320 FAMOUS LIVING AMBEICANS to an equally radical proposition to seize the mines in the name of the United States and begin the mining of coal by the country at large without reference to property rights. In this struggle, so significant and tremendouSi a few men soon became prominent. On the one side were the presidents of the mining corporations. These men, adherents of the old order of things, felt that not only their own welfare but the welfare of the country and all invested funds depended upon defeating labor in its demands upon the anthracite coal com- panies. They felt, or pretended to feel, that there could be no community of interest between the men and the owners of the mines. They insisted that the owners had the right to determine the conditions under which the men should work, and refused to consider any change through which the men themselves might have a voice in things that affected their own welfare. On the other side a single figure emerged with a new theory of the relations of capital and labor. This new figure was John Mitchell. His theory was the theory of the necessity of peace. While the mine owners on the one hand and many la- bor leaders on the other were declaring that the struggle be- tween labor and capital was a struggle never to be ended ex- cept by the complete conquest of the one by the other, Mitchell was declaring that a proper understanding of the relations of labor and capital would make plain that there should be no struggle at all. While, as president of the United Mine Workers, he directed the fight the miners were making against the mine owners, he nevertheless insisted that the struggle was wrong. It came about because neither side saw clearly the exact relationship. In his book, published after the fight was over, he says, in the preface :
- There is no necessary hostility between labor and capital
Neither can do without the other; each has evolved from the other. Capital is labor saved and materialized ; the power to labor is, in itself, a form of capital. There is not even a necessary, fundamental antagonism between the laborer and the capitalist. Both are men with the virtues and vices of
