them to this account for a picture of the events and the conflicting sentiments and opinions connected with them, we here simply reiterate three fundamental principles, often before affirmed by The Outlook-principles which these events appear to us to illustrate and confirm.

I. The workingman's worst enemy is he who endeavors to persuade him to dishonor himself by violating his sacred word or by entering into a labor war when he has no cause. The miners who are working for G. B. Markle & Co. are practically without a grievance. They have an agreement with their employers to arbitrate any differences which may arise. The endeavor of Mr. Mitchell to induce them to violate that agreement and go upon a strike when they have no grievances to be redressed is bad morals and bad policy. It is bad morals because it seeks to stir up causeless strife between copartners in a common undertaking, and because it asks men to violate a solemn contract made to meet just such exigencies as the present. It is bad policy because if employers learn that he who treats his men well is just as liable to a strike as he who treats them ill, and that agreements to arbitrate are binding only on employers but not on employed, all interest to treat men well and all motive to submit issues to voluntary arbitration will be taken away.

II. The first and fundamental right of labor is the right to be free. This right the State ought to protect at all hazards. It ought not to leave it to be protected by private enterprise. To permit a corporation to arm its retainers by swearing them in as deputies is to incite to private war. This method always has led to violence and always will. Governor Roosevelt, when the workers at Croton Dam were threatened by a mob, set an example which we are glad to see there are indications the Governor of Pennsylvania is inclined to follow. With the first threat of danger there ought to be sent to the scene of disturbance a body of well-armed and welldrilled troops, in the pay of the State and under the command of the State, prepared to protect person and property from every form of violence. Whenever and wherever the right of any man to work peaceably where he will, for whom he will, at what wages he will, under what

conditions he will, is threatened, it should be protected-not by privately armed forces, but by the State. If the terms and conditions on which labor may be carried on are to be determined at all for the individual laborer, they must be determined by the State, not by an irresponsi ble body whose edicts are enforced by a mob.

III. The State may well leave controversies between private employers and employed to be settled privately when no great public interests are involved. But when the conditions are such that the interest of the public is directly and largely concerned, the public through its properly constituted officials should have the power, in its own interest, to intervene and to determine the controversy. It is an imperfect civilization which allows the anthracite coal of the country to pass under the control of a small body of owners. It may not be easy now to correct the evils of this blunder inherited from the past, but it ought not to be difficult so to limit their control as to prevent distress and disaster to an innocent public. The community ought not to be dependent for its fuel on the chances of a private war waged, for no one knows how long a time, between the mine-owner and the mine-worker. We do not allow individuals to settle their controversies by a duel; much less ought we to allow great bodies of men to settle their disputes by a conflict which entails privation and suffering on the entire community. The State ought to provide by law compulsory arbitration in all cases in which the community has a direct and considerable interest in the peaceful adjustment of a labor controversy. It ought to require the corporations to submit to a court constituted for that purpose any complaints presented by or on behalf of its men; and it ought to forbid men from combining to cease work in order to enforce their demands, in cases in which such legal redress of wrongs is provided. The latter clause would rarely or never have to be appealed to. Men strike because they have no other redress; provide other redress and they would not strike. Nor is it any reply to the proposition of compulsory arbitration to say that the men themselves do not want it. We do not know whether this is true or not; but the community needs it, and it is in

the interest of the community that the demand for it is made. We are glad to see that in the present exigency the demand is urged in many quarters, some of them decidedly influential. Mine-owners and mine-workers ought not to be permitted to determine whether the community shall have the fuel necessary to its comfort and almost to its existence. If they cannot agree to co-operate in furnishing the coal and cannot be compelled to settle their disagreements by submitting them to an impartial tribunal, the State should take the coal fields from them and furnish the coal itself.

The Galveston Disaster

To affirm, as one minister is reported to have asserted, that God sent destruction upon Galveston as a penalty for sin, is to fall into the very error which the Book of Job exposes an error which assumes that prosperity is an indication of divine approval, and disaster a demonstration of his condemnation. On the other hand, to declare that such events are due to the operation of the laws of nature, and that God has nothing to do with them, is to leave man without a God in the very time when man needs him most. If the Almighty cannot control the forces of nature, if at least he cannot give man warning beforehand of impending disaster, he is not a God to whom one can look as to a present help in time of trouble. It is neither by imputing to God the indiscriminate harshness in administration of the one view or the poverty in resources of the other that faith in God can find support in time of adversity.

