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LIBRARY OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
IN MEMORY OF
STEWART S. HOWE
JOURNALISM CLASS OF 1928
STEWART S. HOWE FOUNDATION
331,39
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"OUR BAD WEALTH" SERIES, No. i.
"It is high time our bad wealth came to an end." — Emerson.
A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES
AGAINST MINERS
OR
The Story of Spring Valley
An Open Letter to the Millujnair
ES
r.v
HENRY 1). LLOYD
CHICAGO:
BELFORD-CLARKK CO., i'L'BLLSHERS
1S90
COPYRIGHT,
HENKY 1). LLOVD,
1 8 go.
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V
CONTENTS.
CHAFTKR. PAGE.
I. Prelude of Starved Rock - - 5
II. Only a Modern Instance - - - 9
III. Who Hath Done This Thing? - - 13
IV. Booming the Town - - - - 22
V. Dooming the Town - - - - 47
VI. The Ghost of Starved Rock. Walks
Abroad ------ 53
VII. Buying Brethren Below Cost - - 82
^ VIII. How to Make a "Free Contract" - 107
^ IX. Appealing to the Governor - - 125
X. The Campaign of Slander - - 143
XI. "Feed My Lambs" - - - - 168
XII. Millions in It - - - - - 195
XIII. Spring Valley Only a Skirmish - 201
XIV. First Fruits ; What Will the Last
Be ? - - - - - - 215
XV. Part of the Moral, wuh Postscript 224
Appendix — What the Millionaires Said
for Themselves — The Replies of
the Miners and the Press - - 230
A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
CHAPTER I.
THE PRELUDE OF STARVED ROCK.
Where the Illinois sweeps its placid way to
the Mississippi between the wooded bluffs of
La Salle, and over the sandstone which makes
many a picturesque shelf in the valley, stands
Starved Rock.
Rising straight from the water-side 125 feet,
it can be ascended only by a narrow winding
path from the shore. Like one of the mediae-
val castles which of old threatened but now
adorn the lochs of Scotland, Starved Rock
once pushed forth from all surroundings, proud
of itself as a sure refuge and defense. To-day
none but associations of ruin and defeat are
intertwined with the beauty of its crumbling
head. A fairer scene cannot be than that
which lies rolled out before those who clamber
to the top — the river, "winding at its own
sweet will;" its sedgy banks, the green and
(5)
6 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
yellow grasses of the bottoms that stretch
along; the older banks of rock and blufifs a
mile apart, which mark where the mightier
river flowed in prehistoric days, when the
great lakes gave their waters to'the Mississippi
instead of the St. Lawrence. Farther yet, on
the higher level of these older banks, swells
away the upland of farm and village and forest.
Up the river are Ottawa, Utica, Joliet and
scores of other flourishing towns; down the
river are La Salle, Peru, and around the bend,
out of sight, is Spring Valley, once called the
" Magic City," more likely to be known hence-
forth as the " Tragic City," and to share with
Starved Rock the romantic interest of this
unhappy happy valley.
The Iroquois, mighty warriors of the Alle-
ghanies, unavailingly fighting east to keep
from going west under the compulsion of the
stronger race that has always been going west,
found themselves crowded into this fair land on
an unknown day in some unknown year centuries
ago. It was the hunting ground and living
ground of a band of the Illinois, a gentler people
than the savage Iroquois; but, as the whites
had done to the Iroquois, so the Iroquois did
to the Illinois. Go west! The last days of
these Illinois rose upon them gathered —
THE PRELUDE OF STARVED ROCK. ^
a remnant of one hundred men, women
and children — on the ample summit of the
rock, which rises as a natural castle from
the edge of the water. There was room
enough for them, and there was timberfor their
fires. From the broad river a hundred sheer
feet and more below no surprise or attack was
possible; the narrow pass upward on the side
of the land was a Thermopylae, where a hand-
ful could defy a host. There the Illinois stood
their last, the Iroquois gathered about. When
the besieged lowered their cups for water the
strings were cut; when they stole forth for food,
they never came back. The river of love in
sky, leaf and view, breeze and bird song,
which, like the rippling river of water, flowed
through the day, flowed in vain before the
cruel Iroquois. A few demoniac days of wrath
and agony, and the Iroquois stood upon the
wide top of the castle of rock, and there were
no Illinois — except the dead. It was war, and,
to the savage, war was right; but even his
heart felt something out of the ordinary in the
victory. It had been won, not by hand-to-
hand encounter, nor by brave assault, but
Ihrough the use, day after day, of an advantage
of position to deny food and water to a com-
petitor for the possession of land and home.
8 • A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
With a touch of poetry, and perhaps aghmmer
of remorse, the Indians, as they told the story,
called the place Starv^ed Rock, and Starved
Rock the towered fastness will always be.
This was War. War paused here long enough
to give this cruel name to the shapely tower,
garlanded with green, and then left the valley
of the Illinois. Business came, and Business
hath its victories no less renowned than War.
At starved Spring Valley, nearb}-, the story of
a victory of Business is printed in the same
ghastly figures as that in which the Iroquois
found their success recorded the morninsf
when, no one opposing, they gained the top
of Starved Rock,
CHAPTER II.
ONLY A MODERN INSTANCE.
Great difficulties block the way of the thor-
ough investigation of the facts of any particular
case of the social problem by persons as ordi-
narily circumstanced, even when like you to
whom these pages are addressed they are stock-
holders, and, unlike you, are trying to find out
what their own directors are doing. It is hoped
that this communication — a part of which was
first printed in the Chicago Daily Herald — may
be of service not only to you to whom it is
specially addressed, " accessories before and
after the fact " of Spring Valley, but to all who
want to understand the " works and days " of
their brothers and sisters. It was agreed at
the National Convention of the American Fed-
eration of Labor in Boston, in 1889, that, as
their secretary put it, " Miners were worse off
than any other workmen in the country. " This
gives these results of several months' almost
constant study of their lot, at a place given
world-wide celebrity by their suffering in a
(9)
10 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
peculiarly interesting crisis, some special value.
From one learn all. You cannot go over this
ground and not gain some insight into the gen-
eral condition of American labor, and its rela-
tions to capital, which were but given at Spring
Valley a little more light than usually falls
upon them.
I have selected the story of Spring Valley
for narration because I have come to know it;
not because there has been anything there in
your conduct as capitalists and corporations
specially worse than what has been done else-
where. On the contrary, I believe, from my
investigations, that the case of Spring Valley
is fairly representative of the relations between
miners and mine-owners throughout the coun-
try — and that is the worst feature of it all. If
Spring Valley were exceptional, we could dis-
miss it as a mere aberration of the commercial
conscience of some particularly depraved pot-
hunter, and let it go. But when, by reading
official documents like the reports of the Ohio
legislative committee of 1885 on the Hocking
Valley strike, the report of the congressional
committee of 1887 on the coal strikes in Penn-
sylvania, and other authorities, we come to
realize that Spring Valley is but one case out
of a multitude — but one pustule of a disease
ONLY A MODERN INSTANCE. II
spread through the whole body — we begin to
get an idea of the seriousness of our social
condition.
The story of Spring Valley needs but a
change of names and a few details to be the
story of Braidwood, 111., where babies and
men and women wither away to be transmi-
grated into the dividends of a millionaire coal-
miner of Beacon street, Boston. It needs but
a few changes to be the story of Punxsutawney
— where starving foreigners have eaten up all
the dogs in the country to keep themselves
loyally alive to dig coal again when their masters
re-open the coal kennels; and Scranton, and
the Lehigh Valley, where the hard, very hard
coal barons of Pennsylvania manufacture arti-
ficial winter for twelve months of every year.
It needs but a few changes to be the story of
Brazil, Ind., where the Brazil Block Coal
Company locked out their thousands of miners
last year until their wives and children grew
transparent enough to be glasses through
which the miners could read, though darkly,
the terms of surrender which they had to
accept. It needs but a few changes to be the
story of the Hocking Valley, where Pinkerton
gunpowder was burned to give the light by
which Labor could read " the free contract"
12 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
its brother Capital wanted it to sign — or the
story of the Reading colheries, where, as the
congressional committee of 1 887-1 888 re-
ported, the employer provoked the miners to
riot, and then shot the rioters " legally." The
story of Spring Valley needs not many changes
to be a picture of what all American industry
will come to be if the power of our Bourbons
of business, such as you have shown your-
selves to be at Spring Valley, develops at its
present rate up to the end of the nineteenth
century.
CHAPTER III.
WHO HATH DONE THIS THING ?
Four legal dummies, orfictitious " persons,"
were the creators of Spring Valley. These
were the four corporations, the Chicago &
North-Western Railroad, the Spring Valley
Coal Company, the Spring Valley Town Site
Company, and the Northwest Fuel Company of
St. Paul, behind which you who were the real
persons are masked. According to any right
standard of morals and law, every one of you
who is a stockholder in those corporations
must bear his share of the responsibility for
what was done, just as each of you gladly re-
ceives his share of the profits. At the be-
ginning, Spring Valley and its miseries and
wrongs were the conception and achievement
of but one or two among the leading owners of
the railroad and the other companies. These
few did the planning, secured the approval of
the board of directors, and the active officers
of the railroad, let in " on the ground floor "the
influential men whose help they wanted, got
(13)
14 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
the special freight rates needed to enable tne
" enterprise" to steal the business of its com-
petitors, bought the coal land, and invented the
various details of the scheme by which fortunes
for you and themselves were to be made out
of the public need for coal, the workingmen's
need for employment, and the misuse of the
powers of the common carrier. At the incep-
tion of the " enterprise," as Ali Baba would
have us call it, some of the directors and most
of the stockholders of the railroad, if not those
of the other corporations, could plead that
they had no actual knowledge of what was go-
ing on, and so no real responsibility for it.
But the press and other indignant protestants
when the iniquities of years culminated in the
" lock-out" made the whole matter, ending in
this strike of the millionaires against the miners,
a common scandal. But so far as the public
know, not one of you, the directors, not
one of you, the stockholders, in whose name
and for whose profit the campaign of starvation
andslander was carriedon, has disavowedor dis-
couraged it. You all seem to have accepted
unprotestingly your share of the guilt — and
gilt; and, if you have had any other anxiety
than that the millionaires should succeed in their
strike against the miners so that you might have
WHO HATH DONE THIS THING? I 5
more gilt, you have never let the public be-
come aware of it. Not one of you, so far as
known, sent a word of sympathy, or a mouthful
of food, to the thousands who were being
ground to powder by your agents for your
benefit. Just who you are, accessories of the
original willing sinners, the people cannot
learn, for the names of the stockholders of our
public corporations are kept in closest secrecy
as one of the prerogatives of the private owner-
ship of public highways. The laws of the
State of Illinois require its railroads to keep
records in Chicago, in which the transfers of
stock are noted. Even that is not done by these
bundles of men — so powerful because so well
tied together. They think it of no ill omen to
themselves, who get their vast wealth from
control of the roads, given them by the law, to
set a public example of flagrant nullification of
law. The corporation, which the great polit-
ical economist Adam Smith predicted would
never come into general use, has grown to be
the almost universal instrument of modern
business. It has become greater than govern-
ment, and it shrouds its members in a secrecy,
under the dark protection of which they can,
with impunity, give rein to passions of power
and greed. They have the cloak of invisi-
l6 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
bility, and they use it as men of prey and lust
would use the darkness of our streets if cities
put out their lights and went back to medi-
iEval gloom and crime. The public cannot
penetrate into the anonymity which protects
all of you who are responsible for Spring
Valley. It only knows the names of those
who were your " directors," among whom are
the largest owners, or representatives of the
largest owners, but does not know what part
they may have taken in the transactions de-
scribed in this book, nor to what degree their
responsibility is actual or constructive. This
is as lucky for those actually guilty, who are
lost in the crowd, as it is unlucky for those
who are discredited by being associated with
them. For the Chicago & North-Western Rail-
way the directors were : Messrs. Albert Keep,
Chauncey M. Depew, N. K. Fairbank, Will-
iam K, Vanderbilt, F. W. Vanderbilt, John
I. Blair, William L. Scott, Marvin Hughitt,
Horace Williams, John M. Burke, H. M.
Twomblcy, D. O. Mills, Samuel F. Barger,
Percy R. Pyne, A. G. Dulman, M. L. Sykes,
D. P. Kimball, and for the Town Site Com-
pany, the Coal Company, and the Northwest
Fuel Co. of St. Paul, Messrs. Scott, Saunders,
and Sheppard, among others. The Spring Val-
WHO HATH DONE THIS THING? I'J
ley Coal Company, owning and mining the coal
lands ; the Town Site Company, buying farms
to sell as " city lots," were organized and are
owned and controlled by a powerful interest
— powerful both in ownership and authority
— in the Chicago & North-Western Railroad.
The same interest reappears in part in the
Northwest Fuel Company, of St. Paul. In
the annual report which you who own the
North-Western Railroad made to the stock-
holders and the public for the fiscal year end-
ing May 31, 1885, you said: "The company
has found it necessary to begin the construc-
tion of about seventy-five miles of railroad,
projected as a coal road, under the charter of
the Northern Illinois Railway, extending from
the coal deposits adjacent to La Salle, 111., to
Belvidere, on the Freeport line, where it forms
a direct connection with the lines of this com-
pany, for the distribution of coal in the State
of Wisconsin and throughout the Northwest.
The lines will be a great local convenience to
the company in reaching a supply of fuel by
the shortest and cheapest route for its own
consumption and for the wants of the general
public. The means for its construction are
procured by the issue and sale of the Northern
Illinois first mortgage five per cent, twenty-
l8 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
fw'C year bonds at the rate of $20,000 a mile
for seventy-five miles, and the bonds are guar-
anteed, principal and interest, by the Chicago
& North-Western Railroad, the sole owners of
the property." This announcement the public
afterward saw was made good by the expendi-
ture of large sums — $207,802.82 in 1884-5,
$r, 1 20, 1 77. 47 in 1885-6, $72,1 I 2.78 ini 886-7.
The owners of the North-Western Railroad
and the coal company, in part the same per-
sons, made contracts with each other, that is
themselves, for the purchase of the coal and
for the rates at which it should be moved.
Whenever the question of coal freights between
northern Illinois and the Northwest was dis-
cussed by any meeting of traffic managers,
those representing the owners of the North-
Western road always made a fight to get the
best rates for the North-Western's coal from
Spring Valley. The road made the same
charge for the Western trade for hauling coal
from Spring Valley as from Chicago; that is,
it hauled the coal from Spring Valley to Chi-
cago for nothing. By the powerful help of the
managers of the road the product of Spring
Valley has made its appearance at all the im-
portant coal-buying points in the Northwest
at prices which made it morally certain to the
WHO HATH DONE THIS THING? 1 9
»
unhappy competitors that its shippers got a re-
bate. Numberless circumstances have indi-
cated so close a relation between the railroad
and the coal company that the latter is habitu-
ally spoken of in the trade as the " North-
Western's coal mine," and always so among
railroad men.
A common personality runs through the
ownership of the railroad, the coal mine, the
town lots, and the fuel company's business.
Through this mutual element an identity of
interest was established for all the associated
capitalists of these enterprises, who represent
upward of $500,000,000 at the least. The
identity of interest has been practical, not
nominal. They have accepted the results, still
possess them, and are expectantly waiting for
more. Through the easy machinery of the cor-
poration, which is your kind of labor union, there
has been a concert of action, with a common
design, for a common object. The profits on
the sale of farms as city lots to laborers and
tradesmen, on the transportation of the coal,
on the use of it for the locomotives of the
road, on the buying and selling of it, on the
sales of supplies to the miners, have gone
to one or another of you to whom this letter
is addressed. You cannot share in the benefits
20 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
of this co-operation without sharing its respon-
sibilities, even though you act through the con-
venient impersonality of the corporation. You
are the " Captains of Industry " in this enterprise,
and, if you accept the acts of your agents, they
are your acts. Your agent has appealed in
numbers of public statements to the public to
be the arbiter between you and the workingmen
and business men of Spring Valley, whose
harm he has wrought — and you have wrought
if you abide with him — for your business
gain. " With public opinion," said Lincoln,
" all things are possible; against it, nothing is
possible." Whether your agent has done
wisely to appeal to public opinion depends
altogether upon whether the things done for
you to the men he and you have persuaded to
dig your coal, buy your goods and real estate,
and accept the " good chance for a home" you
advertised, have been fair and square, kindly
and honest. There has been a profit on all
the various branches of the enterprise. The
company store and the land speculation have
made money. The railroad has reduced the
cost of fuel for its locomotives, and the coal
company has added to its plant out of its
profits, though it has made no dividend. But
whether your attempt to make money has been
WHO HATH DONE THIS THING? 21
successful or not makes here not one iota of
difference. Public opinion has not yet rotted
down to the point of permitting rich men, men
skilled in affairs, to violate all their pledges to
poor and inexperienced followers, simply be-
cause profits have been unsatisfactory, nor
will it allow the capitalist to starve the laborer
to make larger profits.
CHAPTER IV.
BOOMING THE TOWN.
You in your dififerent provinces created this
enterprise, with its railroad, coal mines, land
speculation and fuel business in 1884, acting
simultaneously and re-enforcing each other.
Where Spring Valley is, there was then only
field and forest. The land you needed had to
be obtained from the farmer. You gave them
$35 up to $80 an acre, in very few cases more,
for land which you resold in lots for thousands
of dollars an acre. Where you bought only
the right to the coal underneath you paid them
sometimes less than$io an acre, seldom much
more, for rights for which $15 to $35 an acre
is gladly paid in neighboring localities by
other companies.
Town site companies are a familiar device
in the development of the money-making pos-
sibilities of the modern railroad man. They
are all about the same thing. They are made
up by insiders in railroad management. These
insiders take advantage of their knowledge as
BOOMING THE TOWN. 23
to where new lines are to be built and where
the railroads mean to stop their trains, or they
use their power to say where they shall stop.
Knowing the one or commanding the other,
they buy up the land of the farmers who do not
know it, at prices far below their prospective
value. These farms, converted into cities, on
paper, and sliced up into diminutive metro-
politan lots, are then sold to credulous people
at fictitious prices created by every artifice of
advertising, of wash sales, of mushroom pros-
perity produced by all the means within the
power of railroad manipulations. When the
game of " terminal points," " new hotels,"
" great manufacturing center, " " car-shop site,"
" grand opera house," " investments by the
directors themselves," has been worked for all
it is worth at one point, the great men move on
to the next town, to repeat the same process.
While shrewd agents busied themselves in
buying up the lands of uninformed farmers,
maps were made of the " city " of Spring
Valley, by the Town Site Company, whose
only " improvements" consisted in laying off
the new metropolis on paper. All the mak-
ing of roads, lighting, grading, sidewalking,
and other needed work were left to be made
by the purchasers of its lots, when they
24 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
wanted to use them. Those of you who
estabHshed the Spring Valley Town Site Com-
pany gerrymandered its boundaries so that
your coal mines, advertised by you to be the
"principal industry " of the town, lay outside
the town.
You thereby escaped your share of muni-
cipal taxation, and threw it on the working-
men and the tradesmen, who gave your prop-
erty all its value.
How did you of the coal company and the
land company sell this land, and how did you
draw in the workingmen and others to dig
your coal and buy your real estate ? In the
first number of the Spring Valley Gazette you
published the following advertisement. It
covered half a page with the biggest kind of
black type, and ran with changes as needed
in the paper for nearly four years until the
middle of May, 1889. The date of the follow-
ing is November 14, 1885:
A CHANCE
For making
Prcfitable investments
In tlie town of
Spring Valley, situated in the eastern part of Bureau County,
on the line of Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway
and the terminus of the Chicago and North-
western Railroad, offers extraordinary
inducements to every one who
may desire
BOOMING THE TOWN. 25
A GOOD LOCATION
FOR
BUSINESS OR A HOME.
The principal industry upon which the town is now dependent
is its
IMMENSE COAL FIELDS,
Comprising about fifteen thousand acres, which are being
rapidly developed by the Spring Valley Coal Company.
Three mines are already in operation.
Within eighteen months at least
TWO THOUSAND
MIXERS WILL FIND
STEADY EMPLOYMENT.
The bright prospects for the place shortly becoming one of the
leading manufacturing towns in the State, with
Good drainage,
Plenty of good water,
Excellent building stone,
Brick yards, etc., and with the two lines of railroad to Chicago
and Milwaukee, and surrounded by one of the best
farming districts in the .State offers to all
w ho may
DESIRE A CHANGE IN LOCATION OF BUSINESS
A chance seldom found.
Building and business lots are offered at
LOW PRICES.
TERMS REASONABLE.
Eor further information, write or apply to the Vice-President
and General Manager Spring \'al]ey Coal Company,
Spring Valley, 111.
This advertisement and similar ones were
circulated all over the country in newspapers
and pamphlets. When it became known that
you, who owned the North-Western Railroad,
were to extend its tracks to Spring Valley, the
26 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
miners who had hesitated to sell their homes
elsewhere and move in, the little capitalists in
surrounding towns who had hesitated to invest
their savings in the purchase of lots, hesi-
tated no longer. Where such men led, it was
safe for them to follow, and they followed. "
The Spring Valley (^^^^//c' of November 14,
1885, said: "What makes Spring Valley
different from other coal towns is the fact that
the contracts for the coal were made before
the fields were open. It is to supply the
Chicago & North-Western and the vast coal-
using country tributary to that system. The
coal company is the largest soft-coal corpora-
tion in the country, having a paid-up capital
of $1,500,000, The selling of lots began in
July last, and at the present time (July to
November) about 1,000 lots have been sold.
The price of lots ranges from $150 to $300."
According to these figures, which were prob-
ably furnished to the Gazette by the agent of
the town-site company to help the " boom,"
the total sales in the first six months had been
about $200,000 for land which had cost less
than $20,000.
From the coal-mining places in Illinois and
the neighboring States miners who could move
did so. It was by the best of their class that
BOOMING THE TOWN. 2/
the skillfully prepared bait was taken. It was
not the lazy miners who took the trouble to
move themselves to the new industrial center.
It was not the poor workers who could not get
out of debt where they were — it was not the
thoughtless and intemperate, who had saved
no money with which to make the transfer.
The men who came to Spring Valley were
picked men — selected out of the whole number
of the coal miners of the country by their intel-
ligence, their thrift, their habits of industry.
These men read the statements published by
the Chicago & North-Western Railway, the
Spring Valley Coal Company and the Town
Site Company, and, seeing that the leaders of
the enterprise were of the best business talent
of America, and able, with their hundreds of
millions of capital, to carry out any enterprise
they undertook, decided, without a second
thought, " Spring Valley is the place for us
and our families." From Streator, La Salle,
Braidwood, Peru, from all the neighboring coal-
mining towns, miners who had saved money
enough to buy homes for themselves sold them,
and bought lots, went to work, and began to
build in Spring Valley to get the greater
advantages promised by the greater capital,
better equipments and more skillful manage-
28 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
merit of the " captains of industry " there.
The announcements and advertisements of
these rich and powerful and experienced men
of affairs assured them of steady work, living
wages, and all the appliances of civilization.
It was not miners alone who were taken in the
net. Traders in every line of business in the
surrounding towns sold out, and reinvested in
Spring Valley.
Paragraphs like these, culled from the local
press, give a hint of the fervor with which your
lead was followed:
The Joliet Record, in February, 1886, said:
" In Spring Valley there are now three hundred
voters where six months ago were only a few
farms. One hundred thousand dollars have
since that time been invested there in business
houses, residences and tenements."
The Spring Valley Gazette said, on March
27, 1886: " No less than twelve new buildings
were begun this week." April loth: " Spring
Valley is booming." April 17th: " From the
Gazette office sixteen new buildings can be
seen in construction. Talk about ' boom; '
the word is tame and feeble to express the
activity of Spring Valley." April loth: "Mr.
and Mrs. Fleming, of Sheffield, were in our city
this week and purchased several lots." April
BOOMING THE TOWN. 20
26th: " One of Streator's heaviest capitalists
has $7,000 invested in Spring Valley real
estate." On October, 1888, the Gazette SKi<^:
" On Wednesday a number of Eastern capital-
ists, accompanied by Marvin Hughitt, general
manager of the North-Western Railroad,
were in town, and were so favorably impressed
with the ' Magic City ' that they intend to put
some money in it. Let her boom."
How successful the boomers were the trium-
phant changes in the advertisements in the
pamphlets, papers, etc. , show. A few months
after the appearance of the advertisement
given above a new one was prepared and took
its place. This was circulated broadcast in the
newspapers, filling a half page in the Spring
Valley Gazette, and also in a pamphlet spe-
cially prepared to boom the town, and dis-
tributed for that purpose throughout the
country. Here is the new advertisement:
"SPRING VALLEY."
• * *■
The coming manufactur- ; ; The principal industry up-;
;ing town of the State of lUi-; ; on which thetownisdepend-;
Inois, situated in Bureau; lent are its immense coal;
: County, at the terminus of; ; fields, comprising 40,000;
; the Chicago & North-West- ; ; acres and five large mines al- ;
; ern Rail way,and on the lines l ; ready sunk, which are being ;
;of the C, R. L & P. and; ; developed by the Spring;
; Burlington Railway. ; ; Valley Ccjal Company.
* -y; ^ *
LARGE INDUCEMENTS TO MANUFACTURERS
— GOOD EOCATION FOR A HOME.
30 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
* '
; Other large mines in the
; vicinity of Spring Valley
;are also in operation. The
; town has now a population
I of 4,500, and is rapidly in-
! creasing.
*
* *
2,000 men are now em-
;]iloyed in the mines of the
; Spring Valley Coal Co.,
; and in less than two years
; will employ from 3,500 to
: 4,000 men.
BUILDING A.ND BUSINESS LOTS AT LOW PRICES,
AND ON THE MOST REASONABLE TERMS.
The Good Drainage, Plenty of Water, Excellent Building
Stone, Brick Yards, Etc., together with the Three
Lines of Railway to Chicago and Milwaukee,
and surrounded with one of the best
farming districts in the State,
makes it a most desirable
place to locate.
For further information or particulars, address
the Vice-President and Gen. Manager
Spring Valley Coal Co., Spring Valley, Bureau Co., 111.
The changes are significant. The coal fields,
which at first covered only 15,000 acres, now
amount to 40,000. The coal had proved so
good and the operations of the mines so satis-
factory that 25,000 acres more of coal rights
had been purchased. The population, which
had been too small to mention in the first
advertisement, had now grown to 4,500, " and
is rapidly increasing." The three mines have
become five. The prophecy that " within
eighteen months at least two thousand miners
will find steady employment " has been verified,
and the new prophecy is put out that " in less
BOOMING THE TOWN. 3 1
than two years the mines will employ from
3,500 to 4,000 men."
There were many ways of luring into this
paradise the workmen without the sweat of
whose brows you could not eat bread. There
have been all through the summer of 1889
hundreds of Belgian and French women and
children and a few men in Spring Valley who
have been kept from starvation only by kinder
hearts than their employers, and who were
enticed thither from their homes and employ-
ment in France and Belgium by false repre-
sentations made by an agent whose foot-tracks
his victims declare they have traced straight
to the company's office in Spring Valley. In
the Pittsburg Labor Tribune of September 28,
1886, we read: " Parties from Spring Valley
were in Decatur last week looking for 200 men
to go to work there." The advertisements in
newspapers and pamphlets circulated every-
where drew men from points as far away as
Iowa and Colorado to get " steady employ-
ment " and a " good chance for a home. "
These tactics of your agent, in befooling,
with false promises, honest and sturdy foreign
workingmen to come over to flood the labor
market of Spring Valley, are unfortunately no
new thing in American " business " methods,
3^ A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
but they are all the worse for being old. The
" supply " of labor is in this way made to over-
run the " demand," and the sacred character
of the " immutable law of supply and de-
mand " is given an illustration which working-
men understand, even if political economists
do not. The " unchanging " law, when worked
in this way, increases the number of the cus-
tomers who buy goods at the " pluck-me "
stores kept by the company, makes wages low
by the underbidding of the unemployed against
the employed; it keeps the men poor, humble,
and submissive to all your regulations and exac-
tions. This method of regulating " supply and
demand" is not a native product of Illinois.
It is an importation from Pennsylvania. The
select committee of Congress which investi-
crated the labor troubles in Pennsylvania in
1888, say:
" Many thousands of surplus laborers are
always kept on hand to underbid each other
for employment, and thereby folate the men to
submit to whatever treatment the company
may impose. Squads of Poles, Italians, and
Huns many of whom cannot speak English,
throng the mines to compete for work.
* ■ * * The question will force itself,
Why are the mines overrun by these foreigners?
BOOMING THE TOWN. 33
How do they get there? and by whose
agency? "
I visited many of these French and Belgians.
As a rule, only the women and children were
at home. The men had gone away to seek
work in other towns, and even in other States.
Very poor the homes were, and gaunt the
women and children. Clothing, food, bed-
ding, furniture, were all down to the lowest
level of a pitiful minimum. How had they
happened to come to America? A man had
come to them at Pas-de-Calais, and Courcelles-
les-Sens, etc., etc., and told them of the good
pay and the good times they could have at
Spring Valley.
He gave us a card, and, if we gave that to
the gentleman at Spring Valley, he would give
us the good work and the high wages."
" Were they glad they had come? "
Oh, monsieur, see how we live. It was
better at home! If we could only get back.
We did better at home."
I listened. Of course, there would be angry
words, vindictive outbreaks of indignation
against those who had so cruelly unhomed and
expatriated them for the sake of a little extra
profit. But there was nothing of the kind,
not even a flash of wrath. The poor people
3
34 " A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
answered all inquiries gently and patiently
and intelligently, but never a harsh word
against their oppressors. They even laughed
as they talked. It was as if they felt it all to
be part of the inevitable ill fortune of life,
which they must bear as best they could. I
was amazed and humbled. It seemed to me
that, had I been thus made the victim of inhu-
man greed for " more," had I and my home
and my life been butchered — not " to make a
Roman holiday," but an American dividend
— I would have thought a lifetime too little
to give to a crusade of retribution. The
truth then first really dawned upon me, that
there is a sanctification which comes, however
unconsciously, to the victims of wrong and
injustice, and that it is the master, not the
slave, who receives the double curse of oppres
sion.
It was a brilliant success, this booming of
the town, and great was the profit of it. A
more brilliant stroke still was to follow, and
greater would be the profit of that, the doom-
ing of the town.
Those were bright days in Spring Valley, in
1885, 1886, 1887, when the soft notes of the
" boomer" called every one to " profitable in-
vestments," " steady employment," " good
BOOMING THE TOWN. 35
chances for a home," and " special inducements
to business." People of all kinds were pour-
ing into the magic city. The Kev. John F,
Powers, in charge of a well-established Cath-
olic church at Peru, gave it up, and came to
Spring Valley to build up a new congregation.
Other clergymen and doctors and teachers
came, and workingmen of all kinds. Rents
were high, buildings could be rented for $i8o
a month that cost only $3,000 to build. Those
who bought lots could turn around immedi-
ately and sell them at a handsome advance.
The miners, under the promise of steady em-
ployment, bought your lots on monthly pay-
ments, and began to build homes, getting their
lumber and material of the company. The
miners had to buy their lots under arrange-
ments which forfeited all they had paid, and
the lot, too, if at any time they discontinued
their monthly payments, no matter how near
the end of their indebtedness they might have
got. This forfeiture could be declared by the
company without notice to the poor miner,
and without any legal proceedings in which he
might defend his rights. But the miners were
brave-hearted; they loved to have homes of
their own, and they made these razor-edged
agreements and went in debt for lumber, be-
36 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
lieving all would come out right, since there
was to be " steady employment."
Upon inquiring among these trusting men
for copies of the deeds or contracts executed
between the seller and these simple-minded buy-
ers, I cannot find any. But I do find cases in
which the company sold lots without giving the
workingman who bought a shred of title to
attest their rights. Taking sometimes 33 per
cent, of the price in cash, it charged them with
the balance, and took part of their pay every
month to wipe it off. All that such buyers
had to show for their money and title were a
receipt and an entry on the books, and what
is an entry worth when it is in the books of
men who deal thus with poor and inexperi-
enced " brothers " ? Not one of you would
buy ten cents' worth of land in that way.
There were, at last, five thousand people in
Spring Valley; the main business street had
two rows of flourishing stores; there were two
places of worship, a public library and gym-
nasium, clubs and debating societies, Knights
of Labor assemblies, a court-room, two hotels,
and an opera house. Very intelligent men
the miners were — the picked men of the
industry. There were not a few among them
who could discuss the theories of Henry
BOOMING THE TOWN. 37
George, Herbert Spencer, Darwin, with any
one. Strangers who visited the clubs and de-
batingf societies of the miners declared them-
selves astonished by their intelligence and
range of knowledge. These were days of hope
and growth. One cloud there was. The
miners, work their hardest, could not make
the wages they had been promised. The
mines were good, and of a kind miners liked
to work in, for they were free from water, and
no powder was required. But the earnings
of the men were barely enough to carry them
through. A man in a good place, with steady
work, could earn $45 to $60 in a month,
and more if he got into a particularly good
" pocket," but work was never continuous.
Sometimes it was a fall of rock in the road-
way; sometimes a lack of cars to take away
the coal; sometimes a suspension on account
of a dull market; sometimes a man's room or
place in the vein would be shut off by a new
road, and he would have to wait until another
place could be had. Sometimes it was one
thing, sometimes another; but the upshot of it
was that, mostly, when the miner came to settle
with the company for the preceding month's
work, he found that, after, paying for his oil,
and the sharpening of his tools, his rent or his
38 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
monthly installment on the lot he had bought,
his monthly contribution to the doctor, and
his bill at the company's store, there was
nothing left. He had just made ends meet;
perhaps he was a little behind. Take it by the
year, doing well one month, idle the whole of
the next, the men could not make much more
than about $30 a month. That is to say, they
got for their lives and labor a scanty allowance
of food, clothing, roofing, but not enough;
and practically nothing of the many other
things which people must have who are
to keep up their health and strength — nothing
for their old age, and nothing to help them for
their duties as fathers and citizens.
The physical conditions under which the
Spring Valley miners work are better than
those in many other places, but they are not
easy. You for whom the coal is dug, either
for your dividends or your comfort, as you sit
before your glowing fires, are too far away
from the toil and trouble of the miner. They
spend ten hours a day in their caverns — pitch
dark — except for the flicker and glimmer of the
little lamp each carries in the front of his cap.
For months in the short winter days, when it
is not yet light at seven, and is dark by
half-past five, these men see daylight, only
BOOMING THE TOWN. 39
on Sunday — once a week. They have to work
upon their knees, or lying on their side, or
stooping low, and sometimes are obliged to lie
flat on their backs while digging at the ceil-
ing.
This hard work in a room three feet or three
feet six inches high, hundreds of feet below the
surface, in the gloom of perpetual night, with air
to breathe got only by artificial and imperfect
ventilation, is the human price that has to be
paid on all our coal. You know this coal only
as light, heat, power, profit, comfort, a means
of longer life or greater wealth. To the miner
it is a black and obdurate enemy, a jailer that
imprisons him, shutting out his sunlight, the
fresh air of the hills and meadows, the sounds
of birds and the river; threatening him daily
with death or mutilation in strange and terri-
ble forms, and rewarding his faithfulest and
luckiest toil with less than the cost of subsist-
ence — if the cost of subsistence of the Ameri-
can citizen of this free and glorious republic, is
to include food, clothing, shelter, family life,
amusement, education, leisure, and old age.
Such subsistence as this is possible to no
miner, and becomes more impossible every
day. It is easy for the owner of the mines,
the stockholders, to juggle with their figures
40 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
of capital, operating expenses, profit and loss,
to convince the public that they cannot pay
living wages. The poorest of these stock-
holders lives in a social world which to the
miner would seem a heaven. The contrast
between their " much," and the miner's "little,"
puts all their bookkeeping to the blush. It is
this gulf between the lot of the employer and
that of the employe, all through our mod-
ern life which gives itspulseto the social ques-
tion. A lithe bookkeeping in the world can-
not write out the deficit which the working-
men's account shows in comparison with that
of the business men. In every city, the con-
trast between what is got by the brothers who
employ and the brothers who are employed,
speaks for itself.
None of the promises of steady employmenc
and good pay were fulfilled. As to the pay
Messrs. Gould and Wines, the latter secretary
of the State Board of Charities, the special com-
missioner appointed by the governor to inves-
tigate the trouble in these and the adjoining
coal regions, reported, August, 1889, after
careful inquiry, that the average was $31.62
per month, which they declared was " certainly
less than any laboring man ought to receive."
Take a concrete case which is worth all the sta-
BOOMING THE TOWN. 41
tistics in the world: C W is a steady
German miner, who has had fifteen years' ex-
perience in the mines. He has been at Spring
Valley four years. When you gentlemen of
$500,000,000 invited him to come to Spring
Valley he was working at Coal City. He sold
the house and lot he had bought with his sav-
ings there, and bought a lot at Spring Valley,
paying at the rate of $1,400 an acre for what
cost you between $50 and $80 an acre, a
profit of about 2 ,000 per cent. His earnings the
first month were $13, and he has been " laid
off" by the company for weeks and months at
a time. His highest wages for any month in
the four years have been $65. I procured his
monthly statements of account with the com-
pany for the eight months ending with the
lock-out in May. His earnings for the entire
period were $230.07, an average of $28.76 a
month, and of this he actually received only
$28.56 in cash, all the rest being taken by the
company for supplies bought at the company
store. This man was absolutely temperate ;
he could not have been very riotous on $28 in
eight months. His wife told me that he had
never been able to make enough in Spring
Valley to support the family, and that she and
the eldest daughter had had to go out washing
42 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
to keep them alive. He has eight children.
He was foolish enough, relying on the leader-
ship of the gentlemen to whom this letter is
addressed, to build a house, borrowing part of
the money. Your lock-out cut off the little
income he had. When I saw him his interest
was overdue, and he was awaiting in quiet de-
spair a foreclosure which would sweep away all
that remained of fifteen years' hard work and
savings. Yet this man and his wife told their
story without a word, look or tone of the
righteous wrath against you which I should
have supposed would consume their hearts.
How thrifty and good a man C \V is
I could see bv a little advertisement of his I
found in looking over the files of the local
paper. It was inserted when he first came to
Spring Valley, full of hope, and willing to
work at night at home after working all day
at the mines. It read: " C W will
receive orders for carpet weaving at his home,
— '■ — street."
