The battle against filth is not everywhere zealously prosecuted; but I challenge any American woman to do better than some of these Slovak women on Whiskey Hill. Let me take you into one such home--and I came upon it more often than you may think. The room is freshly papered, the work done by the miner's wife, and not ill done. The floor is scrupulously clean; gorgeous pictures of the saints hang on the wall; there is a sewing-machine, and a woman busy at her task of making shirts for her miner husband. There are two rooms, occupied by a family of [Illustration: THE SLAVIC HOME IN HUNGARY A peaceful, little village surrounded by fields of poppies and maize.] [Illustration: THE SLAVIC HOME ON WHISKEY HILL Flanked by culm piles, breakers and mines.] five, and four boarders. I know the home of this woman in Hungary, and the very village from which she comes. I know the clean, straw-thatched cottage, the broad, dusty street, and the waving poppy-field back of the house; and I ask, "How are you getting along on Whiskey Hill?" This is the woman's reply: "Chvala Bohu dobre." Thank God, very well. I have never seen a more beautiful and grateful smile pass over a face, and have never heard a sentence which more fully suggested "Friedsam"; but suddenly her face grows dark; she hears the noise of hurrying horses and the beating of wheels against the rocky street. "The ambulance! O Virgin Mother, protect me!" she cries; for the ambulance stops at her door, and they bring in the mangled body of her husband. He went out a few hours ago and she was "Naomi"--now he is brought home, and she is "Marah." Bitter, very bitter. What happens next on Whiskey Hill? Do people grow excited? Do the neighbours come rushing in? Do the newspapers in the town at the foot of Whiskey Hill take notice how this "Hunkey" came to his death? No, indeed. Nothing happens. The woman laments alone, even as another Marah laments alone in a similar row on another ridge. There are ten women anything but "Friedsam"; for on a neighbouring hill their husbands were slain together, by the fall of one huge rock or the same powder blast. "And nothing happens?" Yes, something happens. The coroner's jury is summoned, and brings in the verdict; the same verdict always, with slight variations, rendered ever since the great companies absorbed the anthracite industry. This is it: "Martin Horvat, aged forty-two, came to his death by a fall of rock in Mine No. 2 on Whiskey Hill, January 30, 1908. The jury finds that the company should have provided the deceased a safe place to work in. It was not the duty of the deceased to pass on the safety of the roof. The deceased is not to blame." (What a comfort!) "We further find that the place in which the deceased worked should have been properly timbered" (which it was not when the accident occurred), "but we do not find that the company was to blame."