ten to thirty miles from the principal towns, and for the most part are connected with them by branch railways which furnish very poor and very irregular train service. One group

of three towns may be taken as typical of the isolated condition of the entire coal-field. Tabasco, the nearest to the railway, is two and one-half miles from the station and is situated in a narrow gorge. At half-mile intervals up the gorge are Berwynd and Tollerberg. In the three towns live some thirteen hundred people. They are so closely shut in by the hills that only two or three rows of houses are possible. It is twentyfive miles to a flower, a tree, save the scrub piñon high up in the hills, a lawn, a park, a farm, or a running stream. The same distance must be traveled to purchase a newspaper, a book, to attend a play, or to enjoy access to a reading-room. Equally inaccessible are the dentist, the priest, and the lawyer. There is only one place of public resort --the saloon. Once a month a traveling evangelist or a Jesuit missionary visits the camp for a day and returns to his headquarters. Occasionally an itinerant moving-picture man gives a " show" in the school-house. Thus we see that here is as nearly a moral and social desert as is possible to imagine in a civilized country.

The character of the population itself has a profound effect upon conditions in the villages and the whole coal mine region. The per cent of illiteracy is about six times as great as that of the native whites of the State. Many of the people know nothing of America or American institutions, having been transferred from immigrant ships to trains and transported directly to the coal-fields.

The houses provided by the companies are nearly all shabby, ugly, and small. There are some houses with four rooms, even a few. with five, but houses of two or three rooms are far more numerous. In the rear of many of these may be seen sheds built by tenants for the purpose of providing more room. These are built of bits of board, building paper, scraps of old sheet iron, and such material. These bear silent testimony to the pitifully inadequate housing as well as add to the general ugliness of the surroundings. In one town the only boarding-house for the single men of the Slavic population is the second floor of a tumble-down saloon building. There is not a beautiful or artistic building in or near any of these towns.

There is absolutely no sanitation worthy of

the name. Refuse from kitchen, sick cham ber, laundry room and stable is dumped promiscuously in and near the camp. Standing in the very center of Tabasco, the writer looked about, and was forcibly reminded of the perishable character of many things of this world, such as fabrics and fruits, and of the uncertain tenure of life among many created things. In some instances the entire water supply of the town is pumped from the mines. This water is not even filtered. Company wagons peddle it to the people. selling it at twenty-five cents per barrel. Contagious and infectious diseases are unusually prevalent.

The men work in an atmosphere of decided lawlessness. The State laws for the protection of the men's lives are disregarded by both employer and employee. The law provides that the men may choose check weighmen, and that they shall not be coerced into purchasing supplies from company stores. These and other laws regulating mining are constantly ignored.

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The land in the villages is all owned by the companies. In every village the company owns at leasts one building which is used as a saloon. The saloons are farmed out to men who prove in most instances to be the very worst of characters. Human ghouls" is the way one prominent citizen of Trinidad describes them. Often men draw as much as one hundred dollars per month, and in one way or another spend or lose the greater part of it in these company-owned saloons. gambling for large amounts is discouraged by the companies, but in communities so poorly policed and in which men are so easily victimized it is more or less prevalent. Adjacent to many of the camps are privately owned lands occupied by small tradesmen, a few cottages owned by miners, and the tradesmen's dwellings.. In these localities saloon-keepers and other panders to passion. and vice exist literally in swarms. Before the strike the dissipated men in some camps were supporting one saloon to every thirty adults. After allowing for the non-wageearners in this group of adults, keeping in mind that the saloon drew its entire gross receipts from the remainder, the waste is seen to be so appalling as to be almost incredible. But men never assign their own spendthrift habits as the cause of economic pressure. Drink-befuddled and maddened by want, these men became perfect fire(Continued on page following illustrations)