But to appreciate the significance of his triumph it is necessary to record something of the ineffable inhumanity of the industrial feudalism which had been established through the employment of armies of gun-men, the subsidization of the press, the prostitution of the courts, the cringing sycophancy of politicians, and the organization of bi-partisan political machines to meet the demands of greed. It must be a startling story--a story of greed fattening upon the hunger of children, of the trampling of inalienable rights, of the kicking to death of unborn babes by brutes untouched by the law, of the murder of women, and the shooting of unarmed men in the night--a story of tyranny and brutality as infamous and cruel as was ever born of the dynasty of the Romanoffs. And this story, which shocked the most conservative members of the senate, and shamed a republic, must be told primarily because the American people have been told too little of it. And it must be told in the story of Kern as an illumination of his political character and as an explanation of the bitter hostility with which his course was viewed by such a large portion of “our best people” in his own state. The story, of the “Kern Resolution” is the story of Kern. But behind the resolution itself is a story that must be told if we are to understand the full significance of it. I Coal has been the crown and the crime of West Virginia. The second state in the union in its deposits of coal, the industrial, social and political life of the commonwealth revolves about the mine. Until a few years ago there was no organization among the miners. They were industrial slaves. The living conditions under which they worked were horrible beyond description. They had no rights that the coal barons were bound to respect, and none that the civil authorities apparently cared to enforce. In the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek sections in the county of the state capital these conditions existed for years. They were robbed of the full fruit of their labors by a system which denied them the privilege of having a representative in the weighing of the coal they produced. Compelled to live in the cottages of the companies, they were charged unreasonable rentals for impossible huts. Forced to purchase their food from the company stores, they were made to pay on an average of thirty per cent more for the food necessities of life than were being charged at independent stores. From their meager pay the companies deducted every month $6 for rent, $1 for coal, $1 for a physician, 20 cents as a hospital fund, 50 cents for the blacksmith, 80 cents per gallon for miners’ oil, and for various other things approximating an average of $11.05 each month. By the time the miner with a family had paid all this and for the bare necessities of life he was usually in debt to the company. Thus a form of peonage--peonage in reality if not in the legal sense--was established. These men were slaves.