ny-winged and many-windowed, and their shaft-towers rise high up
toward the clouds and the stars. About the feet of those in the valley
the waves of the out-reaching city beat and break, and out on the
hill-sides they stand like mighty fortresses built to guard the lives
and fortunes of the multitudes who toil beneath them. But they are not
long-lived. Like human beings, they rise, they flourish, they die and
are forgotten. Not one in hundreds of the people who walk the streets
of Scranton to-day, or who dig the coal from its surrounding hills,
can tell you where Burnham Breaker stood a quarter of a century ago.
Yet there are men still living, and boys who have grown to manhood,
scores of them, who toiled for years in the black dust breathed out
from its throats of iron, and listened to the thunder of its grinding
jaws from dawn to dark of many and many a day.

These will surely tell you where the breaker stood. They are proud to
have labored there in other years. They will speak to you of that time
with pleasant memories. It was thought to be a stroke of fortune to
obtain work at Burnham Breaker. It was just beyond the suburbs of the
city as they then were, and near to the homes of all the workmen. The
vein of coal at this point was of more than ordinary thickness, and of
excellent quality, and these were matters of much moment to the miners
who worked there. Then, the wages were always paid according to the
highest rate, promptly and in full.

But there was something more, and more important than all this, to be
considered. Robert Burnham, the chief power in the company, and the
manager of its interests, was a man whose energetic business qualities
and methods did not interfere with his concern for the welfare of his
employees. He was not only just, but liberal and kind. He held not
only the confidence but the good-will, even the affection, of those
who labored under him. There were never any strikes at the Burnham
mines. The men would have considered it high treason in any one to
advocate a strike against the interests of Robert Burnham.

Yet it was no place for idling. There were, no laggards there. Men
had to work, and work hard too, for the wages that bought their daily
bread. Even the boys in the screen-room were held as closely to their
tasks as care and vigilance could hold them. Theirs were no light
tasks, either. They sat all day on their little benches, high up in
the great black building, with their eyes