The real questions which we have to consider in the face of such terrible experiences are, Would life be better without them? Doubtless it would be easier, pleasanter, more agreeable, but would it be truly better? If the object of life is to produce what men generally regard as happiness, it is very ill adapted to its end. But there is something very much better than happiness to be secured-namely, character. That something higher we all wish for our children, and we do not hesitate to employ pain at times to confer it upon them. In our higher moods we desire this something better for ourselves, and in our highest see that pain is necessary

to develop it. Consider what qualities of character the Galveston d.saster has evoked: what generous sympathy with the sorrowing; what forth-putting service for their succor; what self-sacrifice in heroic endeavor by men and women laboring for the injured and the dying; what illumination of commerce in the agreement of merchants at a distance to extend the credit of those bankrupted by the disaster; what higher life infused into government, promptly employing its resources to feed the hungry and shelter the houseless; what spirit of courage in the citizens themselves, resisting the temptation to faithless despair, and proving their inextinguishable spirit of manhood in their brave resolve to rebuild the city, re-establish its commerce, and reopen their gateway to the breadstuffs of the Southwest.

And it must be remembered that such disasters not only give occasion for the manifestation of these and kindred virtues, they create them. There could be no generosity in life if there were no need of gifts, no sympathy if there were no sorrows, no courage if there were no dangers, no patience if there were no bur dens. One has only to glance in review over the pages of history to see that those epochs which have been characterized by undisturbed prosperity have cultivated the vices of indolence, ease-seeking, pleasureliving, and self-centering; and that the epochs of stress and storm have cultivated the virtues of heroism, unselfish service, dauntless endeavor, courageous persistence, glad self-sacrifice. One has only to look about among the circle of his acquaintances to see that the noblest spirits are not those that have been coddled in the lap of luxury, but those that have acquired courage by confronting peril, strength by great endeavors, and generosity by having to bear the burdens of others who were dependent upon them.

We are not shut up to believing either that God has nothing to do with such phenomena of nature as cyclones, or that they are the signs of his wrath or his just displeasure. They are necessary means of conferring on man the greatest virtues ; at least we can conceive no better means by which certain virtues could be bestowed than by great disasters. The theological question, What is God's relation to them? it may be difficult to answer, but it is not

difficult to answer the practical question, How can we get the highest gifts from such unpromising sources? The greatest disasters become beneficent when we make a beneficent use of them. Whether they drive us to despair or summon us to an unconquerable spirit of hopefulness, drive us in upon ourselves in the selfishness of sorrow or call us out from ourselves in unselfish sympathy and service, terrify us into chronic cowardice, or inspire us with a courage we never knew before, depends upon our own wills. If we mix the cup of sorrow with the spirit of our own indomitable faith, we shall always find in it something far better than happiness. He who thus sees in what men call the disasters of life envoys of heaven bringing in their hands God's best gift, Godl.keness of character, will understand what Paul means by the declaration, "All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." He means, not that God has a chosen few to whom he promises what men call the good things of life, but that those who, inspired by their love for God, see life as he sees it, have power to take the highest good from the hands of the greatest evils; they make all things serve the divine purpose because in all experiences they are at one with the divine will.

The Books that Nourish

In Mr. Mabie's last Shakespeare article he speaks of "Plutarch's Lives," and the " pasturage of noble minds" Shakespeare found therein. That quotation led me to wonder if there is any book that tells somewhat fully and accurately of the places in which noble minds have found pasturage. If so, I judge that The Outlook can tell. B. F. B.

