was
travail and storm and outrage and death. What nature had made
beautiful, man had made ugly by energy and all the harsh necessities of
progress. In the very heart of this exquisite and picturesque
country-side the ugly, grim life of the miner had established itself,
and had then turned an unlovely field of industrial activity into a
cock-pit of struggle between capital and labour. First, discontent, fed
by paid agitators and scarcely steadied by responsible and level-headed
labour agents and leaders; then active disturbance and threatening;
then partial strike, then minor outrages, then some foolishness on the
part of manager or man, and now tragedy darkening the field, adding
bitterness profound to the discontent and strife.

Rudyard Byng had arrived on the scene in the later stages of the
struggle, when a general strike with all its attendant miseries, its
dangers and provocations, was hovering. Many men in his own mine in
South Africa had come from this very district, and he was known to be
the most popular of all the capitalists on the Rand. His generosity to
the sick and poor of the Glencader Mine had been great, and he had
given them a hospital and a club with adequate endowment. Also, he had
been known to take part in the rough sports of the miners, and had
afterwards sat and drunk beer with them--as much as any, and carrying
it better than any.

If there was any one who could stay the strike and bring about a
settlement it was he; and it is probable he would have stayed it, had
it not been for a collision between a government official and a miners'
leader. Things had grown worse, until the day of catastrophe, when Byng
had been sent for by the leaders of both parties to the quarrel. He had
laboured hours after hour in the midst of grave unrest and threats of
violence, for some of the men had taken to drinking heavily--but
without success. Still he had stayed on, going here and there, mostly
among the men themselves, talking to them in little groups, arguing
simply with them, patiently dealing with facts and figures, quietly
showing them the economic injustice which lay behind their full
demands, and suggesting compromises.

He was received with good feeling, but in the workers' view it was
"class against class--labour against capital, the man against the
master." In their view Byng represented class, capital and master, not
man; his interests were not identical with theirs; and though some were
disposed