The entire community sanctioned these practices, not the employers only; for generations even the miners themselves acquiesced in them. Those who were sacrificed in the mines and factories were victims of the entire consuming community's war against hunger; the furious drive of the acquisitive instinct on the one hand, and also of the passionate longing of all men to escape from economic bondage into security, plenty, economic and spiritual freedom. It was war of a disastrous sort but the world of that day saw no alternative,--could see no alternative from the experience of the race. Until as individuals, and nations and associations of nations, we have won a stable economic surplus and the spiritual maturity to use and distribute that surplus for the benefit of the whole community, we shall not in our hearts condemn war as immoral, whether it be a military or an industrial war. Always we shall contrive to believe that what is necessary for us is necessarily good. People in general deplored the horrors of mining just as before the coming of coal they had deplored the horrors of the wars they had waged in order to survive, but the fact remained that if the golden promise of the industrial revolution was to be realized they must have coal, and what other way was there to get it? At least part of the world was living in comfort and security. As a matter of fact a fair share of the community attained reasonable comfort after the coming of coal. The acquisitive instinct succeeded in piling up a vast permanent capital which was enjoyed by a large proportion of the human race. It had not come through increased production alone. Raiding and exploitation, both commercial and military, had helped mightily, for the old method of feeding yourself from your neighbor's hoard was tremendously accelerated for those peoples whose manufactures and transportation were driven by the power of coal. That the exploited peoples suffered in proportion as the raiding peoples prospered is, of course, true, but among the dominant peoples themselves the acquisitive instinct had begotten a mutual consciousness. Throughout those parts of the world where coal had induced the industrial revolution, a common civilization had sprung up. Parallel with the triumphant acquisitive instinct had developed the spirit of brotherhood and mutual aid which limited and controlled it. The feeling of fellowship which breeds civilization was practically coextensive with the augmented surplus produced through the coming of coal. Coal-driven transportation was good enough so that a famine in one land could be met by the heavy crops from another place: the fighting of disease, the utilization of patents, the exchange of ideas, of luxuries, of scientific knowledge, of passports, of fashions, and of food, became international throughout a large part of the world. Mankind began to approach a world civilization because since the coming of coal to kill or starve was no longer the inevitable choice.