"Quarrel with each
other as much as you please, only always bear in mind that you have a
common enemy which is your Master and Lady."

To find yourself facing a square of irate strikers is to feel yourself
very thin, very colourless, and amazingly inexperienced. It is to
wonder at the rudeness of their speech, the largeness of their mouths,
and to speculate in a Christianly way as to just what screw is loose in
their mental make-up. I know this to be the way of it, for once we had
a strike in a mine which I, with a strutting but misguided assurance,
imagined to be the property of our family. Owing to a former
superintendent having entered into an agreement with the union, I
learned we were holding the mine co-operatively, and that I could not
dismiss the men either individually or collectively.

The trouble happened in this wise: the president being absent for
several months, it fell to me, as vice-president, to hold the reins.
By reason of the facts that the seam of coal was pinching thin; that
the miners were receiving one-third more than any others in the
locality, and that we were producing on a falling market, we found we
were losing nearly one hundred dollars a day. The superintendent
invited the miners to discuss the matter without prejudice. They did
not disallow the correctness of his contention but refused to consider
a reduction of their wages. They were content to stand by their side
of the agreement and would see to it that the company did the same.

And here I showed a lack of discretion in allowing this matter to be
discussed, for, while failing to deduce that it was highly preposterous
to kill the goose who laid the golden egg, they still had the
penetration to see that in closing down the mine because of lack of
orders, my primary object was to nullify the agreement. Nothing could
express their unmeasured contempt of the vice-president, and they left
me under no misapprehension as to their opinion of me. They accused me
of playing them, and being guilty of the offence, I was naturally
offended at the accusation. Still, I declined to be led into further
discussion, or to recriminate in kind, so that ultimately I came to
feel strong as one does who is intentionally weak before her enemy.
There was nothing for it. The miners had to walk out, all except the
engineers who pumped the water from the sump. Now, the night engineer
had a face so wicked that he might all his life have been stoking
f