There is probably no book in which the sources of nourishment which have sustained great spirits are indicated and set in order; such a book might be made by a wise and experienced reader, and could hardly fail to be deeply interesting, if not actively inspiring. The "pasturage of noble minds" must now be found by consulting a great range of biographical literature. It is significant that one rarely reads the life of a man or woman of creative energy without coming, early in the story, upon a record of special service

rendered at a critical moment in intellectual and spiritual development by some book or books of power. Few men and women come to clear consciousness of their own individual freedom and responsibility without the aid and fellowship of some one who has traveled the same road and left a record of experiences by the way. The art of living is so difficult and so exacting of many kinds of skill that few men develop it with any power or originality without the guidance of the great spirits who have made themselves its masters.

No man of deep and creative nature can unfold what is in him without the fellowship of men of kindred aims and experiences. The great man owes more than the average man to his fellows because the measure of his greatness is the measure of his need and his capacity to assimilate the knowledge, the inspiration, and the fruitage of those who have looked into life and recorded the results of their searching. The man who strives for originality by shutting himself away from the rich deposit of spiritual experience in those books of the race which constitute, in large measure, its accumulation of spiritual wisdom and power, violates one of the fundamental laws of development, and condemns himself to a meager and impoverished life. The great minds need to be greatly nourished. Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Tennyson, Emerson, must have rich pasturage; and the places where they fed their souls are the places where life is to be found.

Men need contact with the finest spirits for inspiration and for nourishment. There comes an hour in the lives of most men and women of spiritual insight and of intellectual freedom when a light held upon the path by another hand is of immense importance. Such a light suddenly shining into an uncertain and confused mind, dumbly conscious of power but ignorant of its right uses, has often proved the decisive factor in a great career. Such a moment came to Keats when he read the "Faerie Queene" for the first time, and knew that he was to be a poet; to Johnson when he found a copy of Petrarch in his father's book-shop; to Browning when the early poems of Shelley came into his hands; to Goethe when Shakespeare came in his way and he

found the tragic life of the race illustrated with matchless insight and enchanting beauty.

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The most practical minds need this kind of help quite as much as men of more sensitive and imaginative nature. Franklin has left on record his sense of advantage received from Plutarch's Lives, in which he "read abundantly;" and he tells us that a book of De Foe's and Dr. Mather's Essays to do Good" had an influence on the principal events of his . life. It is impossible to touch the hem of the garments of great thinkers, artists, poets, or men of action without being vitalized and nourished, "I cannot even hear of personal vigor of any kind, great power of performance, without fresh resolution. We are emulous of all that man can do," writes Emerson. "We cannot read Plutarch without a tingling of the blood; and I accept the saying of the Chinese Mencius, 'A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages.'

This is the highest use of biography, and explains Dr. Jowett's remark that in the future morals will be taught by the use of biographies as text-books. It is because Plutarch's material is so vital that he has so deeply impressed many of the greatest men and women. His manner is delightful, and his personality full of interest; he had the insight and the quality of the born writer, or his books would have been mere storehouses of facts; but no delicacy of skill in characterization and no charm of style could have given him the influence which he has exerted for many centuries if he had not dealt with material of the most enduring interest. No man has ever put greater range of experience, wider variety of character, or richer and more striking examples of energy, force, genius, between his pages than the great biographer who, more than any one else, has made antique life live before us.

He has fed men of imagination like Shakespeare, men of action like Napoleon, and men of meditation like Emerson, because he opened a record of life in so many fascinating phases, in so many searching influences, in so many heroic actions. boy can dream of few great achievements which some of Plutarch's men have not made their own. Lockhart's life of Scott, Trevelyan's lives of Macaulay and of

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Charles James Fox, Boswell's Johnson, Stanley's account of Arnold, Mrs. Kingsley's story of her husband's career, the biographies of Washington, Lincoln, Lee, Emerson, Phillips Brooks-to select a few from the biographies accessible to American readers in their own language-are full of the stuff which nourishes men and women of force, `courage, and nobility.

Biography has the qualities of reality and of concrete illustration; it is history in episodes and chapters; it has, therefore, the force and the authority which facts carry with them. But biography must be supplemented by works of the imagination if the richest pasturage is to be found. For this reason, among others, the Bible has fed more men and women, in the Western world at least, than any other book. It appeals to minds of every order; to the practical and to the imagi native spirit; it presents a great array of facts and great array of truths. Every kind of noble pasturage can be found be tween its covers; and its service in vitalizing, inspiring, sustaining, and developing the best in men will increase to the very end of time.

