Mr. KELLEY. I will yield to you for that. Mr. WERDEL. There is a serious question in my mind, Mr. Maize. If with this situation facing us, where our mines are going out of business, our operators in lead, zinc, coal, iron, and all these mines, with all this underground timber rotting, with no knowledge of it for the future, I am wondering if we have not got a sufficient Government interest to subsidize the proper shoring of mines. Mr. MAIZE. You mean, the proper timbering of mines? Mr. WERDEL. Yes, and the creating of statistics for the future. Mr. MAIZE. I would hestitate to say that we have a public interest in going into a mine and subsidizing the actual timbering of that mine. I do not believe it. We have sufficient interest in knowing our workable coal, the amount of coal that is left in a mine, and all that information. But there is one thing that possibly you lost sight of, or maybe you do not understand. Maybe one of those mines has been abandoned for 25 or 30 years. It would probably be the height of folly to reopen that mine through its old workings. You would go over and find a new location close to the workings and sink a shaft down there. You would not think of going into a mine that has been idle for 50 years and cleaning it up, unless it had an extraordinarily good roof. In all probability, you would make a new opening. Mr. WERDEL. Again, you are talking about coal. Mr. MAIZE. Yes; I am talking about coal, Mr. Werdel. Mr. WERDEL. If a man is following a drift of lead or silver or zinc, that might not be true. Mr. MAIZE. NO; that might not be true. I agree with that. But I am talking about coal. Mr. WERDEL. That is all. Mr. KELLEY. Mr. Maize, did I understand you to say that all of the educational activties of the Bureau in the training of first aid, and so forth, had been completely dropped? Mr. MAIZE. I say that the educational program that used to be so vigorously pushed in Pennsylvania and carried on, such as training the men in mine rescue and first aid, has been dropped. They are not doing any first-aid training at all in Penssylvania, so far as I know, and I would know, because we are doing it ourselves now. We are conducting the training. Mr. KELLEY. I know. Maybe that is the reason they do not do it, because you are doing it. Mr. MAIZE. No. They had stopped it before we started it, Congressman Kelley. I think that you will find that it is pretty much the firstaid work, educational work, that they used to do, and it was a wonderful job, has not been carried on, except now that they are teaching more classes, and they are going into the mines and teaching some of the safety committees, and some work like that. But the first-aid work in Pennsylvania has been dropped entirely. Mr. KELLEY. Well, I will repeat, if all the mining States in the Union had as good a law as we have in Pennsylvania and as well administered as we have it in Pennsylvania, we would not have any occasion for this kind of bill. We would not be working with this thing. But there are so many States that have not even approached the mining laws of Pennsylvania, and never will, that in the interest of saving casualties in mines and injuries, and so on, we need this bill. Mr. MAIZE. Congressman, do not lose sight of this: If you give the Federal inspectors in these States police powers in these mines, do not think for a minute that you are going to prevent mine explosions and reduce accidents. Mr. KELLEY. I agree with you that there is an irreducible minimum. You cannot expect ever to stop all accidents. I agree with that. Mr. MAIZE. That is right. We have accidents in the home. You consider in Pennsylvania, where a house burned down and three or four children were killed. When I was a boy, if anything happened down the street, I used to go home because I would be in a safe place. People fall down stairs. They fall in bathtubs. There is no safe place in this world, and there is no safe mine in this world. Mr. KELLEY. That is true. I guess that completes your testimony. Mr. MAIZE. The question was raised about the United States Government not shutting down the Centralia mine. But within 2 weeks after the Centralia explosion, they did not hesitate to shut down 518 mines in the United States. Mr. KELLEY. Of course, I want to say this, too, for the record, that the number of casualties in mines is still too high. When you think about 1,200 men in the United States losing their lives every year in the coal mines in the United States, that is quite a casualty list. Mr. MAIZE. Yes. It is quite a casualty list when you consider that against about 490,000 men that are employed. That is too high. I will admit that. But when you consider that we mine 130,000,000 tons of coal in Pennsylvania with 114 losses now, that is still too high. We are not satisfied with that record. Mr. KELLEY. Then you still have 55,000 or 60,000 men injured every year in the coal mines in the United States. Mr. MAIZE. Yes. Mr. KELLEY. And some of them are permanent injuries. Mr. MAIZE. Yes; that is true. But what I am objecting to, Congressman Kelley, is blaming those injuries on mine management. I cannot see how in the world if a man shovels some coal out to get a car filled and he neglects to put his post up or neglects to put his timber up, how the management can be held responsible for that. Mr. KELLEY. Only to this degree, that mine