Against such instances from real life and the
careful investigations of the commissioners of
the State, it is ridiculous for the coal com.,
pany to put forward, as it has done, a state-
ment of the earnings of twenty-five men,
picked out of 2,500, as fair specimens of the
BOOMING THE TOWN. 43
way in which the milHonaires have divided
with the miners.*
The statements which the company makes
monthly to its men are called "Miner's Ab-
stracts." Here is one of them obtained from
a miner. The man is not designated by his
name, but by a number — in this case 2,103 —
stamped on tin tags, which he puts on all the
loaded cars he sends out of the mine, so that
they may be credited to him. This abstract
needs no explanation. It shows, that, when the
company settled with "No. 2,103" "^ the
middle of March for the work done in February,
there was no money due him. He had earned
$23.13, which does not seem to be " at the
rate of $2.50 to $4 a day," but it was all
soaked up by the charges the company had.
against him for oil, tool-sharpening, fuel, and
the " store. " The company owed him $23.13;
he owed the company $23.13. They were
" even," and he had the priceless privilege of
* There is no way of making money out of these poor men too small
for their rich employers. They charged the miners last year a cent a ton
for sharpening their tools. On the annual production of 1,000,000 to
1,500,000 tons, this would yield the company $10,000 to $15,000 for the
services of blacksmiths, who could not cost, with all allowances for fuel,
shops, etc., more than $2,000 altogether. This was a profit of $8,000 to
$12,000 to the company on an investment of $2,000, and their poor men
had to furnish both the investment and the profit! This is an illustration
which will serve to make clear what is meant by " high finance," and why
it is that so many are poor, while a few are so rich. Before going back to
work after the recent lock-out, the men succeded in getting this charge for
smithy reduced one-half, but they still have to pay the company thou-
san4s of dollars a year, besides paying all it costs to sharpen their tools.
44 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
delving again into the depths to see if he could
keep in that nicely balanced state of impecu-
niosity, so full of heartening stimulation and
encouragement to the free citizen.
MINER'S ABSTRACT.
SPRING VALLEY COAL COMPANY.
Spring Valley, III., Mar. 12, 'Sg.
Ck. 2,103.
Cr.
Tons 25. 14 $23 . 13
Yds. Entry
Days' Labor
Extra
$23.13
Dr.
Collections $0 . 25
House Rent
Cash
Powder
Tools
Smithing 0.26
Fuel 3.20
Oil, etc
Weigliman 0.26
Store 19.16
Sometimes several men work as partners in
one room in the mine, and send out their
joint product in the same cars and marked with
the same number. This number, or " miner's
BOOMING THE TOWN. 45
check," as it is called, will in such cases repre-
sent the earnings of two or three men. I have
before me several such partnership numbers
with statements of their earnings for several
months. They show amounts of $127, $138,
$116, earned by four men; of $47, $60, $65,
earned by two men, showing average monthly
earnings of $24.33 each. The miners told me
that the large earnings reported by the mine-
owners as made by some of their men, are
shown by representing the amount of one
of these partnership checks to be the earn-
ings of one man. At the conference at Joliet
in September, 1889, between the miners and
mine-owners, under the auspices of the special
commission appointed by the governor of Illi-
nois, one of the mine-owners produced a
statement of this kind, seeming to prove that
his men were making very large earnings. But
it happened that some of the men present
knew the number, and were able to point out
that the earnings paraded as specimens of what
a miner could do, were in truth the combined
wages of several miners in partnership, and
they thus successfully exposed the misrepre-
sentation.
Still, these were days of hope and growth.
The miners knew that the opening years of a
46 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
new mine were not its best; that there were in
this, as always in new enterprises, all sorts
of hitches, accidents and disappointments.
Things would mend, and they could afford to
wait, for the advertisements of the coal com-
pany promised them " steady employment,"
and the great and good men who had opened
the mines and with others had built the North-
Western track to the mines " for a supply of
fuel for the road and the West and Northwest
tributary to it," were not triflers.
So after all, notwithstanding the trials and
disappointments, it was a happy community
which began, in December, 1888, to get ready
to celebrate Christmas, day of peace on earth,
and good will among men.
CHAPTER V.
DOOMING THE TOWN.
The " boomers " were getting their Christ-
mas present ready for the miners, merchants,
parsons, teachers, workingmen, who had
added to their millions by coming to Spring
Valley.
On a December afternoon, without previous
warning, the miners in shafts Nos. 3 and 4
were told to take away their tools at the close
of the day, and not return, as that part of the
mine would be closed until further notice.
This threw about 700 men, one-third of the
working population of the town, out of work
for an unknown time at the beginning of winter
— men, too, who had been earning only just
enough to keep body and soul together, no
more.
Without a word of warning! There was no
strike, no whisper of strike; the men had
been working faithfully, digging the coal ac-
cording to orders, and taking the pay as agreed.
Thus the gentlemen of many millions sit-
(47)
48 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
ting under brilliantly illuminated Christmas
trees in jo}'Ous mansions in Chicago, Erie,
St. Paul, New York, by a click of the telegraph
make a present of midwinter disemployment
to one third of " their " town.
Without notice! This has a familiar look
again. It is the Pennsylvania plan, which is
being introduced into the industries of the free
West. Like the means, some of which have
been hinted at, by which the wages of the
miners were cut into and cut down, this unan-
nounced stoppage of work is one of the well-
worn practices of railroad and coal-mining
combinations of Pennsylvania to " break" in
the men. The congressional report on the
labor troubles in Pennsylvania in 1888 de-
scribes this Pennsylvania method. (Page 5-)
" Then, again, as no coal mine can be
successfully worked except full-handed — that
is, with a full complement of experts and
laborers — the railroads, which both mine and
carry coal, always retain an abundant supply
of holp on hand, which help they purposely
keep in ignorance as to when operations will be
suspended, and for how long. If the knowl-
edge of when they shall be required to work
short time or no time were not deliberately
withheld from the miners and laborers till
DOOMING THE TOWN. 49
the last moment, they would doubtless seek
employment elsewhere."
In this way the dooming of the town began,
and we will see it unfolding step by step by a
perfectly planned scheme, just as clearly as we
saw the booming of the town progress by act
on act of unerring " commercial sagacity," to
the great profit of the " sagacious."
Why the men must quit work, they never
knew; why the " steady employment" promised
them so disastrously ceased, they were not told.
The Spring Valley Gazette giving the news
of the shut-down in its issue of January 3d,
gave no reason, but spoke of it as " tempo-
rary. "
Subsequent events have furnished a ghastly
commentary on its concluding remark: " It is
consoling to hear the more sensible men speak
with confidence of the ruling power here in
which they have implicit belief."
The generosity of the remainder of the men
still at work, induced them to share their work
with the unemployed, so that for the rest of
the winter three families had to live on the
wages that before had not been enough for
two. The promise was made by the com-
pany, that the suspension of work would be
but temporary, and that all should soon have
4
50 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
full employment again. The whole popula-
tion staggered through that winter as best
they could. The company would not give
them work nor help, but it fed them with
words of hope, which kept them from going
elsewhere. The people asked for bread, and
you gave them paragraphs like these:
" The indications are that the output at the
mines will soon be increased. " — Spring Valley
Gazette, January 3, 1889.
" All the miners in this city are now having
full work — not full time, of course — but, if the
present kind of weather keeps on, they soon
will have." — Spring Valley Gazette, January
10, 1889.
" Spring Valley," said the Gazette of Janu-
uary 17th, " is merely taking a little doze, pre-
paratory to big, rushing business next fall," and
on January 24th, "The day is not far distant
when more business will be done in Spring
Valley than was ever before."
April 25, 1889, the Gazette announced that
the " Spring Valley Coal Co. had opened a
rail coal yard in Chicago," and that was hailed
by the desperate people as certainly good evi-
dence that " steady employment " was coming
again.
Four days later, the next stroke in the
DOOMING THE TOWN. 5 I
Dooming of the Town fell. On Monday,
April 29th, the men in the m.ines were told,
that, when they quit work for the day, they
could take out their tools, as the mines would
be closed until further notice. In one after-
noon, again without previous notice, all the
miners of the town were deprived of their
livelihood. They had not struck; they had
not asked for any increase in wages ; they had
made no new demands of any kind upon their
employers.* Simultaneously with the closing
of the mines, the company's store was closed.
The company did not intend that any of its
groceries should help to feed, nor any of its
woolens warm, the people. No explanation
was vouchsafed as to when the mines would be
re-opened. The men were simply told to
take out their tools at the close of the day,
and not come back until they were bid. They
were locked out. It was a strike, but it was a
strike of millionaires against miners. It was a
strike of dollars against men ; of dollars which
could lie idle one year, two years, longer if
* Report on the Coal-Miners' Strike and Lock-Out in Northern Illi-
nois, by J. M. Gould and Kred. H. Wines, special commissioners appointed
by the governor, August, i88g, page 5.
"The present suspension," said the commissioners of the State,
"assumes more the form of a strike at Streator and Hraidwood, but of a
lock-out in the vicinity of l.a Salle, especially at Spring Valley, where the
miners were notified to take their tools out, and have not had any terms
offered them on which the company is willing again to employ them."
52 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
necessary, and be dollars still, against men
who began to fade into nothingness the next
day. It was a strike of rich men against poor
men. It was a strike in violation of every
pledge, tacit and expressed, which these rich
men had given when they built their railroad,
and sold the land, and opened the mines, and
called in the men from other work far and near.
It was a strike which brought woe and want
upon innocent thousands for the sake of extra
profits on stocks ajid bonds. To " make more
money," disease and starvation were invited to
come to Spring Valley, and they came.
CHAPTER VI.
THE GHOST OF STARVED ROCK WALKS
ABROAD.
The people who had been digging your
coal, buying your lots, supporting your dis-
employed, making business for your railroad,
began to starve at once. The men scattered
all over the country in search of work, and the
women with their babies took to the roads to
beg. Within a month the local papers an-
nounced that two-thirds of the men had left in
search of employment, and that it had been
necessary to make an organized appeal to the
people of the country for help.
At once the little items in the " local and
otherwise " columns of the Spring Valley pa-
pers showed by dozens how the people began
to feel the whip of want.
" Andrew Kerwick started off last week to
seek employment elsewhere."
" The Henning Hotel, run by Mrs. John
Dixon, was shut up by chattel mortgage fore-
closure Friday for $1,200 due the Spring Val-
(.■;3)
54 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
ley Coal Company for groceries out of the
company's store. "
" Rumors that ' Mr. So-and-so has closed
up' are getting numerous."
" M. L. Leffman has moved his store from
this city to Joliet. "
" All the freight trains have been taken off
the Chicago & North-Western Railroad enter-
ing this city but one."
" The mining situation looks very gloomy.
At the Joliet meeting the mine-owners showed
by their absence that they did not want to
discuss the question (with the miners). * *
An all summer's idleness is probable."
" Tuesday W. T. Plumb took down his big
watch sign, and packed up his stock of watches,
jewelry, etc., and shipped them to Tiskilwa,
whither he went the same day to open his new
store."
" Considerable firewood from over the river
[there was coal everywhere beneath them, but
they were forbidden to dig it] is being hauled
into town."
" Italian miners from this city have been
asking for help from people living on the south
side of the river." This only two weeks after
the shut-down, and there are no thriftier, more
faithful workmen than the Italians. They
GHOST OF STARVED ROCK WALKS. 55
could have saved if any workman could, and
the last thing any workman will do is to beg.
" Many Italians have left town for the iron
mines of Michigan," two weeks after the lock-
out.
" It is estimated that at least two-thirds of
the male population have left towMi to seek
work elsewhere." This was four weeks after
the lock-out.
" Tuesday, the Miners' National Progressive
Union sent wagons out from this city in all
directions asking for aid for the miners and
their families." This action by the associated
miners of the town — only four weeks after
the shut-down — shows how poorly paid the
whole body had been, how they had been
weakened by their winter of self-sacrifice, and
how quickly the siege of starvation made itself
felt.
During the dreadful months that followed,
when thousands of women and children and
the men, who could not get work, lived or
more correctly, starved on twenty-four cents'
worth of flour, meal, etc., a week, the public
never had the pleasure of hearing that one
dollar or one word of sympathy or regret
came from you. Consider such a case as that
of Mrs. Mike M . She has seven children.
56 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
Her husband, locked out. went as far away as
the coal mines of Missouri for work, but found
it at last at Stanton, in this State. During his
absence she felt the hour of her confinement
approaching. She sent for a doctor. He
refused to come. But baby came, although
the doctor wouldn't, and, in this hour of
supreme trial of womanhood, she was alone —
unless God was there. A kindly neighbor
came in later and helped her. As she told me
this, sitting sick and forlorn in a room in which
the furniture and wall paper seemed soaked
with misery and malaria, she was shaking with
ague. Her baby was a fortnight old, but up
to that moment she had had neither medicine
nor a doctor. The Chicago, Milwaukee & St.
Paul Railroad sent supplies and medicines and
physicians to its suffering miners at Braceville,
but that is not your kind of political economy.
Not only did the company do nothing to
alleviate this misery, part of the tactics of
money-making, but, on the contrary, through
your spokesman, you threw public ridicule and
reproach on those who came forward to mend
the lives you had broken. In his public letter
tothegovernor of September 25th, your spokes-
man characterized the appeals which had been
made to the country at large for aid as " false-
GHOST OF STARVED ROCK WALKS. 57
hood and slander, perhaps without a parallel
in the industrial history of the country. " In his
letter to the Chicago Times of October 8th he
said, referring to Mayor Cregier's visit to Spring
Valley:
" And yet high officials in your city, men
who make laws as well as those whose duty it
is to execute them, can find time, under the
cloak of ' sweet charity,' to sanction the law-
less condition referred to when within sight of
their office windows, or within one ward of
your city, more genuine cases of destitution
and misery can be found than could be found
in twenty Spring Valleys."
This word " starvation " is obnoxious to you
and other gentlemen who cut off the livelihood
of working people by light-fingering the
" laws " of supply and demand. It grates on
your ears. You laugh at it over your weary
and heavy-laden dinner tables. You pooh-
pooh it when it gets into the newspapers or
the appeals for relief. You quiet your con-
science, and the generosity of others, by de-
claring that there is no want, that the people
have saved piles of money out of the munifi-
cent wages you have paid them, and that they
could all go to work to-morrow, and " earn $2
and $3 a day if it were not that they preferred
58 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
eharity to work." This is a mightily impor-
tant point with you, and you maintain it with
a stiff upper lip. Everywhere this sort of talk
scattered by you through parlors, bank direct-
ors' rooms, counting-houses, and among your
acquaintances, has tremendous influence. It
buttresses you and your kind of " business"
men in their determination to believe that the
workingmen can neither do good nor feel
wrongs. It shuts many hands and pockets
ready to contribute to the relief which partly
defeated your attempts to make the people so
faint with want that their " supply " would
yield to your " demand." Success in making
the public believe the mystery that your work-
ingmen continue to have plenty to eat after
you have cut off all their means of buying
food is vital to you, and you know it well.
The public endures the things that are being
done all over this country to whole communi-
ties of workingmen, only because it does not
understand them. Even when they are ex-
plained, it cannot believe that the strong would
so ill use the weak. It has not come to see
that our market morality has overgrown all
other morality, and has brought men who
would be good but for business, down to the
depravity of believing that " the Golden Rule "
GHOST OF STARVED ROCK WALKS. $9
is that any rule is right which puts gold into
their pockets.
There is one fatal flaw in your nervous talk
about these poor people preferring, as you
say, charity to work. They worked up to the
last minute you kept your mines open. It
was only when you drove them out that they
began to beg. If you had any sense of shame,
even any sense of humor, grim as it would be
here, you would not make yourselves targets
for public indignation and ridicule, by throw-
ing slanders so obviously untrue at the heads
of the people who came to Spring Valley to
get the " steady work " you advertised, and
who worked until you stopped them.
If the world had not learned by the experi-
ence of thousands of years how the oppressor
hardens his heart at the sight of the suftering
he creates, it would be impossible to under-
stand your cynical denial that any distress fol-
lowed your refusal of all work to the entire
community of 5,ooo people at Spring Valley.
No one but you who are fortified behind
hundreds of millions of dollars would dare to
deny it. No one but those who were to make
money out of it would want to deny it. Over
against these vain attempts to ignore the
palpable truth is the testimony of a cloud of
60 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
witnesses, reporters of newspapers of all shades
of political and economic belief, clergymen,
mayors of the surrounding cities, the neighbor-
ing farmers, the editors of the local journals,
representatives of the State government, and
impartial observers who visited Spring Valley
to see with their own eyes the extent of the
distress in order that they might report upon
it to those who wanted to help the stricken
people.
" How can you tell when a family is in
want?" was asked of the wife of a merchant of
Spring Valley, who has done what she could
out of the ruin of her husband's business to
help those still more unfortunate.
" There's many ways of telling; although
some of these poor people would rather die
than let their wants be known. When the
neighbors see the little children of a family
hanging about the door, crying silently hour
by hour, they know well enough what's the
matter. There's never a bite in that house,
you may be sure."
The Chicago Daily Nezvs, in a telegram from
Spring Valley of June ist, said, a month after
the lock out :
The situation of the locked-out miners of Spring Valley has
been getting worse every day. What money they had is nearly
GHOST OF STARVED ROCK WALKS. 6l
spent. Friday morning a committee of miners was sent to
Chicago to solicit aid. The committee took along a circular
to present to the various labor organizations, making a strong
appeal for aid for starving families.
The paragraphs given above from the local
papers show how simultaneously the work
stopped, and the distress began. As early as
June 24th, a reporter of the Chicago Tribune
telegraphed from Spring Valley:
About 500 miners' families are being helped by the relief
committee here. Some of the families are dependent entirely
on the committee for support, and it is poor support they get,
for provisions come in slowly. Aid to the amount of $700 or
.$Soo has been received, which, divided up, would be only about
.$12.20 in seven weeks to a family, and a family averages six or
seven persons. But even this has long ago been mostly given
out. One-fourth of the miners in town do not know where
their next meal is coming from.
Shortly after the shut-down of the mines a relief committee
was organized, who sent sub-committees out in all directions
with wagons through the country seeking aid. In this they
were quite successful, the farmers contributing liberally day
after day and week after week. Besides the committee wagons,
private families have scoured the country for anything eatable.
A farmer living about seven miles north of town told your cor-
respondent recently that as many as seven and eight parties had
been at his farm begging in a single day, and that as high as
twenty had been there in a week.
The Boston Herald, in its issue of July 27th,
had a dispatch announcing that " Mayor Cre-
gicr of Chicago, Congressman Frank Lawler,
and other members of the relief committee had
62 A STRIKE Of millionaires.
left Chicago with several car-loads of provisions
and supplies for the starving locked-out coal
miners of Spring Valley. There are about
2,000 idle miners in the district, making, with
their families, about 6,000 souls. The arrival
of the train there this afternoon was greeted
with great demonstrations of joy. Every-
where there were evidences of the most pinch-
ing poverty and destitution. Men, women
and children were most scantily clad in the
cheapest of materials, and there was a great
dearth of foot-gear among them. Their faces
bore unmistakable evidences of pinching hun-
ger. These people have been locked out
nearly three months, and are absolutely on the
verge of starvation."
Besides the tons of provisions, Mayor Cre-
gier brought with him a check for $1,562,
which he presented to TreasurerWilliam Scaife,
of the Miners' District Organization.
■ " I come," the mayor said, " as the repre-
sentative of the people of Chicago, who never
hear of want without doing all in their power
to-relieve it. "
The Spring Valley correspondent of the
Chicago Tribune telegraphed, August 6th:
" By dint of close economy the miners manage
to get enough to live on. Many of their fam-
Ghost of starved rock walks. 63
ilies have only flour and a little salt pork from
one week's end to another. Many of them do
not taste fresh meat from one Sunday to
another."
In an interview with a reporter at Spring-
field, of the Chicago Tribune, in July, Secre-
tary Wines said: " At Spring Valley in partic-
ular, the apparent destitution greatly impressed
me. There are no gardens there, and few cows,
pigs, or chickens. The town presents the ap-
pearance of a funeral. It is too quiet even for
Sunday. The miners there cannot be said to
be on a strike in the strict sense of the term.
They were ordered out before they had a
chance to strike."
The New York World oi Saturday, August
3d, printed the following special dispatch from
Spring Valley:
Her Twin Babes Died of Starvation.
[special to the world.]
Spring Valley, 111., Aug. 2.— One of the saddest cases of
destitution among the striking miners on record here came to
the notice of a World correspondent to-day. It was the case
of a mother, the wife of one of the locked-out miners, who lost
her two babes, twins, for the want of sufficient nourishment to
foster them. Being in the poorest circumstances, and living off
such charity as was given by the relief committee, she had the
misery of seeing her babes die of starvation while holding them
to her batren breast.
When the attention of Dr. John H. Ranch,
64 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
•
secretary of the State Board of Health, was
called to this, he had only this to say: " That
it was a thing frequently found even in more
prosperous communities" — a singular product
of American prosperity.
In a special article in its issue of August 3d,
the New York World, under the headlines
" Dying to Escape Slavery — that's what the
coal, miners of northern Illinois are doing," —
said of the whole field:
" There have been scores of deaths among
young and old, since the strike; nearly every
one of them directly traceable to lack of food,
medicine, or medical attendance."
In their report to the governor, Messrs.
Gould and Wines say of the state of things up
to August: *
" It remains to speak of the suffering caused
by the strike. It is real and it is great. There
have been no actual cases of starvation. Miners
freely divide with each other, and it is warm
weather, when vegetables are plenty. But
there have been cases in which families have
lived for a longer or shorter time on vegetables
alone. There has been suffering, also, in sick-
ness, for want of medicines and proper medi-
* Report of the Coal-Miners' Strike and Lock-Out in Northern Illi-
nois, by J. M. Gould and Fred. H. Wines, special commissioners ap-
pointed by the governor, August, 1889, pages 22-23.
GHOST OF STARVED ROCK WALKS. 6 5
cal attendance. It needs no official investiga-
tion to prove that ten thousand men, who have
been idle for nearly four months, and who had
not much money or supplies laid away, but
who have families to support, must be by this
time in a condition verging on destitution. -
They do not parade their suffering; they conceal
it rather, especially from their employers, know-
ing that the operators rely upon this suffering
to bring them sooner or later to terms. The
miners in this district, as we have shown, were
receiving about $225,000 a month in wages,
which would (after deducting one-eighth)
amount, by the ist of September, to nearly
$800,000, which they have lost; they are that
much on the wrong side of the ledger. What
they had, they have been consuming; they
have been exhausting their credit; many of
them have mortgaged their homes. Whether
they have done right or wrong, this state of
affairs cannot last long. The supplies which
have been sent them, generous as they have
been, have been ridiculously inadequate in
proportion to the number of mouths to be fed.
These men do not want charity; what they want
is work and wages. If $7,500 a day in wages
was inadequate for their comfort, and they quit
work because it was proposed to give them
66 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
less, will less than $7,500 a day in charity be
sufficient to supply their needs? And is there,
can there be, any hope of help to this amount,
for any length of time? The real necessity for
aid from outside has been acknowledged, at
least by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul
Railway, which has hired a physician for its
rniners at Braceville, and sent a supply of
necessaries for sick women and children, to be
given out by its agent, in accordance with the
doctor's recommendation."
On August iitha car-load of provisions was
sent to Spring Valley from Peoria. The New
York World described the occurrence under
the heading : " In Starvation's Grim Grip. " It
said :
" One thousand men and women in a starv-
ing condition tramped down from Spring
Valley to the Rock Island depot at midnight,
and waited hours for a car-load of provisions
which was on the way, accompanied by Mayor
Warner of Peoria, and members of the relief
committee of that city. The crowd went wild
with delight when they heard of this relief, and
paraded the streets with torches. The mayor
brought wnth him $400 in cash, and said that
Peoria would send ten more car-loads, if neces-
sary. Everybody, he said, had contributed,
GHOST OF STARVED ROCK WALKS. 6/
even to the women who sell vegetables in the
city market. Part of the provisions were dis-
tributed at once. This makes the third car-
load of provisions that has reached Spring
Valley in thirty days. " Three car-loads in a
month for five hundred families !
In the news items circulated by the asso-
ciated press was this one dated at Galesburg,
111., August 22d:
Five Spring Valley women, with infants in their arms, came
here to beg provisions and clothing for the families of miners
there. The mayor sent them to a boarding house. They will
not be suffered to beg, but a committee of citizens will canvass
the place for them. They represent the families of Spring Val-
ley strikers as in a very destitute condition, and say that the
women have gone out in companies to the leading cities of the
State to beg for their children.
The following paragraph which appeared in
the Sentinel, a weekly paper of Spring Valley,
August 31st, used stronger language about the
"misery" there than any of the preceding,
and the writer lived a daily witness of what he
described :
The fact that the wives and children of miners are dying of
starvation, right in the garden of the world and the center of
the "land of the brave and home of the free," is not a very
consoling spectacle for a Christian country to present to the
world. Then, when such suffering, destitution and death, are
the result of an attempt of coal operators, protected by a tariff
of 75 cents a ton on coal, to starve laborers into submission to
68 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
a reduction of wages, the sight is one that should forever damn
the system and the soulless capitalist that it protects.
The New York World sent a representative
through the northern Illinois coal-mining dis-
trict, and in his letter of August 25th, he
describes what he saw at Spring Valley.
Among other things he says:
" As we passed the little cemetery, with a
plain stone here and there marking the resting-
places of those who had lived in better times,
I noticed that there were many freshly dug
graves, little mounds that told of recent burials,
and empty graves yawning for an occupant.
These evidences of the lock-out's fearful work
told a tale which could not be expressed in
words. They told of want of food, medicine,
medical care and nourishment! * * *
The site of the company houses at Spring
Valley is as inimical to the health of the occu-
pants as at Clarke and Coal Cities. The cor-
poration has selected, because of its cheapness,
the elevation which overhangs the Illinois
River, on which to erect the miners' houses.
The air of this spot is impregnated with mala-
ria, from which the residents are almost con-
tinually suffering. The death-rate of this town
is large, even when the mines are in operation,
and the sick-list is equal to that of a healthier
GHOST OF STARVED ROCK WALKS. 69
town five times its size. From a cursory ex-
amination, it is a low estimate to say that seven
out of every ten families are sick — seriously so.
Malarial fevers, diphtheria, cholera morbus,
ague and pneumonia form the bulk of the ail-
ments. When lack of medical care and medi-
cine is added to the unavoidable sickness, is
it any wonder that scores of men, women and
children have found a last resting-place in the
cemetery since the lock-out? # * *
There are 1,200 heads of families in Spring
Valley who have not had a stroke of work
since last May, and half of these families have
had nothing to eat except what the charitable
have given them. Salt pork, potatoes and
corn-meal, with a little tea and coffee, have
been their sole means of subsistence through-
out the lock-out. Such food is unfit for sick
and delicate women and children to eat, and
the cofifin is soon seen to leave the house.
* * * Yet these poor people did
not denounce their oppressors; did not heap
maledictions on the heads of those responsible
for their condition. * * *
" The policy of the Spring Valley Company
has been to always keep a surplus of miners
on hand, and employ more men than were
actually needed, so that the company would
70 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
sell more goods at its ' truck ' store, rent more
of its houses, keep the men so poor that they
would be unable to resist the reduction in
wages, and create discord in the ranks when a
strike occurred. A grave moral responsibility
rests on the heads of the mine-owners, who
have inveigled married men to this barren
spot and now cast them off to starve with their
wives and children. # * *
" After dinner I took a walk with members
of the relief committee through the desolate
place. The family of Sylvester McDonnell
numbers fourteen, from grandparents to grand-
children, and they occupied two three-roomed
houses. They were drawn up in battle array
outside their home as I approached to talk
with their grandfather. They were in rags
and tatters, pinched faces and hollow cheeks
showing that the cupboard had often been
empty. 'I fought for the negroes,' exclaimed
the old man, ' and now I am fighting for my-
self and the folks. It's the principle of the
thing I am starving for. I am an American
citizen, and I claim the right to educate my
children as Americans should be educated.
We offered to go to work here for a year with-
out a cent if the company would only keep us
in clothing and food, send our children to
GHOST OF STARVED ROCK WALKS. J I
school, and pay our rent if we didn't live in
one of their houses. They wouldn't do it,
and that shows we cannot live on the reduced
wages without begging or going into debt.' "
At about the same time, Father Hunting-
ton, of New York, of the order of the Holy
Cross, who devotes his life to work among the
poor, visited the mining regions on an errand
of mercy. He was greatly moved by what he
saw, and gave it eloquent and indignant utter-
ance. In an interview in the Chicago Ncivs,
he said:
" It is bad enough everywhere I went, but
it is worse at Spring Valley than elsewhere.
But even there the poverty-stricken inhabitants
are not like the poor I am used to seeing in
New York. There is no whining; the people
show intelligence and pride; even hunger has
not debased their feelings, as one might ex-
pect. I am used to scenes of want, but what
I saw at Spring Valley was different. It was
more pitiful than anything I ever witnessed
before. I went among the cottages. They
are nice, and are surrounded by pretty lawns
and gardens, but the awful poverty within was
shocking. * * * Sickness is in-
creasing, and the doctors told me the people
were so enfeebled by long privation and
\
72 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
anxiety, that an epidemic might break out at
any moment. Business is utterly dead. *
* * What is the outlook? Well, it is
black enough. The mine-owners profit whether
the mines are operated or not."
To a reporter in New York, Father Hunt-
ington said:
" I visited Spring Valley. In that town
there is already cruel destitution, and, unless
aid is sent them very soon, many will die of
want and the diseases induced by insufificient
nourishment. Even now there is an epidemic
of diphtheria among the children, and much
ague among the adults, which a few cents'
worth of quinine would have prevented, but
which could not be obtained. There are be-
tween five and six thousand persons in the town,
and 2,360 are on the relief list. The Company
has ordered the mines to be shut down for an
indefinite period, and the town will be wiped
out as effectually as was Johnstown by the
Conemaugh fiood. If the people of this coun-
try desire to avert what will be a national
calamity, they should help those miners of
Spring Valley at once. * * * My patriot-
ism, too, was outraged when I found that men
who had come from England, a so-called effete
monarchy, were compelled to labor under con-
GHOST OF STARVED ROCK WALKS. 73
ditions abolished in the country of their birth
twenty years before. I found in existence the
contract and the "truck" or store-order system,
together with monthly payments."
September 9th the Rev. John F. Power, the
Catholic priest of Spring Valley, wrote the
following letter in answer to an inquiry from a
friend in Chicago:
Spring Valley, III., September 9.
Dear Sir.— In reply to yours of the 7th, asking a statement
from me as to the condition of my people, I desire to say that
fully one-half of them are still dependent on outside charity for
the necessaries of life. Most of the men are away looking for
work. Some succeed at once, but it takes at least a month to
realize any cash to send home to wife and little ones. Mean-
while their families are in a precarious condition, even when
sickness spares them. I am going to appeal in person, in such
parishes as I can obtain permission, to the charitable for aid for
my congregation, beginning ne.xt Sunday in the cathedral parish,
Peoria. I have upward of 300 pupils in the sisters' school.
Besides maintaining the school, we must do what we can to
clothe the children coming on cold weather. This is why I go
abroad begging as the only alternative to closing the school
and sending away the sisters. John F. Power.
From then until the end of the lock-out
Father Power spent every Sunday in " going
abroad begging" in more prosperous parishes,
for the funds with which to keep the children
alive and the schools open.
The writer of this story went to Spring
Valley September 3d, to learn at first hand the
74 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
facts of the destitution, and, as the result of
his observations, published an appeal for help
through the Chicago newspapers and the
Associated Press. In it he said:
" There is greater need than ever of help for
the starving men, women and children of
Spring Valley, in this State.
" There are thousands suffering there from
want of food, clothing, medicine and sym-
pathy.
" Most of these sufferers are children, and
most of the children are little ones.
" I have just returned from Spring Valley.
There, in this great and prosperous State, and
in the midst of harvest-laden farms and rich
cities, the visitor will see a cemetery of the
living. Instead of the light of health, there
shines in the eyes of the men and women the
phosphorescence of decaying strength, and
the children, fatally weakened by want, are
dying.
" There are families where adults and chil-
dren, grievously sick, are without medical at-
tendance or medicines, because there is no
money to pay for them."
September 29th, after a second visit, the
writer published a second appeal for relief, in
which he said:
GHOST OF STARVED ROCK WALKS. /S
Among other means of getting intelligent and unbiased in-
formation as to the exact state of things I visited the Catholic
school and the public school, in which together there are over
600 children, and talked with the teachers and many of the
children. The sisters who teach in the Catholic school said
that their children gave unmistakable evide\ice of not having
sufficient food. They were paler than the year before, and they
could not study as well. Children would frequently fall asleep
at their desks from weakness. But so sturdy was their pride
and self-respect that it was almost impossible for their teacher
to obtain from them any acknowledgment that they did not get
enough to eat at home. Children who were unmistakably suf-
fering for want of nourishment would even refuse food when
offered them by their teacher, and in some cases the sister
superior said when food was taken by some such child, it was
immediately rejected by the stomach, showing how far the ex-
haustion of hunger had gone. One of the teachers in the pub-
lic school stated that on her way to the school in the morning
she would sometimes meet as many as a dozen of her class out
with baskets going to beg. As they saw her the little things,
ashamed, would try to hide from sight until she had passed.
In both schools numbers of the children were insufficiently
clothed, little boys and girls of the tenderest years having on
only some light sack or jacket, with no underclothing. It was
a cold, bleak day, but many were barefoot. How the people
have lived at all is a mystery. There have been during the last
four weeks ending September 25th five distributions by the relief
committee — all in goods, no money has been given out — and
the extent of this "charity" is sufficiently indicated by the
statement taken from the account of the committee that each
family of seven, and others in proportion, had received for the
entire period of four weeks flour, meat, etc., to the value of
$5.88, or 84 cents' worth for each person for the whole four
weeks. The mayor of the city, the editor of the Spring Valley
Gazette, the Congregational clergyman, Mr. Stringer, all the
physicians of the place, every one in fact stated without qualifi-
cation that were it not for the relief from without the people
^6
A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
would have starved and would be starving. To live on such an
allowance is to live a life of slow death by starvation, and the
faces of the people, especially the little women and little men,
show it. The death rate shows it, and with the first touch of
cold and wet weather will show it in terrible shape unless kind-
lier hearts come to the rescue.
The undertaker, Mr. Dyer, who has had the largest number
of interments, had kept no account of them, but, speaking from
memory, said that during the last three months he had averaged
five a week, most of them children, and most of these cases of
diphtheria. Dr. Coveneyhas had thirty-five cases of this disease
in the last ^x"weeks. The local press, I was told, reported
seven deaths from diphtheria last week. There is a great deal of
malarial sickness among young and old.
Notwithstanding all the denials, official and other, it is true
that these poor people, women and children, have been refused
medicine and medical attendance.
I went to see Mrs. Dennis M . She was in bed shivering
with a chill. In her arms was a little child a few weeks old, who
had been ill for several days with inflammation of the lungs or
throat, she thought, but did not know. She had sent for Dr.
. He had refused to come. She then obtained an
order from the town supervisor to Dr. to go at the
expense of the county, as provided by law. The doctor re-
fused to go. The town supervisor then called upon him in
person. The doctor refused to go. I went to see the doctor,
and stated the deplorable situation of the mother and child to
him. He admitted the facts of the official order to him, and his
refusal, and added: "I haven't gone, and I won't go." And he
didn't go*. I gave the woman some of the money sent me by
* This statement having been challenged by the doctor referred to,
whose name will — with more mercy than he has shown the sick poor —
be omitted here, there was published in the Chicago Tribune the follow-
ing sworn statement by the town supervisor, Mr. O'Hara, showing that
orders given by him in person and in writing have been disregarded, and
the sick left unattended :
" State of Illinois, |_
" Bureau County. )'
" James O'Hara, being duly sworn, deposes and says that he called
on Dr. in person, and requested him to visit Mrs. M -n, who had
GHOST OF STARVED ROCK WALKS. TJ
Miss , and, when I visited Mrs. M the next day, she had
had a doctor and some medicine, and knew for the first time
what was the matter with her baby, which if it recovers owes
its life to the dear lady in New York. The father and husband
here was locked out last spring, and went away from home to
seek work, and has recently succeeded in finding employment at
Clark City.
I visited Mrs. Louis J . Her husband, locked out like
all the other miners, went away for employment, and is laid up
at Sparling sick with ague, having been able to do but three
days' work since spring. Of her four children three are ill with
chills and fever, one of these a baby in the cradle. The last had
croup the night before. She had sent for Dr. . He had
refused to come, and up to the time I saw her she had had
neither medicine nor medical attendance.
" Why don't the men go to work instead of living on char-
ity .? " I'here were once 2,500 miners there. As Adjutant-
General Vance states, there are now but 250 left. The rest
have gone. They have scattered themselves to the four quarters
for work. They have gone as far away as Wyoming, Kentucky,
Tennessee, Iowa and Missouri. A short time ago an agent of
the Union Pacific mines, at Rock Springs, came to Spring Val-
ley. He wanted forty men. Ninety presented themselves.
He took his pick, and left fifty men to seek another disappoint-
ment. Ihe men are leaving every day, as they get opportunity.
They often arrive at their destination to find that they ha\e
been deceived. They write back, the postmistress is told by
their wives, that they can sometimes barely make their board.
called at his house for an order for medical assistance, and that Dr. ■
refused to do so; that the next morning he called on Dr. again, and
asked him to visit an aged couple, and again mentioned the case of Mrs.
M n, and that Dr. still refused to visit her; that on September
2Qth a Mrs. M — 1 — n called on him for an order to Dr. for medical
attendance; that he gave her the order, and it was ignored by Dr. ,
he refusing to render her family medical attention.
" James O'Hara,
" Super < isor of Hall Town.
" Subscribed and sworn to before me this second day of October, i88g.
" J. B. Davidson,
" Police Magistrate for the City of Spring Valley, County and State afore-
said."
78 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
A miner thus changing his place of work frequently has to buy
new tools, costing from $15 to $25. Still, the records of the
postoffice, which I saw, show that the men who are hunting
abroad for the means of life for the wives and children they have
left behind, to face, unprotected, the dangers of famine and
disease, are sending home from $125 to $200 a week in all.
County Agent Foley, of Chicago, who had
done a great deal to collect and forward relief,
received the following letter which continues
the deplorable record into the month of Oc-
tober, and throws light on the difficulties which
the men experienced in finding work else-
where:
Spring Valley, III., Oct. 4.
Mr. John Foley, Chicago.
Dear Sir: Yours of the 3d inst. at hand. The car-load ot
provisions sent by you the 2d has been received, and is being dis-
tributed to-day.
iMany of our men have gone in various directions in search
of work. Some who have gone in answer to the many adver-
tisements sent here for miners and others who have gone with
agents find that those places are not as represented, the condi-
tions being such that they could scarcely make their board, con-
sequently they would not be able to send their families any
assistance. There are now 476 families being supplied by the
relief committee. There are a great many cases of sickness,
mainly malaria and ague, and a few cases of diphtheria. The
medicine sent by Mr. Lloyd has done much to relieve this, as
heretofore it was a hard matter to procure medicines. The
coming cold weather will greatly add to the needs of all.