If to the Bible be added the greatest works of the greatest races in literature, the range of rich pasturage is almost illimitable. Books are studied to-day with fuller knowledge, keener vision, and more patient thoroughness than at any earlier period, and it is no assumption to say that we know more about them than our fathers knew. It is doubtful, however, if we know books any better than our fathers knew them. Shakespeare knew Plutarch better than the most learned modern editor of the Lives, though he knew far less about them; Emerson knew Plato better than many of the great philosopher's commentators, though he knew far less about the structure of the Dialogues, their relation to the thought of the times, and their specific contributions to our knowledge of the Greek mind. The real test of our knowledge of a great book is the extent to which we get nourishment from it. To feed upon a book we must come into vital connection with it; otherwise we cannot assimilate what it offers us. Homer, Plato, Shakespeare, Dante, Browning, are most intelligible to us when we take from them in largest measure inspiration and nourishment.

THE MINERS' GRIEVANCES

N reaching Hazleton, the center of the conflict in the anthracite mining fields, I went at once to the headquarters of the President of the United Miners, to whom I was introduced by a letter from the Secretary of the United Garment-Makers of New York. I found him a man about thirty-five years of age, with an attractive face. It was, as a Catholic miner at McAdoo afterwards expressed it, almost, typically the face of a priest. The Catholic miner's comment was, "I fell in love with him at the start." My own impression was also an unusually favorable one. When he talked with me, this favorable impression increased, for he had the rare good sense not to overstate his own case. In this moderation, how ever, he was not supported by most of the men gathered in the room, and when I turned from the general aspects of the strike to the local conditions, and was referred by President Mitchell to the men about him directly employed in the anthracite mines, I heard for a few minutes nothing but extreme instances of extortion and oppression. For example, men told me of cases where they had mined seventy carloads of coal in a month, and had been docked twenty, receiving for these no payment at all, though the coal in these cars was not dumped in the bank of waste but run through the breakers the same as other coal. This statement was only valuable as a suggestion of one of their grievances. Such cases had probably occurred. But when, later, I got ordinary miners to say how much they as individuals were generally docked, the proportion was usuaily from two to five cars out of seventy. Nevertheless, a point remained. It was a question of judgment as to how much slate and how much dirt there were in each ar, and the fact that only the boss paid by the company inspected the cars left the men subject to arbitrary treatment. They asked the permission to hire a representative of their own, who also should pass judgment upon the cars along with the representative of the company.

By this means the equal and the fairer treatment of all individuals could be secured.

The grievance of docking, however, was far from being the most serious of which the miners complained. Every change that had been made in the coal-mine during the last twenty-five years, they said, had made their condition worse. "The companies," said one of them, "complain that everything is changed, but don't seem to realize that the miner has not got the benefit of any of the changes. Twenty-five years ago all the coal that wasn't up to the 'nut' size was waste. The companies got nothing for it, and the miners got nothing for it. First the companies got to selling coal of the 'pea' size, then the buckwheat' size, then the 'bird's-eye' size, and now the 'canary-eye' size. They are getting to use the very dust. All this coal in the dump-banks really belongs to the miner, as we dug it out and got no pay for it on the ground that it was worthless. But if our children go to picking those banks to get coal for the winter, they are charged with larceny." The selling of what used to be waste made up to the companies for the increased cost of the deeper mining, but the men had no gains to offset their losses. Wages had come down, work had slackened, and petty extortions had increased. Since 1897 the bituminous miners, under an agreement made by their organization with an organization representing all the operators from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, had their wages advanced forty per cent., but the unorganized anthracite miners had received hardly any advance at all.

When I tried to get a statement from the men as to the average rate of wages, I was for some time baffled. Some of them were inclined to think that there was no average rate, and their view of the case had a great deal of truth in it. A" miner," as distinguished from mine laborer, is generally a small contractor. He pays the laborer who helps him, and when there is relatively little work to do, his own monthly pay will often fall to less than twenty-five dollars. In other months, when