives in Ottawa? The harsh
truth is that the Canadian gov-
ernment doesn’t give a damn for
Canadian coal miners; it is in-
terested only in seeing that US.
coal trusts receive profitable or-
ders in Canada. What a shame-
ful-betrayal of Canada and Can-

adians this is!

But that isn’t all: According
to the Paley report (prepared for
the U.S. government with view to
utilization of natural resources
for the next quarter of a century)
the U.S. is planning to export
50,000,000 million tons of coal
a year to Canada by 1975.

If that plan is implemented,
the Canadian coal mining indus-
try will be wiped out.

What is the solution?

The coal operators are trying
to keep up their profits by me-
chanization, by mergers and
monopolies (Coal Branch and
the Crow’s Nest Pass) and by
trying to cut wages and lower
working conditions. But this
won’t bring new markets.

The U.S. appointed leaders of
the United Mine Workers, Dis-
trict 18, covering Alberta and
B.C., are apparently afraid to
take a stand against the impor-
tation of U.S. coal and so are
following a do-nothing, don’t-get-
alarmed policy.

The Drumheller miners, who
are under progressive leadership,
through their union locals, have
succeeded in making the demand
for a national coal policy a wide
public issue, but their efforts
have been hamstrung by lack of
cooperation from théir district
union Officials.

Obviously what is needed is a
policy of developing and _ utiliz-
ing our rich Canadian coal re-
sources to build up our Cana-
dian economy and to give jobs
to Canadians.

Only the Labor - Progressive
party has come out with a ‘coal
policy which puts the ne@ds of

Canada and Canadians first. This
is:

+ No coal to be imported from
the U.S. as long as Canadian
miners are idle.

+ Adequate subventions (sub-
sidies of so much per ton per
mile of freight haul) to en-
able Canadian coal to be sold
on the central Canadian mar-
ket.

+ Reorganization of the Domin-
ion Coal Board to include rep-

resentation from District 18 *

and 26 of the UMWA< in order
to protect the interests of the
miners and the public.

+ Establishment of industries to
extract
byproducts of coal.

+ Increases of 50 percent in un-
employment insurance pay-
ments and continuation of
such payments until jobs are
again available.

The LPP federal candidates in
mining constituences—Art Rob-
erts, Bow River, Tony Patera,
MacLeod, Jack Lee, Jasper-Ed-
son in Alberta, and W. S. E.
Morrison, Comox-Alberni in B.C.
—are making this coal policy the
centre of their election cam-
paigns.

They point out that it is a
Canada First coal policy, one
that will benefit all sections of
the population in mining com-
munities and Canada as a whole.
By means of stickers, petitions,
public meetings, leaflets and ads
in newspapers they are bringing
this coal policy to public atten-
tion. They deserve the’ whole-
hearted support of all Canadians.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — MAY 29, 1953 — PAGE 9

the many valuable

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