Note 51 — CHAPTER 8 PARTIAL RECOGNITION AND NEW DIFFICULTIES, 1898-1914

At a conference at Columbus, Ohio, in January, 1886, coal operators from Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois met the organized miners and drew up an agreement covering the wages which were to prevail throughout the central competitive field from May 1, 1886, to April 30, 1887. The scale established would seem to have been dictated by the wish to give the markets of the central competitive field to the Ohio operators. Ohio was favored in the scale established by this first Interstate conference probably because more than half of the operators present came from that State, and because the chief strength of the miners' union also lay in that State. To prevent friction over the interpretation of the Interstate agreement, a board of arbitration and conciliation was established. This board consisted of five miners and five operators chosen at large, and one miner and operator more from each of the States of this field. Such a board of arbitration and conciliation was provided for in all of the Interstate agreements of the period of the eighties. This system of Interstate agreement, in spite of the cut-throat competition raging between operators, was maintained for Pennsylvania and Ohio practically until 1890, Illinois having been lost in 1887, and Indiana in 1888. It formed the real predecessor of the system established in 1898 and in vogue thereafter.