immigrants who took the first job
which came to hand; and farm labourers who came west to take off the
harvest and decided to stay in the country.

These men, while they came under the union scale of wages, were unable
to do little else for the first winter than spoil their shots of
dynamite, cave in the roofs, and blow out the timbers. The mine
operator, however, rarely became disheartened so long as the green man
didn't blow off his own head for, in this case, the operator would be
called upon by the courts to pay staggering damages to the miner's
heirs under the compulsion of an extraordinary statute known as the
Labourer's Compensation Act.

But now, in these days of grace, owing to the investment of British and
foreign capital, the unskilled man has been superseded by electric
drillers and cutters--in a word, modern methods are being used in our
mines with the result that we have fewer accidents and losses.

This application of machinery to the industry has also brought about a
maximum of output with a minimum of expenditure. The development work
can be done with more speed and less expense, so that the old
disabilities under which western operators had to labour will soon be
cancelled out of memory.

While the application of machinery to mining must indubitably minimize
the probability of strikes, the operators must be prepared to reckon
with these until the end of time, in that throwing down their tools
appears to be the chief occupation of miners. It is hard to account
for this irresponsible vagary unless it be that they receive twice as
much pay as other workmen. Or it may be that they make a fetish of the
union, in which respect they do resemble certain stupid people in the
southern seas who have a worm to their god and are wont to sacrifice
oxen to it.

Now, miners on strike are persons of no very marked refinement, neither
are they given to logic. What Tennyson says of the Light Brigade is
finely applicable here--"Theirs not to reason why."

When you meet real strikers nothing counts. You may do everything
which instinct, invention or despair can suggest, except descending to
vulgar invective, yet without the slightest tangible result. No matter
how soothly their employer may speak to them, they are suspicious of
him or her. The intervention must always come from a third party.
These men are the latter-day exponents of the old rule laid down by
Dean Swift for the better direction of servants: