ee hundred of you who use tools; you each pay ten cents a
week to the Company for keeping them sharp,--that is, in round numbers,
$1500 a year. There are two smiths at work at $50 a month (that is
$1200), and a helper at $25 a month ($300 more), making just $1500 paid
by the Company in wages. If you will think this matter out, you will see
that there is a dead loss to the Company of the coal used, the wear and
tear of the instruments, and the interest, taxes, insurance, and
degeneration of the plant. Is the Company under obligation to lose this
money for you? Not at all! The Company does this as an accommodation and
a gratuity to you, but not as a duty. Just as much coal would be taken
from the Gordon mine if your tools were never sharpened, only it would
require more men, and you would earn less money apiece. You could not
get this sharpening done at private shops so cheaply, and you cannot do
it yourselves. You have no more right to ask the Company to do this work
for nothing than you have to ask it to buy your tools for you. It would
be just as sensible for you to strike because the Company did not send
each of you ten cents' worth of ice-cream every Sunday morning, as it is
for you to go out on this matter of sharpening tools.

"But, suppose the Company were in duty bound to do this thing for you,
and suppose it should refuse; would that be a good reason for quitting
work? Not by any means! You are earning an average of $2 a day,--nearly
$16,000 a month. You've 'been out' six weeks. If you gain your point, it
will take you fifteen years to make up what you've already lost. If you
have the sense which God gives geese, you will see that you can't afford
this sort of thing.

"But the end is not yet. You are likely to stay out six weeks longer,
and each six weeks adds another fifteen years to your struggle to catch
up with your losses. Is this a load which thinking people would impose
upon themselves? Not much! You will lose your battle, for your strike is
badly timed. It seems to be the fate of strikes to be badly timed; they
usually occur when, on account of hard times or over-supply, the
employers would rather stop paying wages than not. That's the case now.
Four months of coal is in yards or on cars, and it's an absolute benefit
to the Company to turn seventy or eighty thousand dollars of dead
product into live money. Don't deceive yourselves with the hope that you
are distressing the owner by your foolish strike; y