conditions existing in the mines of West Virginia. One of the most
illuminating pieces of testimony available to the non-partisan
investigator is that of former Governor W. M. O. Dawson. Governor Dawson
sent a special message--a rare document and hard to find now--to the
legislature of 1907. Three cases of peonage in lumber camps had been
called to his attention by Secretary of State Elihu Root at the request
of the Italian ambassador. In his message Governor Dawson declared
without equivocation that a system of peonage existed under the guard
system. One of these cases resulted in what he called a "wanton murder"
as a result of a controversy as to whether the murdered man owed $1.50
for the railway fare of his son. The man was killed by a guard. The
governor goes on:
"The use of guards in this state is not restricted to cases like
these under investigation. They are used at some of the collieries
to protect the property of owners, to prevent trespassing, and
especially to prevent labor agitators and organizers of the miners'
union from gaining access to the miners.... Many outrages have been
committed by these guards, many of whom appear to be vicious and
dare devil men who seem to aim to add to their viciousness by
bulldozing and terrorizing people. It is submitted in all candor
that it is not to the best interests of the owners of these
collieries to employ such lawless men or to justify the outrageous
acts committed by them.
"In certain parts of the state miners are oppressed and wronged.
They are compelled to work in ill-ventilated and otherwise unfit
mines. They are cheated in the payment of the compensation for
their labor. They work on the condition that they receive so much
per ton for the coal mined by them, the coal is not weighed but is
calculated by the mine car. These cars, at least in some of the
collieries, are rated at a capacity of two and one half tons,
whereas they often have a capacity of four tons and in some cases
even up to six tons, but the miner is paid for only two and a half
tons, for all above that he mines, he gets no pay whatever. This is
robbery of the poor and oppression of the weak. At some of the
stores conducted by the collieries the miners are charged
extortionate prices for merchandise. This is likewise robbery of
the poor and oppression of the weak."
_Mother Jones_
The developments of the winter have been under the regime of a third
governor, who came to the state house at a season when part of the
commonwealth was under martial law. In March came the trials of a number
of the strikers and their sympathizers--approximately fifty--by a
military court on charges of inciting to riot, conspiracy to murder and
conspiracy to destroy property. Among those in prison is Mother Jones,
the "Stormy Petrel of Labor" who is always present in big labor
disturbances, especially those of the miners and the railroad men. She
has given the best part of her life to the cause of laboring men and
they adore her.
This old woman, more than 80 years of age, was in the mines when I went
there and I got to know her well. She passed the word along to the men
that I was "all right" and reticent as they are to strangers, they told
me their side of the case without reservation.
I have been with Mother Jones when she was compelled "to walk the
creek," having been forbidden to go upon the footpaths that happened to
be upon the property of the companies and denied even the privilege of
walking along the railroad track although hundreds of miners and others
were walking on it at the time. She was compelled to keep to the county
road although it was in the bed of the creek and the water was over her
ankles. I protested to the chief of the guards saying that no matter
what her attitude might be, no matter how much she might be hated, that
she was an old woman and common humanity would dictate that she be not
ill treated. I was told that she was an old "she-devil" and that she
would receive no "courtesies" there, that she was responsible for all
the trouble that had occurred and that she would receive no
consideration from the companies.
I was with her when she was denied "the privilege" of going up the
foot-way to the house of one of the miners in order to get a cup of tea.
It was then afternoon, she had walked several miles and was faint,
having had nothing to eat since an early breakfast. But that did not
shut her mouth. She made the speech she had arranged to make to the men
who had gathered to hear her although they had to line up on each side
of the roadway to avoid "obstructing the highway," a highway that was
almost impassable to a wheeled vehicle and on which there was no travel.
And in that speech she counseled moderation, told the men to keep
strictly within the law and to protect the company's property instead of
doing anything to injure it.
I had several long talks with her. When she speaks to the miners she
talks in their own vernacular and occasionally swears. She was a normal
school teacher in her early days, and in her talks with me in the home
of one of her friends in the "free town" of Eskdale, she used the
language of the cultured woman. And this is the old woman whom nearly
all the operators in the non-union fields fear, and whose coming among
their workers they dread more than the coming of a pestilence. They now
have her safely in jail.
