May 2, 1943: Fireside Chat 24: On the Coal Crisis a speech from President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Please enjoy May 2, 1943: Fireside Chat 24: On the Coal Crisis a great episode of the legendary Franklin D. Roosevelt - A Classic Old Time radio Show.

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Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Ladies and gentlemen, the President ofthe United States, my fellow Americans.
I am speaking to night, tothe American people, and in particular to
those of our citizens who are coalminers. To night, this country faces
a serious crisis. We are engagedin a war, on the successful outcome

(00:29):
of which will depend the whole futureof our country. This war has reached
a new critical phase. After theyears that we have spent in preparation,
we have moved into active and continuingbattle with our enemies. We are pouring
into the world wide conflict everything thatwe have, our young men, and

(00:53):
the vast resources of our nation.I have just returned from a two week's
tour of inspection, on which Isaw saw our men being trained and our
warm materials made. My trip tookme through twenty states. I saw thousands
of workers on the production line makingairplanes and guns and ammunition. Everywhere I

(01:19):
found great eagerness to get on withthe war. Men and women are working
long hours of difficult jobs and livingunder difficult conditions without complaint. Along thousands
of miles of track, I sawcountless acres of newly plowed fields. The

(01:40):
farmers of this country are planting thecrops that are needed to feed our armed
forces, our civilian populations, andour allies. Those crops will be harvested.
On my trip, I saw hundredsof thousands of soldiers, young men

(02:00):
who are green recruits last autumn havematured into self assured and hardened fighting men.
They are in splendid physical condition.They are mastering the superior weapons that
we are pouring out of our factories. The American people have accomplished a miracle.

(02:22):
However, all of our massed effortis none too great to meet the
demands of this war. We shallneed everything that we have and everything that
our allies have to defeat the Nazisand the Fascists in the coming battles on
the continent of Europe and the Japanese, on the continent of Asia, and

(02:44):
in the islands of the Pacific.This tremendous forward movement of the United States
and the United Nations cannot be stoppedby our enemies, and equally, it
must not be hampered by any individualor by the leaders of any one group.

(03:04):
Here back home, I want tomake it clear that every American coal
miner who has stopped mining coal,no matter how some serious motives, No
matter how legitimate he may believe hisgrievances to be, Every idle miner,

(03:27):
directly and individually is obstructing our wareffort. We have not yet won this
war. We will win this waronly as we produce and deliver our total
American effort on the high seas andon the battlefront, and that requires unrelenting,

(03:51):
uninterrupted effort here on the home front. A stopping of the coal supply,
even for a short time, wouldinvolve a gamble with the lives of
American soldiers and sailors and the futuresecurity of our whole people. It would

(04:12):
involve an unwarranted, unnecessary, andterribly dangerous gamble with our chances for victory.
Therefore, I see to all minersand all Americans everywhere, at home
and abroad, the production of coalwill not be stopped tonight. I am

(04:38):
speaking to the essential patriotism of theminers and to the patriotism of their wives
and children. And I am goingto state the true facts of this case
as simply and as plainly as Iknow. How, after the attack at
Pearl Harbor, the three great labororganizations, the American Federation of Labor,

(05:04):
the Congress of Industrial Organizations and theRailroad Brotherhoods gave the positive assurance that there
would be no strikes as long asthe war lasted, and the President of
the United Mine Workers of America wasa party to that assurance. That pledge

(05:28):
was applauded throughout the country. Itwas a forcible means of telling the world
that we Americans, one hundred andthirty five million of us, are united
in our determination to fight this totalwar with our total will and our total
power. At the request of employersand of organized labor, including the United

(05:57):
Mine Workers, the War Labor Boardwas set up for settling any disputes which
could not be adjusted through collective bargaining. The War Labor Board is a tribunal
on which workers and employers and thegeneral public are equally represented. In the

(06:19):
present coal crisis, conciliation and mediationwere tried unsuccessfully, in accordance with the
law. The case was then certifiedto the War Labor Board, the agency
created for this express purpose with theapproval of organized labor. The members of

