bucket with grimy hands. I have talked with his wife as she bent over the washtub. I was talking with a miner's wife one day when we heard a distant thud. She ran to the door of the shack. Men were running and screaming. Other doors flung open. Women rushed out, drying their hands on their aprons.
An explosion!
Whose husband was killed? Whose children were fatherless?
"My God, how many mules have been killed!" was the first exclamation of the superintendent.
Dead men were brought to the surface and laid on the ground. But more men came to take their places. But mules—new mules—had to be bought. They cost the company money. But human life is cheap, far cheaper than are mules.
One hundred and nineteen men were brought out and laid on the ground. The lights in their lamps were out. The light in their eyes was gone. But their death brought about the two-shaft system whereby a man had a chance to escape in case one of the exits filled with gas or burned.
Life comes to the miners out of their deaths, and death out of their lives.
In January of 1915, I was invited to John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s office with several other labor officers. I was glad to go for I wanted
