It was ridiculous.The sufferings and feelings of individuals did not matter in the least.They were mere conditions, like the weather.What mattered was the pure instrumentality of the individual.As a man as of a knife:
does it cut well? Nothing else mattered.
Everything in the world has its function, and is good or not good in so far as it fulfils this function more or less perfectly.Was a miner a good miner? Then he was complete.Was a manager a good manager? That was enough.Gerald himself, who was responsible for all this industry, was he a good director? If he were, he had fulfilled his life.The rest was by-play.
The mines were there, they were old.They were giving out, it did not pay to work the seams.There was talk of closing down two of them.It was at this point that Gerald arrived on the scene.
He looked around.There lay the mines.They were old, obsolete.They were like old lions, no more good.He looked again.Pah! the mines were nothing but the clumsy efforts of impure minds.There they lay, abortions of a half-trained mind.Let the idea of them be swept away.He cleared his brain of them, and thought only of the coal in the under earth.How much was there?
There was plenty of coal.The old workings could not get at it, that was all.Then break the neck of the old workings.The coal lay there in its seams, even though the seams were thin.There it lay, inert matter, as it had always lain, since the beginning of time, subject to the will of man.The will of man was the determining factor.Man was the archgod of earth.His mind was obedient to serve his will.Man's will was the absolute, the only absolute.
And it was his will to subjugate Matter to his own ends.The subjugation itself was the point, the fight was the be-all, the fruits of victory were mere results.It was not for the sake of money that Gerald took over the mines.He did not care about money, fundamentally.He was neither ostentatious nor luxurious, neither did he care about social position, not finally.
What he wanted was the pure fulfilment of his own will in the struggle with the natural conditions.His will was now, to take the coal out of the earth, profitably.The profit was merely the condition of victory, but the victory itself lay in the feat achieved.He vibrated with zest before the challenge.Every day he was in the mines, examining, testing, he consulted experts, he gradually gathered the whole situation into his mind, as a general grasps the plan of his campaign.
Then there was need for a complete break.The mines were run on an old system, an obsolete idea.The initial idea had been, to obtain as much money from the earth as would make the owners comfortably rich, would allow the workmen sufficient wages and good conditions, and would increase the wealth of the country altogether.Gerald's father, following in the second generation, having a sufficient fortune, had thought only of the men.The mines, for him, were primarily great fields to produce bread and plenty for all the hundreds of human beings gathered about them.He had lived and striven with his fellow owners to benefit the men every time.And the men had been benefited in their fashion.There were few poor, and few needy.
All was plenty, because the mines were good and easy to work.And the miners, in those days, finding themselves richer than they might have expected, felt glad and triumphant.They thought themselves well-off, they congratulated themselves on their good-fortune, they remembered how their fathers had starved and suffered, and they felt that better times had come.They were grateful to those others, the pioneers, the new owners, who had opened out the pits, and let forth this stream of plenty.
But man is never satisfied, and so the miners, from gratitude to their owners, passed on to murmuring.Their sufficiency decreased with knowledge, they wanted more.Why should the master be so out-of-all-proportion rich?
There was a crisis when Gerald was a boy, when the Masters' Federation closed down the mines because the men would not accept a reduction.This lock-out had forced home the new conditions to Thomas Crich.Belonging to the Federation, he had been compelled by his honour to close the pits against his men.He, the father, the Patriarch, was forced to deny the means of life to his sons, his people.He, the rich man who would hardly enter heaven because of his possessions, must now turn upon the poor, upon those who were nearer Christ than himself, those who were humble and despised and closer to perfection, those who were manly and noble in their labours, and must say to them: `Ye shall neither labour nor eat bread.'
It was this recognition of the state of war which really broke his heart.
He wanted his industry to be run on love.Oh, he wanted love to be the directing power even of the mines.And now, from under the cloak of love, the sword was cynically drawn, the sword of mechanical necessity.
This really broke his heart.He must have the illusion and now the illusion was destroyed.The men were not against him, but they were against the masters.It was war, and willy nilly he found himself on the wrong side, in his own conscience.Seething masses of miners met daily, carried away by a new religious impulse.The idea flew through them: `All men are equal on earth,' and they would carry the idea to its material fulfilment.
After all, is it not the teaching of Christ? And what is an idea, if not the germ of action in the material world.`All men are equal in spirit, they are all sons of God.Whence then this obvious disquality? '
It was a religious creed pushed to its material conclusion.Thomas Crich at least had no answer.He could but admit, according to his sincere tenets, that the disquality was wrong.But he could not give up his goods, which were the stuff of disquality.So the men would fight for their rights.
The last impulses of the last religious passion left on earth, the passion for equality, inspired them.