A. D. BouRKE, President.
Thomas Brady,
Secretary of the Miners' Union.
GHOST OF STARVED ROCK WALKS. 79
The Hon. Frank Lawler, one of the mem-
bers of Congress from Chicago, nobly gave
nearly his whole summer to investigating the
sufferings and wrongs of the miners of Spring
Valley, Braidwood, and other places in Illi-
nois, and eloquently and fearlessly appealed
for relief and for justice through the press,
public meetings and by personal solicitation.
If this was done " for political effect " so much
the better. It is high time the servants
of the people sought to win their favor by
serving them against the ruthless plutocracy
which is oppressing them.
" Thanks to the human heart by which we
live, thanks to its tenderness," the public
responded to the appeals for help with enough
food, clothing, medicine, and sympathy to
take off the sharpest edge of the distress,
though it did not give enough to save the
miners at last from a disastrous and humiliat-
ing defeat.
Why did not this evidence, volumes of which
have been laid before you by the daily press
of all parties and opinions, melt your hearts?
Has the bourbonism of the " divine rieht" of
buying cheap and selling dear become so fanat-
ical that you think you have a right to grind
up the very bodies of the poor for " six per
So A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
cent, on the capital" — watered capital at that?
Have your riches and your use of agents
to deal with your employes and customers,
borne you so far away from the people
that you do really not believe that they
have hearts that can ache as yours can, bodies
that can suffer as yours can? Don't you be-
Heve that they love their wives and children
as you do yours? that their hearts sink as
yours would, when, without warning, they are
dispersed, penniless, into strange parts for
work, leaving wives and babies behind, per-
haps to starve? Don't you believe that want
of food weakens their bodies as it would
yours — that hope and success and sympathy
are as essential to their well-being as to your
" finer " natures?
If you don't like to lose one per cent, out
of your six per cents., how do you think it
makes poor men feel to have you cut off all
their income? If you like to take your wives
and children with you to the sea-shore or to
Europe, how do you think a workman feels
when you force him to tramp hundreds of
miles away from his family, leaving them to
charity, while he hunts for work, as if that,
too, were charity? Is it having three good
GHOST OF STARVED ROCK WALKS. 8l
meals a day that has made you believe that to
live on twenty-one cents worth of pork and
meal a week is not " starvation " ?
CHAPTER VII.
BUYING BRETHREN BELOW COST.
The local press chronicled your lock-out in a
curt six-line paragraph, closing with the state-
ment that " the wages for the next year is the
question now to be decided." That was the
question, but it was not to be decided by the
ordinary and decent processes of bargaining
between two free parties. It was to be
decided by a commercial attack of the strong
upon the very lives of the weak. These were
to be made helpless, then asked to make a/r^v
contract. You who could live in luxury in-
definitely without giving employment took
employment away from the workman, who
must die without it. You took hope, too,
away. When you were boomers, you fed the
people on hope in lieu of the good wages you
had promised; but, when you changed this
role and began to play the Doomer, it was ne-
cessary for success in bringing down the people
that despair should be added to disease and
starvation. Dark hints were circulated from
(82)
BUYING BRETHREN BELOW COST. 83
headquarters as to what the millionaires had
done in other cases and would do in this. The
leader in this war on the workingmen, it was
said, had utterly destroyed one mining town
which had resisted his will, and he would do
so here to obtain what he wanted. Mean-
while what he wanted remained like the secret
of the sphinx — uncommunicated. " The Coal
Company," said the Spring Valley Gazette
of May 8th, " are as yet non-committal, and
have made no offer to the men." At a mass-
meeting of the miners June 1st, the resolutions
began with this preamble, which corroborates
the above: "WHEREAS, The Spring Valley
Coal Company, have locked us out since April
29th without having given us any information
why they did so." The coal company's office
gazed out upon the town, blankly through its
two great plate-glass eyes, and made no sign.
The workingmen wrote letters to the company
asking when and how they could get work,
but could obtain no answer. They offered
arbitration, but in vain. They sent committees
to the office, but were told that positive
instructions had been given that the men
should be dealt with only as individuals, never
again through representatives.
During all this time the only communication
84 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
vouchsafed them was the serving of eviction
notices in July on all the families that were liv-
ing in the company's houses.
Though the eviction notices were served with
all the due legal formalities required, the evic-
tion did not follow. It is an open secret that the
then superintendent broke out into open rebel-
lion against the ruthlessness with which the
company was carrying out its policy.
Not long after he sold his stock, and left the
service of the company. Another reason for
the arrest of the policy of evictions was that it
was plain that public opinion was too much
roused to submit to it. The case of Spring
Valley had become a cause celcbre. Things
that had been done and could have been done
in the dark, it was not safe to do in the blaze of
publicity which now poured in there.
This news item from Spring Valley of July
22d, illustrates the methods used to terrorize
the workingman into submitting to the com-
pany's demands. It is a vivid picture of the
influence brought to bear upon the men, as a
preliminary to asking them to sign " free con-
tracts," and throws a flood of sunshine on the
kindly means used by "capital" to demon-
strate its " harmony of interest" with labor.
BUYING BRETHREN BELOW COST. 85
WII>L, EVICT rOLE MINERS.
Notices Already Served by the Sheriff — Probabilities of
Kesisatnce by the 3Ien.
Spring Valley, III., July 22. — To-night nearly 100 notices
to vacate have been served by the Spring Valley Coal Company
upon the idle miners, and about twenty-five more will be served
to-morrow. One week from to-day eviction notices proper will
be served. Two weeks from to-day Sheriff Henderson and an
armed posse of deputies will enforce the notices and turn all idle
miners out. There will doubtless be a total of about 650 per-
sons thrown out. The coal company says that the law will be •
enforced to the letter, while the miners will resist — some by
force some by legal means. Where the miners will go is a
mystery. But few have any money to pay their way to other
towns, and there are not enough empty houses in town to keep
them. The houses will be boarded up as fast as emptied.
From April 29th until August 23d your con-
temptuous silence in the face of all inquiries as
to the cause and prospects of the lock-out was
maintained — five heart-sick months for the
people of Spring Valley. Then the company
posted in its windows at SpringValley an offer to
them of thirty-five cents a ton, instead of ninety
cents, which they were receiving when the
mines were closed. The following is the notice
which was posted at the Spring Valley mines,
on Thursday, August 22, 1889:
Notice to Miners.— I am directed by the president of this
company to make the miners of Spring Valley the following
proposition, viz.: Seventy-five cents per ton for mining in the
third vein, with thirty inches of brushing and three men in a
room, from now until May i, 1890. I am also directed that
86 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
men now occupying company houses, who are unwiUing to work
on these terms, or who do not begin to work on or before Mon-
day, September 2, prox., must vacate the houses occupied by
them on or before that date, or we will be obliged to proceed to
regain possession peaceably and lawfully. The president of this
company desires it to be further understood that we shall not
treat with any committee representing any organization in the
future, and that each man will have to seek employment for
himself and individually.
(Signed) The General Manager.
This offer was so worded that, to the unin-
itiated, it might seem an offer of seventy-five
cents a ton. The words " seventy-five cents
a ton " occurred in it, but there was a string
tied to them, in the shape of conditions, which
cost the miners forty cents a ton. The offer
was, in substance, " seventy-five cents a ton,
less forty cents worth of your work and time."
No one understood the true character of the
offer better than the men who would have had
to work under it, and no one has explained
it better than they did in a communication
which they immediately addressed to the public.
" Brushing," so often referred to below, is
the work of removing the rock above the
coal, so as to give head-room for the mules
and pit-cars. The company require that the
roadway be nine feet wide at the bottom, eight
feet wide at the top and about six feet high.
Of this space, from three feet to three and one-
BUYING BRETHREN BELOW COST. 8/
half feet in height is coal, for removing which
the miners are paid the agreed rate per ton,
whatever that may be. Underneath the coal is
a layer of fire-clay, sometimes of very hard
sandstone, which the miner has to dig away,
without pay, and above the coal is solid rock,
which he has to dig away for head-room, with-
out pay, to the height of twenty-four inches
above the coal, and for a width of eight feet.
The company used to pay the miners- for this
" brushing" at the rate of $1.25 a yard, but
it has gradually shifted the burden of it on the
miners of doing it gratuitously. Before the
lock-out the company had put sixteen inches
of this unpaid work on them, and it has now
increased this to twenty-four inches. A con-
siderable part, also, of the work on the coal
vein itself is without compensation. The men
get no pay for the nut coal, which drops
through the spaces of the coal-screens, about
one-eig-hth of all mined. And there is in the
Spring Valley coal a seam of sulphur, one to
two inches wide, and a band of iron pyrites
varying from one to several inches in thickness.
The coal that breaks into " nut," the sulphur
and the pyrites yield the miners nothing but
unrequited toil. There are many other time-
consuming labors connected with coal-mining
88 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
which cannot easily be described to the unin-
itiated, but all maybe summed up in the state-
ment that, of the ten hours spent hard at work
on the knees, or lying down hundreds of feet
below daylight, only about two-thirds produce
actual earnings to the miner.
This is the letter to the public explaining the
" offer " of 35 cents a ton :
Spring Valley, III, Aug. 24.
Editor of the Herald:
We wish, through the columns of the Herald iogwe. the peo-
ple of Chicago and elsewhere a proper idea of the proposition
of the company which was made to the miners here yesterday
morning; viz., 75 cents per ton, thirty inches of brushing and
three men in a place. Also that the men must treat indi-
vidually with the company, they refusing to recognize commit-
tees or any " board " acting for the men as a whole, which
practically means that all persons who have been active in their
endeavors to have some degree of justice done them will not get
any work here or anywhere else if they can hinder them.
Now, 75 cents per ton is a reduction of 15 cents, the pre-
vious price being 90 cents in the Spring Valley and La Salle dis-
trict. Thirty inches of brushing means at least 10 cents per
ton more, as we were previous to the lock-out paid $1.25 per
yard for this amount of brushing.
It has been stated in the press Ijy some one writing from here
(who is unknown to us) that previous to the lock-out the men
were working three in a place, which is not the fact. We simply
divided our work with those that had been thrown out of work
by the closing clown last December of mines 2 and 4. At no
time were we working three in a place together, but were
working two men, each man laying off two days in the week.
As will readily be seen, this was to each man a reduction of two
days in the week, or one-third of his time, and this was not un-
derstood to be permanent, but only until mines Nos. 2 and 4
BUYING BRETHREN BELOW COST. 89
would resume operations, as the mines, when running at their
fullest capacity, would not, and did not, give the men full work
with two in "a place. The forcing of three men in a place
would simply be dividing the work and wages of two men be-
tween three. Now, to sum up the proposition : In the first
place, there is proposed a reduction of 15 cents per ton, from 90
to 75 cents ; in the next place we are asked to take thirty inches
of brushing, for which we were previously paid $1.25 per yard,
which is equivalent to 10 cents per ton ; and last, but not least,
three men in a place, which, as we have shown, means a re-
duction of one-third of the earnings of each man, which is one-
third of 90, or 30 cents per ton, making in all 55 cents per ton
of a reduction. Now, this is a reduction of over one-half our
former wages, which were shown by the recent investigation
before the State board of charities to be an average of $28 to
$30 per month.
By way of properly seasoning this kind and considerata
offer, it is further stated in the proposition, that, if the men do
not accept these terms on or before the 2d of September, the
company will proceed to regain possession of their houses,
which, of course, means eviction, as none of the miners have
the means to move elsewhere.
This infamous proposition has caused general indignation
here, not only among the miners, but also among the business
men, who are denouncing the outrage in terms more forcible
than polite. The general manager has resigned the manage-
ment of the mines, and has also sold out his interest in the
company. His reason for doing so, it is said, is because of the
president's insisting on these terms, which the latter knows can
never be agreed to by the men, and also because of his intention
of importmg colored men to take the place of miners.
A. D. BouRKE, President of Lodge No. 26.
Thomas Brady, Secretary of Lodge No. 26.
Robert Wilson, Secretary of Relief Committee.
A few days before this " offer," the presi-
dent of the company had, by an ostentatious
90 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
withdrawal, broken up a conference between
mine-owners and miners strugglirig- for an
agreement in Cliicago, at the Grand Pacific
Hotel. As he did so, he is reported by one
of the newspapers to have said :
" I will settle with my own men. I do not
care what this conference may decide upon.
I will pay my men as high a figure as they
may fix. Yes, I will pay them a higher scale
than any which may be adopted at this confer-
ence, that is, if I continue to mine coal in
Illinois. If I decide to resume the mining of
coal, it will be on a bigger scale than ever
before, and on an entirely different basis."
This was August i6th. The value of the
promise to pay " as high " as others, or
" higher," was illustrated within a week, by the
" offer" of August 23d. just described. This
has the unique distinction of being without
exception the lowest bid yet made for Ameri-
can labor. According to the estimate of their
previous average earnings, made by the special
commissioners of the State, it would have
yielded the miners about $10 a month — and
"find" themselves. According to your own
" statistics," it would have given them about
$16 a month, and find themselves. This offer
was stuck to, and repeated publicly a month
BUYING BRETHREN BELOW COST. 91
later, as the best you could do. Every one
knows well, that it was never supposed, even in
offering such terms, that they would be listened
to by the men. Public opinion will never
quarrel with your men for publicly branding as
"infamous" such a proposition, made after
the silence and lock-out of five months, with
every appearance of a purpose to add a new
terror to the apprehensions of the community,
in order to frighten them into selling you their
labor below the cost of subsistence. No one
but those who made this offer have ever had
the hardihood to defend it. Even the local
journals of Spring Valley denounced it. The
Gazette of September I2th, said : " The men
here are willing to do what the La Salle men
are, but the company wants them to accept
terms way below that. This the miners declare
they will not accept, and the sympathies of our
citizens are with them. The Spring Valley
Coal Company can certainly pay as high
wages as its competitors."
Stung into protest by this offer to the men,
and the threat to close the mines, the Spring
Valley Sentinel, which, with the Gazette, con-
stitute the local press of the town, had a plain-
spoken article in its issue of August 3 1 st. It is
of importance as showing, as the article in the
92 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
Gazette does, that the injustice done the miners
was so obvious that it had to be admitted by
local elements not specially friendly to them.
Speaking broadly, the business men and the
working men of our civilization are antag-
onistic to each other, and this is true in little
Spring Valley as in better known communities.
The business men and the working men repre-
sent different social classes, and different sides
of the bargains of industry. Their different
circumstances have given them different ideals
and philosophies of life. The busi-ness man aims
to make a fortune for himself, and, to reach that
solitary good, wants to go it alone. He must
have " competition," " individual enterprise,"
laissez faire, etc. The working man knows
that solitary prosperity and the good of the
people are compatible only by being made one.
He is forced to seek the good of all as the pre-
liminary of good for himself, and he advocates
the policy of union, self-sacrifice of the indi-
vidual for the sake of all, social control. Per-
sonal inquiry among the merchants of Spring
Valley showed that in most cases they felt the
prejudices of their class against the working-
men and their ideas, although this prejudice
was often tempered by the kindest personal feel-
ings, and the tenderest commiseration for their
BUYING BRETHREN BELOW COST. 93
sufferings. The newspapers of Spring Valley
are supported by the advertisements and sub-
scriptions of the business class, including the
patronage of the coal company itself. That
these papers spoke out as they did, must be
counted the strongest possible evidence of the
oppressive unfairness of the action of the mine-
owners.
The article in the Sentinel was as follows:
THE SITUATION.
The present situation is anything but encouraging for Spring
Valley. The mines are closed down, and all the clerical force
laid off indefinitely. The general manager, who owns $350,000,
or one-seventh of the capital stock, offered to take the mines
and run them, and give the company fifteen cents a ton clear
of expenses.* This was refused by the president of the com-
pany. At Braidwood a settlement is about to be made at 87^^
cents per ton. There is an offer of 82^ cents at La Salle, but
there is little hopes of a settlement here. The Sentinel would
be untrue to its convictions of duty did it not call attention
to the true condition of both sides of this momentous question.
It has been given put that this was the largest coal mining plant
in the United States, truthfully. The Town Site Company
have advertised and sold a large amount of real estate on these
representations. The coal company and the Town Site Com-
pany are practically indentical. Men came here and invested
all they possessed, knowing the facts, and believing in the asser-
* The president of the Spring Valley Coal Company, in a conference
with the miners about their wages, told them that they could take the
mines and run them, if they would pay him a royalty of only fifteen cents
a ton. This, to " prove" to the men that the company could not afford to
pay them living wages. Hut, when the superintendent, who was also
part owner, did what the poor miners had not the money, or nerve, or
knowledge to do — accepted the proposition, the president backed down
at once.
94 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
tions that the coal company would be a lastmg feature of the
town. The business done here is transacted solely on the
money disbursed by the coal company. Men who are engaged
in business realize that to stop the mines, stops business. They
have waited for four months, and with the announcement that
another six months of idleness was in store for them, they
have become justly indignant; and are only waiting for a suit-
able opportunity to unload and seek other and more stable
fields of trade. That is one side of the situation. Let us see
if there are any extenuating circumstances. The gigantic coal
company has lost money here. They cannot pay last year's
prices and not lose more. The president of the company
makes a proposition which he claims is all he can do. He can-
not get men to accept it. After waiting a week, he says: " It
is not likely that operations will be resumed for six months or
a year." The people of all classes are shocked, and many are
panic-stricken. What shall we do? What does it mean? We
will tell you. For the business men of the town, six months or
a year more of idleness means bankruptcy ; for the working-
men who have depended on this industry for a livelihood, a
removal, living on charity or starvation. For the coal com-
pany it means a greater loss than has hitherto been sustained;
the opening of new mines, if work is ever resumed. And it
means a new population when the city is once more brought to
life. Now let the candid, intelligent reader judge where
justice and self-interest conflict, and then prognosticate the
future. The Sentinel has this to say:
Though the mills of God grind slowlj'.
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience he stands waiting,
With exactness grinds He all.
And believing in the truth of this, we say there is yet a future
for our city, and a prosperous tide of affairs yet to come. The
president may legally close his mines now, but if the governor
of this State and legislature do their duty as law-makers and
executives should, this state of affairs will be regulated, and the
rights of innocent parties protected. That there is something
BUYING BRETHREN BELOW COST. 95
radically wrong in the management of this affair we are satisfied.
The Union Coal Company, of La Salle, operating the same vein
of coal, and presumably has the same market, has a standing
offer of S2}4 cents. Braidwood operators have made an offer
ten cents in advance of our company's proposition. Its presi-
dent, in his letter to Congressman I. awler, recently i)ublished in
the Chicago Tiibiinc, takes the Chicago market as a basis and
says " if the good people of Chicago " will pay such a price for
coal, he will open the mines. Now, Chicago is not the Spring
Valley Company's market, and never was ; all last year he sold
coal to the North-Western road here at this point, Spring Val-
ley, for $1.42 per ton. Here is his market, and all along the
line of the North-Western road. Streator is a competitor for a
very small part of the coal trade at junction points only. These
facts, placed beside the refusal to lease the mines on a fifteen
cent royalty, are not consistent with his proposition. The sit-
uation is bad. The coal company has made a bad matter very
much worse.
The Gazette and the Sentinel expressed the
almost universal opmion condemning the offer
of the coal company to its men, and approving
their manliness in resenting it as an insult added
to injury. The Rev. Mr. Stringer said, in his
pulpit Sunday evening, October 27th: "When
the president of the company offered the men
seventy five cents per ton with thirty inches
of brushing and three men in a room, nobody
thought the men ought to accept it." All of
this is evidence from sources which through-
out have been far more partial to the employers
than to the men.
Adjutant-General Vance said, after visiting
g6 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
Spring Valley officially for the governor :
" There is a universal expression [among the
citizens of Spring Valley], that the offer of
seventy-five cents a ton for mining and thirty
inches of brushing, with three men in a room,
would be unreasonable, and an unfair remu-
neration to the miners, and the president is
charged with insincerity in making the offer."
With this offer of thirty-five cents a ton,
ostensibly seventy-five cents a ton, was coupled
the requirement that the men should abandon
their union. You do all your business through
a union, and by walking, or more correctly
sitting delegates, and through committees
of directors, and you keep a large staff of
"professional agitators " constantly busy on
your behalf in courts and legislatures and
stock exchanges. But because you are rich
and think you have the power, you determined
to take away the same rights from these poor
men. By this demand of August 23d, for the
surrender of their union, the men learned that,
worse than a reduction of wages, the destruc-
tion of their union had been decreed. This
meant the destruction of their power to make
a free contract, and to protect themselves
against violations of the contract when made.
It meant that the tasks, hours of work, the
BUYING BRETHREN BELOW COST. 97
pay, the personal liberty, the treatment at the
hands of overseers, settlement of disputes,
and other matters, which lay at the very
foundations of livelihood and rights, were to
depend on the will of the employer — harder
than that, on the will of the overseer. It
meant that the men were to be denied the
benefit of any gift of leadership — ahva)s too
rare — that might develop itself among them.
It meant that any man so gifted, who should
have the heart to speak against the abuse of
his fellows, who should have the brain to see
how they could make better bargains for
themselves, and the tongue to get the idea into
their heads, and to speak for them, should be
banished at the will of the employer. It
meant that the workmen could have work only
at the price of dumb submission and disunited
helplessness.
The employers, rich, remote, independent,
could bring their combined power operated
through an agent, to bear resistlessly on the
men, poor, dependent, anchored to the spot by
family responsibilities and lack of the means
to get away. The employers, although strong
enough to stand alone, were united together
in a union the wealth and discipline of which
were far beyond anything possible to the
98 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
workingmen, and yet announced that they
were going to take away the same right of
union from their men.
The company's vein of coal is so thin that
the men have to work all day on their knees or
lying down, but you insist that in addition to
this they shall come on their knees when they
make their application for work, and not like
American citizens acting through a committee
or attorney, if that suits them better than com-
ing one by one. You have in the mines a
class of useful and docile animals in the mules
which stay in the depths for years, and some-
times never come back to the surface. You
always treat with them " individually." If
your plans succeed, it will not be long before
you will have the power to keep your miners
like your mules — down below from year's end
to year's end. There will be nothing left them
worth coming to the surface for, because, if
you can make them give up their unions, you
can make them give up everything. " Unite
or Die " said Franklin to the American colo-
nies. The unorganized workman, says Prof.
Thorold Rogers, cannot make a free contract.
John Morley, the great English statesman,
said recently to the miners of Durham : " We
all know what the labor union has done for the
BUYING BRETHREN BELOW COST. 99
working people. It has made men of them."
You, with so many millions you could not
count them if you counted all your life like
clerks of the treasury, instead of helping to
make men of your vvorkingmen, seek to dehu-
manize them for " more " millions.
The indignant refusal of the miners to con-
sider the offer of August 23d as anything
but a brutality was followed by the closing of
the company's offices in Spring Valley. A
special dispatch in the Chicago Herald of
August 26th, said:
Spring Valley, 111., August 26. — A telegram was received
here this morning from the president of the coal company
instructing his general manager to discharge all employes whose
services were not absolutely needed, and to reduce expenses to
a minimum preparatory to a six-months' or a year's shut-down
of the coal mines here.
Succeeding this came a dispatch of August
28th, which said:
Spring Valley, 111., August 28. — [Special.] • — The Spring
Valley Coal Company to-day discharged their entire general
office force for an indefinite period. Every move that is made
is indicative of carrying out the order to close down the mine
for a year or six months. The town is fast becoming deserted.
September 25th the offer of August 23d was
repeated in a long communication to the public,
printed in the appendix, through Governor
Fifer, and was accompanied by this solemn as-
lOO A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
sevcration: " It is all the concession we can
possibly make to our men and maintain our-
selves in a competitive market." If this were
true, it would not excuse the company's treat-
ment of the men. But it was not true, as
your own spokesmen shall prove, and as can
be shown by three business facts which the
wayfaring man, though a fool, can read. At
the very moment this statement was made a
mine with precisely the same kind of veins,
quality of coal, etc., as yours, that at Locey-
ville, four miles away, was at work, paying its
miners the unreduced rate of wages you gave
before your lock-out — 90 cents a ton — al-
though it was far inferior in capital, equip-
ment, etc. , and so had to buy dearer and sell
cheaper than you. That is fact number one.
Fact number two is just as clear, and proves
that the coal company's statement, in five col-
umns of fine print, of September 25th (see ap-
pendix), was prepared to deceive the public
and prevent them from learning the truth, that
the lock-out was really an offensive movement
of millionaires to put down the livelihood of
poor men below the level paid by other mine-
owners, below the competitive level, below
what you really could afford to pay, and below
the cost of their subsistence. This fact, num-
BUYING BRETHREN BELOW COST. lOI
ber two, was the resumption, close upon your
statement, of the mines at La Salle and Peru,
at prices more than double what you had of-
fered August 23d, and had declared Septem-
ber 25th were all that could possibly be paid.
These mines have the same coal and veins as
yours, but nothing like your capital, equip-
ment or market connections. Fact number
three is strongest of all, and comes out of your
own mouth. Within a month after declaring,
on September 25th, that your offer of August
23d was all you could give and live, you of the
coal company on October 24th, in the nego-
tiations carried on by Rev. John F. Power,
made your men an offer double that of August
23d, viz.: 82^ cents a ton, with an increase
of brushing of only eight inches, instead of
fourteen, and only two men in a room, instead
of three. In fact, this offer was considerably
more than double that which you had so for-
mally and solemnly declared a month before was
the best you could do and live. The increase
of eight inches of brushing takes off about only
3 to 5 cents a ton from the offer, leaving about
'J']y2 cents net, and you made some other
concessions, allowing for which, makes the
offer of October 24th considerably more than
double the " last ditch " proposition of only
/
I02 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
four weeks before. The new offer was de-
scribed in a press dispatch of October 24th,
from Spring Valley, to the Chicago Tribune,
as follows:
This afternoon the following telegram was received from the
president of the coal company :
We are willing to pay 82>^ cents per ton for screened coal
and 70 cents per ton for run of the mine (rough and tumble);
also twenty-four inches of brushing, with two men in a room
and fourteen yards of coal face; no back rent to pay from May
1st to November ist, but we shall insist upon contracts being
signed, and no committees to treat with us. We are willing
that the men shall have all the unions they wish independent
of us.
Immediately upon the receipt of this, the
secretary of the Miner's Union forwarded the
following to the press:
WHY THE SPRING VALLEY MINERS WOULD NOT SIGN MR.
SCOTT'S CONTRACT.
Spring Valley, October 28.
Following are the resolutions adopted at a mass-meeting
held the 26th inst. which had been called for the purpose of
hearing read a. proposed contract which was drafted by Man-
ager Dalzell on the part of the company and James McNulty on
the part of the miners. It had been agreed at a previous meet-
ing by Mr. Dalzell and the miners, that, as the contract before
submitted by the company was objectionable to the miners, that
one be drafted as above, and Mr. Dalzell gave the miners to un-
derstand that the objectionable feature might be stricken out,
but that was not done, and the rules submitted to the meetmg
for the approval of the miners were, with few exceptions, the
original document. It appeared to the miners that undue ad-
BUYING BRETHREN BELOW COST. IO3
vantage was sought on the part of the company, whereupon
the following preamble and resolution was adopted:
Whereas, The locked-out miners of Spring Valley have
used every endeavor to bring about a settlement, and have gone
so far as to surrender some of their rights as American citizens;
and,
Whereas, The terms offered the Spring Valley Coal
Company — viz.: 82)4 cents per ton, with twenty-four inches of
brushing — gives it advantages over all the mines in the La
Salle and other districts in northern Illinois; and
Whereas, The Spring Valley Coal Company has refused to
start its mines on these conditions unless we would surrender
the last vestige of our rights — the right of association; there-
fore be it
Resolved, That we the miners of Spring Valley, in mass-
meeting assembled, do hereby rescind all former propositions
to the company, and bind ourselves to accept no proposition ex-
cept that already submitted — viz., 82^4 cents per ton, twenty-
four ihches of brushing, working place of forty-two feet, with
two men in a place; all other conditions the same as last year.
This offer of October 24th, the men were ready
to accept had you not insisted that they should
still surrender their unions and sign an iron-
clad contract which bound them to all possible
disadvantages and bound you to nothing. To
save their union, without which they well know
they will in the end lose everything that makes
them free men, the miners kept up the forlorn
struggle a few days longer. But it was hope-
less. The importation of men from the Penn-
sylvania field was begun by the company, and
threatened to fill the mines with outsiders,
I04 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
False reports were sent out through the news-
papers that the lock-out was settled at Spring
Valley, and in consequence miners began
flocking in and contributions for relief began to
slacken. The last day came, and the miners,
exhausted utterly, succumbed to the slow siege
of slander and starvation, and at a meeting on
November I2th, voted by secret ballot to give
up the struggle, to apply for work as " individu-
als," and sign the " contract" falsely so called,
which the company had drafted. The ranks
that had stood so heroically together for so
many months, broke. It was a race to see who
could get first to the office and enter servitude
on the Pennsylvania plan.
This oft'er by you of the coal company on
October 25th of more than double what you
had offered August 23d, and had declared,
September 25th, was all you could offer and
live, was an admission outright of the real pur-
pose of your doings. It was a confession that
you had created, or allowed to be created, all-
the misery of Spring Valley to increase your
profits by cutting down the wages of your
men below what you and others were paying,
and could afford to pa}^ This is what your
long letters to the governor, statements to the
public and interviews in the papers boil down
BUYING BRETHREN BELOW COST. 105
to. All the clever columns of assorted statis-
tics, mystifying talk about competitive fields,
railway discriminations, "junction points,"
jargon about " brushing " and slanderous
charges that the men would rather live on
charity than work, you having yourselves
taken away their work and made them beg-
gars — all simmer down to this: You made
commercial war on them, their wives and
children, to add to your millions at the risk of
misery, disease and death to them. The pay-
ment by the competitors all about you of double
what you offered, your own offer of double
what you repeatedly assured the public was all
you could pay, indicates your dreadful pur-
pose to buy your brothers " below cost."
It was for this these poor men were seduced
into leaving homes and employment elsewhere
to settle in " your town ; " that they were
snared in the meshes of land purchase on
monthly installments without a title, making
the purchase of a home a means of slavery
instead of the refuge and support it should be.
It was for this the labor market was over-
stocked by bringing in superfluous miners
from Belgium, France, Italy, and all parts of
America ; that one-third of the mines were
shut down in December, and the rest in April,
I06 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES
without notice; that having promised " steady
employment," your agent refused for five
months to give the arbitrarily disemployed
men any explanation or any chance to work
at any price; that he then offered them less
than half what neighboring mines, poorer
than yours, are paying; that he refused to
arbitrate; that he would not receive the men
when they came offering to work at the prices
paid elsewhere, which he had sworn in public
you would pay and better; that he dragged
the men about from conference to conference
at La Salle and Joliet and Chicago for a com-
promise which he had no thought of making;
that he demanded the abandonment of their
union by men who, without union, were but
brittle sticks to be broken by you one by one
at your pleasure. It is for this that the homes
of the poor have been broken up, and the
men, leaving wives and children to face the
terrors of starvation, have been driven forth
in heartbreak to seek work where a million
unemployed were tramping ahead of them.
CHAPTER VIII.
A " FREE " CONTRACT.
The arrangements under which the miners
went back to work for you are called " con-
tracts. "
It is of the essence of contracts that they
should be free; and to be free, they must be
the voluntary agreements of equal parties,
made without duress, and with a full under-
standing of all the obligations assumed and
imposed. The means taken by the " party of
the first part " to prepare the minds and bodies
of the " parties of the second part," at Spring
Valley, to accept the terms of the iron-clad
printed contract offered them, were of a kind
not to be found recommended in any of the
law books. They were such as these:
Months of disemployment and of intimidat-
ing; refusal to give explanations why work
had been stopped or when it would be re-
sumed; the application of the torture of famine
and of compulsory exile; systematic slander
and misrepresentation through public and
(107I
108 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
private channels; threats that the idleness
might be prolonged for years; the public and
repeated menace that other workingmen would
be brought in to take their livelihood away
from them, by force, " If it takes all the power
of the State to do it," said the figure-head of
tlie millionaires ; the terrifying assertion that
the pay was to be reduced from 90 cents to 35
cents a ton; threats of evictions and of for-
feiture of all the earnings invested in the pur-
chase of lots and building material bought
from the company on the installment plan.
These were the influences used to prepare
the men to make a " free " contract.
When the men broke their ranks, and ran to
the company's office to " settle," they stood
in a long file, hundreds of them passing one
by one before the clerk's window to " sign."
The paper given them, the " contract," was two
pages, foolscap size, of fine print. They had
no time to read it. Not one of them would
have dared to ask to be allowed to read it
before signing at the risk of finding his name
on the black list when he came back. It
would have done none of them any good if
they had read it. They couldn't have under-
stood its full scope, its provisions, carefully
conned over by and woven together at their
A " FREE " CONTRACT. IO9
leisure by shrewd business men with the help
of the best legal advice, embodying all the
latest decisions of the courts in the phrasing of
the different clauses. If they could have
understood it, they couldn't have got it
changed. Oliver Twist asking for "more"
was nothing of a spectacle in comparison
with a miner who should dream of suggesting
some alterations to suit him in the "contract "
he was about to sign. Imagine him, the
" free" party of the second part, his clothes
hanging limp over the cavities in his person
caused by seven months enforced idleness,
his wife and children at home waiting for
what he will bring, the relief contributed by
the public stopped by the news that work has
begun. Imagine this " citizen " standing up
to the five hundred million dollars which looks
out at him over the counter through the super-
cilious eyes of the clerk. Try to fancy his
saying : " This contract suits me, all but this
and that ; make that so-and-so, and we will
call it a bargain! "
Of the men who scrambled over each other
to get to the windows to" sign," a great many
could not read at all ; a great many, being
French, Belgian, Italian, German, Polish,
could not read English. No one read the
no A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
contract to them ; no one explained it. As
fast as they could sign their names or make
their mark, they passed on.
As each one came up he gave his name.
The clerk, before presenting the " contract "
for him to sign, it was observed, always glanced
down to his desk. " What's your name?
Brown? " Looks down. " That's all right.
Brown; put your name here. Now, then, next!"
Here is one of the faithfulest members of
the relief committee in the line. " What's
your name? Bourke, you say? I'll see,"
Looks down. " B-B-B-Bourke. Ah ! yes,
Bourke. I haven't any contract for you. You
will have to see the superintendent. Next."
It is the " black list "which lies on the clerk's
desk. Bourke of the relief committee is on the
list. He will get no work. He will have to
go far from Spring Valley before his waiting
wife and children get any earnings of his for
the purchase of food He is a " free " man —
free to leave, free to hunt work, free to go into
exile.
Here is the so-called contract. It binds the
company to nothing but that while it keeps
the man at work it will pay him so much a ton.
The miner is bound to work usually from May
to May, in this case from December to May,
A " FREE CONTRACT. I I I
but the company is not bound to ^ive him
work. The miner cannot discharge the com-
pany for any cause, but they may discharge
him whenever they see fit. The miner makes
his payment, which is in coal, to the company
every day, but the company makes him wait
two weeks to six weeks for every dollar it owes
him. However starveling may be his wages,
the miner has to bind himself to join no com-
bination to better them. If he even smiles
upon any such combination, it is under the
penalty of losing all the company owes him
for work, and the company is the judge
whether or not he has smiled an insubordinate
smile. Meanwhile, the company may join
any conspiracy it choosesto put down the wages
of the men, or put up the price of coal. If the
pit boss is a tyrant, and oppresses the miner,
as he has hundreds of ways of doing, the
miner has the privilege under the " contract "
of appealing for redress to this pit boss who
has wronged him. The miner who knows
that all of his associates have under compulsion
signed away their right to defend him by the
only power that could help him, the power of
the union, and that he stands in the darkness
of the pit simply as an individual, is not likely
to antagonize the petty despot of the mines.
112 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
But if he has the rare courage to do so, and gets
an adverse decision, he has one privilege more.
He can appeal from the pit boss to the superin-
tendent, whose appointee the pit boss is.
All of which amounts to this: that the miner,
the weaker party, agrees to leave all disputed
questions to the decision of the other party,
opposed to him in interest at all points. No
wonder the workingman has to be locked out
and starved before he feels " free " enough (of
food and manhood) to make such a bargain.
MINER'S ANNUAL CONTRACT.
This Agreement, Made this day of A. D. i8. .
Between The Spring Valley Coal Company of the first
part, and of the second part.
Witncsscth, That the said party of the second part has agreed,
and by these presents does hereby agree, to enter into the em-
ployment of the said party of the first part, as a miner of coal
to commence on the day of A. D. i8. ., and
continue therein until the first day of May, A. D. i8. ., and to
abide by, adhere to and observe the rules and regulations set out
and printed on the back hereof, numbered from one to eleven,
inclusive, and which are hereby made a part of this contract, to
the like extent as if herein written.
The party of the first part hereby agrees to pay the party of
the second part, for each and every ton of screened coal mined
by the party of the second part, delivered in pit cars at the face
of the coal, after being weighed, passing over a screen, the bars
of which shall not be more than seven-eighths (J^) of an inch
apart, as near as the same can be made, and the width and
length of which shall not exceed the dimensions of the screens
now in use by the party of the first part, the sum of cents
per ton of 2,000 pounds, and for each and every ton of 2,000
A FREE CONTRACT. I 1 3
pounds of the run of the mine or for unscreened coal, the sum
of cents per ton of 2,000 pounds.
The said party of the second part further agrees to and with
the party of the first part, that the price herein agreed to be
paid by the party of the first part for all coal mined in the so-
called Third Vein of the mines of the party of the first part,
whether the same shall be screened or unscreened coal, shall be
in full consideration to the said party of the second part for
keeping his room, or working place, in good working order,
including twenty-four (24) inches of brushing, which brushing
must be done the full width of the roadways.
The said party of the second part further agrees to assist the
pusher or driver employed by the party of the first part in start-
ing the loaded cars from the face of the coal for such distance as
may be necessary, provided such distance shall not exceed ten
(10) yards ; also, to take the empty cars from the first parting
or switch, to the face of the coal.
The said party of the first part hereby reserves the right and
privilege, however, of closing the mines at any time, and of dis-
charging any miner for cause, including the party of the second
part, as the superintendent, or person in charge of the mine for
the time being may think proper ; but the party of the first part
agrees that in case steady and continuous work cannot be fur-
nished the party of the second part during the life of this agree-
ment, that such work as may have to be done, shall be fairly
divided with and apportioned to said party of the second part,
on the basis of all the men so employed at and during such time.
