This doubtless tended to eliminate cut-throat competition and
thus stabilize the industry. On the other hand, it may have hindered the
process of elimination of unprofitable mines, and therefore may be in
some measure responsible for the present-day overdevelopment in the
bituminous mining industry, which results in periodic unemployment and
in idle mines.
In the anthracite coal field in Eastern Pennsylvania the difficulties
met by the United Mine Workers were at first far greater than in the
bituminous branch of the industry. First, the working population was
nearly all foreign-speaking, and the union thus lacked the fulcrum which
it found in Illinois with its large proportion of English-speaking
miners accustomed to organization and to carrying on a common purpose.
Secondly, the employers, instead of being numerous and united only for
joint dealing with labor, as in bituminous mining, were few in number
besides being cemented together by a common selling policy on top of a
common labor policy. In consequence, the union encountered a stone wall
of opposition, which its loose ranks found for many years well-nigh
impossible to overcome.
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