tinguish it from all other fuel, and that for many purposes no perfect substitute is known. If this were not so, we should have seen only a fraction of the hardship which in fact resulted from the great strike. The writer's argument has proceeded entirely on the assumption, so well supported by recent experience, that Pennsylvania anthracite may be considered as a commodity by itself, and that the application of the same principles to the mining of other kinds of coal depends en tirely on the similarity or dissimilarity of con ditions. It docs not follow necessarily from Munn v. Illinois, that every man who owns a warehouse anywhere, and stores grain in transit, is engaged in a public calling. In the later case of Budd v. New York (143 U. S. 517), which also concerned grain elevators, both counsel and court properly devoted some little argument to the question, whether the conditions in that case were such as to bring it within the rule of the Munn case. All the more would such an inquiry be necessary, before what has been said of the mining of Pennsylvania anthracite could be applied to the mining elsewhere of other kinds of coal, much more widely distributed in the earth, supplying other markets, and used to a considerable extent for other pur poses., It may at least be doubted whether the same result would be reached. The only other criticism which has come to the writer's attention, opposing the con tention that anthracite coal mining in Penn sylvania is a public calling, is one based upon a supposed distinction between a sale and a service. The answer to any such distinction is easily found in the cases of bakers, gas and water companies, and other similar em ployments. Indeed Mr. Wyman, in the article above discussed, pointed out the fal lacy of that criticism. Another objection, from a different point of view, is found in a contribution by Mr.
Joseph B. Warner to a leading newspaper. Mr. Warner, while not taking issue on the legal soundness of the writer's views, objects to what he imagines would be the economic results of their application. The knowledge that, if a strike in certain classes of industries is sufficiently prolonged, the courts will in terfere and appoint a receiver to run the business, would, in Mr. Warner's opinion, prove the greatest possible incentive to strikes, and would place all such industries at the mercy of shrewd or reckless agitators. With reference to this objection it is, perhaps, sufficient to say that the present writer's pamphlet dealt with a question of law, and not with economics, and that if its views of the law are correct, possible economic evils must be left for the legislature to correct, if those evils shall in fact arise. A word or two may be added, however, in answer to Mr. Warner's position. The establishment of the principles of law under discussion, as applicable to such indus tries as that of coal mining, would undoubt edly prove a very effectual preventive of such strikes as result from refusal by employers to grant reasonable demands on the part of their employees; and when the demands are unrea sonable, it is doubtful if the strikers would want more than one experience with a Federal receiver; for no other person could so effectu ally use all the machinery of the Federal law and the Federal government to prevent inter ference, intimidation and unlawful combina tion, and to secure labor at the lowest price which free competition among laborers could produce. If, for example, a Federal receiver had been placed in charge of the Pennsylvania coal mines, he, as an officer of the United States, would not have been controlled by State laws allowing only licensed miners to work; and he would have been able to pre vent violence and intimidation by the means
