And it was his will to subjugate Matter to his own ends. The
subjugation itself was the point, the fight was the be-all, the fruits
of victory were mere results. It was not for the sake of money that
Gerald took over the mines. He did not care about money, fundamentally.
He was neither ostentatious nor luxurious, neither did he care about
social position, not finally. What he wanted was the pure fulfilment of
his own will in the struggle with the natural conditions. His will was
now, to take the coal out of the earth, profitably. The profit was
merely the condition of victory, but the victory itself lay in the feat
achieved. He vibrated with zest before the challenge. Every day he was
in the mines, examining, testing, he consulted experts, he gradually
gathered the whole situation into his mind, as a general grasps the
plan of his campaign.

Then there was need for a complete break. The mines were run on an old
system, an obsolete idea. The initial idea had been, to obtain as much
money from the earth as would make the owners comfortably rich, would
allow the workmen sufficient wages and good conditions, and would
increase the wealth of the country altogether. Gerald's father,
following in the second generation, having a sufficient fortune, had
thought only of the men. The mines, for him, were primarily great
fields to produce bread and plenty for all the hundreds of human beings
gathered about them. He had lived and striven with his fellow owners to
benefit the men every time. And the men had been benefited in their
fashion. There were few poor, and few needy. All was plenty, because
the mines were good and easy to work. And the miners, in those days,
finding themselves richer than they might have expected, felt glad and
triumphant. They thought themselves well-off, they congratulated
themselves on their good-fortune, they remembered how their fathers had
starved and suffered, and they felt that better times had come. They
were grateful to those others, the pioneers, the new owners, who had
opened out the pits, and let forth this stream of plenty.

But man is never satisfied, and so the miners, from gratitude to their
owners, passed on to murmuring. Their sufficiency decreased with
knowledge, they wanted more. Why should the master be so
out-of-all-proportion rich?

There was a crisis when Gerald was a boy, when the Masters' Federation
closed down the mines because the men would not accept a reduction.
This lock-o