ted operation of mines
made it impossible for any two, or even a considerable number, of the
mine owners to unite for the purpose of reducing the wages of the mine
operatives, and of increasing the price of the coal to the consumer.

"But with the Trust in operation all restraints are removed.

"The illegal traffic rates that the Trust secures, make it impossible
for any mine to be successfully worked that is out of the combine.

"The first step that the Coal Trust took was to limit the supply of coal
at the height of the summer season, when big shipments are ordinarily
made. This afforded a pretext for an advance in the retail price.

"To limit the supply, the Trust shut down work in half of the mines.

"For the past seven years this practice has been followed. Now the
simple miners know what to expect. They have been submissive, because
the suspension of work came in the summer time when they could live on
little, and did not have to withstand the rigor of a Pennsylvania
winter.

"Now the Paradise Coal Company announces that it will close down the
work on three of the mines next Saturday. This throws the men out in the
cold of November. If this plan is carried out it will bring on a long
and bitter strike."

"I quite agree with you," assents Trueman. He puffs meditatively at a
cigar.

"You are too young a man to remember the days of the Molly Maguires,
those awful days when murderers lurked on every road in the anthracite
coal field of this state. It was back in 1876 that the last of the
Maguires was hunted down. Of course there is no excuse for murder; yet
the Maguires were the result of a pernicious condition of wage
depression and degradation of humanity.

"When the just demands of the miners were recognized the reign of terror
ceased.

"But the Trusts have produced another organization of societies in this
state, bent on murder and arson. The Irish, English and Welsh miners,
who predominated in the region twenty years ago, are now supplanted by
Poles, Hungarians, Italians and the worst types of Lithuanians and
Slavs. These newcomers have brought with them the racial prejudices and
institutions that caused them to be enemies in their native lands; they
constitute a dangerous element in the population of this country. So
long as they are able to get food they remain passive, except for the
feuds they carry on amongst themselves. These immigrants are not
inspired to come to this land by reason of an appre