(06:43):
the Board followed the usual practice whichhas proved successful in other disputes. Acting
promptly, they undertook to get allthe facts of this case from both the
miners and the operators. The Nationalofficers of the United Mine Workers, however,
declined to have anything to do withthe fact finding of the War Labor

(07:06):
Board, and the only excuse thatthey offer is that the War Labor Board
is prejudiced. The War Labor Boardhas been and is ready to give the
case affair and impartial hearing, andI have given my assurance that if any

(07:26):
adjustment of wages is made by theBoard, it will be made retroactive to
April first. But the National Officersof the United Mine Workers refuse to participate
in the hearing when asked to doso last Monday. On Wednesday of this

(07:48):
past week, while the Board wasproceeding with the case, stoppages began to
occur in some minds. On Thursdaymorning, I tell draft to the officers
of the United Mine Workers, askingthat the miners continue mining coal. On
Saturday morning, however, a generalstrike throughout the industry became effective on Friday

(08:15):
night. The responsibility for the crisisthat we now face rests squarely on these
National officers of the United Mine Workers, and not on the government of the
United States. But the consequences ofthis arbitrary action threaten all of us everywhere.

(08:39):
At ten o'clock yesterday morning, Saturday, the government took over the mines.
I called upon the miners to returnto work for their government. The
government needs their services just as surelyas it needs the services of our soldiers
and sailors, marines, and theservices of the millions who are turning out

(09:05):
the munitions of war. You minershave sons in the army and Navy and
marine corps. You have sons who, at this very minute, this split
second, may be fighting in NewGuinea, or in the Aleutian Islands,

(09:26):
or Guadalcanal, or Tunisia or China, or protecting troop ships and supplies against
submarines on the high seas. Wehave already received telegrams from some of our
fighting men overseas, and I onlywish they could tell you what they think

(09:48):
of the stoppage of work in thecoal mines. Some of your own sons
have come back from the fighting frontswounded. A number of them, for
example, are now here in anarmy hospital in Washington. Several of them
have been decorated by their government.I could tell you, I could tell

(10:13):
one of you. I tell youof one from Pennsylvania. He was a
coal miner before his induction, andhis father is a coal miner. He
was seriously wounded by Nancy machine gunbullets while he was on a bombing mission
over Europe in a flying fortress.Another boy from Kentucky, the son of

(10:37):
a coal miner, was wounded whenour troops first landed in North Africa six
months ago. There's another from Illinois. He was a coal miner. His
father's his father and two brothers arecoal miners. He was seriously wounded into

(10:58):
Nisia while attempting to rescue two comradeswho jeep had been blown up by a
Nazi mind these men do not considerthemselves heroes. They'd probably be embarrassed if
I mentioned their names over the air. They were wounded in the line of
duty. They know how essential itis to the tens of thousands, hundreds

(11:26):
of thousands, and ultimately millions ofother young Americans to get the best of
arms and equipment into the hands ofour fighting forces and get them there quickly.
The fathers and mothers of our fightingmen, they're brothers and sisters and
friends, and that includes all ofus, are also in the line of

(11:52):
duty the production line. Any failurein production may well result in costly defeat
heat on the field of battle.There can be no one among us,
no one faction, powerful enough tointerrupt the forward march of our people to

(12:13):
victory. You miners have ample reasonto know that there are certain basic rights
for which this country stands, andthat those rights are worth fighting for and
worth drying for. That is whyyou have sent your sons and brothers from

(12:33):
every mining town in the nation tojoin in the great struggle overseas. That
is why you have contributed so generously, so willingly to the purchase of war
bonds and to the many funds forthe relief of war victims here and in
foreign lands. That is why,since this war was started in nineteen thirty

(12:58):
nine, you have in priest theannual production of coal by almost two hundred
million tons a year. The toughnessof your sons and our armed forces is
not surprising. They come a finerugged stock. Men who work in the
minds are not unaccustomed to hardship.It has been the objective of this government

(13:22):
to reduce that hardship, to obtainfor miners and for all who do the
nation's work a better standard of living. I know only too well that the
cost of living is troubling the minersfamilies, and troubling the families of millions
of other workers throughout the country aswell. A year ago it became evident

