political economics.  The mines were in the State of Pennsylvania.  There was no duty whatever laid upon me by the Constitution in the matter, and I had in theory the power to act directly unless the Governor of Pennsylvania or the Legislature, if it were in session, should notify me that Pennsylvania could not keep order, and request me as commander-in-chief of the army of the United States to intervene and keep order.

As long as I could avoid interfering I did so; but I directed the head of the Labor Bureau, Carroll Wright, to make a thorough investigation and lay the facts fully before me.  As September passed without any sign of weakening either among the employers or the striking workmen, the situation became so grave that I felt I would have to try to do something.  The thing most feasible was to get both sides to agree to a Commission of Arbitration, with a promise to accept its findings; the miners to go to work as soon as the commission was appointed, at the old rate of wages.  To this proposition the miners, headed by John Mitchell, agreed, stipulating only that I should have the power to name the Commission.  The operators, however, positively refused.  They insisted that all that was necessary to do was for the State to keep order, using the militia as a police force; although both they and the miners asked me to intervene under the Inter-State Commerce Law, each side requesting that I proceed against the other, and both requests being impossible.

Finally, on October 3, the representatives of both the operators and the miners met before me, in pursuance of my request.  The representatives of the miners included as their head and spokesman John Mitchell, who kept his temper admirably and showed to much advantage.  The representatives of the operators, on the contrary, came down in a most insolent frame of mind, refused to talk of arbitration or other accommodation of any kind, and used language that was insulting to the miners and offensive to me.  They were curiously ignorant of the popular temper; and when they went away from the interview they, with much pride, gave their own account of it to the papers, exulting in the fact that they had “turned down” both the miners and the President.

I refused to accept the rebuff, however, and continued the effort to get an agreement between the operators and the miners.  I was anxious to get this agreement, because it would prevent the necessity of taking the extremely drastic action I meditated, and which is hereinafter described.

Fortunately, this time we were successful.  Yet we were on the verge of failure, because of self-willed obstinacy on the part of the operators.  This obstinacy was utterly silly from their own standpoint, and well-nigh criminal from the standpoint of the people at large.  The miners proposed that I should name the Commission, and that if I put on a representative of the employing class I should also put on a labor union man.  The operators positively declined to