management is required to be efficient in supplying the proper equipment and the proper sup plies at the proper time and in the proper place. Mr. MAIZE. Yes, sir. Mr. KELLEY. And they must discipline the men as far as they can discipline them. They are responsible to that degree, and for the supervision. Mr. MAIZE. They are responsible for the supervision; that is right. Mr. KELLEY And I think that you will agree too that more and better supervision is a great factor in reducing accidents. Mr. MAIZE. It will be a factor. But I say that still we have not reached that point. Mr. KELLEY. But we cannot take the responsibility away from the individual. Mr. MAIZE. That is right. Mr. KELLEY. Thank you very much. Mr. PERKINS. Just one more question Mr Chairman. Inasmuch as the Government was operating the mines at the time these 518 mines were closed down that you mentioned, they had the authority to close the mines down Mr. MAIZE. Because they were their own mines. Mr. PERKINS. That is right, because they were operating their own mines. Mr. MAIZE. That is right. Mr. PERKINS. Now, do you not think that the greatest improvement in mine safety all over the Nation followed when those 518 mines were closed down? Mr. MAIZE. No; I do not think so, because some of those mines started up without doing a single thing in them to bring about_the improvement of the situations that they claimed in some of them. Federal inspectors came to the mine and said, "You can start it up." But our inspectors would not open the mine until they inspected them. The Federal inspectors said, "All right. You can go ahead and start." Some of the miners said, "We will not go in there until the State mine inspectors inspect that mine." That is one of the things that we found. Mr. KELLEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Maize. (The following letter, received subsequent to the close of the hearings, by order of the chairman, is inserted at this point in the record :) Hon. AUGUSTINE B. KElley, UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA, Chairman, Subcommittee on Miners' Welfare, House Education and Labor Committee, Washington, D. C. DEAR CONGRESSMAN KELLEY: On June 17, 1949, Mr. Richard Maize, Secretary of Mines of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, testified before your subcommittee. Among other things, Mr. Maize stated that I had issued a statement saying that the Old Ben mine explosion was an "act of God." This statement is untrue. Mr. Maize made it for one of two reasons: (a) Because he was ignorant; or (b) Because of personal and political animus. Mr. Maize in his previous testimony before the Senate committee proved himself to be irresponsible. He is gratuitously wrong in charging me with making such a statement with respect to the Old Ben disaster. I was on the ground' after that explosion, and I am personally familiar with all the circumstances appertaining thereto. Mr. Maize was not. The statement which he ascribes to me was made by another individual, not a member of the United Mine Workers of America, and not associated in any manner with the undersigned. I deplore such a falsehood on the part of Mr. Maize, and I am writing this letter in the hope that you will introduce it into the record to correct the grievous and maliciously false statement which Mr. Maize uttered. Sincerely yours, JOHN L. LEWIS, President. Mr. KELLEY. Mr. Scholz, you may proceed, if you are ready. TESTIMONY OF CARL SCHOLZ, MINING CONSULTING ENGINEER Mr. SCHOLZ. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, my name is Carl Scholz, of Charleston, W. Va. I am 77 years old. I am a consultant mining engineer and for 52 years I have been a member of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers. I am a former president of the American Mining Congress. My coal-mining experience began in West Virginia in 1891; covers the States of Illinois,. Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Indian Territory before its absorption in the State of Oklahoma; and I expect it will end in West Virginia where I began. I have had engineering experience in Arizona in the copper districts and in Texas, where I reported favorably on the oil discoveries made later in the vicinity of Corpus Christi. I was the first consulting mining engineer at the Bureau of Mines. I was appointed by Dr. Holmes as the first consulting engineer at the Bureau of Mines and was sent to Europe to investigate mining conditions over there. I was born in Germany, and came to America as a youth for the reason that I disliked the German military-caste system, and, secondly, because I was convinced that the American system of free enterprise offered the greatest opportunity for a youth to succeed if he were kindly disposed to work and desired to get ahead. I had learned in Germany that in America the individual was free and unfettered; that it was the voice of the individual that controlled the state and not the state that controlled the individual. I regret to say that the influence of the individual in America is diminishing and there is some sentiment in our country today for the restoration of the state above the individual, a condition from which I fled to come to America in 1889. I had no college education, but I went to the school of hard knocks from 1886 to this date, and I hope to continue in that school as long as I live, as