Page:Challenge of Facts and Other Essays.djvu/407

388 matter to bring into harmony. The miners form a community which is to a certain extent isolated and peculiar. It is not easily acted upon by currents of thought which are strong in the rest of the state, and it is, at the same time, open to agitation and internal commotion and strife, or to temporary fits of feeling and irregular notions. Hence arise peculiar and important social phenomena in mining towns where laborers of different nationalities are assembled. The position of women and children, the relations of marriage and the family, the condition of churches and schools, all tend to become anomalous, and strange or hostile to our civilization.