every case as a too zealous employee of the company, and is set down by a majority of the people who know his personality, as a hard-hearted, driving master. The miner may work hard all day to find, when he comes out of the mine on the changing of shifts, that he has been docked half and sometimes two-thirds of the coal mined. In one case the writer knows of seventeen cars which were condemned in rapid succession as they came out of the mine. In another case a miner was docked half a car when he had loaded no cars at all. In a third case, out of 116 cars mined by a miner as a month's work, forty were docked for refuse. Of course these may be, and no doubt are, extreme cases, but none the less they furnish ground for the miners' demand that they shall have a representative, paid by themselves, to see that they get credit for the coal they mine.

Another indirect method of reducing wages was by the sale of powder to the miners. Of all the grievances complained of probably none drew to the strikers the sympathy of the public as much as did this overcharge for powder. In discussing this much vexed question one must bear in mind that powder is simply one of the tools of the miner. It is a tool somewhat different from the others he uses, however, in that its first use destroys it entirely. This use must therefore repay its cost if loss is to be avoided.

It has been estimated that on the average a miner can get out thirteen cars of coal with one keg of powder. In all but the Schuylkill district this powder cost $2.75 a keg. In mining one car of coal this one tool cost the miner a little over twenty-one cents, about one-fifth the gross price he received for his product. For the year ending December 31, 1899, a total of 1,372,691 kegs of powder were used in the anthracite region by the miners. This powder cost the companies only from 90 cents to $1.00 a keg. The custom of selling powder to miners at an unvarying price was adopted during the Civil War. At that time the price of powder rose and fell almost daily and the operators and miners

finally agreed that for their purpose the price should be fixed at $3.00 a keg. If the cost went above that price the operator was to bear the loss; if it fell below the miner was to be the loser. For a time the companies actually sold powder to the miners at a loss. When the price of powder was fixed at $3.00, it was used as the basis for arriving at the wage rate paid for mining. Since the war, though the cost of powder to the companies has decreased so materially, the miners in the northern and middle fields have been able to reduce its cost to them by only 25 cents a keg. This reduction was made without changing the wage rate, and was therefore equivalent to an increase in wages. In the Schuylkill district the employees of the Reading Company had the price of powder reduced to $1.50 per keg, but along with this reduction a change was made in the basis rate for mining. Notwithstanding the difference in the price paid for powder, therefore, the miners in the upper and middle districts received no less wages than the miners in the Southern field. The high price had, nevertheless, been a source of continual annoyance to the men, who were compelled to pay it and who did not understand why they should pay $2.75 for what the companies bought for $1.00.1

The conditions which brought about indirect reductions in the wages of the miner were sufficiently deplorable, but even more discouraging were the devices by which his earnings were lessened after his wages had been determined. The hard-coal miner of Pennsylvania, living usually in a small mining town, is under a system of complete if not absolute paternalism. He lives in a house built and owned by the company, he buys his food and clothing at the com

1 The operators did not attempt to deny that the price of powder to the miners was much above its cost to them, but they claimed that the rate of wages of the miners was not less than it was agreed it should be when the price of powder was fixed. Any reduction in the price of powder, they argued, without an equivalent change in the basis determining the rate of wages, was nothing less than an increase in the wages of the miners. The operator said the decrease to them in the cost of powder was no more than compensation for the increase in the cost of mining which they had to meet.

pany store, when sick he is attended by the company doctor, and if he is a Catholic his church dues are paid by the company. In fact, all those duties, the performance of which cultivates independence, ambition and the other qualities essential to individual and social development, are taken from the shoulders of the miner and performed by the company. It is not difficult to find mine workers in the hardcoal region who never see or handle one penny of their wages the year through. All their debts are contracted with and paid by the company employing them. An illustration of this dependence is furnished by the form of agreement which existed before the strike between one of the companies and its employees. It read as follows:

miners and shippers of coal at Pa., do hereby acknowledge that I have this day had and received from the said Company, the sum of $. . ., in full payment of all sums of money due me from said firm as wages, or otherwise, for the month of . . ., 188, and in settlement of all sums due me prior to and including said months, hereby ratifying and assenting to all deductions of any and every kind that the said Company have at any time heretofore made from the amounts due me as wages, salary or on any other account while in their employ. I acknowledge that the following is a correct statement and settlement of the balance due me; to wit:

In consideration of the premises, I do hereby consent that the said several sums shall be deducted from the amount due me as above

stated, and paid to the several parties entitled thereto; and to this end I do hereby release, assign, transfer and set over unto Company,

and the several parties entitled thereto, such an amount of the wages due me as may be required to pay said bills and accounts as shown by the foregoing statement.

AND WHEREAS, It may occur that I am now and shall hereafter become indebted to the same or other parties on similar accounts, while I remain in the employ of the said Company, I do hereby authorize and direct the said -Company to pay such accounts and bills for me and deduct the amounts so paid from all wages, salary and sums of money now due or hereafter to become due to me, and to that end I do hereby release, assign, transfer and set over unto the said Company, and to the several persons to whom such amounts may become due, so much of the wages or salary now due or that may at any time hereafter become due from the said Company as will suffice to pay said accounts.

Witness my hand and seal the day and year first above written.

It is easy from long distance, theoretical standpoints to denounce the company store and company doctor systems, but the fairest way is to look at them in the light of the conditions from which they have sprung. When a mine was first opened the land for miles around, with the possible exception of the public roads which had been opened for general use, belonged to the company. On this land, after the mine had been located, the company laid out a village, with a view to good drainage and good water supply, opened the street or streets, erected houses for mine employees, placed the school and perhaps a public hall, assigned land for the church or churches, and performed similar functions usually allotted to the inhabitants of towns and villages in the exercise of their civic responsibilities. The company or general store would be located near the main office of the company. In nearly every case it was the only store to which the miner could go to purchase necessaries for himself and his family.

The community which grew up was isolated from other towns and formed a small world unto itself.

Early in the life of this village occasion arose for the services of a physician. The town being small there was not a sufficient demand to induce a doctor to locate among the people. The company had to meet the emergency, and it did so by making the entire community support the physician by taxing single men fifty cents and married men $1.00 a month. This was necessary for the good of the community, though it may have worked to the inconvenience of a few.

In the course of time we find population increasing in the coal region. Towns spring up nearer the old ones, lines of communication are opened and means of transportation are brought in, and the mining village, heretofore isolated, begins to be brought into contact with other and larger towns. Business concerns in the cities are ready and willing to send wagons of goods each day to this village. It may be that lower prices are placed on the goods to secure the trade of the inhabitants. Soon the miners begin to pay attention to the prices charged them by the company store, and if there is a difference in favor of the city concern, as is often the case, they naturally want to deal where they can get the goods the cheapest. In the meantime the company store has become a source of profit to the company which it does not care to lose. The big store in the large city is able, with its thousands of purchasers, to undersell the small company store which in most cases depends upon a population of a few hundred. Compulsion and exorbitant rates begin to be the complaint of the miners.

So it is in the case of the company doctor. There are many physicians in this large city who are willing to visit the miner and his family in the small mining town whenever their services are needed. The miner would have to pay this physician only when there was sickness in his family. Believing that he would be saving money, he wants to bring about such an arrangement. He raises a cry against the