All payments hereunder to be made monthly on regular pay
day, and in compliance with the rules and regulations above
named, and pay day is hereby fixed for and on the Saturday
nearest to the 15th day of each month, when and at which time
all wages or moneys that may have been earned during and in
the calendar month next prior to such pay day shall be paid, less
all moneys owing said party of the first part on any account
whatever.
It is hereby expressly agreed and understood by the party of
the second part, that should he become a tenant of the party of
il4 A STkikE OF MILLIONAIRES.
the first part during the term of his engagement, then in case of
the termination of this contract, either by his discharge from the
employ "of said first party, or in any other way, the term of such
tenancy shall at once cease and be determined without notice,
and he will vacate the premises so occupied by him, upon verbal
notice of the agent or superintendent of said first party, written
notice to quit being hereby expressly waived, and on failure so
to do shall be deemed guilty of a forcible detainer of such prem-
ises, and that he will not be entitled to demand or receive any
part of the wages due him for labor performed (should the
party of the first part so elect) until such premises are vacated,
and the keys thereof delivered at the office of the said first party.
And the party of the second ]art further agrees that he will
not stop work, leave the employment of the said party of the
first part, or join or become a party to, either directly or mdi-
rectly, any strike or combination for the purpose of obtaining,
or the intent of which is to obtain from, or cause the company,
party of the first part, to pay their miners an advance of wages,
or pay beyond what is specified in this contract. Nor will
he in any manner aid, abet or countenance any such strike, com-
bination or scheme whatever, which has for its purpose anysuch
object or design, during the time specified in the first clause of
this contract. And if the ?aid party of the second part at any
time shall violate any of the provisions of this contract in this
regard, he shall thereby forfeit all claim for coal prior thereto
mined and not paid for, and the said first party shall be fully re-
leased from all liability on account of this contract, or any labor
performed by the said party of the second part.
/;/ Witness Whereof, the said parties have hereunto set their
hands and seals, the day and year first above written.
THE SPRING VALLEY COAL COMPANY.
By [SEAL.]
Agent and Siipenntsndent.
Witness:
[seal.]
(sk^.ned in dl'plica'ie.)
Read ^le /'Allies and Regulations on the Other Side.
A "FREE ' CONTRACT. II5
RULES AND REGULATIONS OF THE SPRING VALLEY COAL
COMPANY.
Adopted for the Purpose 0/ Regulating Mining and Other Em-
ployment in and About their Coal Mines.
I. — Every employe of the Company will be required to lie
ready for duty when the whistle blows for work, every morning,
and will be expected to perform a full day's work in his respect-
ive line of employment, unless the foreman of his department
orders less time to be worked. Engineers are strictly forbidden
to lower any miner or underground laborer into any pit after 7
o'clock a. m., without orders from the Pit-lioss or person in
charge of the pit head.
IT. — No suspension of work shall take place during working
hours, except in case of actual necessity; nor shall any miner be
absent from his work during working hours without leave from
the Pit-Boss, except in case of sickness or other unavoidable
contingency that would prevent him from working.
III. — Any employe feeling aggrieved in any respect, must
present his claim to the Pit-Boss in person. If they fail to ad-
just the matter in a manner satisfactory to the employe, it may
be referred to the Superintendent (if either party desires), whose
decision, upon the hearing of both sides of the question, will be
final. In case, however, the complaint arises from personal
grounds between the Pit-Boss and the miner, the Superintend-
ent, at his option, may change the miner to some other shaft.
IV. — Any employe who may have been discharged by the
Company, or who, with the consent of the Company, may have
left its service, shall receive all arrearages of pay due him at
once. The Company will consent to their employes leaving their
service without previous notice, provided such employe has con-
formed to the terms and conditions of this contract with the
party of the first part, and the rules and regulations governing
the working of the mines.
v.— No person will be allowed to interfere in any manner
with the employer's just right of employing, retaining and dis-
charging from employment, any person or persons whom the
Il6 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
Superintendent or Pit-Boss having charge of the mines for the
time being may consider proper ; nor interfere in any way, by
threats and menace, or otherwise, with the right of any employe
to work, or engage to worlv in any way, and upon any terms,
and with whom he may think proper and best for his interest,
or the benefit of his family.
VI. — No employe will be permitted to fill his place by an-
other man without the consent of the Superintendent.
VII. — Every employe will be paid once a month at regular
pay day, all wages or moneys he may have earned during and in
the calendar month next prior to such pay day, after deducting
any indebtedness which such employe may owe to the Company,
or which the Company, with the consent of such employe, may
have assumed to pay to any other person.
VIII.— On the side where coal is not mined in a miner's
place, the corner of the wall shall not be more than three (3)
feet from the face of the coal, and shall extend six (6) feet from
the corner along the face. The gob wall must not be over five (5)
feet from the face, and must extend six (6) feet from the pack.
On the side where coal is mined, the corner of the pack must
not be over two (2) feet from the face of the coal ; the pack and
gob to be built in the same manner as above ; the pack and road
walls to be built of brushing rock only; the gob and packs to be
built to the roof. It shall be the duty of every miner working
in the mines, provided there is a sufficient supply of props, as
required by law, to keep his room or working place in said
mines in good order and repair, as specified above ; and any
sucli miner who shall willfully, carelessly, or negligently suffer
them to get out of such order or repair, as above specified, and
who shall not upon request immediately put the same in repair
in the manner required by these rules, the Company may put
such places in repair at the expense of the miner in de-
fault, and may retain the amount of such expense from
the next or any future payment to which said employe
would otherwise be entitled, until fully reimbursed for such ex-
pense. And in case a room or working place should close,
when the miner has complied with the above requirements, then
A "free" contract. 117
it shall be the duty of the Company to put the same in good
order and repair at its own expense ; if it is found impossible to
stow all rock in the gob and a part must be loaded and sent out,
the part sent out must be fire-clay, and not brushing rock.
IX. — No miner who has left the employment of the Com-
pany, whether voluntarily or by discharge, will be entitled to
receive any arrearages of pay due him for labor performed,
whether on the regular pay day or during the interval preced-
ing pay, until he shall have put his room or working place in
perfect working order, as required by his contract with the Com-
pany. All miners leaving said employment will be required to
procure the certificate of the Pit-Boss that they have complied
with the requirements of this rule, as aforesaid, before making
application at the Company's office for final payment.
X. — Any tenant of the Company, upon leaving its service,
whether voluntarily or by discharge, will not be entitled to re-
ceive any part of the wages due him for labor performed, until
he shall have vacated the premises occupied by him (shoukl the
Superintendent or other person in charge of the mines for the
time being so elect), and presented the keys of the same at the
office.
XI. — The miners may, at their option and expense, employ
a Check Weighman, whose duties shall be to see that the coal is
weighed correctly by the weighman employed by the Company ;
provided that the party so employed shall be a miner in the em-
ployment of this Company, and in good standing at the time
he may be selected for the position.
Under this contract a man may forfeit his
pay for the whole of one month, and up to the
third Saturday of the next month. The com-
pany makes the law, and is the sole judge and
executioner, allowing no appeal.
The third of the rules which form a part
of the contract makes the miner who feels
Il8 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
aggrieved appeal " in person " to the pit boss.
When the men's union was recognized,
their remedy was quite dififerent; much more
likely to preserve the rights of the weaker
party. Under the union, the miners, when
aggrieved, made their complaints to a com-
mittee of their own number, called the pit
committee. This committee stood between
the boss and the complainant, and behind the
committee stood the union of all_^ the men.
The difference between this kind of a hearing
and that when the miner stands alone, with
nobody behind him, and asks for justice from
the pit boss, behind whom stands $500,000,-
000 and the power of dismissal, eviction, ban-
ishment and the black list, does not need to be
pointed out.
Only the company's pleasure limits the com-
pany's power under these rules to forfeit any
arrearages of pay due the miner if he leaves
before the end of the year for which he has
signed. No matter how extreme may be the
emergency which calls him away, if the com-
pany chooses to say no to his application for
release, he can only go by breaking his con-
tract. If he breaks his contract he may lose
as much as six weeks' wages, or about one-
sixth of the actual income of the year. If he
A "free" contract. 119
must go, and the company chooses to force
him to break the contract, he has no redress;
its decision is supreme.
The possibilities of putting extra work and
expense on the miner, under the eighth and
ninth rules, are limitless. The pit boss is the
sole judge. When the union was the medi-
ator between the company and the organized
men, the company would never attempt to
shift the " deadvvork " of the mine on the men,
unless it wanted to precipitate a strike by the
whole body. Now that no power can inter-
vene, the company has but to say to the miner,
Do this. Do that, and he must submit. There
has been a steady increase year by year in the
amount of labor on the roadways, and other
deadwork once paid for, which the company
is requiring the men to do without compen-
sation. The company used to pay for all the
" brushing;" it now compels the miners to do
twenty-four inches of it without pay. This
shifting of burdens will be accelerated since
the union has been ruined. The men who
must do so much more unremunerated work
in making the roadways, taking out the rock,
etc., will have proportionately less time for
earning money by mining coal.
This " free " contract puts the workingman
120 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
under a yearl} bond. It makes him agree to
abide for a year by a scale of wages fixed as
summer, the dull season, is coming on. The
winter is over. The demand for coal in May
is at its minimum. Prices of coal are at their
lowest, and the wages for the whole year are
made proportionate to this ebb-tide price.
The yearly bond of the contract says to the
miner: You must forego any advantage that
might come to you in the more active months
of the year. If supply and demand vary, you
are not to profit by it. No matter how high
coal goes, nor how much our profits increase,
you must remain bound to work for this
minimum wage. We may " strike " the public
every week for higher prices; you must agree
for a full year not to strike for any change in
wages. And by the ingenious system of keep-
ing back each month's pay until the middle of
the next month, the employers always have on
hand at least one twenty-fourth of the miner's
whole annual income, to be forfeited if he talks
even in his sleep about asking for" more." If
these are free contracts, it is a singular thing
that it should be so difficult to get the miners
to make them. They protest against them in all
their conventions and conferences. After six
months of idleness and famine at Spring Valley,
A FREE CONTRACT. 121
the men stood out four weeks longer in their
misery, and that of their famihes, in the hope
that they might escape the " free contract."
They were whipped into signing it, just as
truly as the Southern slave was whipped to his
tasks, and more cruelly.
The bald truth is that this yearly contract is
slavery. It is slavery in yearly installments.
Put together, year by year, it is a slavery for
life. The miners, in submitting to it, and we,
in allowing them to submit to it, degrade their
manhood, and that of the republic. Slavery,
in no matter how small a spot, among a free
people, is like a spark in a cargo of cotton, a
leak in a ship. It cannot be so insignificant
that it does not imperil the whole. The miners,
to a man, ought to resist this slavery, and the
public should sustain them in doing so at any
cost. Relief given these men in such a strug-
gle would not be " charity ; " it would be an
investment for the defense of the liberties and
the homes of the whole people, all of which are
in peril, if any are in peril. Our forefathers
had the wit to see and act on this wise scheme
of mutual self-interest ; have not we? Ourcon-
stitutions, laws, revenues, expenditures, public
policies at home and abroad, are all operated
by the help of the votes of workingmen who
122 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
are thus subjugated all over the country to
the will of the lords of industry. Are these
votes likely to go to the benefit of the public
which unconcernedly sees them denied their
rights, or to the benefit of those who hold them
under the yoke ?
Spring Valley at the city election in April,
1889, cast 949 votes.
The poison of these servitudes among the
people works up and back into the liberties of
the rest of us just as surely as the pestilence of
the slums creeps through the drainage of the
city into the palace.
In defense of these contracts, it was urged
by a newspaper at the county seat, the Prince-
ton Tribune, that under them the miners " bind
themselves to work until May ist, just as the
company binds itself to furnish a certain
amount of coal " to railroads " at a stipulated
price, until May." The comparison would
compare if the railroad got its contracts for
fuel out of the coal company by refusing it all
transportation at any price, as the coal com-
pany refused its miners work, until it surren-
dered and" signed." No court would uphold
such a compulsory arrangement as a contract,
and the workingmen ought to have the same
A "free" contract. 123
rights to protection under the law of contract
that the rich have.
Such arrangements are not contracts. They
are servitudes, imposed by force and fraud
upon those who do not consent, but submit by
compulsion. The interesting question forces
itself at once to the front whether, if the miners
have not been working under contract, they
are bound to treat the wages they have received
as payment in full. They have against those
who have taken the proceeds of their labor a
valid and ought-to-be legal claim for the unpaid
difference between what they have received
and what they ought to have received. The
enforcement of these claims will be perfectly
feasible the moment the people make them-
selves really what they are now theoretically,
their own rulers, and have in the courts, legisla-
ture and executive chambers servants who
will work for the people instead of doing
tricks for privilege. If the millennial day ever
comes when those unjust men are mulcted to
restore to the people what they have filched
from them, they will deserve no pity. The
penalty will be a light one for their offense in
playing a false part, betraying those who
trusted them. If they want to make contracts
that will hold both sides, let them make con-
124 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
tracts that are contracts. The courts are every-
day releasing business men from contracts that
are held to be no contracts, because of misun-
derstanding, inadequate value given, improper
pressure, duress, variance with public policy,
and so on indefinitely. Is this law of contract
for a class only? Are only the well-to-do and
the strong to have the aid of the courts?
CHAPTER IX.
APPEALING TO THE GOVERNOR.
When you of the Spring Valley Coal Com-
pany broke silence after the lock-out had
lasted more than five months, and made your
intimidating offer of thirty-five cents a ton, as
explained in full in the preceding chapter, the
city officials, business men and miners of
Spring Valley made the following appeals to
the governor of Illinois:
Spring Valley, September 9, 1889.
To the Hon. Joseph Fifer, Gozienior of Illinois.
Sir — We, the Mayor and Common Council of the City of
Spring Valley, and the coal miners and business men of Spring
Valley, desire to submit for your consideration a few facts con-
cerning the mining industry in this valley.
Spring Valley is the center of a mining area of 40,000 acres
of the best coal lands in Illinois. The Spring Valley Coal
Company owns the coal rights in this vast tract of land. The
town site of the city of Spring Valley was also owned by a
Town Site Company, controlled by the coal company, but it
has been sold at high prices to persons settling in the city.
There were four mining plants operated here by the coal com-
pany until December, 1888. The company owns most of the
houses occupied by the miners, and runs a "Company Store,"
at which they are to trade. Coal mining is the only industry
on which the town depends for existence, there being no facto-
(125)
126 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
ries and no stores save such as deal in supplies to the com-
munity.
On December, 1888, shafts Nos. 2 and 4 were shut down,
throwing out of work about 1,000 men. I'heir comrades, know-
ing that the men and their families thus turned into unexpected
idleness in the dead of winter, would starve, divided their own
work with them. For the rest of the winter every miner laid
off one day in three in order to give part work to all. This
lasted into ApriL Then the community, exhausted by the
strain of supporting three men and their families on the earn-
ings of two men, received its final blow. April 29th, without
previous notice of any kind, all the miners were told to take
out their tools and leave the mines, which they did. In one
afternoon their livelihood was taken from them, and since then
no work has been clone in the Spring Valley mines.
The results are these : The entire mining pojiulation here is
without work, without income, without food enough to main-
tain a bare existence, and without clothing and fuel to meet the
approaching fall and winter. Women and children are sick and
without medical attendance, medicines, nourishing food or
proper nursing. Wet weather is coming, to be followed by
cold, and our people can no longer go barefoot, imclad and ill-
fed, as they have been doing. Hence our needs demand prompt
and vigorous attention.
According to the company's officials, the men, when mining,
receive $43 a month each on the average. According to the
men, the average wage per month was about $30 each. This
was when ninety cents per ton was the rate paid for mining.
The Spring Valley Coal Company, some time since proposed a
reduction in wages equivalent to about fifty-five cents per ton.
In detail the proposition was this; First, to reduce the rate
from ninety cents per ton seventy-five cents — being fifteen cents
per ton off; second, the men to do thirty inches of" brushing " in-
stead of sixteen inches, as formerly, being fourteen inches brush-
ing additional, equivalent to ten cents per ton reduction; and
lastly, three men to work where two had formerly been em-
ployed — a proposition in itself involving a loss of nearly one-
APPEALING TO THE GOVERNOR. 127
tliitd tlie earnings of eacli man. The whole reduction by this
proposition would be not less than fifty-five cents per ton.
Whether the men, when working at ninety cents per ton, got
$43 per month, as figured by the company, or $30 per month as
figured by the men, it is apparent at once that the proposed re-
duction of fifty-five cents per ton would reduce their w^ages more
thai! one-half, or from $43 to about $20, or from $30 to about
$14' per month. Ordinary intelligence suffices to show ihe im-
possibility of a family living on from $14 to $20 a month.
It is" to be remarked here, that, while these heavy reductions
in wages were proposed, no suggestion of reducing the rents of
miners living in company houses, was made ; nor were any re-
ductions made in the prices of coal or of goods sold miners at
the company's store. On the contrary, on the 18th of July, the
miners, being unable to pay their rent, were served with five-day
notices that their rent was in arrear, and " that in default of the
payment by them of the rent so due within the time aforesaid,
their right to occupy said premises would cease, and proceedings
would l)e instituted for the recovery of the possession of said
premises in pursuance of the statute of this State. (Signed)
The Spring Valley (Joal Company."
We most respectfully point out to you that the men at Spring
Valley are not strikers, but are the victims of two lock-outs, one
last December and the other in April last. We point out, too,
that the men came here on invitation of the company, and many
have bought or built homes expecting to have work with which
to support their families and to pay the mortgages they were
compelled to assume in order to secure their homes. Instead
of work and wages, however, they have had months of enforced
idleness and starvation, and the city and mines of Spring Val-
ley have been virtually abandoned by the men who promoted
the Spring Valley Company, and who laid out this city and in-
duced the people to come here to settle. We ask : Is it right
for capitalists to buy up thousands of acres of land, lay out
towns, open mines, employ thousands of laborers, and induce
many thousands more to settle in their towns in the expectation
of work, and then to shut down the mines, stop wages, and
128 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
drive an entire community to idleness and destitution ? Is this
right ? Do the people of Illinois sanction industrial organization
and business methods such as these ?
Again we were told in the fall of iS8S that the success of
the ticket on which you were nominated for governor meant
work and wages. The presidential campaign in 1888 was
fought with appeals to workmen and promises of prosperity.
Where, we ask, is the prosperity promised us ? It is proper
to point out in tliis connection that we are reduced to a condi-
tion of destitution, notwithstanding tliese promises. Such
being the condition, we ask you to consider the situation and to
devise such measures for the relief of the miners as to you seem
proper. We would suggest:
1. A proclamation calling our needs to the attention of the
people of the entire State, and asking contributions of food,
clothing and money, and pointing out that, while some of the
mining difficulties have been settled, those in Spring \'alley yet
remain. It should be emphasized that the settlement of strikes
elsewhere in the coal region has caused the public to slacken in
their contributions for relief in the mistaken belief that the
Spring Valley difficulty was included in the agreement. This is
an error. The men are still out of work, and the situation at
Spring Valley is worse than it has been elsewhere.
2. Place the adjutant-general of the State in charge of a
suitable organization for the collection and distribution of the
food and clothing needed here.
3. Recognize the situation of the Spring Valley miners as an
emergency demanding instant action on your part to relieve the
people, and use for that purpose any special fund of money at
your disposal. Surely there must be means within your control
to meet such an emergency.
4. Come to Spring Valley and personally investigate the
needs of the people here, and supervise the measures you inaugu-
rate for their relief. The devastation of the flood at Johnstown
induced Governor Beaver of Pennsylvania to give his per-
sonal attention to the relief of the sufferers there, and it is per-
tinent to ask whether a community of 5,000 persons in Illinois
APPEALING TO THE GOVERNOR. 1 29
in the throes of starvation for months is not a catastrophe
demanding as prompt and thorough action from the government
and the people as the disaster at Johnstown. The people at
Johnstown were drowned. Plere are living victims to starva-
tion. We ask, therefore, that you will personally inspect this
battle of 5,000 miners with destitution; and we believe it will
spur you to instant action.
5. Finally we ask you to submit to the Legislature, which
should be convened in special session, an inquiry into the con-
dition of the coal industry in this State, to the end that legis-
lation may be framed adequate to afford permanent relief for
the laboring masses engaged in that industry.
Respectfully submitted,
H. DUGGAN,
Mayor of Spring Valley.
CoxxoR Keli.v,
Patrick Flood,
Thos. Linsley,
Patrick J. O'Briex,
Joseph Roberts,
Thos. Gavin,
William Proctor,
V. H. Weis-senberger,
Aldermen of Spring Valley.
Spring Valley Miners, in Mass
Meeting Assembled: By,
A. D, BouRKE, President.
Thomas Brady, Secretary.
M. J. Covenv, M. D.
H. Roederer, Baker.
J. H. Steadmax, Butcher.
W. J. Nolan, Grocer.
Jan Budnik, Saloon.
J. Hercer, Mang. Co-oper. Store.-
Jos. Salzer, Dry Goods.
Michael Stanton, City Clerk.
I30 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
The business men's letter was as follows:
Spring Valley, III., Sept. lo, '89.
To the Hon. Joseph Fifer, Governor of Illinois.
Sir — We, the undersigned business men of Spring Valley,
respectfully represent that we came to the city of Spring Valley
and invested our means in business here relying upon the prom-
ises and prospects of the Spring Valley Coal Company to do a
large coal mining business — such a business, in fact, as would
employ large numbers of miners and laborers, who, with their
wages, could buy our goods and maintain our estal^lishments.
We further represent that for nearly five months past the
mines in Spring Valley have been shut down, and the working-
men of this city to the number of nearly 2,500 have been out
of work and out of wages with which to buy our goods.
The result of this is that our business is prostrate, and must
continue prostrate until the miners are given work and are put
in position to buy goods as formerly.
If the present state of affairs continues, the business men of
this city will be driven out of business by insolvency and almost
complete loss of trade.
We, therefore, earnestly ask of you a personal investigation
of the mining difficulties in this place, and that you take all
measures in your power to effect an early settlement of these
troubles and the resumption of work in the Spring Valley
mines. Respectfully submitted,
Berkstresser & PoRTERFiELD, Grocers; R. D. Buchan,
Clothing, etc.; James 1'hom, General Merchant; John A.
BuRCHAM, Glassware; F. E. Mason & Co., Agricultural Imp.;
G. E. Reed, Furniture; J. C. Sitterly, Livery; A. A. Cady,
Grocery; Wm. Andrew Smith, News Depot; J. C. Pinkley,
Druggist; G. M. Burrs, Boots and Shoes; John Solann,
Saloon; James Powers, Grocer; Thos. Cheeseman, Jeweler;
George Hoffman, Bakery; E. G. Thompson, Druggist; John
Foester, Boots and Shoes: John Donlan, Shoes and Boots;
S. M. Horner, Hotel; T. C. Kohin, Principal of Schools;
Jacob Wahl, Saloon; John McMahon, Sample Room; Mrs.
APPEALING TO THE GOVERNOR. 131
A. Davis, Confectionery; J. J. Osborne, Hotel and Restau-
rant; Stanton Bros., Sample Room; Jos. Niemshik, Cigar-
maker; Wm. Klingberg, Merchant Tailor; J. J. Callahan,
Clothier; Mrs. R. Heep, Hardware, etc.; Bernardo Pera-
DOTTA, Saloon; Martin Delmagro, Groceries; I. J. Jagod-
ziNSKi, Grocery; Joseph Riva, Grocery; L. Frank, Clothing.
Hennebry Bros., Clothing; Jos. Salzer, Dry Goods; John
Pick, Sample Room; W. M. Murray, Drugs; M. Slowey,
Groceries. Geo. Sittler, Sample Room; P. Kelley, Sample
Room; James Hicks, Sample Room; John Diesbeck, Sample
Room; L. R. Dean, Furniture.
An anxious article on " The Present Situa-
tion," in the Spring Valley Gazette oiM^y ist
of this year, shows that both the business men
and the miners have reason to fear that " the
ruling powers " intend to carry the Dooming
of the Town into another twelvemonth to force
another cut in wages. The 1st of May is the
day for making the contract for wages for the
year, but when " his " men try to find their
Captain of Industry they can only learn that
he has gone east " on business." What is to
become of them is evidently no business of
his. The Gazette says:
The 1st of May has arrived, and what will be done remains
still unsolved. Last Friday afternoon a petition was signed by
several hundred of the miners, and forwarded to the head of the
company, asking him to come out here to try to effect a settle-
ment. A petition was circulated among the business men in-
dorsing the miners' request. They have received replies that he
is east on business, and will not be back until aijout May 15th.
At the same meeting wherein the foregoing
132 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
memorial was adopted, the following resolu-
tions were also offered and unanimously adopted
by the miners:
Whereas, The proposition made to reduce our wages is
both unjust and unreasonable, as we could not make a bare sub-
sistence by the hardest work on the terms offered; and
Whereas, It has been sufficiently demonstrated that there
is no reason or necessity for such a great reduction as that which
the company offers. Therefore, be it
Resolved, That we decline to accept the proposition of fifteen
cents a ton of a reduction, with other terms which will aggre-
gate fifty-five cents per ton of reduction. Be it further
Resolved, That we are ready and willing to resume work on
the conditions governing the settlement at Streator and other
places in this district where a settlement has been made, namely,
seven and one-half cents per ton of a reduction and last year's
conditions.
On motion, Messrs. Brady, O'Hare and Gil-
letsky were appointed to see Mr. Dalzell and
report the above resolutions. His reply to
the committee was that he would not treat with
any committee or recognize any organization;
that he would treat with the men individually.
Commenting on this, the Chicago X>rt//;/iV^w5
of September 13th said:
The appeal of the locked-out miners of Spring Valley to
Governor Fifer, is deserving of the prompt attention of that
public officer. The plain statement of the cruel treatment which
they have received from the Spring Valley Coal Company, must
arouse indignation in every mind. The company built a city,
selling much of the property at a large profit to merchants and
miners, whom it induced to settle there. The one reliance of
the city was on the mines, 5,000 miners went thither under the
APPEALING TO THE GOVERNOR. 1 33
promise of obtaining work. Now the mines have been shut
down, and Spring Valley is ruined.
These locked-out miners deserve the help of the State and of
all the citizens. They have not struck for higher wages or even
against a reduction of their wages. They have been betrayed
by a soulless corporation and left to starve. By the authorita-
tive action of the governor, this infamous crime against labor
should be branded publicly. At the same time the victims
should be rescued from starvation.
The people of Spring Valley must be given help. A rich
man has sinned against them. Let the rich now relieve their
wants.
Instead of going in person, in response to
the appeals of the people of Spring Valley,
Governor Fifer sent his adjutant-general to
Spring Valley to investigate, and gave the
matter afterward no further attention.
The report made to Governor Fifer by Adju-
tant-General Vance of his investigation is one
of the curiosities of the literature of American
self-government. If such callousness to the
sufferings of the people, such undisguised
anxiety to shield members of an upper class
from the exposure of their misdeeds, such
cynical contempt for their victims, had been
exhibited by an agent of the French court of
Louis XVI. sent into the provinces before
1789, to investigate the reports of a distress
among the tenants of the seigneurs, it would
have excited little surprise, although it would
certainly have figured in the pages of Taine as
134 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
a supreme illustration of the cxw^Viy o'i Vancien
rciriiiie. But when such a document comes,
cold and calculated, from the official representa-
tive of a free American commonwealth, we
can only lose ourselves in puzzling out what
poisonous influences they may be which in one
century have made it possible for a public
servant to put forth, and the public to receive,
utterances so completely hostile to all the
sacredest principles and sympathies of repub-
lican democratic liberty and happiness. The
legend of Marie Antoinette's inquiry why the
poor of Paris did not eat cake, since they
could not get bread, is well matched by Adju-
tant-General Vance's report at Spring Valley.
" There is a general paralyzation of all business
interests and trades, except those dealing in
luxuries." The hardness of heart which could
throw a taunt of this kind, officially, at a peo-
ple suffering as bitterly as the evidence from
all sides given heretofore proves that Spring
Valley was, is an infallible index of a want of
hardness of head.
Adjutant-General Vance was not happy in
the task set him of making an investigation of
the state of affairs at Spring Valley. His true
place was that which he filled during the
summer, when, at the head of the State militia.
APPEALING TO THE GOVERNOR. 1 35
with loaded guns and fixed bayonets, he
marched and countermarched through the
towns of the coal regions, by order of Gov-
ernor Fifer, for a chance to shoot working-
men. The report of Adjutant-General Vance
is as follows:
To His Excellency, Joseph IV. Fifer, Coventor of IUi)iois.
Sir — In compliance with your instructions, I proceeded to
Spring Valley on the 17th inst., arriving there at 9 o'clock
p. m. On the morning of the i8th I called upon Mayor
Duggan, and informed him that I had been sent by your Excel-
lency to ascertain the exact condition and to verify by personal
observation the representations made to you as to the suffering
condition of the people at Spring Valley. During the day the
opportunity was afforded me to meet and converse with a large
number of citizens upon the situation and to ascertain their views
in reference to the alleged suffering in Spring Valley. My in-
quiries were more particularly made with a view to ascertain the
condition as to the destitution, starvation, suffering, sickness,
and general sanitary condition. I requested the mayor to point
out the most prominent cases of destitution, or to have the
supervisor of the township, who is ex-officio overseer of the
poor, do so, as I would prefer to base my representation of the
situation to you upon personal observation. The citizens with
whom I conversed were representative of the population of
Spring Valley, and included physicians, druggists, police,
butchers, mechanics, miners, merchants, professional men, and
business men generally.
The general sentiment expressed by these persons was that
the memorial presented to you, and signed by many of them,
was a misrepresentation as to the condition in reference to
destitution, starvation, suffering, and sickness; that without any
consultation or concert of action on their part, the memorial
was prepared and submitted to them for signature. Some
persons said they were qpposed to the memorial as a whole;
136 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
that no such a condition existed as was represented; that there
was no starvation, destitution, or sickness worthy of mention,
but that they had signed the memorial because, if they refused to
do so, they would be boycotted in business. Others seemed to
take a different view. While they freely admitted the exaggera-
tions in reference to starvation and destitution, yet they urged
that there had been a necessity for charitable work, and that
this necessity would probably exist for several weeks after the
miners have resumed operations.
Physicians stated that there was very little sickness at this
time, and their business was much lighter than usual at this
season of the year; their cases were mostly of a malarial char-
acter, and only six cases of diphtheria in a mild form were under
treatment when I left Spring Valley. Druggists stated that
they had fewer requests for medicine from persons unable to pay
for it than at any time for several years, and in no instance had
they refused drugs to persons unable to pay for them. There
is evidence of a sentiment of hostility toward both mine-
owners and miners among citizens not engaged in these pursuits,
for the reason, as stated by them, that neither of the above
classes at Spring Valley seem to have made much effort to come
to an agreement or to compromise their differences. There is
a vmiversal expression that the offer of 75 cents per ton for
mining* and thirty inches of brushing with three men in a room
would be unreasonable, and an unfair remuneration to the miners,
and the company is charged with insincerity in making the
offer. There is an equallj strong conviction upon the part of
many who should be competent to judge that the mines cannot
be operated profitably at the prices demanded, and that men living
upon charity should show a disposition to concede and a willing-
ness to compromise out of the present difficulties. There is a
growing sentiment there that men who will live upon the charity
of a generous public rather than to work even at wages they
deem inadequate for their own support are unworthy of
the sympathy bestowed upon them.
* Equal to 35 cents a ton net.
APPEALING TO THE GOVERNOR. 137
From the best information I can obtain and from personal
observation, I do not believe the population of Spring Valley
will exceed 2,500 persons at this time. There is a general
paralyzation of all business interests and trades, except those
dealing in luxuries.
Nineteen licensed saloons are doing business at this time, and
are apparently well patronized * notwithstanding the depression
in business generally. At Spring Valley there are three veins
of coal ; the upper and lower veins are about three and one-
half feet in thickness ; the mining is done by hand, and is paid for
by the ton. The middle vein, ranging from four to six feet,
with an average thickness of over five feet, is mined with
machines, and the men operating them are paid by the day.
There is apparently a strong prejudice existing between the men
working in the middle vein and those working the other veins.
The men workmg the middle vein did not cease working last
May, because there was no reduction of their wages, and
because they were satisfied; but the men operating the other
veins demanded of them to quit work in sympathy with and in
support of their contest with the company, which was refused.
Since then the men working the middle vein have been termed
"blacklegs " by the others. The relief committee of the miners'
union is at this time composed of fourteen persons, with repre-
sentatives from each nationality. Mr. Hill is president, Mr.
Brady secretary, and Mr. McNulty treasurer. I was informed
by this committee that it met every morning at ten o'clock. All
cases of suffering and sickness are reported at this meeting.
The committee informed me that it furnished medicines and
delicacies for sick persons, or the money for their purchase when
* L. W. B., the very intelligent correspondent of the Chicago Inter
Ocean, fast and faithful organ of the State Government General Vance
represents, was at Spring Valley a few days before the adjutant-
general. Here is what he says about the saloons which General Vance
declared to be so "well patronized : "
THE PLACE IS ABSOLUTELY DEAD.
Even the saloons are quiet. There were forty-three of these before
the lock-out. There are now only nineteen, and they are quiet as the
grave, except one near the hotel. I heard a good deal of noise in this
one, but found that the merrymakers were some young men who are
clerks in the company's offices. No one else has money to spend.
138 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
they were supplied with funds. The committee informed me
that they issue provisions every Saturday from their supply
store. The issues are made upon the basis of a value of 21 cents
to the head of a family and 14 cents each for the women and
children. This committee commenced receiving money and
relief supplies May 29th, and had received in cash up to Sep-
tember 19th, $2,368.67. Cash on hand that date, $239.31.
The supplies reported received are from miscellaneous sources
to the value of about $Soo; three car-loads of provisions from
Chicago, valued at about $1,000 each, two car-loads from Peoria ;
from Sheffield, one ton of flour and otiier supplies ; from Chi-
cago, four barrels of meat and fifteen barrels of flour. The
committee reports that they are supplying aid to 405 heads of
families ; the total number of persons is 1,704, of whom there
are 901 English speaking, 189 Poles, 339 Erench, 93 Germans,
loi Italians, and 72 Swedes. The committee states that these
persons will not be self-supporting for at least one month after
the mines resume operations. There are at least 200 of the miners
that live at Spring Valley who are working at Loceyville, Ladd,
and other points, all within a few miles of Spring Valley. This
committee states that it has (except to six persons) refused to
issue supplies to those who work in the middle vein, for the
reason that they do not think they need relief
The relief committee denies that it has advised men not to
go elsewhere for work as a committee, and that, if advice of this
kind has been given, it has been by individuals of their own
volition. From the best information I could get from the
citizens and relief committee, I do not believe there are to exceed
250 idle miners in Spring Valley at this time. Advertisements
are posted in Spring Valley calling for 500 miners at Streator;
fifty at Yoimgstown, Ohio; 200 at Centerville, Iowa, and sixty
at Sandoval, 111. An agent of the last-named company was in
Spring Valley, but could secure no men. I have seen a letter
from the office of the Secretary of the Miners' Union at Spring
Valley to the Chenoa Coal Company which says: " Now, if you
would guarantee me that men could make $2.50 per day, or you
make them up to that, I would send you twenty-five good men.
APPEALING TO THE GOVERNOR. 139
if you would build them houses to live in, as all the single men
is about out of here. There is agents here every day paying
men's fare to go to all parts of the country to dig coal, so you
see it will be hard to get men if they can't make $2.25 or $2.50
per day."
In the above I have given you an accurate report of the ex-
pressions and views of others, and of the situation as I found it.
I believe that there should be an organized system of relief
established by the citizens of Spring Valley outside of those en-
gaged in the mining industry, for the benefit of women, children,
and sick persons only, and continued until the necessity for or-
ganized charity had ceased. I ascertained that there had been
no action taken by the township or county authorities in their
official capacity to relieve any want and destitution that may
have existed. Respectfully submitted.
Joseph W. Vance, Adjutant General.
The slur about the miners preferring to Hve
on charity instead of work is paraded with
an eagerness which bhnds the "general" to
the fact that his own statement further along
that " there are not 250 idle miners in Spring
Valley," where there had been 2,500, proves
that these people did not prefer charity to
work. He pauses with evident relish on the
statement " that nineteen licensed saloons are
doing business at this time, and apparently
well patronized." His anxiety to defend the
cruel oppressions of the people by showing
that the wretchedness is due to the viciousness
of the poor prevents him from seeing that he
has himself furnished the disproof of his own
HO A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
Statement. It is impossible that 250 miners,
idle ones at that, should be able to keep nine-
teen saloons "apparently well patronized."
The report is couched throughout in language
studiously calculated by such phrases as those
about preferring charity to work, the prosper-
ity of dealers in luxuries, the extensive patron-
age of the nineteen saloons by the 250 impe-
cunious miners, the non-existence of the alleged
destitution, and so forth, to create the impres-
sion that Spring Valley had no grievances but
its own wickednesses, and no need of other
relief than reform. But the lack of head again
upset the structure of the lacking heart by
concluding with a recommendation for an or-
ganized system of relief to be " established by
the citizens of Spring Valley, outside of those
engaged in the mining industry." This rec-
ommendation is made apparently for the sole
purpose of implying a slander against the
Miners' Relief Committee, against whom no
open charges are attempted to be brought, but
its only effect was to undo all the elaborate
effort of the preceding parts of the report to
show that no need of relief existed.
This report throws no light on the condition
of affairs at Spring Valley. Any intelligent
reader can make from the evidence given in
APPEALING TO THE GOVERNOR. 14I
this book a much clearer and fairer statement.
But that such a document, in face of all the
facts, should have been submitted to the gov-
ernor by a high official of the State, should
have been received by him, and without
rebuke or correction, despite its open incon-
sistencies of statement and ugliness of temper,
should have been given to the public as the
only contribution the representatives of the
people could or would make to the relief of
Spring Valley, is a social fact of immense
import. It shows how high class hatred runs
between the rich and the people in America.
It shows that the downfall of the republic has
gone so far that the people have lost their
hold on their rulers. These are not afraid to
flaunt openly their contempt of the people,
and to display unreservedly their subservience
to the real power that governs the American
people — the money power — the power of the
few comparatively millionaires and corpora-
tions who do the thinking and leading in courts,
markets and legislatures for the 250,000 per-
sons who, according to Thomas G. Sherman,
in his article on " The Owners of the United
States," in the Forum of November, 1889,
already possess this country. No one who knew
that on one side of the Spring Valley case,
142 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
there were a dozen and more of the greatest
milHonaires owning America, besides two or
three very powerful and very impudent and
very disloyal corporations, and that on the
other side there were only a few thousand
outraged citizens, would have dreamed that
any governor would allow even a tone of sym-
pathy for " the people " to escape him officially.
