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HOME AND FLOWERS 



manent advance to a higher, artistic civil- 

 ization." To say that we are living in a 

 commercial age, in an age of combination 

 and organization, as opposed to one of com- 

 petition and individualism, is to utter the 

 tritest of truisms. The great benefits and 

 advantages of such trade and organization, 

 moreover, are indisputable. No thinking 

 man will deny such benefits, nor will he 

 claim that, because ultra material, American 

 aims and ambitions are of a wholly new and 

 contemptible kind. Other nations have 

 shown as much of a commercial spirit as 

 our own. They have gone further. They 

 have fought bloody wars for the sake of 

 commerce. 



And yet it is also indisputable that our 

 national ideals are in danger of becoming 

 dangerously material. We think so much 

 of the quantity of things we make, often 

 comparatively so little of the quality, so 

 much of the making of a living, so little of 

 the making of a life. We have grown rich 

 and powerful as a nation, with fabulous pri- 

 vate fortunes, tremendous corporate capital, 

 outlying "possessions," "subjects." battle- 

 ships and an increasing army. But all this 

 has not made us a happier people or ex- 

 tended the blessings of peace within our 

 own borders. It has not enlarged our stock 

 of brotherly love. Indeed, it would seem 

 that the more power and wealth we have 

 the more occasion we find for conflict with 

 our fellows. 



In the beautiful and fertile Wyoming re- 

 gion of Pennsylvania the English-speaking 

 anthracite coal miners lived in peace and 

 comparative comfort for more than two de- 

 cades, and the mine owners grew rich off 

 the profits of the mines. The miner had a 

 family and a home. Nature is bountiful and 

 fair to look at in this region. The soil was 

 rich enough to giv^ him a farm and a gar- 

 den, which he worked after mine hours. He 

 had ideals of family life, he and his good-, 

 wife enjoyed many comforts, and she culti- 

 vated flowers in the yard. 



Then the railroad companies went into 

 the business of mining coal, and very soon 

 began to bring in cheap labor from Latin 

 and Slavonic Europe. The Slav was igno- 

 rant, had no family and few wants. He could 

 live for a month on less than the American 

 miner paid for his house rent alone. He 

 soon began to lower the standard of living. 

 It is a maxim of commerce that the price of 

 labor, like the price of any other commodity 

 which is for sale, is fixed by the lowest bid. 

 The Slav was, by all odds, the lowest bidder, 

 and the standard of living for all was forced 



down gradually, but surely, to the level of 

 his life. Indirectly the income of the Amer- 

 ican miner was reduced, not by cutting his 

 wage, but by making him give more in ex- 

 change for it. The latter organized against 

 the competition of the Slav, and, when 

 this competition pressed him too hard, he 

 struck. 



For five long months want pinched the 

 miner's life, the operators lost vast profits, 

 and the innocent public suffered more than 

 either. Class hatred increased, social rancor 

 flourished, and between the two hostile 

 camps of capital and labor a wide gulf was 

 opened, across which were hurled accusa- 

 tions and threats, men met violent death, 

 property was destroyed, and bayonets 

 gleamed. It boots not whether the miners 

 were all right, or the operators, or both 

 partially so. It remains true that, assuming 

 only an imperfect comprehension of the 

 signs of the times and the crudest concep- 

 tion of the Golden Rule on the part of the 

 mine owners, the strike might have been 

 avoided. 



Suppose, for instance, these owners had 

 been actuated by a spirit of real progress 

 such as is shown by the Colorado Fuel and 

 Iron Company (see the editorial in Home 

 AND Flowers for November) and had recog- 

 nized the business value of harmony and 

 good living among their employes. Suppose 

 they had been willing to pay a live and let 

 live wage, and to forfeit a problematical 

 profit in dollars for a real gain in the good 

 will of the miners, which would surely have 

 meant financial gain in the end. One of the 

 railroads, I believe, has a system of old age 

 pensions, and looks after its worn out em- 

 ployes in other ways, but suppose the coal 

 "barons" had built a few model villages in 

 the anthracite country, in which the miners 

 could take pride. Suppose they had never 

 brought in the cheap European labor with 

 its ignorance, lawlessness, dirt, and low 

 standard of living, to bring down to its level 

 the American standard. Suppose they had 

 forfeited a little of the profits by so doing, 

 how would they stand today? Would they 

 have forfeited a tithe of what they have now 

 lost by the strike (conservative accounts say 

 a total of $70,000,000), to say nothing of 

 what the public has suffered, of hov/ the 

 operators have fallen in the estimation of 

 that public, of the terrible class hatred en- 

 gendered ? 



The life beautiful and the Golden Rule in 

 business are not mere sentimental abstrac- 

 tions. They underlie all real gain and 

 progress. 



