live on
little, and did not have to withstand the rigor of a Pennsylvania
winter.

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

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

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

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

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

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