When I left the field[11] the conflict was still on. It seemed likely to
continue until one side or the other gave in. The presence of the
military could only bring about a peace that is temporary. Having held
out through the winter, the miners were preparing to hold out through
the spring and summer and autumn if necessary, and the United Mine
Workers of America were preparing to back them up with all the resources
of the national organization.
[11] Since the writer left the district an unavailing effort was made to
secure from the civil courts an order restraining the military
commission from conducting the trials of those held on charges of
participation in various deeds of violence in connection with the
strike. Later, however, Governor Hatfield who, as head of the military
forces of the state, has the power to review the acts of the military
commission, discharged from custody a majority of those held.
Recently negotiations have been carried on between the miners' union and
one of the large companies involved in the strike with the result that
there is a possibility of a settlement being effected in that quarter,
though the matter remains _in statu quo_ until the return from the
tropics of the president of the company. Recently some of the troops
have been withdrawn from the strike zone, though martial law is still in
force.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of the Coal Age_
MILITIAMEN ESCORTING PRISONERS TO COURT MARTIAL]
SOCIAL FORCES
By EDWARD T. DEVINE
CONSTRUCTIVE RELIGION
Greed, selfishness, privilege, injustice, exploitation, ignorance, and
neglect are the seven deadly sins of modern civilization. These evils
are alike in this, that they all have their roots in defective or
abnormally developed character. Weakness and pathological strength are
their opposite but closely related and interdependent poles.
Revolution will not exterminate them, except that revolution within the
soul of man which transforms weakness and moral disease into health and
normal vigor; which eats away the abnormal excrescence of harmful
qualities and transforms the monster into a sane and self-controlled
individual.
Laws will not of themselves exterminate the least of the social evils,
save as they correspond to a previous clear recognition of their wisdom
and justice in the free minds of citizens. If graft and privilege
express the habitual manner of doing business, the natural mental
reaction of the average man of the community, then it will be true, as
an investigating committee has said, that there is no virtue in the
legislative printing press.
Philanthropy is no cure for the evils which cause crime, poverty,
squalor, and degeneracy. It is a necessary means of dealing with certain
definite conditions, but those conditions are symptoms of ulterior
maladies which the charitable relation does not reach. Neither
alms-giving nor preventive measures touch the real sources of
regeneration and health.
Education, in the specific sense of preparation for efficient work and
the development of the mental powers, such education as by mutual
consent we expect from our public schools, does not begin early enough,
or last long enough, or go far enough into the fields of personal
habits, ideals, and motives to guard even against ignorance, at least
that kind of wilful and appalling ignorance which prevents half the
world from knowing how the other half lives, even when the facts are
spread abroad equally in official reports and in popular literature;
that kind of ignorance which blinds the eyes of the more favored of
fortune and blasts the tender shoots of altruism which their hearts here
and there put forth. If education cannot prevent even ignorance of this
kind how much less can it be regarded as a remedy for deliberate
exploitation and conscienceless greed.
If neither revolution nor laws nor yet formal education can cure these
root evils, is there no cure? There is one potent, wholly efficacious
cure, and that is such teaching and such an experience as will supplant
selfishness and greed by generosity and compassion, the desire for
privilege by the desire for equal opportunity, the instinct of injustice
by the passion for justice, the tendency to exploit by the tendency to
nobly serve, ignorance and neglect by a clear-eyed and persistent
determination to know and understand and to act on that knowledge and
understanding. This teaching, wherever it is carried on and in whatever
name, is essentially religious teaching, and this experience, seizing
upon the individual, is nothing else than a religious conversion. This
is not to distort words from their established and usual meaning but
only to apply them as they must be applied.
No rich and educated Jew can justly claim a share in the glorious
traditions of his religious faith if he oppresses the poor and crushes
the needy; if, lying upon beds of ivory, inventing instruments of music,
drinking wine in bowls, and anointing himself with the chief ointments,
he is not grieved for the afflictions of Joseph, if he afflicts the
just, or takes a bribe, or turns aside the poor in the gate from their
right. The afflictions of Joseph are different in these days, the form
of bribery has changed, the rights of the poor from which they are
turned aside are not precisely those which the prophet Amos had in mind;
but the teachings remain, and the curse upon those who "rejoice in a
thing of nought" may not unprofitably ring in the ears of Jews and
Christians with all the old time authority and effect.
