THE CONDUCT OF INDUSTRIES 323 



sums of money collected by the unions from their members 

 for the purpose, properly and impliedly, of caring for their 

 sick, aged, and impoverished, into the support of industrial 

 warfare. The result was the cessation for five months of all 

 coal mining in the anthracite districts and the embarrassment 

 of and often, toward the end, the infliction of suffering and 

 death upon innocent people throughout a large portion of the 

 United States and Canada. It was only when the approach 

 of cold weather threatened the parties to the dispute with 

 similar suffering and risk of life that the fight came to an end. 

 The results had been enormously injurious not only to both 

 parties to the controversy, but to the country at large. The 

 mine owners were estimated to have lost about $46,000,000 

 and the miners and other employees about $25,000,000; the 

 transportation companies also lost $28,000,000, while the 

 loss to the nation through disturbance of business, the com- 

 pulse^ closing down of mills and factories, the going out of 

 blast of furnaces, the check upon the coke and other more 

 or less closely related industries, and the loss of working and 

 earning power, through illness and death, directly and indi- 

 rectly caused by this tremendous disturbance of all industries, 

 has not been estimated, and can be stated only as beyond 

 computation. 



The demoralization of industries was perhaps even far 

 exceeded in importance by the demoralization of the people, 

 not only in the coal regions where law and the principles of 

 good citizenship were most extensively and dangerously in- 

 fringed upon, but throughout the nation. In the case of the 

 anthracite strike universal uneasiness and distrust and a 

 spirit of antagonism between employer and employee were 

 awakened to an extent without parallel in the history of in- 

 dustry. Brother was set against brother, father against son. 

 The attempt to maintain order and to support the law by 

 use of the police powers of the state was often met with direct 

 resistance, and, throughout the country, by endeavors on the 

 part of the friends of organized labor to destroy the efficiency 

 of the militia by creating a sentiment against the entrance of 

 members of the unions into that essential instrument of pro- 

 tection of the law and of law abiding citizens. In some 