long as there is lifeblood left in this carcass, and it is going to work for that. And I will say this, gentlemen: That I have devoted a large part of my business experience in the problem of saving lives in coal mines, because I felt that, since the Scriptures tell us to love your brother as yourself, every coal miner is my brother, and I have lived up to that without hesitation. I have been requested to appear before your honorable committee by the West Virginia Coal Association, a group of coal producers representing an annual production of approximately 90,000,000 tons of bituminous coal, embracing several district coal associations, such as the Kanawha Coal Operators Association, the Logan Coal Operators Association, the New River Coal Operators Association, Pocahontas Operators Association, the Williamson Operators Association, the Winding Gulf Operators Association, and others. In its membership are included many operators from the Greenbrier and northern West Virginia districts, and numerous individual coal producers not affiliated with any of the district associations. The request for the West Virginia Coal Association to appear before your committee came to me because I was known by its officers to be familiar with the creation of the United States Bureau of Mines, having appeared before the Congress in advocacy of the legislation. I was a close personal friend of Dr. Joseph A. Holmes, the first Director of the Bureau, and my friendship with this learned, kindly man, continued until his death. I think I am as much responsible for the legislation that created the Bureau as any other man. I well recall Senators Bailey and Teller, who objected to this legislation. Senator Joe Bailey was a man of great ability. He had a perception of the future and told me that it was only a few years until this Federal Bureau would undertake to supplant the States, and Senator Teller, telling me that, while he would support the bill, he predicted that I would live to rue the day I had asked him to vote for the bill. Originally the Federal Bureau of Mines was created for educational purposes. I have never wavered in my belief that it could serve a very useful function. It has been exceedingly beneficial to the mining industry in the exploration of the causes and prevention of mining disasters, but I regret that I have been forced to admit that Senators Bailey and Teller were right when they predicted that the Bureau would ultimately be manned by persons who would seek to destroy the sovereign power of the States and demand those police powers that were never sought when this educational bureau was established by law. I am opposed to the extension of police enforcement powers to the United States Bureau of Mines. Even when clothed with only inspection authority, we have seen the Bureau plunged deeply into the political arena, and it took a strike called by the head of the United Mine Workers to secure the confirmation of the present Director of the Bureau, an appointee of the President of the United States, who was opposed by the union and who caused his confirmation to be suspended for many months. Now, I might say for your information that Dr. Sayers, the previous Director of the Bureau, was a doctor, and having done business in so many States and had been everywhere, including the continent, I said to Dr. Sayers, "Doctor, why haven't I run across you before?" "Well," he said, "I am a doctor. I don't know a thing about mining." Yet, he was acceptable to the mine workers. He admitted to me that he did not know a thing about mining, but he had an able staff, and he depended on them, just as Dr. Boyd is evidently doing. I just mention this because it shows that there is an ulterior power that we do not quite always see governing these appointments. And today we see spokesmen of the Bureau forgetting their educational duties to lobby in the halls of Congress for more power over the coal-mining industry. I am opposed to H. R. 3023 because it is one of several measures of like nature, attacking the sovereignty of the States, and proposing to vest increased power in the Federal or Central Government. The Members of Congress are elected by the several States, or divisions thereof; and many of them, when they come to Washington, join in efforts to divest the States of their authority and grant greater powers to the Federal Government. If I may express my personal opinion, I would not want to be elected to the Congress as a representative of a sovereign State and then use my office to destroy the powers of the State which honored me with election. Section 2 of article 1 of the West Virginia Constitution reads as follows: The Government of the United States is a Government of enumerated powers, and all powers not delegated to it, nor inhibited to the States, are reserved to the States and the people thereof. Among the powers so reserved by the States is the regulation of their own internal government and police * H. R. 3023 violates that provision of our State constitution, and if I were a Member of the Federal Congress I would faithfully protect those rights reserved to the State which sent me to Congress. While your committee has under consideration only H. R. 3023, as I have suggested, this bill is only a part of the conspiracy to strip the States of their sovereign powers. There are other measures pending |