Monument In Coal

Outside the mining town of Beckley, W. Va. one afternoon last week, the deep-throated voice of John L. Lewis rumbled over the heads of 5,000 listeners and bounced sonorously back from the green mountainsides. In a chill drizzle, the United Mine Workers' boss warmly hailed a "new era of peace" that had brought forth one of the most impressive social landmarks in U.S. industry: a chain of ten hospitals in three states, built and operated by the U.M.W.'s welfare and retirement fund. As Lewis dedicated the chain to "those who suffered and died before us," patients and doctors watched intently from the northernmost hospital of the $26 million network, a five-story, glass-walled building so bright and strange to the Appalachian valley that miners call it "Beckley's Airport."

Medically and architecturally, the U.M.W. hospitals in West Virginia, Virginia, and Kentucky are among the most advanced to be found anywhere in the U.S. Built for the low cost of $16,000 per bed, the hospitals were designed for maximum efficiency, minimum operating cost. Each "chain-store" hospital is laid out around a central service core, from which food and drugs move by assembly belt and dumb-waiter to dispatch stations on every floor. A centralized administration and service center at Williamson, W. Va. will keep the books and do the housekeeping, e.g., maintenance, filling of prescriptions, laundry, for the whole system. Thus the cost of administering the medical program has been cut to 5.4% of the $42.8 million total spent in fiscal 1955, well under half the 12.6% average administrative cost for U.S. group hospital and medical plans.

Though the U.M.W. welfare and pension fund was set up ten years ago and has cost the industry close to $1 billion, a series of strikes and squabbles delayed its effective operation until 1950. Since 1946, the mine operators have upped their contribution from 5-c- to 40-c- a ton. They have also accepted responsibility for the monumental task of bringing modern medicine to the industry with the second-highest accident rate (after logging) in the U.S. Unlike many unions, the U.M.W. has run the program so efficiently that a Senate subcommittee investigating union welfare funds last April called it "honestly and well administered ... no less than excellent."

Moreover, as old (76) John L. pointed out last week, pensions and medical care for the U.M.W.'s 400,000 miners and their families in the area have left "men on both sides of the industry . . . free to apply themselves to the major project of making this industry successful." The U.S. today produces more coal at lower cost than any other nation in the world. With production running 15% ahead of 1955 and heavy export orders stacked up, the once-sick industry is fast improving its health.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.