Life — May 14, 1914 — page 20: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

MAY 14, 1914 ‘* While there is Life there's Hope” Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY J. A. Mircnett, Pres’t. HE best thing that could be done ‘about the mine troubles in Colorado has been done. Fed- eral troops have been sent there, and at this writing the order has gone out for the rest of the people in the mine-strike district to turn their arms over to the United States sol- diers, If the arms are turned in, that ought to prevent further killing. As to the merits of the late war, and what was the matter and who was right—if anyone—all that had_ better go to the jury when the case is tried. At present all statements conflict, and what one reads in one column of a newspaper is contradicted in the next. There are three stories to be told, and each side tells its own and con- tradicts the others, The miner-chiefs tell one, another is issued in behalf of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the third is that of the militiamen of the State of Colorado, who are quite as much on their defense in this matter as anyone else. The disposition so prevalent, especially among the more vociferous sisters and brethren in the sociological troupe performing here- abouts, to attribute the devilment that has been going on to some individual malignity of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., seems considerably humorous. Mr. Rockefeller is the responsible com- mander of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, the largest of the group of mining properties involved. Every- body hereabouts knows about him; that he is a man attentive to decorum, and exceptionally anxious to do right. As the head of his company it was his A. Mites, Sec'y and Treas. 17 West Thirty-first Street, New York English Offices, Rolls House, Breams Bldgs., London, E. C. concern to see to it that the company prospered as well as was consistent with the existing conditions of busi- ness. We suppose he has been duly attentive to that duty, for if not, he would be culpable. His company got into a fight with miners and men were killed on both Also some women and children. President Wil- son, as a last expedient before sending Federal troops into the State, sent and invited him to yield to the miners. He declined. To have done otherwise would have amounted to public ad- mission that he had heen the position he had taken from the start. But if he was wrong he will have to be shown, for he does not think so. sides wrong in RONG or not, Mr. Rockefeller is now unpopular with the United Mine Workers. Their president, John P. White, is quoted as saying at Scam- mon, Kansas, on May 2nd: As to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., he has lost interest in the human value, His life, in spite. of his riches, is empty. He has devoted his great brain and intelligence to money making. Mr. White has got the two John D.’s mixed up. It was the father of the gentleman he speaks of who devoted his great brain and intelligence for a good many years to money’ making, and made a handsome and fairly com- plete job of it, as is all but universally admitted. The younger Rockefeller devotes an excellent intelligence partly, to be sure, to the management of properties and their maintenance in more or less profitable activity, but very largely—chiefly, we believe—to the diffusion of his father’s accumula- tions so that they may do mankind some good. The accumulations are so extensive, and the propensity of money to do mischief when given away is so pronounced, that his job is really a very hard one. He works at it with notorious diligence, and with such xpert assistance as he can engage, and gets out of it about what other people get of fairly. successful employ- sments—board, lodging, clothes and transportation in a motor car when it is too wet to walk. M* WHITE ought to know Mr. Rockefeller. Hv is not at all the kind of man Mr, White supposes. His life is not empty, but seems rather overloaded. He has not lost interest. in the human value, for it is his pro- fession to raise it. As for money, we dare not speak positively, but we sup- pose he feels about it very much as the candy-shop girls feel about candy. It is something that he keeps in stock, and hands out to customers. He is so superabundantly rich that the idea of his fighting miners in Colorado for more money is ludicrous. He is fight- ing to save a property which belongs only partly to him, and which cannot long continue to pay miners, union or non-union, unless it is so managed as to pay expenses and something over. And here we come to something that, we suppose, is partly to blame for the extraordinary disorders in Colorado, and probably, for the late mining troubles in Michigan, and for lots of other strike difficulties, and that is non-resident ownership. When the owners of a property live in New York and Chicago and the property and its employees are in Colorado; when the owners live in Boston and the property is in Michigan—or even in Lawrence, or Ipswich or Fall River—it is, it must be, harder to keep a wholesome human comicbooks.com