te high in rank, and
among the oldest of those comprising the greatest republic, seems
incomprehensible. In the very State where the Declaration of
Independence was sent to the world, proclaiming that men are created
free and equal, and that the right of the majority is the supreme law,
how comes it that a settlement can be maintained where the rights of the
majority can be ignored and suppressed at the point of the bayonet? For
an answer to this question, comes the monosyllable--Trusts!

Wilkes-Barre is a typical specimen community which may be taken as the
sample unit for a microscopic investigation of the conditions that have
created the modern institution of _voluntary slavery_. The scrutiny of
the specimen is given through the eyes of a resident of the town, and
the observations are his.

"In a month then, they will shut down three of the mines, and will close
the Jumbo Breaker. You know what that means. I have asked the men of
Shaft Fifteen if they intend to starve, and they answered to a man that
they would sooner be shot than starve like rats in their homes."

"What is that to me? Am I to look after every man who has ever blasted a
ton of coal in my pits or crushed in the breakers?

"You tell the men of Shaft Fifteen, and of every other shaft in the
valley, that if they make a single move that threatens the property of
the Paradise Coal Company I will see that they don't 'starve in their
homes.'"

"Then you will not arbitrate?"

"There is nothing to arbitrate. I have no more work for the men. That
settles it. The world is big, and if they can find no work in
Wilkes-Barre, let them hunt for it elsewhere."

"Mr. Purdy, I give you ample warning. The miners will declare a general
strike if you persist in locking out half of them now that the winter
weather has set in. The pits and the breakers can stand idle while the
demand for coal at an advanced price is created by an artificial coal
famine; but the miners have to be fed. They work like machines; but as
yet they have not learned the lesson of living without food."

"Metz, I have given you my final answer. The mines and breakers close on
the day I stated."

Carl Metz is the foreman of the largest of the Paradise Company's Coal
shafts, the "Big Horn." He is in consultation with Mr. Gorman Purdy, the
president of the company. Their closing remarks as just quoted are
uttered as they stand on the steps leading to the street from the
offices on the main squa