It is safe in America for " rulers " to treat the
people with contempt; it is not safe for them
to thwart the plans of the money-power, not
even if they are plans to rob and murder the
poor. The money-power can prevent the
nomination, election or confirmation of any
official obnoxious to them. The people have
no power in politics except to choose between
two sets of candidates, selected by the myste-
rious forces of the caucus, and both wanting
office only to do the work and get the boodle
of the money-power. Why should a governor
or his adjutant-general care for the people?
They will beg for their votes like" Coriolanus "
in Shakespeare's play, but only that, like
Coriolanus, they may get the power with
which to betray them and the republic.
CHAPTER X.
THE CAMPAIGN OF SLANDER.
Not content that these hapless people had
been thus drawn into an ambush of starvation,
and driven upon the wasting summit of a
new and broader Starved Rock than that of
the Indian legend which shadows the Illinois a
few miles beyond Spring Valley, youhave taken
every means to rob them of the help and sym-
pathy of the public. The siege was made one
of moral as well as physical starvation. A
stream of false information was poured into
the ears of the country. Everything the min-
ers said was garbled, all that they did misrep-
resented. To such an extent was this carried
that it is literally true that not a single state-
ment on any crucial point has been made by
the company that was not misleading to the
public and unjust to the men.
To alienate public sympathy, which was
defeating the attempt to starve these men,
your agents have dwelt with ceaseless itera-
tion on the willingness of the men to live on
(143)
144 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
charity instead of work, although almost all
left their homes in search of work. You have
stated repeatedly, as you did in your letter of
August 24th, that you had offered the men
$1.75 and $2 a day to work in your middle
vein, and ingeniously made the unsophisti-
cated public believe that your men refused it
and preferred to live on charity rather than
work. You omitted to state that your middle
vein could give work to only fifty or one hun-
dred men, only two or four out of every hun-
dred you discharged, to all the rest of whom
you refused all work. Nor did you state that
the men offered to work there, but you would
not listen to them because they came in com-
mittee. One of the latest instances of mis-
representation of the men was the state-
ment in the letter to the citizens of Spring
Valley, published November 1st, that " the
final decision of the men is that they will not
sign any contract nor be governed by any
rules," the fact being that the men had made
every effort to get a two-handled contract out
of you, and had in mass-meeting agreed to
abide by the rules of last year.
Very cunningly was the campaign of slander
to check the streams of relief carried on. Only
special knowledge of the subject could save
THE CAMPAIGN OF SLANDER. 145
outsiders from being deceived, and this knowl-
edge the public did not possess. The pre-
possessions of many of the leaders of the busi-
ness world were unalterably against the men,
and they willingly believed the evil report.
The essence of " business " is to get out of the
workingmen more than is given them. It is
out of that margin of" profit" that our large
fortunes and gigantic business revenues are
scooped. One of the great model merchants
of Chicago was asked for a contribution of
some of his canned beef tea, for the sick
women and children of Spring Valley.
" No," was the reply, " we will give nothing
to men on strike." His philosophy was clear
and simple. The employer, like the king, can
do no wrong. To explanations, assurances,
offers of proof that the trouble was not a strike,
but a lock-out, his ears were deaf The work-
ingmen must be wrong. But " nothing is
asked for the men," was then urged; this beef-
tea is wanted for the sick women and children,
and I promise you it shall be given only to
them, and only upon a physician's order."
Still deaf in heart and head. " If the work-
ingmen choose to place their wives and children
where they will die for want of food, or medi-
cine, or doctors, so let it be. We will not do
146 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
anything. " Slanders against the miners lodged
easily in such soil; to weed them out was hope-
less. The inexperience of the general public
made them ready dupes to the stories that the
miners refused to work at high wages, because
they wanted higher; that they were bad and
desperate men; that the mines could not be
operated in competition with the mines of
southern Illinois unless wages were cut, etc.
You assured the public, through your letter to
the governor of September 25th, that there
was no profit in the operation of the mines,
and the public actually got to believe that
your mines were a sort of eleemosynary enter-
tainment run by you for the benefit of humanity
in general, and your miners in particular, with
no possibility of return to yourself. It now
leaks out that, while making these statements
to the public, a large stockholder in the
coal company was buying up the interests of
smaller holders. And while you were making
these misstatements, other mines were working
the same veins in your neighborhood with
success. The White Breast Fuel Co. of Iowa,
a powerful corporation, believed to be a sort
of Siamese twin-brother of the Chicago, Bur-
lington & Quincy Railroad, was spending a
great many "thousands of dollars at the same
THE CAMPAIGN OK SLANDER. 147
time a few miles away, in sinking shafts to
reach the same veins. Up to October all its
shafts had been failures, owing to water or some
other trouble, but the company cheerfully kept
on sinking new shafts. Its managers knew
what they were about. They had heard all
about the bugaboo of " Southern Illinois
competition." They knew there was a prize
in the Spring Valley neighborhood, and that
it was well worth sinking thousands of dollars
to get to it. Such facts make it ridiculous to
waste time over your assertion that the mines
were not profitable.
Well informed, indeed, must he have been
who could detect all the different varieties of
untruths with which the cause of the men was
met in street, parlor, newspaper, business office.
During a visit at Spring Valley I learned at
first hand that an offer had been made to the
company, at the instigation of business men,
anxious, naturally, to see the miners at work
again, by about fifty miners, to work the
middle vein, where .only that number could
then be employed. The offer had been sent
on to the head of the company for approval or
the reverse. Imagine the surprise with which
I read in the next day's issue of one of the
leading newspapers of the country a telegram
148 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
from spring Valley announcing that the com-
pany had offered the miners this work, and that
the miners had refused it— just the reverse of
the facts.
In an interview with the manager of -the
company I asked why you had decreed the
destruction of the miners' union.
" Just look at that," he said, in a charmingly
confidential and I-don't-mind-telling-you-all-I-
know sort of air, " and you'll never ask that
question again."
What he had to show me was a little four-
page circular of the " By-Laws and Rules "
governing Lodge 26 of the Miners and Mine
Laborers.
" What is it you specially object to? " I
asked.
" All of it, but look particularly at this Rule
XIII.: 'Any man found with another man's
tools, shall be subjected to the following pen-
alties: First offense, suspension for ten work-
ing days; second offense, suspension for thirty
days; third offense, unconditional discharge
from'the works.' Now," he said, " how would
you like to have your employes usurp the right
of discharging your workmen?"
Of course, I wouldn't like that if I were an
employer, and I said so. I went away con-
THE CAMPAIGN OF SLANDER. 149
vinced that-there was more in the " tyranny of
labor organizations " than I had believed.
This was so important that I spent some time
getting at the bottom of it.
The truth — carefully withheld by the man-
ager — was, I found, that these dreadful rules
and by-laws were a joint agreement which had
been made between the company and the men
for their mutual convenience in settling the
various questions that arise in mining between
employer and employe. They were the com-
pany's rules as well as the men's.
The use of detectives has become a feature
of the " harmony " between American labor
and capital. It is one of the most significant
symptoms of the true condition of our indus-
trial relations. Espionage and tyranny have
always gone together. Power that has to
uphold itself by the use of spies is, self-con-
fessedly, a power that stands by force, not by
consent. The use of spies by a government
shows that it is despotism, because it is not
founded on the free consent of the governed.
The use of spies by an employer is proof con-
clusive that the relations between him and his
" hands " are not those of free contract. It is
one of the mischievous features of the present
system that it has made the captains of Indus-
I50 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
try SO rich, and taken them so far away from
actual touch with the people, that they have to
depend on the report of intermediaries and
detectives. These, by resistless laws of their
kind of human nature, will tell their principals
the things they think these would like to
know, and will create, if they cannot dis-
cover, the conspiracies and bugaboos which
make their services continuously indispensable.
Spies sent from Pennsylvania worked in the
Spring Valley mines for months before the
lock-out of December, and it was no doubt
largely on the report made by them that the
policy of the company was determined. De-
tectives, claiming to be Pinkertons, were sent
to town during the troubles between the com-
pany and the men. It was on the strength of
the inebriated imagination of one of these
worthless men that the idea gained credence
that the miners — the most peaceful men in
the world — contemplated a resort to mob vio-
lence. These lying reports found ready echoes
in the guilty consciousness of the company that
its lock-out was a daily repeated act of violence
against the lives of the people. The com-
pany's office was hastily converted into an
arsenal, and repeating rifles with their deadly
ammunition were sent in large quantities to
THE CAMPAIGN OF SLANDER. 151
defend those whose only assailants were their
own consciences and the mercenary imagina-
tions of spies. These detectives went so far
as to make their defiling rendezvous in the
church.
While the people, with incredible gentle-
ness, were bearing this great burden of want,
wondering, as Father Huntington said of them,
" with a look of bewilderment creeping over
their faqes — wondering why they must die,"
your associated millions put out such asser-
tions as this, over the signature of your repre-
sentative, the president of the company,
in a letter in the Chicago Times of October
lOtli: " If property has depreciated in value, it
is the result of a condition of anarch}', There
is no law in Spring Valley to-day. Property
rights are not recognized there, nor is the life
of any man safe there, after dark unless it be
that of a man who is well armed and able to
protect hiinself. " This was indeed stoning
those who asked for bread. Little need be
added to what Father Huntington says in his
letter on page 71, to show that these people
not only had not the brutal instincts which
could find gratification in violence, but had the
wit to know how -irretrievably any disorder
would hurt them. Such a slander could have
152 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
been uttered against this deeply injured com-
munity in this hour of suffering only by the
heart which had deliberately created misery to
make dividends. It was not true, but it helped
create public opinion against the people, and
checked the relief. The charge was especially
cruel, because Spring Valley has always been
phenomenalh' peaceful. In four years there
has only been one murder there, and that was
done by a railroad hand, not a miner. Crime
of all kinds, has been practically^ unknown.
People went to bed safely without locking
their doors. For a new town with a popula-
tion of 5,000, gathered suddenly from all parts,
and out of all nationalities, this is a record
which can probably not be matched elsewhere.
It confirms what has been said about the select
character of the people. They were the pick.
Even during the excited days when — no out-
break of any kind having taken place — the
streets were taken possession of by heavily
armed men, deputy sheriffs, called in because
the company said it expected trouble, and when,
following them, several companies of militia
came with loaded guns and fixed bayonets,
the people kept their temper on the whole
marvelously. Some stones were thrown,
some windows broken. The little disorder
THE CAMPAIGN OF SLANDER. 1 53
there was, though not justifiable, was, Father
Power declared, provoked by the behavior of
the deputies. The grand jury of the county,
mostly farmers, and not partial to labor union-
ists, could find nobody deserving of indictment,
and when the militia went home, they sent back
contributions for the relief of the people they
had been summoned to shoot. Mr. Murtha,
marshal of Spring Valley, says: " I have been
a policeman in London and elsewhere in Eng-
land, marshal in La Salle for many years,
marshal here, I have been for twenty years
in one way and another an officer of the peace,
and in all that time I have never seen a quieter,
more peaceful and law-abiding town than
Spring Valley." This was said, too, during
the lock-out, and after the affair of the deputy
sheriffs, and the militia. The attitude of
the miners when the deputy sheriffs and
militia were quartered on the town sug-
gests many resemblances to the behavior
of the people of Boston under the provoca-
tions of the presence of the British soldiers in
1770, except that the miners were more pa-
tient than the Bostonians. The miners called
the citizens to unite with them in a mass-meet-
ing June 2d, at which the following preamble
and resolutions were adopted:
154 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
Whereas, The Spring Valley Coal Company, after having
locked us out since the 29th day of April, without having given
us any information of why they did so; and,
Whereas, Htiving now brought to our city without cause
or warrant the sheriff and posse, for the purpose of creating
disturbance in our otherv.dse peaceable city, who have insulted
and abused a number of our citizens who are pursuing their
ways peaceably, not having violated any law; therefore, be it
Resolved, That we, the citizens of Spring Valley, condemn
the action of the Spring Valley Coal Company as unwarranted,
pernicious, and un-American, and calculated to disturb the
peace of the city, thus prostituting the rights of our citizens to
serve their private ends ;
Resolved, That though these parties are here for the pur-
pose of causing disturbance, we will thwart them in their efforts
by counseling peace and a strict observance of the law, which
they are determined to make us violate ;
Resolved, That a committee be appointed to wait on
Mayor Duggan and request him to assert his authority and
bring to justice those parties who have been brought here
without his leave or warrant.
We heard much from Spring Valley of an-
other favorite accusation against the men:
That they are prevented from working by their
leaders, who are bad men, who terrorize the
good men, etc.
In truth, every important step taken by the
miners, as by labor unions generally, is by
secret ballot.
The men vote just as they choose and in
perfect security.
In this the labor organizations are far more
democratic, far more observant of the opinions
THE CAMPAIGN OF SLANDER. I 55
and rights of dissentients than the organiza
tions of capital. There is nothing in labor
unions comparable to the dictatorial power
exercised by the managers and trustees of
corporations. The unionist has a freedom of
speech, and vote on all questions, which the
stockholder does not know.
The miners were published to the world as
having " refused to accept their own offer," in
declining to work when the company in
October posted a notice calling for miners to
go into the middle vein at the wages which
the miners, through President McBride's letter,
had said would be satisfactory to them. The
men were entirely right; they refused to go to
work because the company made it a neces-
sary part of their proposal that the men should
give up their union, and make their contracts
as individuals. To have surrendered this point
would have been to surrender something much
more important than the rate of wages. They
did not " refuse their own offer," for the
recognition of their union was the most im-
portant part of their offer. But this unjust
and untruthful color was given their action
and heralded through the country in press dis-
patches, and triumphantly quoted by the busi-
ness class as another proof of the perfidious
156 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
and shiftless character of the working people.
The ingenuity with which, in this and other
countless ways, the course of these unfortu-
nate miners has been tortured into seeming to
be the opposite of what it really was, has been
nothing short of diabolical. Going among the
men, nothing has interested me more than to
see how this continuous and perverse misrep-
resentation of what they said and did mysti-
fied them, until in a kind of daze they came
to accept it humbly, as part of their lo.t,
something in the order of nature, that the
well-to-do, the business class, should be for-
ever unable or unwilling to understand them.
Rather an unwise and unsafe attitude this, it
has often seemed to me, for a minority, even
if rich, to place themselves in with regard to
the vast majority of the people.
It was the company, not the miners, which
" refused to accept its own offer." October
iith a notice was posted in the company's
window, that a limited number of men were
wanted to work in the middle vein, under
" Streator rules and conditions." It is part of
the Streator rules that the men's organization
is recognized by the company.
At a mass-meeting of the miners in Spring
THE CAMPAIGN OF SLANDER. I 57
Valley, October i ith, the following resolutions
were passed:
R.-sohi'd, That we send a committee to Manager Dalzell to
inform him that we will resume work on the same conditions as
La Salle — namely, 82 >4 cents per ton and twenty inches of
brushing.
Henry Hill, Joseph Hercer, and Archy
Hamil were appointed on the above committee,
with the addition of IMessrs. W. Bailey, of the
Gazette, and Mr. Johnson, of the Sentinel.
This committee retired from the meeting
and had a short interview with Mr. Dalzell,
who said he was instructed to have nothing to
do with the committee in any manner, and he
could not listen to any proposition from them,
nor give them any satisfaction whatever.
The meeting had been called because of a
notice being put up in the office window to the
effect that the company was going to start the
middle vein Monday, and would give employ-
ment to a limited number of men. The num-
ber of men that can be put to work in that
vein is between 50 and 100. The committee
asked Mr. Dalzell what the conditions in that
vein would be. He told them he could not
tell them as a committee; but, if any one applied
for work as an individual, he would tell him.
After much discussion, the miners arrived at
iSB A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
the conclusion that the middle vein was being
started for the same purpose as it was the ist
of June — to use fifty or sixty men for the
purpose of enslaving several thousand — and
that the purpose further was to break the
miners' organization, which if accomplished
would subject the miners to abuses they have
before experienced, and with which the present
reduction could not be compared. The fol-
lowing resolution was then adopted unani-
mously:
Resolved, That no man apply for work in the middle vein
until the company is prepared to give all work and treat with
us as a body.
In a communication to the press the miners
explained that there are many men who can-
not understand the English language, and, if
they applied in person, they could not tell
what conditions the company would impose-
in their contract. Of those who speak English
there are many who would not properly un-
derstand the contracts, as the men claim that
experience teaches that they are not couched
in plain language, and that they need the
closest investigation and consideration. The
coal companies take every advantage of the
miners when they succeed in compelling them
to make agreements in this way ; and then
THE CAMPAIGN OF SLANDER. 159
hold that they (the miners) are in honor bound
to abide by them.
" All this trouble is being made by a few
leaders who never dug a pound of coal," was
another remark the representatives of the
company often made to prejudice the public.
" Which of the leaders do you refer to ? " I
asked the superintendent, for all of them, as
far as I knew, were practical miners, and had
worked in the Spring Valley mines.
" There's Tom Brady, for one," he said;
" he never swung a pick in his life."
" How is this, Brady?" I said to the secre-
tary of the miners' organization, when I next
saw him, " People say you have no right to
represent the men, for you have never been a
miner."
" Look at that scar," he said, rolling down
his stocking; " that's where my leg was
smashed by coal falling on it while I was
workinor; in the mines. I have never mined
in Spring Valley, but I was check-weighman
here, by the consent of both the men and the
company, and the check-weighman must be a
practical miner."
Even if the leaders were not miners, why
should not the employed be as free to choose
their representatives as the employer ? The
vJ
1 60 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES
president of the company never mined a ton
of coal. The directors never mined a ton of
coal. Are the rights of representative gov-
ernment in industry for the rich only?
This readiness to misrepresent any fact so
as to prevent the public from getting the ma-
terials for a true 'understanding of the case
went to recklessness and beyond. Turning
back to the advertisements offering lots for
sale on pages 24 and 29, the reader will see that
they are all signed by the Spring Valley Coal
Company. These advertisements were circu-
lated in newspapers and pamphlets for five years ;
hundreds of thousands of dollars' v.'orth of lots
were sold through them, and yet the president
of the coal company, who has acted as your
spokesman throughout the whole business, de-
clared to the public, over his own signature, in
a letter dated October 8th, in the Chicago
Times: " The Spring Valley Coal Company
has never, so far as my knowledge goes, of-
fered lots for sale. It has never, to my knowl-
edge, disposed of any of its realty. The sale
and purchase of lots at Spring Valley have
been entirely private transactions with which
the company has had nothing to do." If the
reader will compare these amazing assertions
with the closing lines of the advertisements
THE CAMPAIGN OF SLANDER. l6l
given above on pages 24 and 29, he will fit
himself to judge correctly of the value of all
the other assertions coming from your repre-
sentatives.
One of the officers of the company repeated
to me the favorite refrain of their letters, inter-
views, and statements that the men did not
want to go to work, and had made no eff"ort to
get back to work.
I knew better than that, and said: " It is
only a few days since the men decided, in their
mass-meeting, to make you an offer to go to
work in your middle vein, at the same prices
paid in Streator, where about fifty could be
employed, and sent you a committee with the
proposition."
" We don't recognize committees," was the
reply.
Because the men had come in a committee,
this gentleman was willing to make the statement
that " the men " had never tried to get work.
To any one of the general public too little
familiar with the facts to detect the lurking lie,
this assertion would have conveyed the impres-
sion it was made to convey, that the company
was anxious to open the mines, and that the
men didn't want work, and would rather live
on charity.
1 62 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
The public has been misled by your agents
about the facts of the business, as well as about
the doings of the workingmen. In their vari-
ous communications to the public the coal
company have dwelt, as the main line of de-
fense, and with great effect, on the compe-
tition of the coal of southern Illinois. They
have succeeded thereby in creating the wide-
spread belief that this cheaper southern coal
was driving the dearer coal of Spring Valley,
and the rest of northern Illinois, out of the
market. Speaking of this, the president of
the company says: "The operators in north-
ern Illinois cannot pay from 30 to 50 per cent,
more for mining their coal and compete in the
markets with coal costing from 30 to 50 per
cent, less for mining." Again, he says: '' If
we could mine and produce our coal at Spring
Valley at the same cost that it is mined and
produced for in southern Illinois we would
then be on an equal footing in these markets,"
etc.
By these, and many other reiterations of
the same point, the idea was thoroughly dis-
seminated among the public to the disadvan-
tage of the miners, that they persisted in de-
manding wages at which the northern Illinois
mines were being driven out of business by
THE CAMPAIGN OF SLANDER. 1 63
the southern Illinois mines. This was done so
successfully that the first point made against
the writer whenever I began a discussion with
a business acquaintance, of the case of the
Spring Valley miners, was sure to be: " It is
impossible for these mines, with their thin
veins, to compete with the thick veins of the
southern mines. If the miners won't take less
the Spring Valley Coal Company says it will
have to shut its mines for good."
Fortunately, or unfortunately, according to
the point of view, the facts of this bugbear
competition of southern with northern Illinois
coal are accessible to all. They disclose that
it is a phantom, a shadow good enough to fight
the claims of the working people with, but not
good enough to stand the light of investiga-
tion. This would be more than surprising if
we had not had in this whole degrading busi-
ness so many other illustrations of the same
mongering of facts. In truth, the trade
morality of our day thinks it all right for one
bargainer to mislead another as far as he can.
Let the buyer beware." Special Commis-
sioners Gould and Wines made a thorough
inquiry into the excuse thus proffered for the
terrible course taken at Spring Valley, and re-
port that there is nothing in it. Nothing in
i
164 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
it ! The whole fabric of the company's justifi-
cation of its action in inaugurating the lock-
out, in the application of the hunger-screw to
o-et lower wages, rests on the allegation that
they were made necessary by this southern
competition. The president of the Spring
Valley Company said, in his letter to Governor
Fifer, September 25th, justifying the offer of
35 cents a ton : " We have made all the con-
cessions that we can possibly make to our men
and be able to maintain ourselves in a com-
petitive market."
But the special commissioners of the State
of Illinois report, officially, that there is noth-
incr in it. This ground of defense occupies the
principal place in all the company's state-
ments. The facts will be found given in full
on pages 13 and 14 of Messrs. Gould and
Wines' report. Their conclusions are thus
stated:
" In 1883 the first mining district and Bu-
reau County,* taken together, reported 25.6
per cent, of the total output of the State,
and 27 per cent, of the value of all the coal
produced; while in 1888 they reported 30 per
cent, of the total output of the State, and
36.4 per cent, of the value of all the coal pro-
* Spring Valley is in Bureau County.
THE CAMPAIGN OF SLANDER. 165
duced. They had gained on their rivals,
within the State, in five years, 4.4 per cent, in
tonnage, and 9.4 per cent, in price, instead of
losing ground, as they claim that they have
been doing for a long series of years past."*
The commissioners conclude: " We dismiss
from further consideration by us the claim
that the diminution of profits in mining in the
first and second districts is due to the increased
production of coal in southern Illinois. It
appears to us to be not only not proved, but
disproved by such statistics as are at our com-
mand. "
A deep condemnation is pronounced upon
you in these colorless official words.
Your lock-out was unnecessary.
Your nicely built defense, with facts and
figures so skillfully dovetailed, is a sham.
What aspect does this put upon your treat-
ment of these people?
The contradictions and absurdities in the
statements put out by these great business
geniuses, speak for themselves. For instance:
Your spokesman figured out in his letter of
August 24th, that, if the miners' demand of 85
cents a ton were conceded, the company would
* On account of the lock-out no comparison can be made with the fig-
ures of 1889.
1 66 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
lose 1 7 y2 cents a ton. It was then offering 3 5 ,
nominally 75, cents a ton for mining. It has
since settled at 823^ cents, 2 i^ cents less than
the ficrure on which the above calculation of loss
was estimated. If these figures were correct, it
is now losing about 15 cents a ton. It was to
get the opportunity of losing 1 5 cents a ton that
the manager of the company based the offer of
his superintendent to take the mines and pay
him a bonus of i 5 cents a ton. It was for the
privilege of losing 15 cents a ton that he has
been printing and scattering broadcast pam-
phlets, " To Miners," urging them to go to
Spring Valley, has been appealing almost with
frenzy to the public for their support through
every channel possible, has more than doubled
his first offer to the men. It is by doing busi-
ness on this principle of losing 15 cents a ton,
no doubt, that the enormous fortunes repre-
sented in the Spring Valley enterprise have
been created.
Is it not strange that, of such transparent
iup-glins as this with common sense and busi-
ness sense, public opinion should be made?
These incidents give only a glimpse into the
methods of this campaign of slander and siege,
of moral starvation.
Where will public indignation find the words
THE CAMPAIGN OF SLANDER. 1 6/
to express itself when it realizes that the pur-
pose of these misrepresentations was to cut off
the sympathy of the world from these poor and
betrayed men, so that, unrelieved, they might
be forced by your partners, hunger and cold,
to sell you their lives below cost?
CHAPTER XI.
FEED MY LAMBS.
The men who went to work, in November,
after the surrender, got no pay from the com-
pany until the middle of December. They got
credit at the stores, but there were many fami-
lies whose heads were away, many who could
not get work, because the mines are not yet
cleared up, and therefore could not get credit.
The distress of the summer, therefore, con-
tinued into midwinter. This was anticipated
by Adjutant-General Vance in his report
given above, in which he says that the neces-
sity for relief would probably exist for several
weeks after the mines have resumed opera-
tions.
November 27th one of the leading men among
the miners wrote in a private letter: " A great
many of our men have not started to work yet,
as only a limited number can possibly work at
the repairing. * * * There are
some who have a hard time to keep body and
soul together. We have no money in the
(168)
FEED MV LAMBS. 169
treasury. The men are ii-ya poor condition,
and somewhat discouraged."
An inquiry was consequently sent to a resi-
dent of Spring Valley, asking what relief was
still needed, and to whom it should be sent.
His reply puts the last touch to this picture of
man's inhumanity to man. With other infor-
mation, it was the basis of the following dis-
patch, furnished by the write rand sent out by the
Associated Press on Thanksgiving Day, 1889:
Chicago, November 28. — The Spring Valley Coal Com-
pany, to prepare people to celebrate Ihanksgiving, have refused
employment upon re-opening the mines to miners who, during
the lock-out just ended, took a leading part in the distribution
of food, clothing and medicine to the sick and starving. This
relief forced the company to make terms twice as good as those
offered, although it did not save the men from severe reduction.
The company has also declined to re-employ officers of labor
unions, and has compelled all miners to abandon unions. As
there is no other industry in Spring Valley except that of this
coal company, this refusal to employ banishes the members of
the relief committee and leaders of the union from Spring Val-
ley. They are penniless, having had no work for seven months,
like all the working people here.
Some of these banished men have families of seven and eight
children. This action of the company has so intimidated the -
other miners that they decline receiving contributions for tho.se
still in want. They are afraid that if they are found distribut-
ing relief they will be also told to leave. Distress will last at
least until midu inter, as the mines are ready for only a few
men, and the heads of many families are away looking for work.
November earnings will be small, and not paid until the middle
of December. Relief will be needed, but the union has been
I/O A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
broken up, and the miners do not dare form another relief
committee.
Here was a speedy illustration of what the
surrender of the union meant to the men when
worn out by the ceaselessly applied torture of
famine, they went back to work as " indi-
viduals." When Mr. Bourke, who had been
president of the union, applied for work along
with the rest who had stampeded, he was told
that there was no place for him. When Mr.
McNulty, who had been secretary, made a
similar application, he got a similar answer.
Henry Hill, too, has had to go. He was
never an officer of the union, never took any
lead in any dispute with the company. He
has been banished because, when the women
and children and the men who could not get
work began to starve, he gave himself to the
duty of relief. He was made chairman of the
relief committee. He worked day and night
dividing the provisions that were given, scour-
ing the country for more, hunting out the
worst cases of distress. He fed your hungry,
he bound up your wounded, he visited your
sick. As he did it to these; he did it unto Him
whom you call Lord! Lord! and, for doing it,
you have said to him, " Move on. There is no
place for you in Spring Valley with your seven
FEED MY LAMBS. Ijl
children and your wife. Take to the road.
You tried to save the lives we were trying to
cheapen. " C. W. , too, whose story I have told
above, when he applied for work, after the sur-
render, got the word which meant, " Move on.
You shall not live in Spring Valley if we can help
it." He was never an officer of the union,
never represented the men in any of their dif-
ferences with the company, has always worked
faithfully according to his bargain. His only
offense was that he had been a member of the
relief committee, and that he had fed " Him
who was a hungered," who, as " Chinese
Gordon " says, lives to-day in the persons of
the poor and suffering.
These men and the others refused work
were sober, industrious, good. men. The
" sacred right to work," of which we hear so
much, was denied them, simply because they
had been chosen by their associates to act for
them in the union or the relief work, and had
done it to the best of their ability. The re-
fusal of work is, so far as the coal company
had control, the refusal of the privilege of
living at Spring Valley, since there is no other
industry there, as the advertisements stated,
except coal mining, and the coal is all owned
by you of the coal company. Some of the
172 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
blacklisted men got public work to do for the
city ; the others have gone. The men who
have acted, as you would say of your own rep-
resentatives, as " attorneys," or " directors,"
or " purchasing agents," or " brokers," or
what not, for their fellows, as yours worked
for you in this very matter, have been for that
offense banished with their families. To get
lower and lower wages, and more and more
workout of your men, it is indispensable that
they should not be allowed to unite, that they
should be starved, that, when starved, they
should be cut off from outside relief, and that
any natural leaders who show themselves
should be weeded out. So these men must
move on, like Poor Joe, although they had no
money to move with, no place to go to, and
winter was on them. If they had bought lots,
not fully paid for, they must forfeit land and
money. Christian warfare stops murdering its
enemies when they pull down their flag ; but
business and the Apaches take a surrender
only to facilitate extermination.
The men had anticipated the possibility of
such tactics, and had endeavored to guard
against them. Before surrendering, knowing
it to be the practice of employers to black-
list the leaders of the men during strike or
FEED MY LAMBS. 1/3
lock-out, the miners put to the president
of the company, the direct question, whether,
if the men went back to work, he would
aeree that the leaders should also be em-
ployed. They received in reply the fol-
lowing explicit assurance over his own signa-
ture: " Regarding those men who maybe con-
sidered the leaders, and who are so largely
responsible for our difficulties, but who have
not been parties to any overt acts toward the
company, we will make no exceptions to their
returning to work and remaining in the employ
of the company, so long as they in good faith
live up to what they agree to do. We have
arranged to send men to Spring Valley, and
we are meeting with more success than we ex-
pected."
Badly whipped as they were, the men were
too honorable to go back to work, and leave
their leaders to be sacrificed. They would
have continued the hopeless fight still longer,
rather than submit to that. But this declara-
tion from the president of the company was
explicit and satisfactory. It came from a foe,
but still from a foe they supposed to be an
honorable one.
Immediately upon receiving this assurance,
that their leaders would not be discriminated
1/4 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
against, the men voted to go back to work.
Then they found that the pledge had been
given only to lure them to surrender. In its
public card in the following pages, it will be
seen, the company does not venture to make
any pretense that the banished men had been
guilty of any offense. If a tale of such duplicity
were put into a novel on the labor question,
all the critics would cry out against such
inartistic, because impossible, fiction.
Neither State nor nation has the power by
law to banish, but America's millionaires claim
and exercise it, though it is a function which
the government itself would not dare to assert.
The feeling with which this news was re-
ceived by the country was expressed with elo-
quent indignation by the New York Hcj'ald
in the following editorial, in its issue of Novem-
ber 29th:
A DISGRACE TO CI VILIZATIOX.
It is almost incredible that the Spring Valley Coal Company
should upon reopening its mines refuse employment to the
miners who took food, clothing and medicine to sick and hungry
folks during the terrible lock-out, and yet such is the news tele-
graphed from Chicago yesterday.
A more brutal and damnable action can hardly be conceived
in a civilized community. It has cowed the relief committees,
and supplies have ceased. Disease and starvation may stalk
unchecked among the helpless women and children.
When spring comes the sleek directors of this wealthy cor-
poration can point to the graves of those who perish this winter,
FEED MY LAMBS. 175
and say to their slaves: " If you would save your dear ones
from this fate, take the wages we offer you without murmur-
ing." Then the directors may go back to their homes and
thank God that they live in a land of liberty and charity.
The president of the company repHed to the
statements made in the Associated Press dis-
patch by issuing a card, which, on account of
its gross and angry personaUties, the Associated
Press declined to circulate. Omitting the
" abuse of the plaintiff's attorney," the card
said:
There has been no order given to not employ men at Spring
Valley who took " a leading part in the distribution of food during
the strike," as is alleged, nor as to any miner who was engaged
in the strike. When the men accepted the company's terms,
which were more liberal as to the price of mining than the
price paid at other mines in the State, more men signed con-
tracts the first day than we could possibly put to work, and
miners have been leaving other mines in the State and flocking
to Spring Valley in such numbers since work was resumed that
it has been impossible for the company to find work for all of
them.
Owing to the long strike our mines were not in condition to
work at their full capacity when work was resumed. We are
doing all we can, night and day, to get them in order, which we
hope to do by the middle of December, when we will be in
shape to double, if not treble, the number of men we are now
working. No better refutation of the infamous .slanders and
misrepresentations heaped upon the Spring Valley Coal Com-
pany and its officers can be given than the fact that not only
have all of our old men signed contracts, but that miners are
coming to Spring Valley from all over the State, seeking work
without our solicitation. Men generally go where they are
best paid, and where they can earn the most money.
176 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
In reply to the Herald, the president of the
company wrote a card, in the course of which
he said:
I do not ask or expect the public or press of the country
to accept any statements made by my company in refutation of
the misrepresentation and falsehoods that a partisan press has
subjected the Spring Valley Coal Company and its officers to
during the past six months, but I do claim that official state-
ments and records made by the authorities of the State of Illi-
nois ought to be accepted by a fair and impartial press as a
refutation of these slanders. Governor Fifer, of Illinois, a
republican, through his adjutant-general and the State Board of
Charities, during the past summer, and when the strike of the
miners had been on from four to six months, made a thorough
investigation of the condition of affairs at Spring Valley, and
the official report of these gentlemen is the best answer that I
can give to the infamous slanders and misrepresentations which
have been published in the press of the country.
Why there should be any suffering or destitution at Spring
Valley on Thanksgiving, when a miner can earn from $3 to $5
per day for the support of himself and his family, I am unable
to account for.
The following extract accompanied the letter,
though, as the reader will see, it has nothing
whatever to do with the subject of the Herald's
editorial.
My inquiries were more particularly made with a view to
ascertain the conditions as to the destitution, starvation, suffer-
ing, sickness and general sanitary condition. I requested the
mayor to point out the most prominent cases of destitution or
to have the supervisor of the township, who is ex-ofiicio over-
seer of the poor, do so, as I would prefer to base my representa-
tion of the situation to you upon personal observation. The
FEED MV LAMBS. 177
citizens with whom I conversed were repres;ntatives of the pop-
ulation of Spring Valley, and included physicians, druggists,
police, butchers, mechanics, miners, merchants, professional
men and business men generally.
The general sentiment expressed by these persons was that
the memorial presented to you and signed by many of them
was a misrepresentation as to the condition in reference to
destitution, starvation, suffering and sickness; that without any
consultation or concert of action on their ]iart, the memorial
was prepared and submitted to them for signature. Some per-
sons said they were opposed to the memorial as a whole; that
no such condition existed as was represented ; that there was no
starvation, destitution or sickness worthy of mention, but that
they had signed the memorial because, if they refused to do so,
they would be b lycotted in business. ()thers seemed to take a
different view. While they freely admitted the exaggeration in
reference to starvation anddestitution^yet they urged that there
had been a necessity for charitable work, and that this necessity
would probably exist for several weeks after the miners had
resumed operations. — Extract from Jaiiics IT. J'aiiie''s Report.
Concerning the card in the New York Times,
the Philadelphia Press said:
The facts in this case are clear. The president of the coal
company and his associates made money in the Spring Valley
mines by methods which led to a strike by starving men.
These methods were exposed by that well-known Episcopal
clergyman, Father Huntington, and by others. The exposure
aroused public sympathy and led to public aid, which rendered
the strike successful. There is even reason to believe that it
will advance wages throughout the Illinois mines. Replying to
published letters asserting that the company was refusing work
to miners engaged in relief distribution, to officers in the union
and to all who would not leave the union, the president of
the company denies that " orders " to this effect were issued,
and asserts that " all our old men have signed contracts." We
12
178 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
sincerely hope this is true. We would like to believe that even
he has seen the error of his ways. We hope he has. At the
same time, a more direct denial would have been better adapted
to convince, and he could clinch it by a brief statement from
the union or its officers.
To the cards in the Times and Herald, the
following" rejoinder was made. It was circu-
lated by the Associated Press, and, as the
comments of a large number of papers showed,
was universally accepted as the indisputable
truth of the matter :
The Spring Valley Coal Company denies the truth of the
statement sent out by the Associated Press, that the coal com-
pany refused employment, upon reopening the mines, to the
miners who took a leading part in the distribution of food,
clothing and medicine to the sick and starving, and to the offi-
cers of the union during die lock-out, and has also compelled
the miners to give up their union. The statement was true;
the denial is untrue. It is vital the fact should be understood,
not tu make or unmake any one's reputation for veracity, but
that the public may know what means are being employed to
terrorize and impoverish the working people.
In a letter written the day before Thanksgiving a prominent
member of the Spring Valley Relief Committee said :
" The company are putting the men to work as fast as they
can — that is, the men they want to give work to. Seven of us
have been refused work, and five of those seven for certain will
get no work in Spring Valley. Their names are James O'Hare,
Andrew Bcurke, Thomas McNulty, Chris Weimer and Henry
Hill. They will have to go and' seek work elsewhere, which is
pretty 'hard law' in the winter, after seven months" idle time.
As far as sending relief here now is concerned, none of the
miners would take anything to distribute for fear they would be
dealt with like these five, and be made victims and have to leave
FEED MY LAMBS. 1/9
the place. If you could do anything to find work for me I
would go to Chicago."
Confirmation of these statements is right at hand from the
other side. In its issue of Thanksgiving Day the Spring Valley
Gazette, the organ of the business men, not the workingmen,
said :
" At the miners' meeting Monday evening the men donated
$li8 to help out of town a few men who have not yet got work
from the coal company. Six men are on the list — namely: A.
D. Bourke, Harry Hill, Thomas McNulty, Clement Lalliment,
Ed. Travis, and Chris Weimer. The $il8 was the entire bal-
ance of the money remaining in the hands of the relief com-
mittee. "
Of these men who are " on the list," Bourke was the president
and McNulty the secretary of the Miners' Union up to the end
of the lock-out, Hill was the chairman of the Rehef Committee,
and the others active members.
