CHAPTER VIII 
STANDARDS OF LIVING 
On the palatial steamers that nightly ply the 
Hudson River are powerful searchlights, the 
concentration of whose rays along the shore 
brings out in bold relief amid the surrounding 
darkness particular objects as they are passed 
by. Here it is a lighthouse, there a group 
of buildings; again some other object, as a 
landing or a section of the giant Palisades. 
In like manner, figuratively, let us concen 
trate our mind’s searchlight upon some of the 
more important industrial effects as the newer 
immigration stream has cut its channel among 
the population of the anthracite region of 
Pennsylvania. We shall necessarily have to 
pass over many important influences; in fact, 
we will have to centre attention almost wholly 
upon some phases of that industrial competi 
tion which this immigration has brought into 
play among the mine workers.* 
The production of anthracite in the United 
States is confined within an area in northeast 
ern Pennsylvania of seventeen hundred square 
miles having an actual coal area of only 485 
* The material in this chapter, now revised and brought down 
to date, was originally presented in “ The Slav Invasion and the 
Mine Workers,” which book is out of print. 
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