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The soil was easy to cultivate and had lost little of its virgin fertility. Two railroads, the Lake Shore and Michigan Central later a part of the great New York Central System and a less important coal-carrying road, called the Wheeling and Lake Erie, ran through the town. Twenty-five hundred people lived then in Bidwell.
Singly, they would present defects of coal-carrying capacity, sea-going qualities, and accommodation for crew which would render them comparatively helpless and innocuous; but in combination they possess all the travelling capacities of a large warship, conjoined with the deadly powers at close quarters of a number of torpedo boats, all acting closely in concert upon a single plan.
It was altogether adequate for practical purposes, he argued, and so he lost little time in proceeding to New York, where he began a business career as a clerk in the office of the marine superintendent of a great coal-carrying railroad. It was a beginning with a quick ending. The clerkly pen was not for him; he discovered this before he was told.
We fled over red and slippery pavements, strewn with the bodies of dead and wounded policemen and civilians the hideous harvest of the machine-guns. At the corner of Madison Avenue and Twenty-fifth Street I saw an immense coal-carrying motor-truck with plates of iron covering its four sides, and through loopholes in the plates I saw murderous muzzles protruding.
Speaking of the great coal strike which occurred while he was President, he developed the idea in this way: "The great coal-mining and coal-carrying companies, which employed their tens of thousands, could easily dispense with the services of any particular miner. The miner, on the other hand, however expert, could not dispense with the companies.
"When my reorganization of the iron industry proved such a great success, and God rewarded my labors with large returns," he went on, "I looked about me to see what new work He wished me to undertake, how He wished me to invest His profits. And I saw the coal industry and the coal-carrying railroads in confusion, with waste on every side, and godless competition.
My hands were never likely to be more chapped at sea than they had been with dirt and snow and want of things to dry oneself with at school; and as to coal-carrying
Hundreds of boiler plants operate at no greater than 60 per cent efficiency, and it would be a comparatively simple matter to bring them up to 70 per cent efficiency. The saving in tonnage would be more than the combined yearly coal-carrying capacity of the Baltimore & Ohio and the Southern Railway systems.
To perfect this monopoly he leased some coal-carrying railroads and made "a gentlemen's agreement" with others; and in line with his policy of raising the importance of the road, he borrowed large sums of money for the construction of new terminals and approaches and for equipment. Now, all of these plans interfered seriously with the aims and ambition of magnates far greater than he.
The presidents of the coal companies and the coal-carrying railroads replied that they were always ready to meet their own employees but would have no dealings with a general labor organization.
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