The work of preparing to defeat the pending strike is at once taken up,
Purdy and Trueman working in perfect accord.




CHAPTER V.

AN UNQUIET DAY AT HAZLETON.


Nearly two months have passed, and a mantle of snow covers the ground.
The rigorous December weather has come and is causing widespread
distress among the mining population of Pennsylvania. Forty per cent of
the operatives of the Paradise Coal Company have been laid off, as Purdy
declared they would be. This means that starvation is the grim spectre
in six thousand homes.

The anomaly of miners in one town working at full time, and those of an
adjacent town shut out, must be explained as one of the insidious
methods of the Trust to create an artificial coal famine.

Gorman Purdy, whose word is law in the Paradise Company, had determined
to exact an advance of twenty-five cents a ton from the retail coal
dealers. To do this he had to make it appear that the supply of coal was
scarce. This led him to close the mines in Hazleton. The miners in the
town sought to force the opening of the mines by bringing about a
sympathetic strike in the neighboring towns. To prevent this, the Coal
and Iron Police have been brought to Hazleton to intimidate the miners
and to suppress them by force if they make any concerted move looking