“Yes, judge, when I want an answer quick.”
“But Barney says there is nothing the matter with his heart.”
“Judge, that fellow doesn’t know the difference between his heart and his liver. I have been out to meetings with him and walking home down the roads or on the railroad tracks, he has had to sit down to get his breath.”
The judge called the jail doctor and told him to go and examine Barney’s heart in the morning. Meantime I asked my friend, Mr. Murphy, to see the jail doctor. Well, the next day Barney was let out of jail.
CHAPTER VIII Roosevelt Sent for John Mitchell
The strike of the anthracite miners which started in the spring with $90,000 in the treasury, ended in the fall with over a million dollars in the possession of the United Mine Workers. The strike had been peaceful. The miners had the support of the public. The tie up of the collieries had been complete. Factories and railroads were without coal.
Toward fall New York began to suffer. In October, Mr. Roosevelt summoned “Divine Right Baer”, President of the Coal Producers’ Union, and other officials of the coal interests, to Washington. He called also the officials of the miners’ union. They sat at the cabinet table, the coal officials on one side, the miners’ officials at the other and the president at the head of the table in between the two groups.
They discussed the matter and the mine owners would not consent to any kind of settlement. Mr. Baer said that before he would consent to arbitration with the union he would call out the militia and shoot the miners back into the mines.