The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1902-12-11
PILLoRIED AT LAST,

e TRIPPED AS THEY ARE of all
save LIES most biting necessities,
| dragging out a miserable existence in
| miserable novels where the wolf of
poverty bays ever at the door, the
anthracite miners of Pennsylvania, as
| the story of the wrongs they have en-
dured, Of the sufferings they have
borne, is unfolded before the arbitra-
ton commission, must stand acquitted
in the court of public opinion of well
nigh every charge that has been laid
against them. AS between these mis-
cradle men and women and the sleek,
well fed, luxury-loving and luxury-en-
joying operators who have oppressed
them, who stands the higher in popu-
lar esteem this day?
Take the case of the man evicted
with his wife and her. century-old
mother from the poor shack they
called home. A sleety rain was fall
ing, but the stony-hearted beasts wig
represented the operators threw their
few sticks of furniture out into the
weather and the human beings along
with them. There isn't a dog owned
by one of the operators that is not
better treated. As a direct result of
this inhuman abuse, the wife sickened
and died
Would her husband have been so
much to blame if. in the first madness
that comes with hopeless despair. he
had seized a firebrand and applied it
to the nearest colliery? What a pitt
full. pitiful story that is! How sad. how
tragic, we may judge from the excla-
nation wrung from Justice Gray, man
of long judicial experience, a man
accustomed to depressing his feelings
and to hide his emotions.
THAT is all, Mr.. Coll, he said, "and
that's enough
1t was as involuntary, that exclama-
ton from Justice Gray, as though an
other man had said: Great God! how
can such crimes be permitted ?"
Enough? Yes, that broken-hearted
miner, Coll, told enough to convict, in
the minds of the public, the Markles,
by whom he was employed, of murder.
No earthly court will punish them.
but they viii feel, even in their lux
uriOus homes, even behind the barriers
which their great wealth has raised
around them, the lash of public opin-
ion. the biting scorn of honest men.
And then the widow, Mrs. Kate
Burns of Jeddo. Her husband was
brought home to her dead one day,
killed in mine. He left her with
four children, the Oldest only s
began a struggle for existence. No
words will ever be coined that can
paint a true picture of that widows
battle with poverty. At last the old
est boy reached the age of II years
and was sent to the mines. With his
first pay envelope he received a state
ment from the company of an in
debtedness of 1896 for hs1use rent.
Not one cent did the boy or his
brother. who followed him into the
mines, receive until this obligation
was discharged. And it was not a
legal Obliga ton, either. There were
other cases almost as tragic. The
widow and the fatherless were OPP
pressed without mercy; the sick, the
weak. the lame and the halt were
forced to coin their blood into pennies
to fatten the Markle treasury.
But the day of reckoning seems al
most at hand. Already the operators
are pilloried and the lash of public
opinion is descending upon their backs.
Wayne MacVeagh, the brightest of
all of the attorneys for the operators,
saw the drift of The tide. He urged
a settlement out of court, but the in
dependent mine owners blocked his
plans. Now. they are paying the pen
atty Let US hope they will be obliged
to drain the bitter cup to the last
dregs.