I want to picture out in this chapter one of the hardest fields the minute-man has to labor in. I think there are greater inequalities to be found in our land than in any other, at least a greater variety of social conditions. Times have changed much in the last twenty-five years. The consolidating of great business concerns has made a wide gulf between the employer and employee such as never before existed outside of slavery.

It is not true to say that the rich are growing richer, and the poor poorer; for the poor could not be poorer. There never was a time when men were not at starvation-point in some places. We have to-day thousands of men who never saw the owner of the property that they work upon. There is a fearful distance between[228] the gentlemen and ladies in their four-in-hand turnout and the begrimed men who come up into the daylight out of our great coal-mines, or those who handle the heavy iron ore. I have seen men whose hands could be pared like a horse\'s hoof without drawing the blood, who were going back to Germany to stay,—men who had been lured over by the promise of big wages, who, as they said, averaged "feefty cent a day." I have seen sixty and seventy men living in a big hut, with two or three women cooking their vegetables in a great iron kettle, and dipping them out with tin ladles. I have seen little boys by the score working for a few cents a day, and four, five, and seven families living in one house, and where all the pay was store-pay, and did not average five dollars a week, and where it was not safe to walk at night, and murder was common,—and you could find within a few miles cities where there were men who would say that the whole of the above was a lie.

[229]When I first talked on these regions, I could think of nothing else; and some good men advised me not to tell of what I had seen. It smacked too much of socialism, they said. I remarked, "You will hear of starving, bloodshed, and riot from that region before long." And so they did. The State troops were called out more than once. And here in the midst of this misery our minute-man went. Before the mines were opened, a little stream of clear water flowed between green banks and through flowery meads; cattle dotted the meadows, and peaceful farm-houses nestled under the trees. But all this was soon changed. The green sod was turned up, the clear stream became a muddy, discolored torrent, and wretched little houses took the place of the farm-houses. Low saloons abounded. Our minute-man was warned that his life would be in danger. On the other hand, he was offered three times the salary he was getting as a missionary if he would become a foreman. But the man is one[230] of the last of that noble army of pioneers that count not their life dear.

When our man tried to find a place to preach, there was none save an old dilapidated schoolhouse. The window-sashes were broken, the panels of the door gone. The place was beyond a little stream, which had to be crossed upon a log. It was nearly dark before his audience arrived. The women, much as they wanted to go, were ashamed of the daylight. Many of the young girls had on but one garment. The men were a rough-looking lot. The place was lighted with candles in lanterns, the flames of which fluttered with the draughts, and gutters of tallow ran down. What a contrast to the church a few miles away, where the seats were cushioned, and a quartet choir sang, "The Earth is the Lord\'s," with a magnificent organ accompaniment! What a gulf between these poor souls and those who came in late, not because of poor clothes, but because of fine ones! And yet I suppose they did not perceive it, perhaps they[231] did not know. But it does seem to me that ............