oncerns acting in unison.

The President ordered an investigation, and, as a result, proceedings
under the Sherman Act to restrain the great packers from continuing
their alleged combination. A temporary injunction was granted. The slow
machinery of chancery bade fair to work out a decree, but long before it
was on record, alert spirits among the packing firms evolved a new plan
not obnoxious to decrees, but effective for union.

If the public suffered from these phalanxed industries while they ran
smoothly, it endured peculiar evils from the periodical conflicts
between the capital and the labor engaged in them.

The Steel Strike of 1901 was a conflict over the unionizing of certain
hitherto non-union plants of the United States Steel Corporation. It
resulted in defeat for the strikers and in the disunionizing of plants.

[Illustration: Two officers standing in front of a rail car.]
Col. Clements. Gen. Gobin, commanding troops sent to Shenandoah in the
coal strike of 1902.

This strike had no such consequences for the consuming public as
attended the anthracite coal strike of 1902, which was more bitterly
fought in that it was a conflict over wages. The standard of living had
been lowered in one of the coal-fields by the introduction of cheap
foreign labor. Now the same process threatened the other coal-field.

A strike ordered by the United Mine Workers began May 12, 1902, when one
hundred and forty-seven thousand miners went out. Though the record was
marred at places, they behaved well and retained to a large degree
public sympathy. When the price of anthracite rose from about $5 a ton
to $28 and $30, the parts of the country using hard coal were threatened
with a fuel famine and had begun to realize it. For the five months
ending October 12th, the strike was estimated to have cost over
$126,000,000. The operators stubbornly refused to arbitrate or to
recognize the union, and the miners, with equal constancy, held their
ranks intact.

[Illustration: Three men is suits sitting on a large log.]
Coal strike at Shenandoah, Pa., 1902. A strikers' picket.

[Illustration: Seven men around a large desk.]
Copyright, 1902, by George Grantham Bain.
The coal strike arbitrators chosen by the President. Carroll D. Wright,
Recorder; T. H. Watkins, General J. M. Wilson, Judge Gray, Presiding
Officer; E, W. Parker, E. E. Clark. and Bishop Spalding.

The problem of protecting the public pressed for solution as nev