(13:48):
to all of us that something hadto be done about living costs. Your
government determined not to let the costof living continue to go up as it
did in the First World War.Are Your government has been determined to maintain
stability of both prices and wages,so that a dollar would buy so far

(14:09):
as possible, the same amount.Are the necessities of life. And by
necessities I mean just that, notthe luxuries, not the fancy goods that
we have learned to do without inwartime. So far we have not been

(14:31):
able to keep the prices of somenecessities as low as we should have liked
to keep them. That is truenot only in coal towns, but in
many, many other places. Whereverwe find that prices of essentials have risen
too high, they will be broughtdown. Wherever we find that price sealings

(14:56):
are being violated, the violators willbe punished. Rents have been fixed in
most parts of the country in manycities, they've been cut to below where
they were before we entered the war. Clothing prices have generally remained stable.
These two items make up more thana third of the total budget of the

(15:22):
worker's family, as for food,which today accounts for about another third of
the family expenditure on the average.I want to repeat a gain. Your
government will continue to take all necessarymeasures to eliminate unjustified, avoidable price increases,

(15:43):
and we are today taking measures toroll back the prices of meats.
This war is going to go on. Call will be mined, no matter
what any individual thinks about the operationof our factories, our power plants,

(16:03):
our railroads will not be stopped.Our munitions must move to our troops.
And so under these circumstances, itis inconceivable that any patriotic miner can choose
any course other than going back towork and mining coal. The nation cannot

(16:30):
afford violence of any kind that thecoal mines or in coal towns. I
have placed authority for the resumption ofcoal mining in the hands of a civilian,
the Secretary of the Interior. Ifit becomes necessary to protect any miner

(16:52):
who seeks patriotically to go back atwork, then that miner must have and
his family must have, and willhave complete and adequate protection. If it
becomes necessary to have troops at themine mouths or in coal towns for the

(17:14):
protection of working miners and their families, those troops will be doing police duty
for the sake of the nation asa whole, and particularly for the sake
of the fighting men in the Army, the Navy, and the Marines,
your sons and mine, who arefighting our common enemies all over the world.

(17:40):
I understand the devotion of the coalminers to their union. I know
of the sacrifices they have made tobuild it up. I believe now as
I have all my life in therights of workers to join unions and to
protect their unions, I want tomake it absolutely clear that this government is
not going to do anything now toweaken those rights in the coal fields.

(18:07):
Every improvement of the conditions of thecoal miners of this country has had my
hearty support, and I do notmean to desert them now. But I
also do not mean to desert myobligations and responsibilities as President of the United
States and Commander in chief of theArmy and Navy. The first necessity is

(18:36):
the resumption of coal mining. Theterms of the old contract will be followed
by the Secretary of the Interior.If an adjustment in wages results from a
decision of the War Labor Board,or from any new agreement between the operators

(18:56):
and miners which is approved by theWar Laborers, that adjustment, as I
have said before, will be maderetroactive to April first. In the message
that I delivered to the Congress fourmonths ago, I expressed my conviction that
the spirit of this nation is good. Since then, I have seen our

(19:21):
troops in the Caribbean area, inbases on the coasts of aur Alive,
Brazil, and in North Africa.Recently, I have again seen great numbers
of our fellow countrymen, soldiers andcivilians from the Atlantic sea board, to
the Mexican border and to the RockyMountains the night, in the face of

(19:48):
a crisis of serious proportions in thecoal industry. I say again that the
spirit of this nation is good.I know that the America people will not
tolerate any threat offered to their governmentby anyone. I believe the coal miners

(20:08):
will not continue the strike against theirgovernment. I believe that the coal miners,
as Americans, will not fail toheed the clayer called the duty.
Like all other good Americans, theywill march shoulder to shoulder with our armed

(20:30):
forces to victory. Tomorrow, thestars and stripes will fly over the coal
mines, and I hope that everyminer will be at work under that flag.

(20:52):
Ladies and gentlemen, our national anthem. Ladies and gentlemen, you have

(22:04):
heard the President of the United States. This is the Blue Network.