nd all of the class of big propertied men, of which they
were members, from the dreadful punishment which their own folly would
have brought on them if I had not acted; and one of the exasperating
things was that they were so blinded that they could not see that I was
trying to save them from themselves and to avert, not only for their
sakes, but for the sake of the country, the excesses which would have
been indulged in at their expense if they had longer persisted in their
conduct.

The great Anthracite Strike of 1902 left an indelible impress upon
the people of the United States. It showed clearly to all wise and
far-seeing men that the labor problem in this country had entered upon
a new phase. Industry had grown. Great financial corporations, doing a
nation-wide and even a world-wide business, had taken the place of
the smaller concerns of an earlier time. The old familiar, intimate
relations between employer and employee were passing. A few generations
before, the boss had known every man in his shop; he called his men
Bill, Tom, Dick, John; he inquired after their wives and babies; he
swapped jokes and stories and perhaps a bit of tobacco with them. In the
small establishment there had been a friendly human relationship between
employer and employee.

There was no such relation between the great railway magnates, who
controlled the anthracite industry, and the one hundred and fifty
thousand men who worked in their mines, or the half million women and
children who were dependent upon these miners for their daily bread.
Very few of these mine workers had ever seen, for instance, the
president of the Reading Railroad. Had they seen him many of them could
not have spoken to him, for tens of thousands of the mine workers were
recent immigrants who did not understand the language which he spoke and
who spoke a language which he could not understand.

Again, a few generations ago an American workman could have saved money,
gone West and taken up a homestead. Now the free lands were gone. In
earlier days a man who began with pick and shovel might have come to own
a mine. That outlet too was now closed, as regards the immense majority,
and few, if any, of the one hundred and fifty thousand mine workers
could ever aspire to enter the small circle of men who held in their
grasp the great anthracite industry. The majority of the men who earned
wages in the coal industry, if they wished to progress at all, were
compelled t