A later letter states that four of the men, Bourke, Hill, Lal-
liment, and McNulty, the leaders of the union and the Relief
Committee, have gone into their involuntary exile, and by the
same mail comes the Spring Valley Gazette stating that Bourke
has gone as far away as Missouri. These men have to leave
their wives and children behind them.
As to the union the miners, besides submitting to the banish-
ment of their old leaders, are compelled to sign contracts by
which they bind themselves, individually, not to take part in
any combination to obtain better wages, and agree to leave the
settlement of all grievances to the sole judgment and decision
of the company. The company refuses the union any recog-
nition in matters between itself and the men.
The value of the company's denial may be sufficiently judged
from the fact that the only quotation it makes from the Associ-
ated Press dispatch is garbled by changing the word lock-out to
strike. The trouble at Spring Valley was officially declared to
be not a strike but a lock-out by the special commissioners em-
ployed by the governor of Illinois to investigate it. The
anxiety of the company to mislead the pidilic on this point is
l80 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
evidence tliat they cannot afford to stand by their action in ap-
plying the torture of famine for seven months to 5,000 people
in order to buy their labor " below cost."
The New York Sun of December i6, 1889,
in printing this .statement, said, editorially:
"It is a conclusive reply."
The Philadelphia Press said: " Denials
count for little in the face of these facts, and, if
the president of the coal company wants any
one to believe him, he must meet these pains-
taking and accurate statements not with abuse,
but with proof that his company has given
work to the men whose only crime was dis-
tributing charity to their mates."
And the Pittsburg Dispatch declared that
this recapitulation of the facts made "fine
mince-meat" of the denial by the company.
No further denial was attempted. Any
one who has made himself familiar with the
facts of this case, and has a taste for the work,
can pick out dozens of contradictions and
obvious misstatements in the statements made
by the company. But it is a profitless task to
spend time hunting for dropped stitches in a
web, the warp and woof of which are spun
altogether out of deceit and wrong-doing.
But it is worth while, in passing, to point out a
characteristic illustration of the reckless will-
FEED MY LAMBS. l8l
ingness of these dtnployers to make a point
regardless of the facts. In its card of No-
vember 29th, the company stated that it " has
been impossible for the company to rind work
for all of them " — the miners who had applied
for employment. But the next day, in the
card of November 30th, the spokesman of
the company says:
" Why there should be any suffering or des-
titution at Spring Valley on Thanksgiving,
when a miner can earn from $3 to $5 a day
for the support of himself and his family, I am
unable to account for."
Friday the needs of selt-defense created a
demand for some such statement as that the
company had not refused employment, but
had been unable to give it to all. That state-
ment was supplied accordingly. Saturday
created a demand for the statement that the
company had furnished all with employment
yielding $3 to $5 a day, and that statement
was supplied forthwith.
Such are the advantages of life- long practice
of the principles of supply and demand.
But the company, in their first denial, make
one assertion, upon which it will be profitable
to pause. Your spokesman says:
" No better refutation of the infamous slan-
1 82 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
ders and misrepresentations heaped upon the
Spring Valley Coal Company and its officers
can be given than that not only have all of our
old men signed contracts, but that miners
are coming to Spring Valley from all over
the State seeking work without our solicita-
tion.
The writer of the card conceived, as he wrote
that, to say " All of our old men have signed
contracts" would sound well, and he said it,
utterly untrue as it was, as the facts we have
given show. But that is a mere aside, which
can be dismissed as an extemporaneous caper
in a life-long waltz with fancy. But the clos-
ing declaration that the miners who had flocked
into Spring Valley, upon the resumption of
work, had come there " without solicitation,"
conceals a maneuver so deliberate, so char-
acteristic of this whole business, and so mis-
chievous, that it must not be passed by.
In the Spring Valley Gazette of November
14, 1889, when the company was in the thick
of the negotiations with its locked-out men for
their return to work, this paragraph was
printed:
" ' A Word to Miners ' is the title of a neat
eight-page pamphlet received Monday from
Erie, Pa. It is descriptive of the city of Spring
FEED MY LAMBS. 1 83
Valley, and the mines to which it refers, in
glowing terms. "
Erie, Pa., is the home of the president and
spokesman of the coal company. The pam-
phlet is herewith given in full. It is an impor-
tant document.
A WORD
TO
COAL MINERS.
(185)
A WORD TO COAL MINERS.
There is no State in the Union containing a larger Bitumi-
nous Coal area in proportion to its square miles than the State of
Illinois, and there are no mines in the United States where a
miner can have steadier work at more remunerative wages than
can be had at the most favorably located mines in northern Illi-
nois. There is a reason for this that can be readily understood
by any intelligent miner: In the first place the consumption of
Bituminous Coal for steam purposes, by railroads, is enormous
in that section, arising from the fact that Illinois contains more
miles of completed railroad to its population than any other
State in the Union. The consumption of coal by these rail-
roads is a steady one throughout the year, which is a great ad-
vantage in the way of furnishing steady work to the wage-
worker. The northern boundary of the coal fields of the State,
where the veins of coal are well defined and regular in their
formation, terminates at about the 41st parallel of latitude, at a
point where the Illinois River reaches its most northern limit.
The great States of Wisconsin and Minnesota, as well as por-
tions of Illinois and Michigan north of the 42d parallel, are
destitute of coal. The coal from these northern Illinois fields
also finds a ready market in the States and Territories west
and northwest of the State of Illinois. With fully seven months
of winter and the thermometer often falling to 30 or 40 degrees
below zero throughout this large area, with its large and active
population, practically without timber, coal is not only a ne-
cessity in the great cities, but also to the farming community.
By referring to the geological map of the State of Illinois, it
will be seen that the northern limit of the coal fields of the State,
as stated, is between the 41st and 42d parallels of latitude, and it
(187)
1 88 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
will also be observed that the great city of Chicago is within the
same parallels. Drawing a line due east and west through Chi-
cago, and north and south through Spring Valley, Illinois, it will
be found that the Spring Valley mines are about 55 miles south of
the east and west line, and about 100 miles west of Chicago,
midway between the waters of the great lakes and the Missis-
sippi River, and that the great lower and upper veins of the
Illinois fields do not extend beyond eight miles north of Spring
Valley, and that their southern terminus is in the 37th parallel
of latitude, being about the southern boundary of the State.
This great middle field, as officially laid down by tlie geological
map of the State of Illinois, cannot be better described than by
comparing it with a ham, the hock starting at Spring Valley,
Illinois, and extending south. Within this formation, only the
middle or upper veins are found. East and west of it, to a
greater or lesser extent, the great underlying veins are found,
but in no instance are the upper and lower veins found together
in their complete formation outside of the counties of La Salle
and Bureau, and even in these two counties not exceeding 40,000
to 50,000 acres. Taking Chicago as the great railroad center
of the West, with its present population of over 800,000 people,
and its prospective growth, it is hard to even approximate what
its future coal consumption will be. We know that in 1SS8
Chicago consumed over three millions of tons of Bituminous
Coal, and it is within bounds to say that the railroad consump-
tion of coal by the roads extending north, west, and southwest
of Chicago, for steam purposes, during the same period, was
not less than five millions of tons. If you want to sell coal, or
in fact any other commodity, you must find a market for it. A
large market means a large consumption, and a large consump-
tion means steady work for the producers of the commodity
consumed, as well as fair wages for the wage-worker; and, if
there are any coal fields in the United States better located in
this respect than the mines at Spring Valley, we have yet to find
them.
When the last geological map of the State of Illinois was
issued in 1875, ^^^ ^^^^ was not then known that the Spring
A WORD TO COAL MINERS. 1 89
Valley coal fields contained laotli the middle and lower veins of
coal of the State ; but practical working has fully demonstrated
this fact. There are three well defined and workable veins of
coal at Spring Valley, the first vein averaging about four feet,
and, at a depth of 150 feet, has not been worked. The second
vein is from five to seven feet thick, at a depth of 250 feet below
the surface, with a good roof and comparatively free from water,
and is worked on the room and pillar system.
A good miner doing an honest day's work, can mine from
four to five tons per day, and are now doing it, which at the
present price paid for mining in that vein, namely, 72_J^ cents
per ton, will enable him to earn from $3.25 to $4 per day, and
the men now working are making these wages. The lower
vein, 350 feet below the surface, is mined on the long wall
system. The coal is from three feet eight inches to four feet
thick. Tlie under-cutting is mainly in fire clay, although in
some of the rooms or faces in two of the shafts, the rock is
found underlying the coal to a limited extent in some of the
working places. The roof is soapstone, about fourteen feet
thick, and about twenty-four inches of it above the coal has to
be removed. There is no water in the lower vein; it is practi-
cally free from faults; the level of the vein will not vary five
feet in a mile; no powder is required; after the bearing in is
done, the coal falls from the compression of the roof. Two
men are allowed a face of forty-two feet to work in. The per-
centage of the nut and slack combined is only thirteen per cent.
The screens are seven-eighths of an inch, and the price paid for
mining this vein is 82 }4 cents per ton of 2,000 pounds of
screened coal, including twenty-four inches of brushing. A
good miner can mine four tons per day, and in many cases five
tons.
THE TOWN OF SPRING VALLEY.
Less than four years ago, where the town of Spring Valley
now stands, was an open prairie containing a kw scattered farm
houses. The town is located at a bend on the northern bluff
of the Illinois River, fronr 90 to 100 feet above same, in the
I90 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
counties of Bureau and La Salle, on a high rolling prairie. No
more beautiful, fertile, and productive agricultural region can
be found on this continent than is tributary to Spring Valley.
In less than one year from the time work began in developing
the mines, there were i,ooo inhabitants in the town, and in
1888 the population was estimated to be between 4,500 and
5, 000 people. Fine brick blocks, churches, schools, private
residences, hotels, national bank, electric lights, ^\ater supply,
and last but not least, snug and con>fortable houses for the
wage-worker, were constructed as if by magic. Three trunk
lines of railroad pass through Spring Valley, two of which
have been extended there since the town was started, namely,
the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, and the Chicago & North-
western, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific being the third.
No town of its size and certainly no coal property has superior
railroad and shipping facilities than Spring Valley, and in addi-
tion, by the Illinois River, it possesses an uninterrupted water
• communication with the Gulf of Mexico. The development of
the Spring Valley Company's property and the output of coal
reached in so short a period, has been phenomenal, and as the
main product is produced under the long wall system, being
the largest mines worked under this system in the United
States, if not in the world, to-day, its ability to meet all possi-
ble demands upon it in the future, is equal to that of any
Bituminous Coal mines in the country. There are six shafts
or mines now open, and when fully developed and in operation,
will have a capacity of not less than 1,000 tons of coal per day
each; in 1888 ihe output per day reached as high as 4,000 tons.
To the steady, sober and industrious coal miner, no better
locality can be found to locate in than Spring Valley, and
no coal field where steadier work and the highest wages
paid for mining coal can be relied upon. To the indus-
trious miner willing to do a fair day's work for a fair day's
wage, and who wi.shes to own his own home, and live "under
his own vine and fig tree," the Spring Valley Company are
prepared to erect such homes for them, to be paid for in
monthly installments, on long time, at a rate of interest not
A WORD TO COAL MINERS. 191
exceeding five per cent, per annum on the actual cost of
the house and lot, and these monthly installments will be so
little in excess of the rent usually paid for such premises, that
at the end of a few years the wage-worker will have his own
home. The Spring Valley Coal Company do not want agitators,
bummers or drunkards, nor will they employ such knowingly.
Men who live off of the labor of others and whose occupa-
tion is dependent upon their ability to excite .strikes and differ-
ences between the wage- worker and the operator, are the worst
enemies of labor. Every intelligent employer of labor should
know that his interests can be best promoted by paying the
highest possible wages his business will permit, and by making
those who work for him feel that he has an interest in their pros-
perity and welfare, and that he is ready and wilHng at all times
to concede to the individual wage-worker his just and equitable
rights.
HOW TO GET TO SPRING VALLEY.
It takes two or three hoiirs to reach Spring Valley from Chi-
cago by the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad, and the
fare is $3. The Spring Valley Coal Company can now give
steady work to additional miners, with good tenement or board-
ing houses to live in, at reasonable prices. Men vA^o are ac-
customed to mining anthracite coal, iron ore, or other minerals,
can soon successfully work at Spring Valley.
Those desiring further information, can address:
Genl. Manager, Spring Valley, 111.
Genl. Agent, Chicago, 111.
Spring Valley, III., November ist, 1889.
192 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
This pamphlet re-enforces the exhibition
made by the advertisements and pamphlets de-
scribed above and used to " boom " the town.
It shows how systematic and expensive were the
solicitations to new miners to come to Spring
Valley, to buy lots, to overstock the labor
market, an-d to menace the locked-out men al-
ready there with the permanent loss of their
places. It baits again the old trap of the
" home" and " the vine and fig tree." It is
silent as the sphinx aboutyour lock-out, still in
force, which had lasted eleven months for one-
third the men and seven months for all of
them, ignoring that, it renews the promises,
so cruelly falsified, of the original rainbow ad-
vertisements of " steady work" and the "highest
wages.". The terms in which it describes the
six shafts " now open," and the price which
is" paid of 82^ cents a ton, are obviously
designed to conceal the fact that no wages
were beingearned at all, and that the six shafts
were closed to all the men, except fifty or
sixty who were working in the middle vein.
The uninformed miner reading this pamphlet
would believe Spring Valley to be in the mid-
career of busy prosperit}'; not until he arrived
would he learn the truth, and discover that the
invitation he had accepted was but a " busi-
FEED MY LAMBS. 1 93
ness man's " maneuver to use him against
brother workingmen. This pamphlet was
openly addressed to miners. It was dated
November ist, it was widely circulated, it is
signed by the officers of the company, it soli-
cits miners to come to Spring Valley, even
gives the railroad fare from Chicago; and yet
the spokesman of the company has the face to
declare, in a public card over his own signa-
ture four weeks later, that the miners who
filled Spring Valley came there "without our
solicitation."
When the president of the Spring Valley
Coal Company says the miners now in Spring
Valley came " without solicitation," he has
to face even more damnatory evidence than
this pamphlet. In his letter of November 2d,
to the men quoted above on page 1 7 1 , he says :
" We have arranged to send men to Spring
Valley, and are meeting with more success than
we expected. "
It is by such strokes of " enterprise " that
the conditions of dissatisfaction and the sense
of wrong are created among the working
people.
It is seldom that facts like these — as real
facts of supply and demand as any others —
get to the public. Professors of political
13
194 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
economy do not come near enough to realities
to discover these things; the workingmen do
not know how to bring them before pubhc
opinion. All possible pains are taken to con-
ceal these tactics, to keep them subterranean,
and deny them, as is done in this case. But
it is such deceit and betrayal and false guid-
ance that make the difference to the working-
man between mere subsistence and killing
poverty. To the employer they mean success
in getting lower wages and higher dividends;
he lives at the comfortable altitude where the
alternations of the economic climate are only
between the more and less of too much. He
seems to be unable to understand the suffering
or the resentment of the working people
whom his business stratagems (so pleasant to
him) reduce from too little to nothing.
CHAPTER XII.
" MILLIONS IN it! "
" How can such things be true? " the public
ask, appalled. " Even if there is no humanity
or justice in these men, their interest ought to
restrain them. They lose when their mines
are shut, the sales of land arrested, the com-
pany store closed, the coal traffic of the North-
Western suspended. What can the motive
be? These men are not monsters who would
torture the poor when there is no money in it
for them."
There is money in it. There is millions in
it.
It has been a good speculation for all of
you, this successful attempt to cheapen the
men and destroy their union. Besides the
profit that will be made by forfeiting all the
money,* and regaining possession of the lands
* The latest nevs from Spring Valley is that the company is pushing
the men hard for back payments on the lots bought by them previous to
the lock-out. In almost all cases this must end in the forfeiture of the
lot and all the money so far paid in. This forfeiture will be the direct
result of the lock-out, and the company will make a handsome profit out
of its own wrongdoing — thereby violating one of the fundamental princi-
ples on which social life is based.
19s)
196 A STRIKE OF MIIXIOXAIRES.
•wMdi Willi of itself roll up, in the conrse of
years, to thoMsaiiids per cent, of profit on the
wihole inves.taneinit. The coal company has
40,000 acres of coal land, or sixtj'-six sqnare
miles, the largest estate of any coal-mining
CC' mpvaay in the vrorM.
Tiie circialar, * A Woird to Miners,'" qmoted
above, states that there aie * three wdl-defined
and workable veins, the first at a depth of I yO
feet, averaging fomr feet; * » »
the second, 250 feet below the sianiace. five to
seven feet tMck; * * * -;-;
third, 550 feet below the snrface, three feet
eii^ht inches to fomr feet thick."" The formmla
msed bv mining emgineers in these fields to find
the amomnt of coal in these veins gives i ,000
tons of coal per aoie to every foot of thickness
in the vein. Hence, according to the com-
panv's statement, that its three veans ft>ot np
aboiai fomrteen feet thick, it mmst have 14,000
tons of coal per acre for the whole 40,000
acres. This womld be 560,000,000 tons in alL
On tiae cost of diggjimg this, they have secanred
by their war on the workingmen a irediiBCltjoB
of not less than tea cents a ton, besides ad-
vanta£!es in the iron-dad ooandtract wortii solid
M
MILLIONS IM IT." 1 97
money. This saving of ten cents a ton on
your 560,000,000 tons makes the pretty penny
of $56,000,000. The total investment of the
coal company has not been much more than
$1,000,000 — it pays taxes on only $166,994
— and this single campaign, according to its
own figures of the amount of coal, yields a
profit of 5,000 per cent, and more; a profit
from this single summer's campaign of over
$50 for every dollar invested.
You have no right to growl with these fig-
ures, for they are your own. But the truth
is they are incorrect. The company, in
its " Word to Miners," grossly exaggerated
the amount of coal to be mined, and did so
as a part of its tactics to beguile innocent and
trusting workingmen into its paradise of
" steady employment " " at $3.50 to $4 a day."
But the public must not be misinformed, even
though it would serve the company right to let
its figures stand to its own confusion. Mining
engineers who have made a thorough investi-
gation of the coat fields in the vicinity of
Spring Valley agree that there are, as nearly
as can be figured out, about 5,000 tons per
acre. On this basis, your mines will yield
200,000,000 tons, and your midsummer cam-
paign of starvation and slander against your
198 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
men will give you a saving of $20,000,000 in
the cost of mining it.
The paid-up capital of the coal company is
$2,500,000. At that figure, as the annual
capacity is 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 tons, the
saving of ten cents a ton will of itself pay a
yearly dividend of 4@6 per cent, on the
whole of it. No wonder that your bashaw
confidently announced that he would keep the
mines closed a year, two years, as many
years as needed, and that, if needed, he would
make the grass grow in the streets.
You who own the coal company could afford
even a longer idleness. Time cannot take
away your coal, nor your lots, nor the rail-
road ; but it began, the day after the lock-out,
to eat away the hearts and homes, souls and
bodies, loves and lives of the poor ones from
whom you had determined to steal the
$20,000,000 by the brute force of your mill-
ions and monopolies.
Mankind shuddered when Louis XIV. gave
the order that the Palatinate, alien to him in
race and religion, be ravaged. What will the
public, to which you appeal, say of you when
they comprehend the true nature of the ruin
you have visited for your "profit" on men,
" MILLIONS IN IT. 1 99
women, and children of your own country,
fellow-citizens, and your " partners " ?
What has been done at Spring Valley is not an
extremecase; ithassimplybeen given extrapub-
licity. It is a perfect illustration of our monop-
olistic morals. You owners of Spring Valley
have simply pushed a little farther than poorer
men would have dared to do, the principles of
buying cheap and selling dear, and the manip-
ulation of the " Eternal law" of supply and
demand. The Spring Valley case is only a
well-illustrated instance, which shows how
rapidly the industry of this country is passing
out of the control of business men into that of
business animals, whose prototypes must be
sought among the carnivora that go on all fours,
and who need, as Emerson said of similar men
of his time, to be educated out of the quad-
ruped state. The majority of our business
men are being consumed, as well as the work-
ingmen, by such monsters. The workingmen
feel the devouring tooth of" monopoly" more
keenly and more promptly than business men,
simply because they are weaker, and have a
narrower margin between themselves and death.
Prescience should arouse among business men
an even sharper ferment of reform than dis-
tresshas created amongthe workingmen. Busi-
200 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
ness men should make common cause with the
workingmen. Only by such a cooperation
can the country be saved from the catastrophe
toward which its rights, prosperity, and liber-
ties are being hurried by the greed and lust
of a small body of the richest and most danger-
ously disloyal men popular government has
ever been threatened by
CHAPTER XIII.
SPRING VALLEY ONLY A SKIRMISH.
The trouble between you and your men at
Spring Valley is one of the incidents of a social
war which is raging in the soft coal regions.
In this civil strife the mine-owners and rail-
roads of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illi-
nois are fighting with each other, and with the
workingmen. It is part of the history of this
calamitou struggle that the workingmen have
opposed it, and have advocated an enlightened
policy of cooperation, which, if the capitalist
and corporations had been as civilized, would
have put an end to the industrial war with its
incalculable losses — losses in life, as well as in
property. It is a significant fact that it was at
the suggestion of the workingmen that a joint
organization of mine-owners or operators, and
miners was formed in 1885, which for three
years established peace in this industry. On
this subject the following from the report on the
coal-miners' strike and lock-out in northern
Illinois, by J. M. Gould and Fred. H. Wines,
(201)
202 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
special commissioners appointed by the gov-
ernor, August, 1889 (page 10), is of interest:
" The executive board of the ' National Fed-
eration of Miners and Mine-Laborers,' in
session at Indianapolis, September 12, 1885,
issued an address requesting the mine operators
of the United States to meet with said board,
' for the purpose of adjusting the market and
mining prices in such a way as to avoid strikes
and lock-outs, and give to each party an in-
creased profit from the sale of coal.'
" At a convention held in Chicago, October
15, 1885, at which both operators and miners
were present, this call by the miners alone was
indorsed, and a joint committee of three oper-
ators and three miners was appointed to in-
vite the cooperation of all engaged in coal-
mining in America, and to call a meeting of
operators and miners in joint convention at
Pittsburgh, on the 15th of December, 1885.
" At the Pittsburgh convention a scale of
prices for Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and
Illinois was drafted, which was afterward ap-
proved by the ' First Annual Joint Conference
of Miners and Operators ' at Columbus, Ohio,
in February, 1886. This scale was known as
the Pittsburgh scale,
" The scale was revised at the second an-
SPRING VALLEY ONLY A SKIRMISH. 203
nual conference, also at Columbus, in Feb-
ruary, 1887.
" It was again revised at the third annual
conference at Pittsburgh, in February, 1888."
This movement to substitute the methods of
reason for those of force became abortive through
the failure of the operators — employers —
to sustain it. The mine-owners of southern
Illinois refused to enter the organization.
Those of northern Illinois consequently with-
drew in 1888, and the final disruption was
brought about in 1889, by the withdrawal of
the Indiana operators. The movement was
started by the workingmen and loyally sup-
ported by them, but killed by the business and
railroadmen. In southern Illinois, the miners,
despite the hostility of the operators, did their
best to establish the system, and through their
union succeeded in advancing wages to the
figure set for their district by the joint conven-
tion. The workingmen were faithful in all
instances. But the Grape Creek Coal Com-
pany of Illinois, although one of the parties to
the scale, after agreeing to it, refused to accept
it, and kept their men out of work for two
years, until at the end of one of the most
righteous and obstinate labor strikes on record
the men were compelled to give in. Such
204 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
action as this, and the failure of the mine-
owners of southern Illinois to join the move-
ment, and the withdrawal of the northern
Illinois and Indiana operators brought this
most hopeful effort for industrial peace to a
close. The differing attitudes of the working-
men and the employers show the difference in
their philosophy produced by the difference in
their circumstances. The workingman repre-
sents the multitude — the people. He knows
by a sure instinct that war is fatal to his wel-
fare. The business man represents the few
who aspire to supremacy over the many by
war. He welcomes the struggle, with all its
chances, for one of these chances is that he
may win great wealth, and be elevated above
all his associates. The workingman stands
for the democratic principle in business ; the
capitalist for the aristocratic.
Behind the failures of the peace movement
in the coal industry, may be easily seen the
malign influence of the railroads. Space for-
bids to give the details here, but broadly, the
refusal of the southern Illinois mines to enter
was because by doing so they and the railroads
with which they are interlinked would have lost
the advantage ofmaking secret and unfair freight
rates. The withdrawal of the northern Illinois
SPRING VALLEY ONLY A SKIRMISH. 205
mines had a similar element in it. At the open-
ing of the Pittsburgh conference of 1888, a
leading operator boldly charged that there had
been a " conspiracy between the railway officials
of the Northwestern railroads and the opera-
tors of the Northwestern mines of Illinois to
shut out of the great markets of the North-
west, as far as they were able, the coal mined
in Pennsylvania and in Ohio."
The principal owners of the important coal
mines are often owners and officials of the allied
railroads, and they believed they could do
better in a demoralized market, with the help
of " rebates," than they could by assenting to
any open and harmonious arrangement to
settle prices and wages. They might be the
" fittest " who would survive the general ruin.
The baleful disorganizing "rebate" appears
again in the closing scene, when at the last
joint convention, that at Columbus, March 12,
1889, the Indiana operators withdrew. From
the debates in the last joint convention, it is
apparent that the mine-owners of Indiana
calculated that they could make more money
by breaking up this arrangement than by
perpetuating it. If they withdrew from the
mutual obligations it imposed on them with
respect to their competitors of Ohio and
206 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
Pennsylvania, who still remained, and their
employes, they could have recourse to two
sources of profit. First, they could obtain
from the railroads that connected them with
Chicago such discriminating freight rates as to
give them an insuperable advantage in the
market; second, they could whipsaw down the
wages of their miners to almost any point by
the use of the unemployed labor, so plentiful on
all hands. They withdrew, and the joint con-
vention, after four years' existence, adjourned
sine die. In an eloquent speech,* begging the
operators and miners not to separate, Col. W.
P. Rend said:
It is not for the interest alone of the miners tliat a settlement
sliould 1)6 reached. It is not for tlie niterests of the operator
alone that a settlement should be reached. It is for the interest
of both. It is for tlie interest of the great jirinciple of conciHation
that, for the first time, I believe, in the industrial history of the
country, has been given effect to by the miners and operators.
* * * It is apparent that this question has got to be settled
by one of two methods. We have got to employ one of two
agencies : the agency of force or reason. Gentlemen, which
shall we employ? Shall we resort to brutal strikes and lock-outs
again? Is that your wish? Is it the wish of any operator here
to go back to the old system; to the old plan of fighting the
miners, the plan that entails loss of capital, the plan which
brings with it oftentimes scenes of bloodshed and disorder to
the State, and which engenders feelings of enmity and hatred
* From the official verbatim report of the Fourth Annual Joint Con-
ference of Miners and Operators held at Indianapolis, February 5-7, and
Columbus, IMarch 12-14, 1889. (Pages 112, 113, 114, 115.)
SPRING VALLEY ONLY A SKIRMISH. 20/
between capital and labor? I do not believe that you want
to go back to that old system. The other system is that
of reason and intelligence, of using the highest power and
the highest faculty that God Almighty has given us. Three
or four years ago we decided that the agency of reason was
the proper one for us to employ. We met together ; opera-
tors and miners both raised their voice in condemnation of
the system of strikes that had characterized, and I might
say brutalized, the industry before. After a great deal of
discussion and several conferences, we found a common
standing ground. We formulated scales. We established
peace, we established concord, we established good-will, where
before there had been either open warfare or an unfriendly
peace, and where before there had been discord, enmity and
hatred. We have accomplished marvelous results, gentlemen,
during the last three years. I do not think that the most san-
guine of the originators of this plan had believed that such
gi-and results could be accomplished in such a short time. Now,
gentlemen, it is not necessary for me to delay you in going over
the history of our dealings during the past three years. Suffice
it to say that we are convinced of the wisdom and justice of the
principles of arbitration.
* * * When this movement was first organized it was
treated with ridicule. It had no friends. Many of the operators
of the United States looked upon it as averse to their interests.
They said : " Clentlemen, you will build up a gigantic Miners'
Union, that will use its strength to make war upon us."
" You are giving strength to the enemy," they said. I did not
believe it. A great many of them called it a delusion. They
said: "It is an impossibility for so many interests to agree
where there is such a conflict and such a complication of inter-
ests. It is impossible to adopt any scale or any general
arrangement between operators and miners." Where it was
not looked upon as folly, it was regarded by many operators
as a vague chimera. We have demonstrated by three years'
trial and experience that it has been a strength to the cause
of capital; it has helped capital. (Applause.) Gentlemen, no
2o8 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
man here in this room, I beheve, representing the operators,
will deny the fact that the last three years have been the best
period that we have experienced in the entire history of the
coal trade. You have derived a benefit from it. I have been
benefited by it, and it is useless, it is false, for any man to get up
and say that this movement has been injurious to the interests
of capital. It has been a benefit to the interests of capital and
labor, and you have both been benefited by this peaceful mode of
settlement. Before this, as I said before, there was a general
feeling of hostility. We looked upon one anotlier as enemies.
We did not understand one another, gentlemen. We did not
understand each other's position. The miner felt that he was a
victim of wrong, of grave oppression. He felt that capital was
a hard taskmaster, that ground him down. He felt justified,
whenever an opportunity presented itself where he could take
advantage of his employer, in taking that advantage. The
pain of his suffering became more intense, from the belief that
his employer was the cause of his privation and misery. On
the other hand, the operator looked upon the miner as unrea-
soning, and as turbulent. He felt that no matter what con-
cessions he made, no matter what he did, no matter what act
of kindness he would extend, he would be rewarded with in-
gratitude. These opinions were largely false, and due to mis-
conceptions. Their falsity has become apparent from the happy
experience of the past three years. We have now become ac-
quainted, and mutually understand each others' purposes and
sentiments. The men we have met here — I say it with no
idea of flattery, no idea of currying any favors; I ask no favors
of any man (Applause) — but I say that the men we have come
here to meet, we feel it an honor to meet. They are men
of intelligence; they are thoughtful men, and they mean to
act fairly and justly. They state their case fairly, and they
argue it well. We find they are better equipped and belter
prepared with arguments than we are. We find able men here
representing the miners. We are proud to meet men of this
kind. Now we are dealing with intelligence, where oftentimes
before we had to deal with ignorance. Sound sense, good judg-
SPRING VALLEY ONLY A SKIRMISH. 209
■*.■
ment and a spirit of fairness characterize tire demands and
claims here presented I)y the miners' delegates."
The break-down of the joint organization of
miners and operators was followed by a season
of strikes and lock-outs, ending in great losses
to all, and in reductions of wages to the min-
ers; but the problem of organizing for the
common good, thus selfishly abandoned by
the capitalists, has been taken up again by
the workingmen. After the lock-out and
strikes of the soft-coal region were over.
President John McBride, of the Miners' Pro-
gressive Union, issued the following call for a
convention of five States:
National Progre.ssive Union Miners )
AND Mine Laborers, [-
Gen. Office, Columbus, Nov 18, 1889. )
Tlie miners of northern Illinois, Indiana, ()hio, western
Illinois, western Pennsylvania and West \'irginia, whose coal
goes into Western and Northwestern markets, are hereby noti-
hed that a convention of this competitive district will be held
in Indianapolis, Ind., at 10 A. M., on Wednesday, December
18, 1889.
All miners not organized are requested to meet at their
respective mines to select and send delegates to this conven-
tion.
The objects of this convention will be to consider and
determine upon a policy by and through which the interests of
the miners and mine laborers may be better protected and their
wages advanced during the coming year.
The joint movement of operators and miners for the adjust-
ment of mining rates in this district gave good results -to both
14
2IO A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
parties while it lasted, but the withdrawal of Illinois and Indi-
ana operators from the movement and the bitter warfare waged
by them since May last against their employes makes it prac-
tically impossible for us to meet them in convention next
spring.
The experience of the last six months proves to us that min-
ers in no one or two States in this district should again enter
into an agreement with their employers and allow miners in
other sections of the district to do all the striking. We must
stand cr fall together as a district.
We prefer peace rather than contentii n with the operators,
but the good of our craftsmen in this field now depends that we
either secure a general agreement or depend upon our own
efforts to win just and equitable rates and conditions. The lat-
ler, judging from present surroundings, seems inevitable during
the coming year, hence we advise the consideration of a policy
that will include, among other things :
1. Restriction either in hours, tonnage or by a series of sus-
pensions at stated intervals throughout the entire competitive
district.
2. The creation of a large defense fund between this and May
I, 1890, to be used for the carrying out of the policy agreed
upon by the convention.
The conditions of the coal market now warrant better prices
than are being paid for mining, and, if our judgment is not seri-
ously at fault, next year will increase the prosjierity of the coal
mining industry. It will be our own fault if we do not receive
better returns for labor performed next year.
We now ask that each miner do his duty, and urge immediate
election of delegates. Fraternally yours,
John McBride, Prest.
In opening the convention, called as above,
President McBride said, among other things :
The history of the "joint movement" in this competitive
district during the past four years has clearly demonstrated that
SPRING VALLEY ONLY A SKIRMISH. 211
in an intellectual contest we have been able to hold our own
with the owners and operators of mines, and I do not hesitate
in saying that, were disputes between mine employers and
employes to be adjusted by arbitration, instead of by a resort
to strikes, the ability of your representatives, aided by facts and
the logic of the situation, would have retained prices and bet-
tered mining conditions throughout the competitive district ;
but the discordant and demoralized state our forces were in,
together with their weakness financially, seemed to court the
destruction of conciliatory methods, and invite a conflict
with operators which could not but end in loss and disaster
to us.
To relieve the distress of those on strike and to reduce their
wants to a minimum, is a duty devolving upon our craftsmen
who continue at work, but to our shame it must be said that
this duty has been but indifferently discharged in the past by
the great majority of those who had work to do, and as a re-
sult their fellow-miners who were striking and suffering were
compelled to accept defeat, starve or appeal for aid to a sympa-
thetic and charitable public.
If miners and mine laborers would but do their duty toward
each other this need not occur ; and I am sick and tired of being
humiliated year in and year out by having to jiublish to the
world that my craftsmen are so lacking in energy and enterprise
that, rather than make proper financial provisions in time of
peace to protect their interests during periodical and apparently
inevitable wage contests, they prefer to be classed as paupers
and mendicants. This language may sound severe and harsh
to you — it certainly is not pleasant to me — but it is true, and
we are forcil)ly reminded of its truth by the fact that during the
several months' strike of the nine thousand miners and mine
laborers in Indiana and Illinois only about forty thousand dol-
lars in money and goods was contril)uted to aid them. This
would be but a small amount for the more than sixty thousand
nime workers of this competitive district to pay, hut the records
show that fully one-half of this sum was contributed by others
than mine workers, and this showing is not creditable to us.
212 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
No wonder that operators so loudly boasted of their ability to
starve their miners into submission.
The convention adopted the following reso-
lutions:
Whereas, The almost total defeat of the miners of North-
ern Illinois and in the block coal fields of Indiana has caused
them to lose by cessation of work for six months, and by re-
duced wages for the next six months, at least half a million
dollars, and to this may be added the amount of money con-
tributed by those not engaged in the strike ; and.
Whereas, The miners in other parts of the competitive
field are now in danger of having prices and conditions similar
to Indiana and Illinois forced upon them; to prevent such a
calamity, mine workers of the entire district must decide, and
decide quickly, to cease complaining about their inability fo live
upon their meager earnings, and purpose to make a mutual and
determined fight along the line by contributions of a few dol-
lars each to a fund that will be large enough to guarantee the
success of a strike inaugurated to restore, not alone the old
rates in Illinois and Indiana, but an increased price throughout
the entire field. This must be done, or all go down to a lower
level. Therefore, be it
Resolved, That we favor the creation of a fund large enough
for both offensive and defensive purposes, and with this end in
view we recommend that mine workers throughout the entire
competitive district be assessed $i per month for the months of
February, March and April, the sum to be paid into the general
treasury; and
Resolved, That we advise our mine workers of this district
to consider, that, if an amount equal to one-half the money lost
through the failure of the late strikes was centered in a general
fund, it would prevent defeat in future contests for wage adjust-
ment. Be it further
Resolved, That the mine workers of this district instruct
their delegates to the national convention, to be held in Colum-
SPRING VALLEY ONLY A SKIRMISH. 213
bes, Ohio, at an early date, to vote for or against the creation
of such a general fund by the methods herein advised, and to
also provide for the election of a board of trustees and proper
safeguards to prevent the misuse of any part of the funds for
purposes other than those for which it is asked to be created.
Whereas, The reports of the delegates show that the
miners represented are almost unanimous in their desire to have
the eight-hour day imposed in the competitive district, either on
May I, 1890, or as soon thereafter as practicable, therefore,
be it
Resolved, That we ask the miners and mine \\orkers in this
competitive field to prepare to put the eight-hour day in force
on May i, 1S90, and that our delegates to the Columbus con-
vention urge the co-operation of miners.
Resolved, That we are in favor of a restriction in the output
of coal in this competitive field and leave to the Columbus Con-
vention to determine the best method of restriction and the
time it shall take effect.
Resolved, That this convention urge the miners of Illinois to
use every available means to establish a shorter interval between
pay days.
If there has been any movement among the
operators toward organization, it has not been
pubh"c, Hke all the proceedings of tlie miners.
But it is not likely any such movement has
been attempted. The forces at work among
the capitalists, are forces of selfishness and
disintegration, not of union for mutual benefit.
A desperate struggle is on for the partition of
the soft coal business of the country among the
leading railroads and their business favorites.
The interests of the miners, of the operators,
and of the public, must all stand in abeyance
214 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
until this process of coal monopolization is
settled. If it is settled by the survival of the
" fittest " of these anarchical contestants, it
will be found too late that another American
industry has passed under the absolute control
of a few men. These men will be able to fix
by the tariffs of a few railroad managers, and
by the votes of a half-dozen trustees, what
men shall be permitted to own and operate
coal mines, how much coal shall be mined each
year, what mines shall be operated, which
closed, what price the public shall pay, what
wages the miners shall receive, and at wdiat
points the industry of America dependent on
fuel shall or shall not be permitted to expand.
The men who have this power in the coal
market will have much to say, also, along with
similar lords of industry in other markets,
about who shall be senator, president, judge,
what laws shall be enacted, and how taxes
shall be apportioned among the people. Only
a fool can suppose that the republic of the
United States of America will survive the
continuance of such a system as this, which
before our eyes is being set up in the most
■ important departments of the life of the
American people.
