Rail & River Coal Co. v. Yaple

• Decision Date: 20 May 1914
• Docket Number: 233.
• Citation: 214 F. 273
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Ohio
• Parties: RAIL & RIVER COAL CO. v. YAPLE et al.

214 F. 273

RAIL & RIVER COAL CO. v. YAPLE et al.

No. 233.

United States District Court, N.D. Ohio, Eastern Division.

May 20, 1914

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] [Copyrighted Material Omitted]

Hoyt Dustin, Kelley, McKeehan & Andrews, of Cleveland, Ohio (A. C. Dustin, of Cleveland, Ohio, of counsel, and Tracy, Chapman & Welles, of Toledo, Ohio, on the brief), for plaintiff.

Timothy S. Hogan, Atty. Gen., of Columbus, Ohio (James I. Boulger, of Chillicothe, Ohio, Robt. M. Morgan, of Cleveland, Ohio, and Clarence D. Laylin, of Columbus, Ohio, of counsel), for defendants.

Before WARRINGTON, Circuit Judge, and SATER and KILLITS, District judges.

PER CURIAM.

The plaintiff, a West Virginia corporation, a large producer of coal and employer of mine laborers, of whom there are more than 45,000 in Ohio, assails the constitutionality of the Ohio law of February 5, 1914 (104 Ohio Laws, p. 181) entitled 'An act to regulate the weighing of coal at the mines,' and asks for an interlocutory injunction against the defendants, who constitute the Industrial Commission of Ohio, to prevent them from enforcing and attempting to enforce any of the provisions of such act. The act, in so far as it need be considered, is set forth in the margin. ^[1] Diversity of citizenship and the presence of federal questions confer jurisdiction. Siler v. Louisville & Nashville R.R. Co., 213 U.S. 175, 191, 29 Sup.Ct. 451, 53 L.Ed. 753; Michigan Central R.R. Co. v. Vreeland, 227 U.S. 59, 63, 64, 33 Sup.Ct. 192, 57 L.Ed. 417; Louisville & Nashville R.R. Co. v. Siler (C.C.) 186 F. 176, 179; Ohio River & W. Ry. Co. v. Dittey (D.C.) 203 F. 537, 589; Mutual Film Co. v. Industrial Commission of Ohio, 215 F. 138, decided in this district April 2, 1914.

The Ohio Coal Commission, appointed by virtue of a joint resolution of the General Assembly (103 Ohio L.p. 981) 'to investigate and report an equitable method of weighing coal at the mines, when the employes are to be paid for their labor on the basis of weight, measure, or quantity, and that will at the same time be to the best interest of the consumers and protect the coal measures of the state,' submitted a report in December, 1913, in which, following a review of the evidence and arguments of both operators and miners, it recommended for passage a bill which finally assumed the form of the present act. The information thus brought to the attention of the General Assembly, and to which counsel in the present hearing freely alluded, in so far as deemed material, is summarized in the next succeeding paragraph, and is as follows:

