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September 15, 1921

BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE HIMLER COAL CO.

The president, Martin Himler, is the third from the right in the rear row. He has a black tie and white shirt. Martin Himler as editor of a Hungarian newspaper in New York, the Magyar Munkaslap, was greatly attracted by mining men, capitalist and mine worker alike, and was much interested in the efforts of his fellow countrymen to better their condition. This experiment In co-operative mining is the result.

years. In the intense fight for unionization on the one hand and resistance to unionization on the other, the Himler operation has been untroubled. The story is not uninteresting.

A little more than two years ago Martin Himler, a naturalized Hungarian, conceived the plan of organizing a co-operative coal-mining company. Following up this idea, he formed the Himler Coal Co., capitalized at $50,000. Stock was sold to men of his own native land. A small mine in Mingo County, West Virginia, was purchased, and operations were begun. The mine had been a failure for previous owners. The seam was thin and working conditions were difficult. Yet the new company, employing its own stockholders, made money from it, and ultimately sold it at a profit.

Seeking larger fields, the company invaded Martin County, Kentucky. That county therefore had been a veritable wilderness. Tug River blocks its only outlet to a railroad. The obvious thing to do was to bridge the river. The new co-operative company, the laughing stock of coal operators throughout the Williamson field, faced its problems with optimism. A reorganization increased the capital stock of the company from $50,000 to $500,000, and the new stock was promptly subscribed by nearly fifteen hundred stockholders in the United States and in Europe.

A tract of approximately twelve hundred acres, in which lay the Warfield, or No. 2 gas, seam was under lease. An opening was started; contracts were let for erection of forty-five houses; attention was turned to bridging the river. Difficulties encountered in this project included the discovery of beds of quicksand where solid rock should have been. The original estimated cost of the bridge was $25,000. The structure was finally completed at a total cost of about $300,000. First shipments of coal were hauled over the new structure on July 1.

Meanwhile the new tipple was being built. Erected by the Link-Belt Co., it contains novel features, among these being the installation of a scraper-type conveyor running on a 45-deg. slope to the loading pit in the mine entry. The company declares no other successful installation of a scraper-type conveyor has yet been made on such a steep slope.

The novel features, however, are not confined to the physical equipment of the company. Its organization is unique.

Stock in the company is sold only to Hungarians, native or naturalized. One of the bylaws of the company provides, however, that no stockholder may seek employment with the company until he has undertaken naturalization as an American citizen. According to Martin Himler, president of the company, no stock holder in the company has yet arrived in America with out a firm resolution to become an American citizen as promptly as the laws will permit.

Employment by the company is not limited to stock holders, but the non-stock-holding employees must not exceed one-third the number of stockholding employees. The employment of non-stockholding employees, Himler explains, has been agreed upon by the company to take care of the resident labor.

A portion of the work of the company is devoted to Americanization, and to this end a night school has been established with a competent instructor in which the English language and the theory of American government, with a study of the Constitution of the United States, are taught employees of the company.

Himler's rules of conduct are strict, and in these his hands are upheld by his associates. On a recent tour of the property of the company, two employees were found "shooting craps." The men were promptly discharged and their stock purchased by the company. On a subsequent tour an employee who owned a small store

Stockholders' Meeting

Martin Himler in a miner's cap explain ing the $1,000 In surance policies being distributed among the work men. Eugen Dang, the secretary, the man on the extreme left In the preced ing figure, may be seen in this Illus tration behind and on the left hand of Mr. Himler. policies In hand. Nearly every other man Is a coal miner-stock holder.