CHAPTER XIV.
FIRST FRUITS — WHAT WILL THE LAST BE?
BONAMY Price, then Professor of Political
Economy at Oxford, visiting Chicago, called
about himself a parlorful of people, and asked
this question: " What is it specially distin-
guishes man from the brute? " There were
many answers, but his own was the only one
he liked: " Progressive desire. Like Oliver
Twist, man is always crying for more." By
virtue of this law, man, when associated as a
railroad, continually reaches out for more, more
railroad, more power. The locomotive is the
representative of our age. Concentrated in it
are all the tendencies of our civilization in
their intensest culmination. It stands for the
millionaire and the tramp, the overworked
■' hand," and the laborer displaced by machin-
ery, the corporation dominating the state, the
idolatry of the god of our day — the bargain.
Steam and machinery reach their climax in the
locomotive. The commercial fanaticism of the
right to do what one wills with his own, and
(215)
2l6 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
to buy i\nd sell anything, has found in the lo-
comotive the potent instrument which rides
over all the rights of the people in highways,
businesses, courts and government, and drowns
all protest with its screaming doctrine, that
public roads are private property, and that
private property is the government of the
many by the few, " of divine right," and not
to be questioned. This control of the high-
ways tends to become the control of the coun-
try dependent on the highway, and of all the
men and things therein. The framers of the
last constitution of Pennsylvania, knowing this,
sought to counteract this dangerous tendency
in the field where it was foreseen it might pro-
duce its most calamitous effects, by forbidding
any railroad to own or operate coal mines.
But, as they at the same time neglected to
make it impossible for the railroads to become
the owners of the courts and legislatures,
through which this prohibition was to be en-
forced, the wise foresight was of no aval]. The
sole effect of this provision of the constitution
has been that the railroads became the ovi'ners
in fee simple (very simple) of the government
of the state, as well as of the forbidden coal
fields. To-day a few law-breaking, anarchy-
practicing railroad giants, w^ith a few enor-
FIRST FRUITS. 21/
mously wealthy individuals bound to them
by invisible but .unbreakable money-belts,
own all the hard coal fields of the great State
of Pennsylvania. In the language of the con-
gressional report on the labor troubles in
Pennsylvania, in 1888, "seven coal-carrying
railroads, which are at the same time coal
miners, may be said to own or control all the
anthracite of the United States."
The report further says : " During the first
forty years the mines were worked by individ-
uals, just as are farms. The hundreds of em-
ployers were in active competition with each
other for labor. The fundamental law of sup-
ply and demand alike governed all parties.
As to engagement, employer and employe
stood upon a common level of equality and
manhood. Skill and industry upon the part
of the miner assured to him steady work, fair
wages, honest measurement, and humane
treatment. Should these be denied by one
employer, many other employers were ready to
give them. The miner had the same freedom
as to engagement, the same reward for faithful
service and .protection against injustice, that
the farm hand possesses because of the com-
petition between farmers employing hands.
With the development of the railroad system
21 8 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
and its peculiar methods, the huv of competi-
tion was steadily restrained, and finally sus-
pended. To-day seven great carrying com-
panies are the real operators in the whole
region, and have either driven out the many
individual operators or else absolutely control
the few that remain. This virtual combination
of all employers into one syndicate has prac-
tically abolished competition between them as
to wages, and gradually but inexorably the
workmen have found themselves encoiled as
by an anaconda, until now they are power-
less.
The law of " progressive desire," which
drives the railroads to become the owners of
tonnage as well as the movers of it, has been
stronger than the law of the land. This law,
that the ownership of the highways grows
steadily into the ownership of the country
dependent on the highways, is to-day to be
seen in as active operation in the West as in
the East. Nothing produces so much freight
to the acre as a good coal mine; no other
source of freight is so concentrated, and so
easy to control as coal land. No single item
. of expense in railroading is greater than the
supply of coal. No other kind of commodity
is so certain always to demand distribution by
FIRST FRUITS. 2ig
the railroads as coal. It is possible to conceive
of each locality in the West turnini^ in upon
itself for the suppl}^ of its food; but coal is
found only in spots, and the business of dis-
tributing it is one railroad men know the world
will not outgrow. Hence the leading railroads
in the West some years ago began to imitate
the policy so successful in Pennsylvania, despite
the law — the policy of becoming the owners
of their own coal mines. In this way they get
at cost the enormous amounts of coal they use
themselves, and secure on most, if not all, the
coal used by their " provinces," the several
profits of mining, carrying and selling. The
Northern Pacific owns coal mines on the
Pacific coast; the Union Pacific, those at Rock
Spring, Wyoming; the Central Pacific and
Southern Pacific are supplied by their mines.
The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe gets coal
for itself and its provinces from its own mines
at Trinidad, Colo.; Pittsburg, Kan., and
other points. The Braceville, 111., coal
mines are the adjunct of the Chicago, Mil-
waukee & St. Paul. If the Chicago, Burling-
ton & Quincy did not own its own coal mines,
it boughtsome of its supplies from mines owned
by leading stockholders. Similar arrange-
ments have been made by the Illinois Central,
220 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
the Chicago & Alton, the Chicago & Rock
Island, the Wabash; by the Chicago & North-
Western at other points — as in Iowa — than
at Spring Valley, and by other railroads.
It would require a more intimate acquaint-
ance with the inner mysteries of the great
railroads than outsiders usually have, to be
able to say with certainty in what cases coal
mines are really owned by the corporations in
connection with which they are operated.
Sometimes they are owned by " rings " of the
managers, who thereby acquire the pleasing
and profitable power — nothing could ever
give them the right — of buying as officials of
che railroad, from themselves as individuals.
This works to the great advantage of the in-
dividual, who has great luck in getting good
bargains out of the official. We see here, no
doubt, one of the reasons why all our great
business geniuses make such point of the
sacredness of "individual enterprise." The
mines from which the Missouri Pacific and its
allied roads draw their fuel and coal freight
are understood to be largely the property of
the distinguished professor of the science of
" individual enterprise," who has been in con-
trol for many years of that main highway of
the Southwest. The "evolution " — to give a
FIRST FRUITS. • 221
respectable name to the proceedings of so
highly respectable men — which has made the
property of the many the property of the few,
and has converted yeomen into miners, and
miners into slaves in the hard-coal fields, is
already well under way in the soft-coal dis-
tricts. Good society meets the poor reformer
with the angry charge that he means to
divide up property, but it winks complacently
upon the commercial monsters who are
visibly dividing the property of their neigh-
bors and competitors among themselves. All
the evil features of the destruction of private
property and personal liberty in Pennsylvania
are being repeated in the coal regions of the
West, as illustrated in the rapid monopoliza-
tion of the vast coal deposits by comparatively
a few men controlling rates of transportation,
and by the misery and degradation forced
upon whole communities like yours of Spring
Valley, and like Brazil, Braidwood, the Hock-
ing Valley, and other places.
In this first short half-century the enthusi-
asts for improved transportation who so
humbly begged the State for charters to per-
mit them to take away other men's land with-
out their consent, for little experimental rail-
roads, and who so thankfully solicited and re-
222 * A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
ceived every gift of bonds, lands, money or
" county aid," have grown to be these giants,
getting from the strong meat of highway
monopoly the strength to reach out for land
monopoly and market monopoly. If these are
the fruits of the first fifty years, what will be
those of the next fifty years? If these are the
winnings of the inaugural era which has seen
only the consolidations of local lines into trunk
lines, what will be the winnings of the period
already begun, which will be signalized by the
union of the trunk lines into one or two great
railway trusts, operated by private citizens for
private profit, claiming the highways of the
nation as private property, and using this pri-
vate property as the jimmy with which to get
possession of all other property?
If the fuel famines of Kansas and Dakota, if
the extortions of the coal rings and trusts of
Chicago and Pennsylvania, if the ruin of Spring
Valley, if the pitiable poverty of the miners of
Pennsylvania, if the extermination of the indi-
vidual coal-mine owners of Pennsylvania and
Illinois, and the " division of property" taken
from them, among their powerful destroyers,
if these denials of the " sacred right to work "
and of " private property" are the fruits of
these first years, when these properties and
FIRST FRUITS. 223
privileges are still managed by men who have
sprung from the people, what will the fruits be
in the second and third generations, when all
this power has passed into the hands of those
who, by experience, education and habits of
life belong to another world than the com-
monalty, and who have acquired a taste for
powers and luxury that must be satisfied by
greater and greater levies on the people? If
these are the fruits of the grasping of coal
mines by the owners of the highways, and the
Napoleons of commercial conquest, what will
be the fruits of their ownership of the other
mines, the forests, and the factories, and farms,
all of which must in time be surrendered to
the " progressive desire " of the lords of in-
dustry?
CHAPTER XV.
PART OF THE MORAL.
Men do not lose nor lessen their personal
responsibility by acting through a corporation,
or an agent, or by an}' other indirection. The
growing shrewdness of the public will onl)' lay
a surer and heavier hand on those who smite
their brothers from behind that ancient and
uncanny creature — the corporate person —
and then claim immunity for their souls and
bodies, because their dummy has no body to
be kicked, and no soul to be damned. Of the
two leading authorities on the law of Ameri-
can corporations, Taylor says:*
" It is the opinion of the writer that the fic-
tion of the ' legal person' has outlived its use-
fulness, and is no longer adequate for the pur-
poses of an accurate treatment of the legal
relationst arising through the prosecution of a
corporate enterprise. By dismissing this fic-
^ Preface to " Law of Private Corporations," by H. O. Taylor. Phila-
delphia: Kay & Piros., 1884.
t Or moral or economic.
(224)
PAFT OF THE MORAL. 2^5
tion a clearer view may be had of the actual
human beings interested, whose rights may-
then be determined without unnecessary mysti-
fication; " and Morawetz says;*
" The existence of a corporation as an entity
independently of its members is a fiction;
* * * while the fiction of a corpo-
rate entity has important uses and cannot be
dispensed with, it is nevertheless essential to
bear in mind distinctly that the rights and
duties of an incorporated association are in
reality the rights and duties of the persons
who compose it, and not of an imaginary
being. "
What men do in managing enterprises char-
tered by the public is not " their private busi-
ness." In such affairs they are public func-
tionaries doing the business of the public.
Such men as public functionaries are as law-
fully and inevitably to be called before the
people by name for the public discussion and
criticism of their acts as any other public serv-
ants. " For, although," says Ruskin, " many
of my discreet friends cry out upon me for
allowing ' personalities,' it is my firm convic-
tion that only by justly personal direction of
* "Law of Private Corporations," by Victor Morawetz. Boston:
Little, Brown & Co., 1886.
IS
226 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
blame can any abuse be vigorously dealt
with."
He who acquires profits or property is
responsible for all the means that produced
them. lo-norance of this law excuses no man.
Step by step the " Model Merchant " has
pushed his right to buy cheap and sell dear far
beyond the necessary limitations of law, econ-
omy, morals and humanity.
Modern business under the leadership of the
Captains of Industry has developed into an
unnatural fanaticism of greed, producing a
seditious wealth and a morbid poverty.
Under the inspiration of this fanaticism, men
irreproachable in other relations of life proclairr)
and practice their right to consume the liveli-
hood, the liberties and even the lives of their
fellow-citizens in order to multiply superflui-
ties of power and luxury for themselves.
These fanatics of business — few but su-
preme — set a pace which is leading our busi-
ness civilization to destruction.
That the -sort of thing you have done at
Spring Valley, and others like you have done
in the valleys of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana,
and elsewhere, will be made conspiracy by
law if necessary, is certain as soon as the
public get to grasp the motive and the result
PART OF THE MORAL. 227
of such concerted attacks upon the lives and
hberties of the people. It will be in vain that
you who own and manage the North-Western
Railroad will repel with indignation and amaze-
ment the charge that you are in any way
responsible. You did not know what was
being done? You have accepted and continue
ready to accept its result. You only built a
railroad to a coal field, as any one might do,
and are not responsible for any wrong com-
mitted in the production of the coal of whicli
you were only the carrier? Your position is in-
finitely worse than that. Owners and man-
agers with you in the railroad were owners
and managers of the coal company and land
company, and your acts disclose a concert of
action with a common purpose in the co-op-
perated management of those properties. The
question of conspiracy is a question of circum-
stantial evidence, and of the public judgment
of the evidence to be expressed, it is to be
hoped, some day by a jury, in the " good old
times " that are coming, when the public wits
will have developed to the point of taking
away from the poor and lowly their present
monopoly of conspiracy. The building of the
road and the booming of the town went on
together under the direction of a mutual ele-
226 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
blame can any abuse be vigorously dealt
with."
He who acquires profits or property is
responsible for all the means that produced
them. Ignorance of this law excuses no man.
Step by step the " Model Merchant " has
pushed his right to buy cheap and sell dear far
beyond the necessary limitations of law, econ-
omy, morals and humanity.
Modern business under the leadership of the
Captains of Industry has developed into an
unnatural fanaticism of greed, producing a
seditious wealth and a morbid poverty.
Under the inspiration of this fanaticism, men
irreproachable in other relations of life proclain]
and practice their right to consume the liveli-
hood, the liberties and even the lives of their
fellow-citizens in order to multiply superflui-
ties of power and luxury for themselves.
These fanatics of business — few but su-
preme — set a pace which is leading our busi-
ness civilization to destruction.
That the -sort of thing you have done at
Spring Valley, and others like you have done
in the valleys of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana,
and elsewhere, will be made conspiracy by
law if necessary, is certain as soon as the
public get to grasp the motive and the result
PART OF THE MORAL. 22'J
of such concerted attacks upon the lives and
liberties of the people. It will be in vain that
you who own and manage the North-Western
Railroad will repel with indignation and amaze-
ment the charge that you are in any way
responsible. You did not know what was
being done? You have accepted and continue
ready to accept its result. You only built a
railroad to a coal field, as any one might do,
and are not responsible for any wrong com-
mitted in the production of the coal of which
you were only the carrier? Your position is in-
finitely worse than that. Owners and man-
agers with you in the railroad were owners
and managers of the coal company and land
company, and your acts disclose a concert of
action with a common purpose in the co-op-
peratcd management of those properties. The
question of conspiracy is a question of circum-
stantial evidence, and of the public judgment
of the evidence to be expressed, it is to be
hoped, some day by a jury, in the " good old
times " that are coming, when the public wits
will have developed to the point of taking
away from the poor and lowly their present
monopoly of conspiracy. The building of the
road and the booming of the town went on
together under the direction of a mutual ele-
228 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
ment in both companies. When the dooming
of the town began, you of the raih'oad sub-
mitted "to it and to the loss of heavy traffic
receipts, when by a word you could have com-
pelled your other selves of the coal company
to have continued the mining and supply of
coal. Now that the people have been starved
into surrender, you have put on your trains
again and use the coal again. You will boast
again in your annual report, as you have done,
of the progressive cheapness per ton of your
coal— $2.28 a ton in 1885, $1.96 in 1886,
$1.75 in 1887, and perhaps $1.50 this year —
a progressive cheapness every downward cent
in which represents scores of broken lives.
The railroad has made prices on Spring Valley
coal at competitive points which indicate re-
bates on its transportation. High officials of
the freight department of the road have
appeared in person at the public tender of
bids for the supply of Spring Valley coal to
public institutions in competition with other
coals. This cumulation of evidence tells its
own story. Nor can you of the coal company
protect yourselves by the plea that competi-
tion forced you to do what you did. The
facts given above about the wages paid by
your competitors, and your own latest offers,.
PART OF THE MORAL. 229
take that ground from under you. But waiv-
ing all that, you have no right to create such
competition, and then plead it as an excuse for
other wrongs.
If you continue your war on the miners, if
you pocket the profits that success will bring
you, the public will sooner or later declare to
all of you that you have vitiated your title to
your rights and properties at their very
roots. Political economy gives you private
property only that the interest of all may
be served by your self-interest ; the law gives
you your franchises and estates only for the
general welfare and the public safety; relig-
ion holds you to be only stewards of your
riches. If you usurp for your private profit
all these trusts and grants, if you withdraw
yourself from serving and protecting the
public and take to oppressing and plundering
them from your points of advantage, you will
but repeat the folly of your mediaeval exem-
plars whose castles now decorate a better
civilization with their prophetic ruins.
APPENDIX.
STATEMENT TO THE PUBLIC BY THE COAL
COMPANY, AND REPLIES BY THE MINERS AND
THE PRESS.
The first and last statement to the public by
the Spring Valley Coal Company after the
lock-out of December and May, was in the
following letter to Governor Fifer. It was
made to justify the offer of August 23d of os-
tensibly 75, really 35 cents a ton.
Hon. Joseph IV. Fifer, Gover^ior of the State of Illinois.
Sir— The undersigned, in behalf of himself and those con-
nected witli him in the ownership and control of the Spring
Valley Coal Company, respectfully submits to you, and through
you to the public, the following statement of facts, which can
be verified and confirmed by evidence and figures which we ask
you and the public to impartially consider in refutation of the
uncalled-for and unjust abuse which the managers of the com-
pany's property have been subjected to.
The Spring Valley Coal Company was organized under the
laws of the State of Illinois in the year 1884 to develop a coal
territory north of the Illinois River, about lOO miles southwest
of Chicago, which field embraces about 40,000 acres. Within
this territory, in 1884, there were two small mines in operation,
supjilying the local demands of the neighborhood, the total out-
put of these mines not then exceeding 500 tons per day. As to
(230)
APPENDIX. 231
the value of this coal field I can submit no better evidence than
the fact that no coal operator in your State was willing to risk
hip money in its development and improvement, or considered it
of sufficient value to invest one dollar in it. Neither myself nor
my associates supposed, when we concluded to try and utilize
this coal property and develop it, that we were committing any
crime. We supposed, that, so long as we conformed to the laws
of the State of Illinois and obeyed them, we would be protected
in our lawful rights, including the right of controlling our
property to the extent that other corporations and citizens
of your State enjoy. We asked for nothing more; we are en-
titled to nothing less. In this supposition we have found our-
selves sadly mistaken. Venal and partisan newspapers, as well
as politicians, desiring to serve political ends, together with
a few honest and charitable citizens and misguided clergymen,
have, without the necessary facts or knowledge to enable them to
form a correct opinion, heaped upon this company and its offi-
cers, through the press, an amount of falsehood and slander
that is perhaps without parallel in the industrial history of this
country.
The development of the Spring Valley coal field was not en-
gaged in for speculative purposes. All we could hope for was
a very moderate return on the capital invested. The Spring
Valley Coal Company purchased the coal rights and lands in fee
now owned by it located in the counties of Bureau, La Salle,
and Putnam, paying to the farmers of those counties something
over $650,000 for the same, and of this sum $350,000 to $400,-
000 was utilized by them in removing mortgages from the land,
the surface of which they retained. The company up to date
has further expended a large amount of money in improving and
developing the property, and to-day our mines have the capacity
to produce over 4,000 tons of coal per day, when in operation —
a capacity exceeding that of any other mines in the world worked
under the long-wall system. You can readily understand, sir,
that a property capable of producing from 1,000,000 to 1,500,-
000 tons of coal per annum could not expect to find a market
for its coal locally, situated as the Spring Valley Coal Comjiany
232 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
is, but from necessity would have to look to tlie States and Ter-
ritories of the North and Northwest to market its product. The
ability of the company to operate its mines, to give steady em-
ployment to its men, and to sell its coal, is contingent upon two
factors — first, the cost of mining at Spring Valley, as compared
with the cost at the mines in the other Illinois coal fields with
which we come in competition; second, the cost of railroad
transportation from Spring Valley to competitive markets as
compared with the cost of transportation fiom mines in the
other fields to the same markets. The coal fields with which
the Spring Valley Company has to compete virtually embrace
the entire coal area of the State of Illinois south of the Illinois
River at Spring Valley, and extending to within forty-five miles
of St. Louis. Within this field are located what are known as
the Streator, Braidwood, and Wilmington districts, constituting
a part of what are known as tlie northern Illinois coal field.
Taking Streator as the center of this group of mines in the
northern field, and St. Paul, Minn., as a market for Illinois
coal, the relative distance from Spring Valley to St. Paul is
twenty miles less than from Streator. As you go south and
southwest on the lines of the railroads from Chicago, extending
into what are known as the central and southern coal fields of
Illinois, there are numerous mines producing and shipping coal
into the Chicago market and the markets of the Northwest; and,
if we take Essex, on the line of the Wabash road, \\hich is the
transfer point of coal from these central and southern fields, and
Chicago and St. Paul as competitive markets, we find the dis-
tance from Spring Valley to Chicago is loi miles, and to St.
Paul, by the shortest route, 420 miles, as against 60 miles from
Essex to Chicago and 470 miles from Essex to St, Paul.
Under an arrangement between the railroads of your State,
centering in Chicago and extending into the North and North-
west, within which territory the northern Illinois coal mines
are solely dependent for a market for their product, the follow-
ing system and rates of transportation have been adopted and
are to-day in force : A zone or territory embracing certain coal
fields in northern, central, and southern Illinois lifts been estab-
APPENDIX. 233
lished, and the rates of railroad transportation upon coal from
all mines within this zone, passing through and going beyond
Chicago by rail lines from Chicago, are uniform, irrespective of
the distance the coal is transported from points within this zone
to Chicago. The limits of this zone are as follows : Starting
from the city of Chicago due west to Clinton, Iowa, thence fol-
lowing the Mississippi River as far south as Burlington ; thence
in a southeasterly direction, passing through Bushnelland Ver-
mont ; thence in a northeasterly direction through Peoria,
Lacon, Minonk, and Essex to Chicago ; embracing all the
mines and coal deposits within the territory described. The
southern limit of this zone or belt is Vermont, distant from
Chicago 211 miles, and from St. Paul, via Chicago, 621 miles
by the shortest rail route ; as compared from Spring Valley to
Chicago, loi miles, and St. Paul 420 miles. But, perhaps,
Peoria is a better illustration, for the reason that larger ship-
ments of competitive coal are sold in the Chicago market and
markets of the Northwest from the mines in that vicinity. The
price of mining in the Peoria mines last year was sixty cents a
ton, as against ninety cents paid at Spring Valley. The dis-
tance from Peoria to Chicago is 161 miles, and from Peoria to
St. Paul, via Chicago, 571 miles. Now, a ton of coal shipped
from Peoria to St. Paul, via Chicago, a distance of 571 miles,
pays only the same rate per ton for transportation that a ton of
Spring Valley coal pays for 420 miles, with a difference of over
thirty-five cents per ton in cost of mining in favor of Peoria.
To further illustrate the inequalities of railroad transporta-
tion affecting the operation of the fields of northern Illinois, we
would refer to the Consolidated Coal Company's mines, op-
erated within fifty-four miles ot St. Louis, with a claimed pro-
duction of 10,000 tons per day. The actual amount paid for
the transportation of a ton of coal by the Consolidated Coal
Company from their mines to St. Paul is $2.40, as against $2
from Spring Valley to St. Paul ; but the distance froni the Con-
solidated mines to St. Paul is 636 miles, while from Spring Val-
ley to St. Paul it is 420 miles, and an equivalent rate for a ton
of coal from Spring Valley to St. Paul would be $1.58 per ton,
234 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
as against the $2.40 paid on a ton of coal from the Consoli-
dated 'mines, or a discrimination against Spring Valley, on the
distance relatively transported, of forty-two cents per ton ; and
the price paid for mining a ton of coal at the Consolidated
mines is forty-five cents, as against ninety cents a ton paid at
Spring Valley. This coal to-day is sold in the city of Chicago
for $1.65 per ton, and is sold at Essex for $1.25 per ton.
Now as to the relative cost of mining a ton of coal at Spring
Valley as compared with the cost of mining at other mines in
the northern field, and with the fields of central and southern
Illinois : Since the Spring Valley Coal Company has been in
operation the price paid the miners for mining a ton of coal has
been uniformly 90 cents per ton, with sixteen inches of brush-
ing, as against an average price of 80 cents a ton paid for mining
a ton of coal in the other mines of the northern coal field, as
against 60 cents and as low as 45 cents a ton paid for mining
in the central and southern C(>al fields.
(As the general public may not understand the meaning of
the term " brushing " used in this letter, I would state that it
refers to the refuse rock or other material overlying or under-
lying the vein of coal, and where a vein of coal is not of suffi-
cient thickness, when mined, to leave a perpendicular space
high enough to permit a pit car to reach the face of the vein,
of sufficient capacity to haul a maximum load of coal to the
bottom of the shaft, this material either overlying or underly-
ing the vein of coal has to be removed to secure the necessary
height, and this refuse necessary to be removed is what is
technically known as " brushing.")
There has been no jieriod during the foin- years which we
have operated the Spring Valley mines that we could not pur-
chase, and, in fact, we have purchased, coal from other mines
in the northern field at from 12 cents to 17^ cents per ton less
than the actual cost of producing the coal at our own property ;
and, as the rates of transportation from these fields from Chi-
cago and St. Paul were the same that our company had to jiay,
I think you will agree with me that we could hardly expect to
be able to maintain ourselves in a competitive market. I)Ut we
APPENDIX. 235
have gone on hoping for a better condition of affairs, when we
would be able to keep our works going and our men employed,
and we stopped work only when the men declined to meet us
to endeavor to agree upon a price to be paid for mining for the
present year, and when we found that it was an utter impossi-
bility for us to continue operations without virtually bankrupt-
ing our company. The mild winter of 1888-89 so affected the
demand for coal that in December we were compelled to shut
down two of our mines, as there was no market for the coal ;
and for reasons hereafter explained, we were compelled to shut
down the remainder of the mines May ist, following.
About the 1st of April, and prior to deciding to close the
mines, I was advised by our superintendent that a committee
representing our miners desired to meet me in Chicago and see
if some equitable basis of mining could be agreed upon for the
then ensuing year. I was then in the city of New York, and
went from there to Chicago in compliance with this request, and
was there on the day fixed by the committee. I remained in
Chicago two days, and during that lime a telegraphic notice
was received from this committee that they would not come to
Chicago. This notice on their part being equivalent to aban-
doning the idea of having a conference, I returned home and
ordered the works closed on the following ist of May, on which
date all the other mines in the northern field ceased to work, de-
manding a reduction in the price of mining.
We have never asked, expected, or desired a miner working
in our mines to mine coal for us at one cent a ton less than a
fair relative price as compared with what was paid in other
fields in northern Illinois. As every intelligent coal operator
and miner knows, in fixing a rate for mining coal there are ad-
vantages and disadvantages to be found in the same veins, even
in the same field, which must be taken into consideration in
arriving at what are fair and practically equal prices to be paid
for mining at the different mines in such field. It would be
clearly unreasonable to expect, and unjust to ask, miners to
mine coal at Spring Valley at the same price ]5aid for mining in
the Braidwood field if it can be shown that the disadvantages
236 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
at Spring Valley are greater than those at Braidwood; and, of
course, the foregoing applies equally to Braidwood if the
conditions be reversed.
There is not in the State of Illinois, nor in the United States,
a coal property where men can work with less discomfort and
greater safety to life and limb than they can in the Spring Val-
ley mines. During the four years that the mines have been in
operation, not one life has been lost. The mines are practically
free from water, which fact inures greatly to the comfort, not
only of the miner, but to his ability to mine coal therein.
You are, sir, respectfully asked to compare the price paid for
mining at Spring Valley during the last four years with the
price paid at Braidwood, at which latter place the highest
nominal price per ton was paid during this period for mining
coal in the State of Illinois. The basis upon which coal was
mined at Braidwood was 80 cents per ton for a vein of coal 2
feet 10 inches thick, and 15 cents per ton additional for a mini-
mum brushing of 3 feet 6 inches and a maximum of 4 feet — the
contract between the operators and miners at Braidwood speci-
fying 4 feet. Taking the minimum brushing as the basis, the
aggregate price was 95 cents a ton, which covered the cost of
mining the coal and brushing of 42 inches. Now, it must be
kept in mind in making this comparison that the relative con-
ditions of mining the seams of coal at Braidwood and at Spring
Valley are practically the same, except as to the thickness of
the veins ; and we also claim for Spring Valley certain advan-
tages which do not necessarily come into the actual cost of pro-
duction, but which are of material advantage to the miner.
The percentage of slack and nut coal produced in both veins is
the same. The stratum under the veins is the same — namely,
fire-clay. Both mines are operated on the long-wall system,
consequently the breaking down of the coal in each is the same.
The differences which exist in the comparative working of the
two veins are, first, the Spring Valley vein is entirely free from
water; second, it is practically free from faults; third, the vein
lies on a horizontal plane that does not vary from one to three
feet in a mile in the level of the coal; fourth, the roof is per-
APPENDIX. 237
fectly dry and of free soapstone rock, 14 feet thick. In the
Braidwood district there is a large amount of water, and the
dip and rise of the vein in 1,000 yards varies as much as forty
feet. The roof at Braidwood is water-soaked, and is much
more difficult to maintain, \yhich work has to be done by the
men, and is covered in the price paid for mining. In some
placts the Braidwood vein comes within 25 feet of the surface,
while at no point at Spring Valley is the third vein within 450
feet of the surface. These comparative advantages and disad-
vantages in the working of the two veins, whatever they may
be, are largely in favor of the Spring Valley miner. During
the last four years we paid our men 90 cents per ton for mining
coal, including 16 inches of brushing. We require 30 inches of
brushing to enable us to economically mine the coal. Now, it
can be readily understood that, if a miner can jnine a ton of
coal at Braidwood at 80 cents a ton for mining, and 15 cents a
ton for 42 inches of brushing — all conditions being equal at
both mines, except as to the thickness of the veins — the relative
price at Spring Valley for 16 inches of brushing would be 85.71
cents per ton, and in this comparison we do not take into con-
sideration the fact that our vein is 10 inches thicker than the
vein at Braidwood.
Now, let the cost of mining at Braidwood be compared with
what would be the relative cost of the same work at Spring
Valley, and what would be an equivalent price to be paid at
Spring Valley as compared with that paid at Braidwood ?
An ordinary working place at Braidwood is 42 feet face, 2
feet 10 inches high (of coal), 3 feet deep, with three men work-
ing in the face. Now 2 feet 10 inches of coal, 42 feet face, and
3 feet deep, contains 357 cubic feet, and allowing 80 pounds of
coal to the cubic foot the space would produce 14 tons and 560
pounds of coal at Braidwood. It must be borne in mind also
that the miners claim that it is impracticable for them to work
three men in a working place at Spring Valley in a space of 36
feet face; but three men do work in a working place at Braid-
wood in 2 feet 10 inches of coal, 42 feet face, and there is no ob-
jection to it on the part of the men.
238 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
It is as feasible and practicable to make the working places
at Spring Valley 42 feet (we now work there 36) as it is at
Braidwood. If, therefore, the working places should be in-
creased six additional feet, to enable three men to work instead
of two, which can be readily done at Spring Valley, a working
place at the latter mines with the same working face as at
Braidwood — namely, 42 feet face, 3 feet deep, and the thick-
ness of the vein being 3 feet 8 inches — would contain 462 cubic
feet, and at 80 pounds of coal per cubic foot would produce 18
tons 960 pounds of coal; or 4 tons and 400 pounds more coal
would be produced in the same space at Spring \'alley than at
Braidwood.
It must be kept in mind, also, that not one additional stroke
of a miner's arm is required in connection with the bearing in
or breaking down of this 18 tons 960 pounds of coal at Spring
Valley over what it requires at Braidwood for 14 tons 560
pounds within the space given.
The foregoing figures show that three men in a working place
at Braidwood, working in the space heretofore given, w^ould
mine 14 tons 560 pounds of coal, by which, at 95 cents per ton
paid at Braidwood, they would earn $13.57, and that for the
same work at .Spring X'alley, in the same space, they woulil
produce 18 tons 960 pounds, which, at 90 cents a ton, the price
paid last year, would amount to $16.63, which would be $3.06
more earned by the men at Spring Valley than at Braidwood,
which $3.06 would be equivalent to 16.56 cents per ton paid at
Spring Valley more than was paid at Braidwood. This excess
of earnings by the men at Spring Valley over that of Braidwood
would arise from the fact of the difference in the thickness of
vein mmed at Spring Valley, namely 3 feet 8 inches of coal, as
compared with 2 feet 10 inches of coal at Braidwood. Now,
the miners at Braidwood removed 42 inches of brushing to earn
their $13.57, whereas the miners at Spring Valley only removed
16 inches of brushing to earn their $16.63. Now, as our com-
pany had to do an additional 14 inches of brushing, and, if we
assume its cost to have been at the relative price paid for brush-
ing at Braidwood — namely, 15 cents for 42 inches of brushing
APPENDIX. 239
— it would be equivalent to 5 cents per ton on each ton of coal
mined at Spring Valley, which should be added to the 16.56
cents, to secure 30 inches of brushing, making 21.56 cents,
which amount was actually paid the miners at Spring Valley in
excess of what should have been paid to equalize our mining
ccst with that of Braidwood; and if to this we add the cost of
the 12 inches additional brushing done at Braidwood, more
than what was required at Spring Valley, which, at the equiva-
lent price paid at Braidwood, amounts to 4.28 cents per ton, it
would make a total equivalent of 25.84 cents more paid for
mining a ton of coal at Spring Valley in 1888 than would have
been paid if the price of mining at Spring Valley were on an
equality with Braidwood.
To present this matter in another light: In the working
places heretofore described at Braidwood 44.74 per cent, of the
material moved is coal, and 55.26 per cent, is material necessary
to be removed to secure 42 inches of brushing. In the same
area at Spring Valley the percentage of coal produced is 59.46
per cent, and 40.54 per cent, is material removed to secure 30
inches of brushing. It will, therefore, be seen that the per-
centage of coal produced at Spring Valley for the same amount
of labor is 14.72 per cent, greater than at Braidwood, and that
it requires 14.72 per cent, less labor for brushing at Spring
Valley than is required at Braidwood, and yet the cost of mining
a ton of coal at Spring Valley last year exceeded the equivalent
price paid at Braidwood by 25.84 cents per ton.
Assuming that the foregoing statements as to the compara-
tive amount of labor required for a miner to mine a ton of
coal at Spring Valley as compared with Braidwood are correct,
and then taking into consideration the amount earned by a
Braidwood miner, together with that earned by the Spring
Valley miner, the amount of labor being equal at each mine, we
ought to be able to arrive at what would be a fair price to the
miner for mining a ton of coal at Spring Valley to make it the
equivalent of the price received by the miner at Braidwood.
This comi)arison would show that (the price now paid a Braid-
wood miner for mining a ton of coal being 87^ cents per ton
240 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
in a 2-feet lo-inch vein of coal, with forty-two inches of brush-
ing) an equivalent price for mining a ton of coal at Spring
Valley in a 3-feet 8-inch vein of coal with thirty inches of brush-
ing would be 68.14 cents per ton. The miners at Spring Valley
demand 82 j/^ cents per ton for mining in the third vein with
sixteen inches of brushing, and, if required to do thirty inches of
brushing, then to be paid twenty cents per ton additional for the
coal mined, which would make the cost of mining a ton of coal
at Spring Valley $i.02j^ per ton as compared with the price
now paid at Braidwood (where the Braidwood miner does forty-
two inches of brushing) of 87^^ cents per ton.
When we come to what is known as the Streator field, we
cannot with any certainty make a relative comparison between
the Streator vein and our third vein ; but our second vein of
coal and the Streator vein are similar in all respects, with tlie
exception that perhaps our second vein contains from five to
nine inches more coal, on an average, than the Streator vein.
We have compared, as I have stated, the Braidwood vein with
our third vein because they are similar in all respects, and both
are worked under the long-wall system. Our second vein, like
the Streator vein, is worked upon the room and pillar system.
The miners and the operators at Streator have agreed, for the
])resent year, upon 72 j-^ cents per ton for mining a ton of coal,
and we are entirely willing to pay our men 72^ cents per ton
in the second vein, giving to them any advantage which this
price may give as between the Streator vein and the Spring
Valley second vein.
A word as to the alleged " pauper wages " the miners in the
Illinois coal fields have received. The statement made by the
committee of the State Board of Charities, in their report to
you, that the average monthly wages of the miners throughout
the general mining district of Illinois for the year 1888 was
$31.60, does not agree with what an average miner earned at
Spring Valley. I have had prepared a table of the work done
and the money paid to twenty-five average mmers at Spring
Valley, who were permanently employed there during the last year.
APPENDIX. 241
I can furnish their names and further details, which would be too
voluminous to embrace in this communication. A summary of
this table shows that these twenty-five men, working, we believe,
not to exceed seven hours in a day, mined an average of 2.7
tons of coal per day or part of a day, including 16 inches of
brushing; that the average pay received by each miner for each
day or part of a day worked was $2.51 per day ; that, of the
298 working days in the year, the average time lost by each
miner, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, was 66 days, or 22
per cent.; that the total average amount of pay received, if
divided over the whole numl:)er of working days in 18S8, would
amount to an average of $1.96 per day for each miner, and that
the total average amount paitl each of these twenty-five miners
for the year 1888 was $582.79, or an average of $48.56 per
month for the twelve months in the year, including over two
months of lost time — the amount stated being the absolute net
earnings of these twenty-five men, after deducting every outlay
which they are subject to.
As to the alleged profits realized by the stockholders of the
company from the mining of coal, from the company's store,
and from the town site of Spring Valley, they have no more
foundation to stand upon than the other charges referred to
herein. During the four years the work has been in operation
no stockholder has received one cent return upon his invest-
ment, nor will the books of the company show that he is en-
title 1 to any. As to the company's store and its profits, I
would state that, on the 1st of May last, when the mines were
closed and every employe of the company had been paid what
was due him in cash, the books of the store showed that there
was due the store about $17,000, 85 per cent, of which was
owed by the men who had been employed by the company; and
this $17,000 represents not only the capital originally invested
in the store, but some .$4,000 over, and these debts we consider
of little or no value. The total gains arising from the sale of
lots at Spring Valley by the Town Site Company for a ]ieriod
of five years and up to this date, instead of the fabulous
242 A e^TRIKE OF MILLTONAlRKS.
aniounl stated by certain reckless journals, will not exceed the
sum of $26,000.*
* Statements like these, cunningly ambiguous, as careful reading will
show, made without verification, and put forward by one party to a dis-
pute for the purpose of cheapening what he wants to buy of the other —
his life and labor — cannot he accepted as evidence. They are invalidated
hopelessly by the demonstrations elsewhere given aii ttauseam of the
utter unreliability of all of the important statements made by the officials
of the company in their various communications to the public. These
allegations of loss are inconsistent with the known facts of the case. At
the time of making these assertions, the president of the company had
refused to accept his own offer to give up the management of his mines to
his men if they would pay him a bonus of fifteen cents a ton. The
company was therefore making more than that. The unprofitableness of
the mines, the Town Site Company and the company store is negatived
also by the eagerness of the company to resume work at wages more than
double those at first offered. Nothing need be said of the evidence which
could be procured of those who have seen the books and balance sheets of
the various companies, and can testify that they all exhibited profits,
although these may have been reinvested in the enterprise, instead of
being paid out in dividends. But even if the pretense of losses was true,
it does not justify one of the outrages done at .Spring Valley. The Rev.
