I went out to see the soft-coal miners recently, and as I visited there and had a talk with them as they were going into a "strike," I saw that they showed that same disposition precisely. The miners said that their pay had been raised three times, but so many people had told them they might just as well have ten dollars advance as three, consequently the very raise of their wages made them the more discontented. While they do not get any more than they ought to get, yet this increase has made them more and more discontented, and if they were to be paid all they ask for, they would be more discontented than they are now. It is human nature, and especially human with that class. They should be contented with a fair wage in order to be happy. Happiness is not found in drawing an immense income which results in enriching a person without his having earned it, and thus, without having an opportunity to appreciate it.
How much do you think Mr. Rockefeller knows about his two or three hundred millions? How much does he get out of it? He does not get as much out of it as you do out of what you possess. He cannot enjoy it. No man can enjoy perhaps over fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand dollars furnishes everything that any healthy man or woman could enjoy, and when a man gets beyond that sum he is going into care; he has passed beyond the place where perfect happiness is found. The men who divide with their employees as they go along are the successful men. They are rich in more ways than one. They are the happy men who divide as they go along.
If the "coal barons" had only taken time by the forelock, and, consulting with each other, had decided that they would raise the pay of those miners to balance their increasing profits, it would have been all peace. While they would not have received, at first, so many millions in money themselves, they would have been happier, and happiness is worth more than the millions could be to them. Men who divide with their employees as they go along are the happiest men that you find in the world of business. The time has come when men must divide as they go along in their business, or they become very unhappy, and certainly, in these days, will be very unsuccessful.