The coal miners of Colorado are not seeking charity, they want justice.
-John R Lawson
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Wednesday October 6, 1915
From The New York Times: John R Lawson Condemns the Rockefeller Plan
LAWSON CONDEMNS PLAN.
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Lacks Essentials of Real Collective Bargaining, He Says.TRINIDAD, Col., Oct. 2.-John R. Lawson, international board member of the United Mine Workers of America, confined in the county jail here awaiting decision of the Supreme Court on his application for a new trial on the charge of murder, made a statement tonight relative to the Rockefeller industrial plan.
[He declared:]Referring to that part of the plan which says that the company will pay the expenses of miners' representatives to the conferences and reimburse them for time lost, Mr. Lawson said:The plan is not practical...and will not prove the factor to promote industrial peace in Colorado, because it does not contain the essentials of collective bargaining, but rather attempts to substitute paternalism for democracy, or philanthropy for justice.
The coal miners of Colorado are not seeking charity, they want justice. They are only asking the same rights that the officials of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company claim for themselves, the right to join the organization of their choice, which is provided for by statute in Colorado. They demand the privilege of selling their labor through the medium of collective bargaining. They desire an organization on each side equal in strength, with a sense of equity to govern a contract that is binding on both sides.
This new plan of labor union, built along the lines of the old Provincial Workmen's Association of Canada, now defunct, will not do in Colorado. Without an organization there is amassed on one side all the wealth and power, on the other are grouped the partially organization employes, without any real organization behind them.
It will be a hopeless task, indeed, if safe representatives cannot be found under this benevolent plan. No intelligent person is going to be deceived by this subterfuge.----- [Photograph added.]