"The rights and interests of the laboring man will be cared for -not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of the country."
George F. Baer, President of the Philadelphia and Reading Rail Road, in response to a letter during the Anthacite Coal Strike of 1902, urging him as a Christian to make concessions to the workers. The Philadelphia and Reading owned huge tracts of coal lands in eastern Pennsylvania, which it acquired by charging such exorbitant shipping rates to the independent coal operators that they were forced to sell to the rail road. In a statement to the Anthracite Coal Commission, convened by Theodore Roosevelt as arbiter of the strike, he stated in regard to working conditions in the mines...
"These men don't suffer, why hell, half of them don't even speak English"
and more recently...
"I'm just a banker, doing God's work."
Lloyd Blankfein, CEO Goldman Sachs
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