Waterbury evening Democrat., 1903-03-07
A QUESTION OF MASTERY.
MT. Darrow's ArraiGnment of the
 Anthracite Coal BaronS.

MT. Darrow's ArratEnment of the Anthracite Coal Barons.
 The following is an extract from the closing speech of MT. Darrow, counsel for the United Mine Workers of Amer
 lea, before the strike commissions: want to say that this strike, from first to last, was due to the blind, auto- cratic, stupid spirit of these operators, that their men should not organize nothing else. It was not because they thought they should have no more money, for am inclined to think that these gentlemen would have raised the wages by this time, strike or no strike. At least they came into this court one after the other and practically con- ceded that they should have raised them and should now raise them. They were not willing to do it then. But | cannot understand how MT. Baer, as president of the Reading railroad, can raise his wages, and how the president of the Pennsylvania railroad can raise his when they are dealing with the railroads and still say that these men, infinitely poorer paid, in an employ ment generally more dangerous, in an occupation certainly more disagreeable and onerous, should have no share in the increased prosperity which has come to them and which has come to the common country.
 It was not, then, the question of wages. These gentlemen precipitated the greatest conflict between capital and labor which the world has ever seen, the most gigantic strike in histo- ", because in their minds 1t was a question of mastery thing else; be- cause they felt and they believed that upon this contest depended the ques- ton of whether they should be the masters or whether the men should be- the masters.
 Neither should be the result of this contest. They, with their feudal ideas way have been placed in the ownership and the possession of industry are the masters, that they have the right to make the rules and the regulations and set the wages -set them, as will show they did in this case, by mailing their schedule on door-they, who believe that for one moment to accede to the demands and requests of these men would mean that they were no longer the masters, thought they had better let the water come into their mines and drown them out and destroy their prop erty rather than submit.
 Naffhnrs hnlioxrn That fhfa xvo q entirely due to the mine owners when l consider that they were willing to take these fearful chances, to let the country face this coal famine, to let their mines be destroyed. see in this stubborn, cruel fight, where the weap- on used by the opera tors was starva- ton, where they depended not upon starving men alone, but expected that the men would listen to the starving cries of wives and children to give up this struggle. believe the operators were induced and urged by the rail-, road companies to believe that here in the coal region was the final struggle to determine who were the masters in this country, whether the men were chattels or whether they were men en- uOW0N WILL JItG Sd1lG Il&uL LO 1OOh Ll0 other contracting party squarely in the face, the same right to make their own terms as to the hours of labor, the days of labor, the price of labor when they are selling their lives, as the mas ter does when he is buying the labor CTS life.
 This was the struggle, and this was the cause, and wish to prove this matter to this commission, not from our testimony, but from that of these gen tlemen alone. I prove it from their own mouths and place, the responsible ity where it belongs, upon these men, who cannot understand that the human race through its long, sore and bitter travail has been moving onward and upward and forward toward the final democracy of man, to the time when each human being shall be a man clothed with the right to contract, with the right to live bis life, al ' not to be governed and ruled by such rules as the masters have ever imposed upon him.