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PART IV.
CHAPTER I.
LETTER FROM SALINEVILLE, OHIO.
THE MINING TOWN OF SALINEVILLE, O. -- THE TRUCK STORES -- THE INABILITY OF LEGISLATION TO RECEIVE THE OPPRESSED AGAIN DEMONSTRATED -- THE MORALITY OF MODERN COMMERCIALISM -- WAGES OF THE MINERS -- HAZARDOUS WORK -- AN OLD MAN'S SUIT -- TWO MEETINGS HELD -- THE SALVATION ARMY -- UNENDURABLE CONDITIONS MAKING REVOLUTIONISTS.
Taken from "The Alarm" of January 25, 1886.
Comrades: On Thursday morning, with fraternal goodbyes to friends in Cleveland, I took the Cleveland & Pittsburg train for Salineville, O., a mining town of about 2,500 inhabitants. Here is established a flourishing Group of earnest workers in a propaganda of the social revolution. Salineville is a strictly mining town, and when for any reason the mines close up work all other business is practically suspended. The town lies in a hollow along the banks of a creek, for three miles almost as straight as a shoe-string, the whole population living upon or contiguous to one single street. There had been a big thaw, and I had ample occasion to become acquainted with the proverbial mud and slush of a rough, unpaved mining town. The homes of the miners in this place are a little better than I have found them elsewhere, some of them owning their houses, but the great majority are tenants at will of the corporation which owns the earth and all it contains hereabouts. Of the 500 or 600 miners employed here they are divided into nationalities, as near as I could ascertain, about as follows: About one-half of them are
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