"'That, my friend, is impossible. The price of coal has fallen this year, the price of man must come down in proportion. All I could do for you is to reduce your wages. You object to that. All right; down the shaft you go: don't let us talk about it any more.' "But the men won't go down. "'You don't make money this year. All right. But when you made huge profits, did you give us even the crumbs from your banquet?' "'I wasn't a shareholder then; it was my father.' "'_My_ father, like myself, was a miner. He died of consumption, his lungs choked with coal-dust. Now it is my turn to cough and spit black. And my wife, looking at her babes, asks herself whether I shall live long enough for them to be old enough, before my death, to go down into the mine which will kill them in turn. If I crack up too soon, misery, ruin, beggary, wholesale wretchedness for wife and children.' "They don't come to terms. The strike begins. "Economists argue, to begin with, that the State has no right to interfere in the relations between miners and mine-owners. The mine-owner is at home on his own property. Certain securities for life and limb may be demanded, nothing more. But no sooner does a strike begin than the State, which five minutes ago had no right to interfere, is called upon to bring in horse, foot and artillery on the side of the coal-owners. Then the miners have no rights left, and the judges decide against them on shameless pretexts and condemn them to prison, when they cannot bear false witness in support of the police and military." Such were Clemenceau's views on the right to strike and the grievances of the men, before he accepted the post of Minister of the Interior and began to deal with the troublous state of things at Courrières-Lens, where the terrible accident had occurred and a strike had been entered upon, while the entire district was in a state of mind bordering upon anarchist revolt. The first step he took was as bold and as remarkable an act as any in the whole of his adventurous life. He went down at once to Lens himself. Arrived there, he walked straight off, without any escort whatever, to meet and confer with the committee of the miners themselves. Courageous and honourable as this was, it failed at first to impress the strike committee. This was natural enough. They were lamenting the wholesale butchery of their comrades and were incensed against the employers who, with hundreds upon hundreds of dead pitmen below, would not deal fairly with the survivors. Clemenceau therefore met with a very cool reception. But he was nothing daunted, and began to address them. Gradually, he convinced the committee that he meant fairly by the men, and that he had not come down, alone and unarmed as he was, with any intention of suppressing the strike, but, so far as he could, to see that they had the fairest of fair play, according to their rights under the law.