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rageous price of $13. This, however, was the only hall in town, and as a monopolist he was master of the situation, viz.: pay his price or go without. The Miners' Brass Band, composed of fifteen musicians, a fine-looking body of men, discoursed several pieces of well-executed music in the calm, clear atmosphere of New Year's day in front of the hall. At the time named quite a crowd had assembled. At the opening of the meeting I announced for discussion the Socialist declaration that by natural right and human necessities the mine belonged to the miner, the tools to the toilers, and the product to the producers. Any other arrangement of affairs left the producers a dependent, hireling class, at the mercy of the non-producers. The poverty of the miners was the same as all other workers -- enforced and artificial. The parasites, the drones in the industrial hive, absorbed all the honey and made the industrious workers drudge and slave for them.
Their attention was called to the fact that strikes, boycotts, arbitration, and voting could not adjust the trouble between capitalists and laborers. What was necessary was not to soften and palliate their wage-slavery (which would not be done), but its abolition. To abolish the capitalist and destroy his power to rob and enslave would be to place all capital and means of subsistence into the hands of the people for their free use. All could then voluntarily co-operate in the production and distribution of the wealth, and poverty and want would be unknown and impossible.
This and much else was said in proof of the statement that the existing social system not only made but kept the producers poor, and there was no help for it until that infamous system was destroyed utterly.
The first meeting was held in the afternoon at 2 o'clock, the second the same evening at 7:30 o'clock. The greatest interest was shown at both.
As seen from the above facts, the bodies of these miners are already lost and damned, and yet for three months this town has been afflicted with the marching and countermarching of the Salvation Army. The Salvationists are trying to save for the next world the souls of these poor people, whose bodies have already been ruined in
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