Men's hearts are cold. They are indifferent. Not all the coal that is dug warms the world. It remains indifferent to the lives of ...those who risk their life and health down in the blackness of the earth; who crawl through dark, choking crevices with only a bit of lamp on their caps to light their silent way; whose backs are bent with toil, whose very bones ache, whose happiness is sleep, and whose peace is death.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at ...the same time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A machine is characterized by sustained, autonomous action. It is set up by human hands and then is more or less set loose from hu...man control. It is designed to come between man and nature, to affect the natural world without requiring or indeed allowing humans to come into contact with it. Such is the clock, which abstracts the measurement of time from the sun and the stars: such is the steam engine, which turns coal into power to move ships or pump water without the intervention of human muscles. A tool, unlike a machine, is not self-sufficient or autonomous in action. It requires the skill of a craftsman and, when handled with skill, permits him to reshape the world in his way.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"The room's very hot, with all this crowd," the Professor said to Sylvie. "I wonder why they don't put some lumps of ice in the gr...ate? You fill it with lumps of coal in the winter, you know, and you sit round it and enjoy the warmth. How jolly it would be to fill it now with lumps of ice, and sit round it and enjoy the coolth!"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Writing is to descend like a miner to the depths of the mine with a lamp on your forehead, a light whose dubious brightness falsif...ies everything, whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Shea--they call him Scholar Jack-- Went down the list of the dead.... Officers, seamen, gunners, marines, The crews of the gig and yawl, The bearded man and the lad in his teens, Carpenters, coal-passers--all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mr. Christian, it is about time for many people to begin to come to the White House to discuss different phases of the coal strike.... When anybody comes, if his special problem concerns the state, refer him to the governor of Pennsylvania. If his problem has a national phase, refer him to the United States Coal Commission. In no event bring him to me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or... a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making "ladies" dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must... somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »