ions which men express when free from the shadow of an audience, or when they are not expected to stand by the temporary stock interests of their class, may at least supplement other forms of testimony. More than this I will not claim for it.

If this evidence seems like a too irresponsible sort of gossip, I can only answer that the volume contains no reference that is not the honest expression of opinion by men whom the investigator would naturally seek as most likely to throw light on his subject.

It is true that these critics are exceptions. The prevailing commercial opinion is that which justifies the methods under which one's wealth is gathered. It is doubtful if any bias exists at the present day that acts with more blinding power upon men than the bias associated with their money income. There is scarcely any rich source of pecuniary profit for which the average citizen will not find ethical justification. During my first visit to the anthracite coal fields, I found a coal operator who was making large profits from a private bar to which his miners were expected to come for their drink, as they were expected to patronize his company store. He had no difficulty in defending this retailing of liquor on what he insisted were moral grounds. The miners could be more easily guarded against excesses. They would spend less money than in the low groggeries of the town. Certain miners' wives had expressed their gratitude to him for these benefits. There was perhaps no conscious humbuggery in this, but the profits on his gin and whiskey were so alluring as to bias his judg ment. The proof of this came in abundance from his fellow-employers who did not or would not keep

a bar. Free from the bias, they were unqualified in their condemnation of this source of income for one in this employer's position. In the same way practically every business abuse against the miners is condemned by those employers who have got rid of the abuse. The "company store" began as a necessity for the miners, but when the town grew and private stores everywhere sprang up, the miners naturally preferred to buy, as the rest of us do, where they liked. The company store from this time on was a reproach to the best business management. Yet I never knew an operator, still maintaining one, who did not argue with unction and fervor that they were very beneficial to the miner and his family.

If one to-day go through those regions, asking right and left among those who have discontinued the company stores, he will hear the frankest admission that it had long since come to be a nuisance and without any justification. In 1900, when operators were indignantly defending their method of selling powder to their miners greatly above the market price, I found that the operators who did not do this, had only sarcasm for the ingenious reasons which the other employers were giving. The president of a company told me: "The miners are perfectly right in their contention. It is true that the higher price entered into an older agreement, but this clumsy method of paying wages is one that any first-rate business man ought to be ashamed of."

The miners in the recent strike (1902) asked among other things, to have the coal weighed as it comes from the mine, and to be paid by weight rather than by car-load. They honestly believe that they are

cheated out of a portion of their earnings. The employers, who still pay by this rough and elastic car measurement, would make the inquirer believe that the miners' demand is as ignorant as it is absurd. Fortunately a small proportion of the coal now mined is paid by weight. Among employers who have adopted this method, I found the strongest convictions that the miners were in the main right about this issue.

Again, when one sees the conditions under which the "pumpmen" work for twelve hours daily in the mines, he is curious to hear what defence can be made for such slavish toil. The first employer I asked, said: "The pumpmen are not overworked. They would be perfectly contented if the trade-union bullies would let them alone." The mine boss and the superintendent know what the pumpman's life means. When they were convinced that their names would not be used, I got from them the most pronounced opinions that eight hours a day is long enough for pumpmen to work. The superintendent said, "The man who denies the grievance of the pumpman either does not know or does not care how men are used."

There is no great business that does not thus open to the investigator, from its own inner circles, the most trustworthy evidence concerning abuses. From evidence of this character, we may get invaluable hints as to general industrial tendencies and to possible improvements. There is invariably a small minority of men who in speculative discussion will freely take the larger social point of view, even if against their interests. A far larger class must first have thrown off

the abuse before unbiassed judgment becomes easy. In most business communities may be found a type of business man who has retired long enough from active work to look with a certain largeness upon these labor questions. They are among the best of witnesses. A retired shoe manufacturer in Massachusetts, who now ranks among the rich men in his community, has told me that the whole problem had entirely changed to him as he looked back upon the thirty years of chronic struggle with the trade union. "They make a good many stupid mistakes," he said, "but an organization strong enough to fight the employer is a necessity to labor. Competition so forces many of the best employers to copy the sharp tricks of the worst employers in lowering wages, that the trade union must be equipped to fight against these reductions, or for a rise in wages when business is more prosperous. I have fought the union in more than twenty strikes, but I can now see that they were at least as right and as reasonable as I was." It is this kind of evidence of which I make very free use in this volume. It has the competence wrought out of long experience. It is dispassionate and disinterested. This man had been separated from the tug and warfare of practical affairs long enough to see them in their larger social relations. Any one who had gone to him in earlier days, when he was in the heat and turmoil of his occupation, would have got simply a snap-shot judgment based upon the supposed business interests of that moment. It would have its value even then, but not the value of the later and calmer mood.

There is in this volume very frequent reference to

problems arising in the coal industry. This is done partly because of many visits to the soft- and hardcoal regions. It is further due to the fact that no business presents a better point of view for study, either of practice or of theory, in the labor question. I have excluded the soft-coal interest from the present discussion because the very immensity of area covered leaves it still open to general competitive influence. With the exception of the remarkable common organization at this moment existing between the federated trade union and the employers, it throws far less light on the subjects herein treated. The hard or anthracite coal is lodged by nature in so compact a pocket; it has so much the character of a monopoly, in spite of soft-coal rivalry, that it stands. out in admirable relief for investigation. During the last eighteen years I have visited every important strike in these regions. Nowhere can one see quite so clearly the relation between business proper and the various harassing problems that are more and more to challenge our corporate good sense. This business is on the competitive outskirts where the merits or demerits of further state interference and regulative legislation are likely to be forced upon us at no distant day. The last strike marks an epoch in the development of socialistic thought in this country.