The Irish standard., 1896-10-24

b - M -
Il rate.' boug ht coo acre Shafts
q were sun 4, 81 he coal " ems opened, ana coAl
4 production on IL thesea HANNA anderbilt
y syndicate lands began at once. IN $ .5 Y @S 8
i Among other ma tiers incid entsto a II this,
atoWn was surveyed and built and named
4 Spring Valley II 1T might better have
4 been called L 1T he Valley Of the Shadow Of
death for such it proved to many an i'm
\ nocent woman and child before the. Han
4 ma love for work folk in this instance
4 had expressed itself to exhaustion.
AT the beginning the men employed in
4 these Spring Valley mines were Aneri-
leans of English, Scotch elsh and Irish
Istoek. These men were as Woodworking
and industrious as any who ever welded
4 PICK or Wore candle at their hat bands.
down with the choke and fire damps they
learned their perilous money, and their fru-
gal thrifty wives at home saved it. The
/ miners. like the mines Of Spring Valley,
throVe apace and prospered.
i But this was too much for the Hanna
/ Vanderbilt syndicate, to whom the sight
i Of a prosperous workingman had some
thing maddening about it. They put their
heads together and mapped out q plan. It
1 was to be and do two things, this plan.
| 1t was to act as a safeguard against
! strikers. and it was to divert the penny
meagre stream of the miners savings
1 t0dSh " Tic COilldHy d$odill3l
r. And 1t was the poisonous beauty of the
whole affair that the syndicate. whose sole
purpose was to miserably swell its hoard
at the loss and pauperism of the miner,
| should appear as one moved only by the
most friendly and benevolent interest in
the welfare of it's working folk The syn
dleate's scheme in nutshell was to build
and ''sell'' the miner q home on the il,-
stallment plan.
! In India there lives a creature half
bird, half beast, with the wing of demon
| and the face OF a fox, which for want of a
sucks blood and lives by nothing else, it is
given the distinguishing epithet Of YAM
pire. All day it hides in the caverns or un-
| DER dark cliffs, or in the shadows and|
| darkness of. the crumbling temples and|
fanes of that broken spirit-lost land. Att
! night the activities Of the vampire as-l
sernbe themselves Through the oper
easement of some bungalow it turns is
hight. Its noiseless coming does not dr.
turb the hammick-swung sleeper. Tie
vampire. towering above it's victim, SITS
MIN to deeper slunlher still with the COL
| insidious promise Of its tanning wigs.
The sleeper never stirs, nor feels the york
that's letting out his life. The blood dows
and drips, the vampire drinks and leeds.
until with the first gray rays of DIV, it's
blood taste for the moment satiahd. the
vampire droops heavily away, leaving the
sleeper dead.
Such is the vampire bat offndia. and
such for very parallel of scheme was the
Hanna-Vanderbit syndicat e$ arrange
ment to build and "sell' it's workmen
homes on the installment pla5 For in
sldlous, soft and wool-foot trsachery the
game would have been WORTHY a Bengal
tiger. The whole business amounted to
this: It set a trap for the Spring Valley
miner, and used wife and children as the
bait and lure.
The Hanna Vanderbilt syndicate, own
ing the land, built cottages thereon Then
they put price and fixed t1letfgure What
naa COST $500 was set at 500, and so in
When miner bought horse he didn't
get a deed; he got a contract: The miner
each month was to pay a Certain sum.
and at the end of every six rAonths or a
year he was to pay the INTEREST on the
whole sum, which, like the grass. had
the grass, grew as exuberantly in JanI1
airy as it did in June
When all was paid. principal anG. interest
w by the very price and the space Of
years as a transaction--then the miner was
to receive his deed. Do you observe fhe es
ceedee o. Of the method The syndicate
contract with the promise Of final home
vas bond against strikes and fetter to
cate. Every payment that was made W Mu
an ex ira rivet in the syndicate shackl.sw a af
the miner. VI
In the hope of winning final home Shell
ter for wife. and children many a 1nire,
bent his neck to the syndicate yoke. The
V 2s52laSnt c pan TOOK d z The III
were readily taken by the miners For :
time all AL, went IN fairly well At the wages
careful living and occasional stint, the the
miner met his payments and paid the
mo ont ~ installments when ripe and due
fall upon a bad day. There was a. sudden,
constituencies cur ordered in their wages.
This e sa,,t at time when they were we'll
lieve there would be a strike: they ar
serve to hold the men and that thew wol u1d
submit to the cut rather than lose their
half-patd-for homes.
the company called for state protection and
retreated to that law which must ever hold
towel and bowl when capital gets ready to
the enforcement of clause in the INSTALL
nent plan contract. It read that on failure
Of any Il w htfer prneipa or in
forfeited, and the title to the property be
clear again in the syndicate. SO as Incl
The homes of the miners were swept away.
They We're driven from the mines and
eyicted from their cottages:
Passing over all the rioting and blood
letting and killing; the homeless women
and children starving on roots and berries;
the graves with their dead, all fruit of this
strike, let us so for the next syndicate
miners, the Hanna Vanderbilt syndicate
began a systematic stocking of the Spring
Valley mines with five different national-
ties. They drained southern and eastern
Europe for these human dregs. Hordes of
Huns, Poles, Austrians, italians and Litll-
uantans were imported to the Spring Valley
mines. They were set to work in the shafts,
while the. families of these half savages
We're appointed to occupy the cottages from
which the American miners had been evict-
ed.
This last provoked an attack by the des-
perate. American miners. house1ess with
of the syndicate. There was more blood
and more killing, and more house burning.
Then the Pinkertons came down anal
earned syndicate money by clubbing and
shooting the American miners now in hot |
revolt.
But let capital calm itself. The Hanna
Vanderbilt syndicate won. It kept it's
Slavs and Huns in its coal holes It retain
ed the ''installment PLAN homes Of the
American miners. 1t exiied the latter into
other regions. Then the Hanna-Vanderbilt |
syndicate tried to cut at the wages of the
these serfs would solernnly submit. But no.
even this worm turned and stung the heel
of it's oppressor. More strikes, more blood |
more poor dead folk, more wan mothers
with thin, starved children in their arms I
more militia: more crime and disorder.
starved savages whom the Hanna-Vander-
bilt syndicate had imported looted the syn
dictate store. No; the syndicate didn't lose |
AS legal corrolary the syndicate sued the |
county and took Judgment for something |
like s100, 900 for the looting, Following the