“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 appreciation of the liberty that our Constitution vouchsafes to all mankind.  They have been brought here by the agents of the Trusts, because they are willing to work for pauper wage.

“I can tell you, Mr. Trueman, that in the strike that I feel will follow the lock-out, there will be bloodshed.  It may not be at the initiative of the miners.  But the fear of the magnates is now aroused and they will not hesitate to employ force.  Once the appeal to force is made, where is it to end?”

“All that you have told me, I shall report to Mr. Purdy,” Trueman says, as he extends his hand to grasp that of the plain, earnest miner.

Metz departs, well satisfied with the progress he has made in advancing the cause of the miners.