All mine employes are required to belong to the United Mine Workers-- the strongest labor organization in the country. They have had no difficulty in the past in securing fair wages. The system of paying miners long in vogue in nearly all Ohio mines originated when only lump coal was marketable, and is based on the amount of coal mined and passed over a 1 1/4-inch screen, which amount is assumed to be 28 per cent. The insistence of the miners that they are paid for but a part of the product of their labor began when the finer grades of coal became salable. Their persistent grievance, although it will not bear analysis, engendered disputes and bitter feeling between them and their employers. A statute (section 956, Page & A. General Code of Ohio), whose purpose is the avoidance of danger, especially in gaseous mines, wisely requires the removal of fine coal and coal dust from the mines, for the violation of which (section 976, Page & A.G.C.) the offender may be punished by fine or imprisonment, or both; but the miners, believing their grievance to be just, have not always removed such coal and dust, and thereby neither obviate such danger nor conserve the coal supply. Generally stated, from 20 per cent. to 50 per cent. of the coal under the heretofore prevailing systems of mining has been left in pillars, ribs, and stumps. The coal so left deteriorates from exposure, becomes somewhat crushed by the overlying strata, and yields a more than ordinary percentage of fine coal, in consequence of which the miners either wholly refuse to draw such supports, or decline to do so unless paid a sum additional to the regular contract price. In many instances, on account of such unwillingness, those portions of mines which yield an unusual amount of fine coal have been abandoned, and the fuel so indispensable to industrial progress is lost. On account of dissimilarities in the character of coal, the quantity of fine coal produced varies in different mines and even in different portions of the same mine; the variations in some instances being quite marked. The result is a variation in the wages of miners of equal skill and ability, and an advantage to operators obtaining an excess of fine coal as against the miners, and also as against other operators in districts in which an effort is made to secure as large a percentage of lump coal as is possible. The increased openings between screen bars, resulting from the wear incident to use, diminish the quantity of lump coal passing over such bars, to the loss of the miner. The failure to substitute new screens is due in part to the negligence of the check weighman, authorized by statute (section 970, Page & A.G.C.) and selected and paid by the miners to call attention to the defective character of the screens, and in part to the carelessness of the operators in failing to maintain screens conforming to their contract. Each, however, charges the other with the responsibility of such failure, and instances have occurred in which the miners have struck and closed down mines on account of disputes and delays regarding the furnishing of new screens. Neither the charge that the operators so dump mine cars as to break the coal (by an excessive drop from such cars to the screens, for instance), nor the countercharge that the miners will not permit such dumping as will eliminate the fine from the lump coal, is proved; but the cupidity and the carelessness of each are deemed factors worthy of consideration. If coal be shot from the solid, payment on the mine-run basis will result in an increased quantity of fine coal. Whether such increase will occur if the coal is undercut before it is shot down, as was done with about 95 per cent. of the coal mined at the time the report was filed, is, in view of the experience in other states having kindred statutes and the difference in the Ohio coal from that of other fields, problematical. If an increase occurs, it will operate quite prejudicially to the sale of Ohio coal. The adoption of the mine-run system will also cause, to the prejudice of the operators, a considerable increase in the amount of impurities brought to the surface, unless some way be found to protect the operator from the carelessness and indifference of the miner, and will require the inauguration of some method of cleaning. It will also necessitate some increased expenditure in the readjustment of tipples. The commission, in view of its findings so summarized as above, concluded that the present system of mining is inequitable, unjust, and productive of discontent. To obviate existing conditions, and to conserve the coal by supplying an incentive to employes to remove pillars, ribs, and stumps and the portion of mines yielding more fine coal than is usual, and to load and send from the mine the fine coal which is now left underground, the commission recommended that shooting from the solid be prohibited, and that the mine-run system of payment be adopted, but so safeguarded as to apply to clean coal only, i.e., coal so cleaned as to be marketable.

The plaintiff charges that the act, in lodging in the industrial commission the duty of determining the percentage of impurities unavoidable in the proper mining or loading of coal, and of fixing, in case of disagreement between the mine operator and his employes and until they subsequently agree, the percentage of fine coal allowable in the output of the mine, unreasonably, unnecessarily, and arbitrarily deprives the operator, whose business, it is alleged, is strictly private and unaffected by any public interest, from contracting with his employes for the production of coal containing more impurities or having a greater degree of purity than that which the Commission has fixed, and denies him the right to reject, and requires him to accept and to make payment for the total contents of each mine car, without deduction or diminution, so long as the percentage of impurities fixed by the Commission is not exceeded. It avers that the act is not designed to protect the morals, health, or safety of the public or of mine employes, and has no real or substantial relation as between the purposes attributed to it and the means devised for attaining such purposes, but has for its object the regulation of the relations between masters and such of their servants as are paid by weight for coal mined or loaded, and that it is therefore unconstitutional, in that it deprives the plaintiff of liberty and property without due process of law, and of the equal protection of the law as guaranteed by the fourteenth amendment and the Ohio Bill of Rights.

The act must be sustained, unless it can be clearly shown to be in conflict with some constitutional provision. Board of Health v. Greenville, 86 Ohio St. 1, 20, 98 N.E. 1019, Ann. Cas. 1913D, 52; Schmidinger v. Chicago, 226 U.S. 578, 587, 588, 33 Sup.Ct. 182, 57 L.Ed. 364; Mutual Film Co. v. Industrial Commission of Ohio, supra. It came into existence through a claimed exercise of the police power, a power which extends to the making of regulations 'promotive of domestic order, morals, health, and safety. ' Railroad Co. v. Husen, 95 U.S. 465, 471, 24 L.Ed. 527. Laws enacted in its...