John F. Power, of Spring Valley, gave the following information to a
reporter of the Chicago Inter Ocean :
"The president of the coal company is not honest with the people.
When he last met the men he made the bluff: ' Give me fifteen cents per
ton royalty, and you may take the d — d mine and run it.' That was his
language, and, when his superintendent offered to take the mines at the
proposition, he refused to let him have them. The president says that he
has lost money here. That is not true. In the last two years his mines
here have netted him $160,000. The company store has netted $34,000
since it was started.
"the company h.\s m.^de money
on its coal operations; it has made money on its town-site investment;
it has made money on its store.
"The trouble is that he has not been able to make 6 per cent, on the
watered stock of $2,500,000. That is the amount of the stock they claim.
It is half water. The whole outlay here cannot exceed $1,250,000.
The 40,000 acres of coal was purchased to keep out competitors. They
paid .$10 an acre for it. That would be .$400,000. The town site cost them
$80 an acre. You can figure up what they are out there and for the mining
machinery. I cannot see where they have invested more than $1,000,000
capital."
To which " L. W. B."of the Inter Ocean, after careful inquiry among
the principal tradesmen and citizens, adds:
The president of the company claims he has lost money in .Spring
Valley. That may be, but it will take different figuring from that made
by the men here to show his losses. He bought the coal under 40,000
acres of land at .$10 an acre. This is an outlay of $400,000. He paid
about $50,000 for the town site. He put up 200 houses at $500 each,
which would represent another $100,000. 'I'his makes $650,000 of an
outlay, and
LE.WES HIM NEARLY $2,000,000
of his capital stock to pay for sinking five shafts. In reality these did
not with the hoisting machinery cost more than $100,000.
On the town site, which cost about $50,000, he realized more than
APPENDIX. 243
One of the necessary adjuncts in the operation of a propeity
such as the Spring Valley Coal Company is tenement houses for
those in the employ of the company to live in. The .Spring
Valley Coal Company, at an expenditure of $100,000 has con-
structed about 150 miners' houses. The money rent of these
houses is a secondary consideration to the company, as the op-
eration of the mines is mainly contingent upon their control
and who occupies them. On the 1st of May last, when work
was stopped at Sprmg Valley, the miners and their families
then occupying the company's houses were left in possession,
and they remained in undisturbed possession until about the mid-
dle of .August, when the proposition of seventy-five cents per ton*
was made to the men to resume work, and the superintendent
of the company was instructed as follows:
" In carrying out these instructions, I desire to avoid all con-
flict with the men or to give them any reasonable ground for
complaint ; and in case any of our houses are, on receipt of this
letter, occupied by the families of the men who are absent, you
will not take any legal proceedings to obtain possession of such
hoiises until the absentees have been notified, and have had time
to return to .Spring Valley, to remove their families. You will
make no claims cr demands upon the men for rents due the com-
pany since the 1st of May, unless in the case of such occupants
whose ability to pay will justify you in so doing."
It is now the 25th day of September, or nearly five months
(since May ist), that many of those houses have been occupied
by the men or their families, and u|i to the time of this vvriting
the possession of any house has not been secured by distraint
or eviction. But many of these houses are now occupied by
the families of men who have left Spring Valley and are work-
ing at other mines for less wages than we are willing to pay them;
others by men who will not vacate, and who have publicly
$300,000, making 600 per cent on his investment. The 40,000 acres of
coal was purchased to keep out competition, but he has made his whole
investment pay a fair per cent, on his watered stock oi $2,500,000. That
is what is claimed by the best business men of .Spring Valley.
* Thirty-five cents a ton net.
244 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
threatened mob violence if they are disturbed in their occu-
pancy. These men will neither work themselves nor permit
others to work; and, if we should attempt lawfully to exercise a
right enjoyed by every citizen of your State to regain posses-
sion of our houses by distraint (without issuing an execution or
levy upon the tenants' household goods for back rents), we
should expose our property to incendiarism and ourselves to
the criticism of the press as oppressors of labor. If this con-
dition of affairs is not anarchy, virtual confiscation of property,
and the subordination of the law of the land to the will of the
mob, then I do not know how to designate it, and yet it is appar-
ently upheld by an intelligent and law-abiding public.
This company and its officers have been charged with closing
down the mines and refusing to negotiate with the men, with
the object in view of obtaining a reduced and unfair price of
mining, regardless of the welfare of the men and their families.
To this I answer that it is false; that I went to Chicago in April,
on the invitation of a committee representing our men, to meet
them there, and after I had traveled i,ooo miles to comply with
their request, the committee could not travel lOo miles to meet
their own engagement.
If the statements herein and the conclusions drawn from
same are reliable, you, sir, and an intelligent public, will admit
that the closing of our mines May 1st, last, was not ior the
purpose of forcing our miners to accept starvation prices for
mining our coal, but that we were justified in so stopping until
some fair and equitable basis for the mining of our coal could
be agreed upon, based on tlie price paid for mining at other
mines in the State where the conditions are similar.
We know of no law, moral or statute, that makes coal
mining an exception, or which is not equally applical^le to tlie
conduct of any other business interest of the country; nor do
we know of any moral or statute law tliat makes it obligatory
upon the individual citizen, or a corporation, to conduct his or
its business regardless of the interests of such business and the
conditions of trade, solely for the object of furnishing emi^loy-
ment to the labor of the country, when such a policy must inev-
APPENDIX. 245
itably result in the bankruptcy of the individual or corpora-
tion.
We now propose to stand on our legal, moral, and equitable
rights. No amount of personal misrepresentation and abuse,
emanating from a gang of professional agitators at Spring
Valley and circulated throughout the country by a partisan
press * can drive us or influence us to resume work at Spring
Valley upon any other basis for mining than a relative price to
that paid by other mines in your State, where the conditions are
similar, unless we choose to do so voluntarily. And when this
conduion of affairs can be brought about, we are ready to start
up our works, and do all within our power to find steady em-
ployment for our men.
Taking the present price of mining as agreed upon between
the operators and miners at Braidwood, namely, 72^ cents per
ton for mining the coal and 15 cents for 42 inches of brushing,
and deducting from this the relative difference between mining
a ton of coal at Braidwood and Spring Valley, on the basis of
72)4 cents at Braidwood (arrived at in same manner as hereto-
fore shown, based upon the price of 18S8), of 15.07 cents per ton
in favor of Spring Valley, our price for mining should be 57.43
cents per ton; and adding to the 57.43 cents the price we should
pay for 30 inches of brushing, based upon the Braidwood price
of 15 cents for 42 inches of brushing, namely, 10.71 cents, it
would make the relative price of mining at Spring Valley 68.14
cents per ton, including 30 inches of brushing. We leave it to
an impartial public to say whether in refusing to accede to the
demands of the men for 82^ cents per ton, with 16 inches of
brushing, and 20 cents per ton additional for 14 inches of brush-
ing, the misrepresentations and abuse with which the officers of
this company have been assailed by an unscrupulous press are
justifiable.
In offering our men 75 centst per ton for mining a ton of coal
* The severest criticisms of the company have been made by papers
like the New York World, New York Herald, New York Sun, Chicago
Herald, Chicago Times, and St. Louis Republic, all of which represent
the party to which the president of the company belongs.
t Thirty-five cents a ton, when all the conditions of the offer were
fulfilled.
246 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
in our third vein, including 30 inches of brushing, if they desired
to go to work, which is 2^ cents more tlian is paid in tlie
Streator field and 6.86 cents per ton more than an equivalent of
the price paid in the Braidwood mines, we felt and still Ijelieve
that we had made all the concessions that we can possibly make
to our men and be able to maintain ourselves in a competitive
market. Respectfully yours, President of the Spring Valley
Coal Company, Erie, Fa., Sept. 25, it
The Chicaf^o Times, the only journal which
printed this statement in full, conimented upon
it in the following editorial :
WHAT GOOD FAITH DEMANDS.
The Times published last Saturday a statement of the presi-
dent of the Spring Valley Coal Company, addressed to the gov-
ernor of Illinois, giving the company's side of the conflict with its
miners.
There is one important point, which the president in his long
apology passes over lightly, which deserves general attention.
It IS asserted that the Spring Valley Coal Company, soon after
its organization, when in the process of developing its mine,
offered, by advertisement and otherwise, its town lots for sale,
and held out as an inducement for their purchase that the com-
pany would prosecute the business of coal-mining and make the
lots offered to the public of permanent value. On these repre-
sentations a very considerable number of town lots were sold,
the men in the employ of the company at that time being to a
large extent the purchasers. These were necessarily men of
small means, and the sums which they invested, both in the pur-
chase of the land and the construction of improvements, were to
them of extreme importance. We are told that the amount
invested on these representations by the Spring Valley Coal
Comjjany in lots and improvements amounted to as much in dol-
lars as the total amount expended by the company itself in devel-
oping the mines and putting them in a condition, as the presi-
APPENDIX. 247
dent says, for ])ro(lucing 4,000 tons of coal per day. The state-
ment in regard to this important point is meager and unsatisfac-
tory. He said : " The total gains arising from the sale of lots
at Spring Valley by Ihe Town Site Company for a period of five
years and up to this date, instead of the fabulous amount stated
by certain reckless journals, will not exceed the sum of $26,000."
Whether or not in the process of book-keeping the sum of
$26,000 is all the profit that appears on the company's books
from its town-lot operations is not of special moment. The
important fact is that a large number of men of small means
have been induced by the company's representations to invest
their money in the purchase and improvement of real estate,
and by the action of the company in closing its mines and
ceasing production these lots and the improvement thereon
have been rendered valueless. This is a point which the press
and the public may appreciate and rightfully sit in judgment
upon. If the president and his associates, who are known to be
men of large means, have led poor men into losing investments
l)y their representation, it is fair and right that they should
make reimbursement for these losses.
The Spring Valley Coal Company and its owners may or
may not be legally bound to make good the losses resulting from
their misrepresentations in this regard. It is tjuite probable
that the men who have invested their money in Spring Valley
lots and improvements are not able to contest the matter in the
courts. It is difficult to see, however, how this case dififers from
those in which the managers of " booms " in various parts of
the country, have involved, by their misrepresentations and false
statements, credulous investors. The Spring Valley Coal Com-
pany undoubtedly is composed of men thoroughly conversant
with the conditions of the coal trade. They bought the prop-
erty at .Spring Valley knowing what miners' wages and the
rates of transportation were, and on this knowledge they based
their representations to the public that they could successfully
conduct the coal business, and make Spring Valley a prosper-
ous town. If they deceived themselves, as fair business men
they should bear the whole loss of that deception, and not profit
248 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
by the confidence which has been placed in them by men of
smaller means.
There is still another view of this phase of the matter. It is
for the interest of employers everywhere that laborers should
be protected in the ownership of their homes. The laborer who
owns his home is a better workman and a better citizen then he
who lives in a tenement. The saving habit which the purchase
of a home creates in the workingman is one which wise employ-
ers everywhere take pains to develop. It is a misfortune, equal
to the failure of a large savings bank, when the real estate bought
with workingmen's wages is made of no value. Just as the
manager of a savings bank, who speculates with the hard-earned
money of workingmen intrusted to him, deserves the condem-
nation of the press and public, so does the manager of any large
enterprise who leads workingmen to invest their money in the
purchase of property which he afterward, either through pique
or misjudgment, destroys the value of.
If the president of the coal company would have his conduct
approved by the people of Illinois, he and his associates of the
Spring Valley Coal Company should take steps at once to reim-
burse those who have been misled into investing in the Spring
Valley real estate, whether their investments have amounted to
a sum which, as it is claimed, will equal the total amount of the
Spring Valley Mining Company's investments in its improve-
ments or are no more than the $26,000 which he confesses his
company has profited by in its town-site speculation.
This editorial called forth the followinf^ from
the spokesman of the company:
Erie, Pa., Oct. 8. — To the Editor : My attention has been
called to an editorial in your issue of the 2d inst., charging,
inferentially if not directly, the Spring Valley Coal Company
with selling town lots to residents of Spring Valley on the
strength of false representations.
I should not feel justified in trespassing on your time and
encroaching on your journal's valuable space if it were not tha
APPEJ^DIX. 249
your remarks seem to invite an explanation. They embody
statements which are evidently based on a misunderstanding of
the actual facts, and the inference that might be drawn from
them would therefore be erroneous. •
Unfortunately we have no literary bureau connected with our
company, and consequently it would be an impossibility for us
to reply to all the misstatements concerning the company pub-
lished by the press of the country. If we were to undertake the
task we should be obliged to give up all other business, for we
should have no time to devote to anything else.
The Spring Valley Coal Company has never, so iar as my
knowledge goes, offered lots for sale.*
It has never, to my knowledge, disposed of any of its realty.
If it has disposed of any, it must have been to such a very limited
extent tiiat it would hardly form a basis for the deceptions you
seem to think the company has practiced, but which, so far as 1
have any knowledge on this subject, exist only in miagina-
tion.
The Spring Valley Coal Company, when it began opera-
tions, bought and is now the owner of certain real estate in the
town of -Spring Valley necessary for the operations of the com-
pany, present and future — if it is to be permitted by the law-
less element of your State to have a future. The sale and pur-
chase of lots at Spring Valley have been entirely private trans-
actions, between individuals, with which the company has had
nothing to do. While the parties owning the lands were to a
greater or less extent interested in the company, if there has
been any fraud or if false inducements were offered for the sale
of lots, would it not be fairer to specify th^ alleged cases and
let those who are personally interested answer, and not bring
general or vague charges or indulge in insinuations that are sup-
ported by nothing belter than idle rumors, and which are hardly
worthy of refutation ?
The property-owners of Spring Valley, in my judgment, are
not suffering from false representations such as your article
* See advertisements of the company on pages 24 and 29.
250 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
implies. If their property has depreciated in vahic, it is the
natural result of a condition of anarchy. There is no law in
Spring Valley to-day. Property rights are not recognized there,
nor is the life of any man safe there after dark unless it be that
of a man who is well armed and able to protect himself. No
wage-worker can go to Spring Valley and exercise the rights of
American citizenship and go out on the street at night without
placing his life in peril.
Is it any wonder that property has declined in value at Spring
Valley? What would it be worth in the city of Chicago under
a similai condition of affairs ? And yet high officials in your
city, men who make laws as well as those whose duty it is to ex-
ecute them, can find time, under the cloak of "sweet charity,"
to sanction the lawless condition referred to when within sight
of their office windows 01 within one ward of your city more
genuine cases of destitution and misery can be found than could
be found in twenty Spring \'alleys.
When law and order shall have been restored at Spring Val-
ley, when a human life is safe there, when a property-owner can
control the property that he has bought and paid for, as others
control their property in your State, Spring Valley may peihaps
fulfill the hopes and expectations of her citizens. But prosper-
ity will not be secured by disregarding the obligations of law.
l)uring the year iSSS mir company paid taxes in Illinois ag-
gregating over $8,000. This, we supposed, was our contribu-
tion for the protection of life, liberty, and property at .Spring
Valley. Is there not a greater principle involved in the existing
condition of affairs at that place, and in which the whole peo-
ple of your Stale have an interest, than there is in the issue
which you undertake to raise. If there be any such cases of
deception and misplaced confidence as you seem to think there
are at Spring Valley, the aggrieved persons have the courts of
law to apply to for redress, while for our company at the pres-
ent time there appears to be no law except the law of the mob.
Very respectfully.
President of the Spring A'alley Coal Co.
APPENDIX. 251
The Chicago Times of October iith made
this editorial rejoinder, which ended the con-
troversy:
The president of the Spring Valley Coal Company falls into
error such as Hamlet warned his mother against. He lays the
flattering unction to his soul that it is the trespass of Illinois,
not the soullessness of the corporation known as the Spring
Valley Coal Company, that is responsible for the blight which
has fallen upon the town of that name. He writes a com-
munication to the Times wherein he chooses to make a distinc-
tion, into the requirements of which the Times does not choose
to follow him, because it is practically a distinction without a
difference, between the Spring Valley Coal Company and its
twin brother or other close relative, the concern which has sold
town lots at Spring Valley. The Times'' position, generally
stated, was that if the coal company did not propose to carry
on the business of coal-mining at this place, it had no right,
directly or indirectly, to sell town lots and induce settlement
upon its property upon the representation that such was its
purpose. Such town lots were purchased with the understand-
ing that the industry was to be carried forward right there. He
admits tTiat " the parties owning the lands were, to a greater or
less extent, interested in the company," by which he means the
Spring Valley Coal Company, of which he is president. We
understand how these things aie done. There are wheels
within wheels. The coal company buys coal lands. Certain of
these lands are set aside for persons who are, to " a greater or
less extent, interested in the" coal "company," and they repre-
sent, that, as here is to be a town in which will be congregated
a large body of miners, we will sell this land, subdivided for the
purpose as town lots. Then, in course of time, the coal com-
pany locks out the operatives upon a pretext with which the
Times nor any humane person can have sympathy, and the
town lots become next to worthless. For this depreciation the
Times avers that the coal company, through its failure to carry
2 52 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
out the projects it intimated to miners and lot purcliasers
it would pursue, is responsible. He says: "The property-
owners of Spring Valley, in my judgment, are not suffering
from false representations, such as your article implies. If
their property has depreciated in value, it is the natural result
of a condition of anarchy. There is no law in Spring Valley
to-day. Property rights are not recognized there, nor is the
life of any man safe there after dark, unless it be the life of a man
who is well armed and able to protect himself." Consciously
or unconsciously, he is guilty of a gross calumny not alone con-
cerning Spring Valley, where life and property are wholly safe,
but also concerning the State of Illinois, which protects both.
He writes from Erie, Pa., and speaks without personal knowl-
edge, or we assume he would not speak thus loosely. There
is not in all of Pennsylvania a more orderly commiuiity, nor
is there in all Pennsylvania a community more unjustly dealt
by than the settlement which the Spring ^'alIey Coal Com-
pany induced to gather there from far and wide, and now
leaves, miners and town-site owners, and all, to the charity of
mankind.
If it was not the purpose of the Spring Valley Coal Com-
pany to carry on the business of mining at the point named,
persons more or less interested in it, of" whom the president
may or may not be one, had no moral right to sell farm lands as
town lots; it had no right to gather miners from other fields
and center them there, and, when it suited the purpose of the
concern, to shut down the mines and lock out the operatives.
These Pennsylvania tactics are not welcome in Illinois. Spring
Valley is not in a condition of anarchy. It is in a condition of
extreme distress — a situation brought about not by the opera-
tives of the mines, not by the owners of town sites, who have
good cause bitterly to repent their bargains, but by a coal com-
pany which seems to be as soulless a corporation as ever was
organized under the laws of this or any other State.
It is not creditable to the president of the company and his
associates, that they alone of all the mine-owners of Illinois,
refuse to carry forward the operations they began, and, safe in
APPENDIX. 253
their possession of unbounded wealth, leave poor men they
had gathered about their shafts to idleness and hunger.
The foregoing statement to the public by
the Spring Valley Coal Company was met by
the miners with the following address to the
governor of Illinois:
Hon. Jost'plt jr. Fifc7-, Governor of Illinois.
Sir — The open letter addressed to you, and through you to
the public, by the president of the Spring Valley Coal Com-
pany, in which he endeavors to sustain the position he has
taken upon the question of mining rates for the Spring Valley
field, showing, as he attempts to do, in lengthy, labored argu-
ments, the justice and equity of his claims, based, as he pre-
sents them, upon a comparison with competitive districts, dis-
plays a willingness to meet the issue as squarely as he under-
stands it.
In replying to his statements of the case, we must ignore a
considerable portion of his letter, which has no application, so
far as mining is concerned, to the present difficulty; therefore
we will treat only such features as are vital to the question at
issue, pointing out to you, and the public, the fallacious nature
of the conclusions at which he has arrived.
It is generally understood, that, when the operators of north-
ern Illmois offered a ten cent reduction, he made no proposition
to his miners, but left them in doubt as to the terms he desired
and intended to offer. When the joint meetings, brought about
by the agency of the commission appointed by you, succeeded
in obtaining a concession of i)A, cents, making the reduction in
mining rates 7^^ cents per ton as compared with last year's
prices, which rates have been accepted by the miners employed
in the field accepted by the strike, then it was that he proposed
75 cents for mining at Spring Valley, 30 inches of brushing, 3
men in a room, with an additional condition that in the future
he would refuse to deal witli his miners through their commit-
2 54 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
tees or as an organized body. He says that his company " lias
never asked, expected or desired a miner working in our mines
to mine coal for one cent a ton less than a fair relative price as
compared with what was paid in other fields of northern
Illinois, "and intimates that they shall continue to pursue m the
future the same equitable policy that has marked their past his-
tory, yet the proposition made by him, and which he thinks fair,
and should be accepted, is a reduction of 15 cents per ton below
rates paid last year, with other conditions annexed, equal, upon
the company's own admission, to 10.75 cents per ton, as against
in the La Salle field, his nearest neighbor and competitor, of y'i
cents, with 20 inches of brushing; and the La Salle field condi-
tions as to mining and markets are the same in every respect as
those which prevail at Spring Valley mines.
While professing a willingness to pay as much for mining as
his competitors in northern Illinois pay, he in his argument
ignores the other and more important fields surrounding him in
northern Illinois, and confines himself to a comparison of earn-
ing ability between miners employed at Spring Valley and at
Braidwood.
To show the fallacious character of his comparative reasoning,
as applied to his own and surrounding mines, let us briefly out-
line methods by which miners' wages have been and are likely
to be adjusted.
In fixing mining rates in mines shipping coal to a common
market, one of two principles must be recognized: ist, by the
amount of l^or required to produce a ton of coal, regardless
of cost of dead work, quality or ability to sell it in a competi-
tive market; 2d, by the fixing upon a mean between the amount
of labor required to produce. The cost of production to own-
ers and operators of mines, quality of coal and ability to com-
pete with coals from other fields entering the same markets.
To carry out the first principle means to give a cheaper rate
of mining to miners having thick coal, which is easily mined,
and a proportionately higher rate in mines where mining is ren-
dered more difficult through a decreased thickness of the coal-
bed and faults of other kinds that make mining hard and dis-
APPENDIX. 255
agreeable. Any one conversant with coal-mining knows that
this metliod means the survival of the fittest, and is generally-
advocated by operators whose mines have great natural advan-
tages in the way of thick coal and a low rate of dead work.
The claims of these operators are that a day's labor is a day's
labor, and whether performed in one field or the other, in a
thick or in a thin vein of coal, should yield to the miner the
same rate of wages per day. Upon this basis and by this
method of reasoning the president of the coal company, with a
view of reducing the wages of his miners, compares the earn-
ing ability of the Spring Valley and Braidwood miners. We do
not believe this method, under existing conditions, is practica-
ble, and we kno\\', if it was applied in a general way, that it
would close his mines, and his customers would purchase from
more favored fields. He says tliat the proper relative differ-
ence between Braidwood and Spring Valley should make the
price at the latter place 68.14 cents per ton. It is generally
known, and cannot be questioned, that a miner in Mt. Olive
mines, Macoupin County, 111., can produce with the same
labor double the quantity of coal ; and, if the equitable theory
of labor cost, as urged by him, be enforced, the relative rate at
Mt. Olive, as compared with Spring Valley, should be 34.7
cents per ton. This adjustment would equalize the earning
power of miners and permanently close mines located and op-
erated under similar conditions as those at Spring Valley,
whereas necessity would compel miners to secure employment
in more favored fields. To the miners this charge would in-
volve temporary inconveniences, but to operators it means total
less of invested capital.
The second principle to which we referred is founded upon
" a live and let live policy," by which operators and miners in a
competitive field agree to share the responsibilities and divide
with each other the labor and cost involved in the production
of coal.
The method is the one liy which all wage adjustments have
been hitherto made, and, although it has sometimes given, as it
must necessarily give, a greater reward to miners in thick coal
256 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
than it does to miners working in thinner seams, it has also
tended to keep operators nearly upon the same plane in produ-
cing and selling coal ; this because it is cheaper to produce coal
in a thick than in a thin vein. Hence, if a thick co.al seam is
profitable to operators, and if thin coal afflicted with difficulties,
such as brushing, water, etc., is more expensive to operate, it
cannot be questioned that it is also less remunerative to the
miners, or that the disadvantages are shared by miners and
operators alike.
The president of the company states, "there is not in the
State of Illinois, nor in the United Stales, a coal property where
men can work with less discomfort and greater safety to life and
limb than they can in the Spring Valley mines." This is a mis-
take. There is as much safety at La Salle, Winona, Minonk,
Bloomington, Decatur, and other places in the same coal bed,
and there are dozens of larger coal fields in the United States
just as safe, while, so far as comfort is concerned, Spring Valley
is no better off than the places named above. All of them are
free from water, yet miners in Spring Valley and other thin
vein mines in northern Illinois are subjected to discomforts
such as are not known in thick coal beds or in mines worked
upon the room and pillar system. In the latter, miners have
more space to move around freely, to stand erect and work with
ease, while at Spring \'alley miners work upon their knees or in
a stooping position, and in loading coal must work in the nar-
row space left between the packing and the coal face.
Let any man who disbelieves this statement spend ten hours
hard at work in a room three feet or three feet and six inches
high, and convince himself that there is greater discomfort ex-
perienced than in working just as hard for the same length of
time in a room five to eleven feet high.
He wants three men in a room instead of two as heretofore,
and is willing to increase the length of the rooms from thirty-
six to forty-two feet. The miners are willing to meet thi^
objection by two men working in rooms forty-two feet wide,
but they feel that three men working in one place often gel
into each other's way, and thus lessen their ability to produce.
APPENDIX. ■ 257
If he does not want to cripple the earning power of his miners,
and simply desires to save in roadways, he will readily grant a
forty-two foot room to two men.
He also intimates that the hours of working at Spring Valley
did not exceed seven. The facts are that miners at Spring
Valley were compelled to be in the mine before 7 a. m. and to
stay in their working places until 5 p. m., the only exceptions
being when a fall of stone upon the roadway or no cars pre-
vented them from working.
The president is evidently misinformed as to conditions at
Braidwood, which he compared with those of his mines. It is
true that the method of working is the same, that is to say, both
places are operated upon the " long wall system." We have
never heard any very serious complaints about water in the
Braidwood mines, as he asserts; while some sections of the
mines may at times be damp, they are not wet. If, however,
he is correct in his statement that vast quantities of water accu-
mulate at the working faces in the Braidwood mines, thereby
involving additional expense for the employment of extra labor
and machinery to remove it, a factor to which he attaches great
importance, the owners of wet mines must be at a decided dis-
advantage in competing with the dry and less expensive mines
at Spring Valley.
Regarding the amount of brushing done by the miners at
Braidwood he has erred. He says the minimum amount is
forty-two inches and the maximum four feet. There is no stip-
ulated height for brushing required by Braidwood rules, tlie
only requirement is that the roadway be kept four feet from the
rail, and this under some conditions might necessitate three feet
of brushing and under others considerably less.
There is removed by the miners two feet and ten inches of
coal and from four to six inches of fire clay as mining, and to
this must be added, according to him, four feet, the maximum
brushing, thus making a space of over seven feet ; assuming the
roof settles until it reaches the bottom, which is absurd when we
consider the packing put in the place of the coal taken out, the
17
2 58 A STRIKE- OF MILLIONAIRES.
amount of brusliing would need only to be increased a few
inches to cut the roadway through the solid rock.
There is a difference, too, in the manner roadways are driven,
not accounted for by him asNto width. At Braidwood roadways
in rooms never exceed seven feet in width at the bottom, and
are arched in such a manner as not to exceed four feet at the
top, while at Spring Valley the requirement is nine feet at the
bottom and eight feet at the top, and the labor required for this
work, especially at the Spring Valley mines, by reason of the
extra width and more solid nature of the strata, is even, at six-
teen inches thick, almost if not equally as onerous as that per-
formed by Braidwood miners.
The nature of the fire clay underlying the coal strata at
Braidwood is more uniform than at Spring Valley. At the
former place it is customary to take four to six inches of clay
in mining, while at Spring Valley there is an irregular sand-
stone formation underlying the fire clay, which frequently
touclies the bottom of the coal seam, where the sandstone rock
fluctuates so as to leave no fire clay between it and the coal bed,
and one-third of the places at Spring Valley are affected in that
manner ; it then become necessary to mine in the coal, and
this involves a double hardship upon the miners employed in
such rooms, for which the company has allowed no compensa-
tion. It increases the difficulty of mining, and when mined and
brought down, its shelly and brittle nature admits a larger per-
centage to pass through the screens, and for which the miner
receives nothing.
We are of the opinion that if the president was more famil-
iar with mining coal at Spring Valley than his assumptions in-
dicate, he would not place himself in a position to be justly
crUicised !)y those who are willing to admit his superior brain
power in many respects. He say^: " not one additional stroke
of the arm is required to bring down the coal, compared with
Braidwood." Here again he errs. And it is upon eirors such
as we have referred to, mistakes which he accepts-as facts, that
the erroneous nature of his conclusions, if not the imperfection
of his logic, is clearly shown. The amount of sulphur, or the
APPENDIX. 259
number of iron bands running in the coal, determines the ease
or difficulty with which it can be brought down. It is conceded
that all coal contains more or less refuse, and his mines are
especially cursed in this way. At Braidwood a small seam of
sulphur is mostly found about the middle of the vein. This
varies, as it does in all other mines, from one to two inches in
thickness; in addition to this there is at Spring Valley, in
nearly every place in the entire field, a band of iron pyrites two
inches from the top of the seam, varying from one to several
inches in thickness. There is no cleaving quality in this stone,
and from si.x to eight inches of coal is thus lost, which dimin-
ishes materially the height of the vein represented by him.
The loss of this amount of coal, however, is not the chief
complaint, but the increased labor of wedging it from the stone
to which it strongly adheres. Those wlio have had a practical
experience with mining know without further comment the in-
creased labor necessary to produce coal under such conditions.
The cost of production, whether it be due to natural dis-
advantages or incompetent management, does, as a matter of
fact, determine the margin of profit and the prices for labor at
which the mine can be successfully operated, under the head of
what is commonly known as " dead work," which phrase is in-
tended to cover operating expenses of all kinds, much of an in-
teresting character might be furnished. In the late investiga-
tion conducted by the commission appointed by you, to effect,
if possible, a peaceable and satisfactory adjustment of the
mining difficulties in northern Illinois, much information of a
conflicting nature was produced. This, too, from several parts
of the same field, where conditions being nearly equal might
reasonably be expected to illustrate this ; the actual cost of dead
work embracing every source of expense connected with the
producing of a ton of coal at Spring Valley, which field, by
reason of the absence of water and other exceptional conditions,
which increase the cost of production, was, as shown by the
books of that company, at the request of Messrs. Gould amj
Wines, the committee appointed by you, forty-six cents per
ton, while the actual operating expenses of the Braidwood field.
26o A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
which, as the company ptactically admits, is higher by reason
of tlie water and other disadvantages with which that section
has to contend, disadvantages whicli we admit are shared to
some extent equally by the miners and operators, were, as
Colonel A. L. Sweet testified, equivalent to forty-five cents
per ton.
Here the query naturally suggests itself, how Colonel Sweet,
owning and operating mines at Streator and Braidwood, both
under heavy disadvantages as compared with the dry and
comparatively inexpensive mines belonging to the Spring
Valley Company, paying, in addition to the extra sources of ex-
pense from which the natural conditions at Spring Valley ex-
empt the company, five cents per ton more for all coal pro-
duced at Braidwood, could yet show, as he has done, a net
expense of forty-five cents per ton against the forty 'six cents in
Spring Valley field, is a question that might well elicit interest
and inquiry. The results here shov^-n demonstrate one of two
facts, either that the mines at Spring Valley have been under in-
competent and therefore expensive management, or that Colonel
Sweet's mines have been most economically conductetl. If the
charge of relatively increased cost is due to mismanagement or
to any other cause, aside from actual and inevitable operating
expenses, the great aim on the part of the company should be
to remove the defects by substituting a more economical policy,
instead of endeavoring to reward extravagance or put a pre-
mium up m incompetency by reducing mining rates below what is
conceded to be the fair relative prices in the districts immedi-
ately surrounding him.
The miners of Spring Valley have never asked, expected or
desired to receive a price for their labor in excess of a fair rela-
tive rate as compared with that paid in other fields in northern
Illinois. This they believe they are entitled to, and, as the
president has expressed a willingness to grant this, it on'y re-
mains for him to join with liis miners in an effort to arrive at the
facts in the case by practical methods, such as a joint investiga-
tion as to the truth or falsity of his statements as compared to
ours.
APPENDIX. 261
From the statements to which we have taken exception, we
have proved and could, if space permitted, further demonstrate
the equitable relations which Spring Valley prices and condi-
tions, prior to the strike, gave to the miners and operators of
that field as compared with those in competing districts. We
have defined the advantages the Spring Valley company would
enjoy as compared with other operators, and also explained the
disadvantages its miners would labor under if the prices and
conditions for mining at Spring Valley, as proposed, were
accepted. The injustice of the president's proposition may be
summed up thus: ist. He asks his miners to do a greater
amount of brushing than Brairrwood miners are required to do.
2d. For this work he proposes to pay twelve and a half cents
per ton less than Braidwood miners receive. 3d. He asks his
miners to mine coal three feet and eight inches thick, eight
inches of which is lost to the miner by reason of sulphur, and
in addition thereto do the brushing above referred to at a price
only two and a half cents per ton above the rate paid at Streator,
where the coal is over five feet in thickness and the miners have
no brushing to do. 4th. He proposes a reduction of fifteen
cents per ton with thirty inches of brushing, while the original
proposition at the La Salle field, his nearest competitors, operat-
ing under precisely the same conditions, and shipping coal into
the same markets, was ten cents per ton below last year's rates,
which proposition has since been reduced to seven and a half
cents, or one half less than that demanded of us. Iwenty-
four inches of brushing that has by compromise been reduced
to twenty inches, compared with his demand that Spring
Valley miners hereafter shall take thirty inches or ten inches
more in height, including extra widtli, than asked by his La Salle
competitors.
Being willing to accept equitaljle conditions and prices,
and to effect an honorable settlement of the present strike, we
offer
ist. 'I'o work the second or thick coal vein at .Spring Valley
for the ])rice paid Streator miners, namely: 72}^ cents per t<in;
this, too, in face of the fact that the mine is yet in the crop coal, is
262 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
full of faults, and up to this time has cost the company, liy their
own admission, over $2 per ton for mining it.
2d. Believing that the president of the coal company will ad-
mit the fact that more labor is required to mine a ton of coal in
the third vein at Spring Valley than in the thick coal at Streator,
we will agree to mine his thin coal for the price paid the thick
coal miners at Streator, provided the company will do the brush-
ing and building; or
3d. We will agree to an adjustment of prices and conditions-
such as may be determined liy arbitration, or by an agreement
to jointly investigate, and be governed by the facts developed
by such an investigation.
Trusting that an equitable and amicable settlement may be
speedily effected by some one of the methods herein submitted,
we are, sir,
Respectfully yours,
Peter McCall.
James McNulty.
Wm. Scaife.
David Ross.
John McBride.
Ill an editorial, commenting on this cor-
respondence between the " head " of the coal
company and its " hands," the Chicago Inter
Ocean said:
The president of the Spring Valley Coal Company complained
to Governor Fifer that the press of Illinois was trying to compel
him to run his mines solely in the interest of the miners. He
claimed that he had been willing to pay fair wages, and he
labored with an endless column of figures to show that his offer
of 75 cents a ton was equal to the wages paid in other Illinois-
mines.
The miners in their reply do not resort to his methods of hand-
ling figures, so as to confuse rather than enlighten. They make
APPENDIX. 263
a plain proposition, which he will either accept or leave the
people to infer that his first letter was not honest.
He claimed that the second or middle vein in his mine com-
pared favorably with that at Streator. This vein is not yet
developed, but the miners met him more than half way with an
offer to work this vein for 72 j4 cents per ton, the Streator price,
and 2^ cents less than the price he offered. He has claimed
that every ton of coal taken from this undeveloped vein has cost
him $2. He has a good chance to show the foolishness of the
miners' proposition or the unfairness of his own by accepting
this offer.
Another proposition from the miners seems fair. They offer
to mine the coal in the third vein for the same price, 72^ cents
per ton, if the company will do the brushing and road-making.
This would be pay equal to that at Streator and Braidwood.
.Streator has no brushing to do, and the Braidwood operators
pay the men 72^ cents per ton for the coal, and pay them extra
for the brushing and road-making. I'he president of the com-
pany argued that the brushing and road making could be done
for less money than his miners asked. He, in fact, offered
them zYz cents per ton for this work and sought to justify that
offer in his letter to the governor. He can demonstrate this
much clearer to the people of Illinois by accepting the miners'
second proposition, and by building the roads and doing the
brushing for ly^ cents a ton. When he has done the work and
balanced his books, he may be able to show that his recent offer
was fair and equitalile as compared with the wages paid at
Streator and Braidwood.
The miners put the president of the company in another
corner by offering to submit their case to arbitration.
They have the best of the controversy so far, and will hold it
unless he meets them fairly on one or all of these propositions.
He cannot convince the people of Illinois that the miners are
in wrong, and that he is" opposed hy anarchy, "Ijy writing long
letters with such statements. The fact is that he has sought to
"break down the miners' union in Illinois. He did not wait for
a strike in his mines, he did not offer a proposition for reduced
264 A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES.
wages. He closed his mines and threw his men out of work.
He kept the mines closed until after a settlement had been
effected at Braidwood and Streator. Then he offered seventy-
five cents a ton, the brushing to be done for nothing, and
announced that he would only treat with men individually on that
proposition. He would have nothing to do with any committee.
In his letter to the governor, the president forgot to mention
this feature of the trouble between him and his miners. It is
really the one great barrier between them, and he should be
manly enough to let the public see his true position, or keep
quiet.
In matter and manner, the reply of the
miners justifies the confident statement of
President McBride at the Indianapolis conven-
tion, in December, 1889, that the men had
shown themselves able to hold their own in an
intellectual contest with their employers, and
corroborates the manly acknowledgment of
Colonel W. P. Rend, at the Columbus Joint
Conference of March, 1889, that "We found
they [the miners' representatives] were better
equipped and better prepared with arguments
than we were."
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UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA
331.89L77S C003
A STRIKE OF MILLIONAIRES AGAINST MINERS
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