Earnings of Coal Miners

The earnings tables of the Coal Commission were prepared to show the relation of earnings to time worked in considerable detail. The earnings for individual employes were grouped in intervals of $100 for amount received while employed at one mine. Such a grouping was planned to bring out differences in earnings where such differences existed for the same occupation. The figures given are not, therefore, the annual earnings of any employe who shifted during the year. In attempting in this paper to give summary figures for earnings, I am obscuring the variations upon which the Coal Commission reports tend to lay most stress. It should be remembered also that the Coal Commission was necessarily occupied with an enormous problem of collection and tabulation. In getting together the mass of data, it was more important to provide the primary facts than to get a few outstanding but oversummary conclusions. Everyone recognizes the necessity of sifting and interpreting statistical data collected in this way. However, the enormity of the task of tabulating earnings material did not leave sufficient time after the tabulation was done for detailed interpretation of all the data. The figures will, therefore, be the basis for discussion for some time by students interested in careful study of the problems of earnings in coal. Three facts should be borne in mind in using the summarized data: first, that one is obscuring important variations; second, that the earnings figures must be interpreted in connection with the wage rate, turnover and irregularity studies of the Commission; and third, that the figures published do not give annual earnings. Earnings in the industry can be summarized for three major occupational groups. The piece work, or tonnage occupations, comprise in anthracite collieries the contract miners and their laborers. In bituminous mines there are three important groups: machine miners engaged in operating the coal

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