But how about the position of the prosperous and influential Christians
professing a law of love, the son-ship of all men to a common Father, a
gospel of good will embracing justice and implying obligations
stretching in all directions infinitely beyond justice, but never
denying it in the least iota? If this profession is not arrant hypocrisy
or pure self-delusion, the faith which he holds will instantly expel
the very evils from which we suffer, and nothing else except such faith
will expel them. Religion goes to the very roots of character, cleansing
the evil nature, revealing new motives, illuminating the mind,
trans-valuing values, strengthening the will, lessening the power of
temptations, setting the feet on safe paths, giving a new meaning to
common experiences and a new zest to life.
The question remains whether this kind of constructive religion, this
vital, living and vibrant faith, is to be found today in the churches
and synagogues, or whether it has departed from its ancient altars,
perhaps to reappear in strange disguises in the labor movement, in art
or poetry or philosophy, or among humble people who do not have the
means as yet of expressing the new impulses.
It is a grave question--for the churches. One interesting indication
that it is to be answered in favor of the continued claim of the
existing religious bodies to represent the main current of flowing
religious faith, work, and thought is to be found in a new journal which
appeared on the news-stands in March with the captivating title _The
Constructive Quarterly_. Silas McBee, former editor of the _Churchman_,
is its editor, but it is to have no "editorial pronouncements."
What is distinctive about this new periodical is that it is to work for
a better understanding among the various communions of Christendom,
building on what the churches are actually believing, doing, and
thinking. It is not seeking neutral territory where courtesy and
diplomacy would tend to avoid issues and round off the sharp edges of
truth and conviction, but rather common ground where loyalty to
conviction will be secure from the tendency to mere compromise and to
superficial and artificial comprehension. In the first number there is a
striking array of able articles from Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox,
Evangelical Protestants, from Europeans and Americans, clergymen and
laymen. It will be difficult to maintain so high a standard; but the
idea is an inspiring one and deserves to succeed.
The tragedy of ecclesiastical history in all ages is the spilling of
blood and treasure by the churches in warfare against other forms of
faith. It is true that the decay of religious controversy has usually
meant a decay of interest in religion. A writer in the _Quarterly_
quotes Tennyson as having said, "You must choose in religion between
bigotry and flabbiness." What the present venture is in some measure to
test is the possibility of laying aside hostility while yet maintaining
_esprit de corps_, to act in the spirit of Von Moltke's dictum, "March
apart, strike together!"
The success of the effort will depend on the clear perception of the
enemies against which the allied forces of religion are to strike, or
dropping the figure, on the concentration of effort on the positive
results which the forces of organized religion are to seek to secure in
the social order. These lie partly at least, avoiding dogmatic
exaggeration, in those social relations in which the evil tendencies to
which we have referred are so apparent. The religion which is
constructive is one which makes men unwilling to exploit the vices or
weaknesses of their fellow men, and at the same time makes the other men
unexploitable, which destroys privilege through just laws, impartially
enforced, and upheld by enlightened public opinion, which dispels
ignorance by full and exact knowledge bearing fruit in sound measures of
social reform, which protects the sub-normal and emancipates the
handicapped from their limitations, which permeates education, business,
politics, and eventually the entire social life.
There may be other tests of true religion, but these are concrete, easy
to understand and to apply. They have ancient and sufficient sanction.
They are unsectarian and non-controversial.
STRANGE INCENSE
CARY F. JACOB
_A tiny, tangled head bent down
Within a city's gutter--
A laughing face of tan and brown
Amid the rubbish of the town._
_Mud-pies and broken glass all day
Bring fairyland from far away
To thee, sweet innocence, at play._
_But mud-pies blacken; glass gives pain,
And laughing eyes are turned to gain
'Mid cold and hunger, snow and rain._
_God shield thee, tangled head bent down
Within a city's gutter!
Poor lily of the noisome town!
Strange incense, shed o'er stranger ground!_
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Simple typographical and spelling errors were corrected.
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in this work; otherwise they were not changed.