The coal truck was bringing a cargo of children from the shanties of striking Pennsylvania miners to Pittsburg, where they intended to beg what little they might get to supplement the Union's vanishing reserves. They were scantily clad in incongruous cast-offs, and their only food for the day was a slice of bread soaked in unpalatable coffee, but they sang with a verve derogatory ditties about the police and patriots. The pinch of hunger had wizened their faces and made them look four or five years older than they were, but it had left their spirits free for the hatreds which the organizers chose to sow. This is the sketch which a college graduate living among the miners draws in the July Forum.

The unbearable conditions of the workers in the coal fields of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky are typified by this incident. The Communist organizers have taken advantage of the situation to win an unreasoning allegiance for their cause, and to implant hatred for the operators even in the children. According to their own ethics they are completely justified in ignoring the plight of the operators who have faced insuperable difficulties on account of the growing use of substitutees for coal. In the same spirit the capitalists feel no compunctions in employing every means to combat the miners, even to the subversion of police power. Neither side considers the problem intelligently, and the only egress from the resulting impasse is afforded when one group reaches the limits of its resources.

No truly civilized nation would tolerate such conditions as these. Germany and England, in a considerably worse situation, have to some extent relieved their wretched workers and controlled the employers. This nation has allowed its industrial difficulties to become so acute that a peaceable solution of them seems almost hopeless. Meanwhile the government has continued to shatter public confidence by frittering its time in partisan and inconsequential bickering. If tragic outbreaks are to be avoided, Congress must drop its petty electioneering and turn serious thoughts toward removing the worker from his frightful predicament.