the same year he was appointed one of the Examining Surgeons, a position he held for twenty years. In 1868 was elected a member of the Select Council of Scranton, and for nine consecutive years was re-elected. In April, 1868, was appointed postmaster of Providence, and was only removed in 1884, after the city of Scranton had practised the game of Jonah on the whale in Providence.

Dr. Roberts is regarded as a man of excellent judgment, and he stands high as a physician and as a man.

HON. LEWIS PUGHE.

The city of Carbondale has contributed many of its best business-men to the growth and development of Scranton within the last three decades,-the late Colonel Monies and Joseph Gillispie, two energetic men, William H. Richmond, of the Hillside Farm, Notary Public John M. Poor, Horatio S. Pierce, the successful banker, but none of them have been brought more prominently before the public than Mr. Pughe.

Truth, a most able newspaper, published in Scranton by HoN. JOHN E. BARRETT, paid the following tribute to this prominent stove manufacturer:

"The Hon. Lewis Pughe, who was recently the recipient of numerous congratulations on the celebration of his sixty-fifth birthday, is a happy illustration of the self-made man who owes his success to honest industry and careful business management. He was born in North Wales in 1820, and came to this country in 1844, when he settled in Carbondale, the pioneer city of the Lackawanna Valley, of which he had the honor of being elected first city treasurer, and subsequently alderman and associate judge of the Mayor's Court. A valuable tribute to his popularity with all classes was his election as a Republican to the Pennsylvania Legislature in the year 1859, at a time when the district comprised the entire county of Luzerne, with a Democratic majority of over 2500. In 1867 he became a resident of Scranton, and a partner in the well-known and eminently successful firm of Monies & Pughe. In the year 1872 he was elected a member of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention, and in that body was generally esteemed by his associates for his fine social qualities, as well as for his comprehensive

views on all public questions, and the thorough knowledge of the needs of the people, which he brought to the consideration of all the important provisions which now form the organic law of the State. It was in that convention that the way was paved for the creation of a new county, and to the earnest labors and convincing arguments of Lewis Pughe in resisting propositions which, if adopted, would prove fatal to the project and prevent the necessary legislation, the people of this valley are indebted for the existence to-day of the flourishing county of Lackawanna, with its capital in this city. All the power of Wilkes Barre was directed against such a measure at the outset. But when the late Chief-Justice Woodward, who was a member of the convention, listened to Mr. Pughe's convincing argument, bristling with statistics showing the wonderful resources that made old Luzerne an empire in itself, he was so well pleased, and so deeply impressed with the grand tribute paid to the county's greatness, that he immediately declared to Mr. Pughe that he would not interpose any obstacle that might prevent the division of the county. Mr. Pughe was one of the Presidential electors on the Hayes and Wheeler ticket in 1876. He was one of the originators of the Scranton Board of Trade, and to his efforts the Scranton Poor District is indebted for the wholesome reforms which have made the Hillside Farm the model institution of its kind in the State. His recent election to the Board of Health gives promise of needed reforms in that body. Whatever he undertakes to do he believes in doing thoroughly, and as he is still active, mentally and physically, it is right to predict for him many years of usefulness. Mr. Pughe takes a deep interest in educational as well as charitable matters. He was a school director in Carbondale for ten years; was a member of the board of the old Fourth District, this city, and recently served a term on the Scranton School Board, where he was a valued and progressive member. He is president and one of the largest stockholders of the Pittston Stove Company, one of the most successful manufacturing establishments of its kind in the country, with a capital of $100,000. Mr. Pughe's nature is cosmopolitan, and he knows neither sect, creed, nor nationality in doing good."

THE STRIKES.

Throughout the entire Northern Coal-Field mining was suspended from the middle of May, 1869, to the middle of September. If the good effects of the war in stimulating the extraor dinary yet artificial demands for coal that it did, and beguiling unneeded labor to the coal-fields that now creates its own embarrassment, were once acknowledged by all, then it must be confessed that whatever apparent advantage was gained by its existence at the time has been thrice counterbalanced by subsequent strikes, stops, and suspensions that have followed each other, and that must inevitably follow while the means for producing coal are so far in excess of its demands and consumption. About the first of December, 1870, all the coal-producing companies of this region ordered a reduction of wages. This resulted in a strike known as the long strike, whose baneful influence still shadows bankrupt merchants with hopeless indebtedness as a reward for trusting in credit. All mines but private ones for local trade were idle and silent. The immediate cause of the strike was the reduction of wages of miners and laborers; the remote cause, the great excess of mine labor. The plain truth is, that for the amount of coal now demanded there are, by far, too many miners and too many mines for its production.

When the fresh agricultural grounds of the West or the warmer acres of the South invite the personal and permanent attention of at least one-third of our miners and laborers, the remainder can find remunerative employment, and prosperity will then, and not till then, return to enrich and enliven the banks of the Lackawanna.

The system of suspension inaugurated in 1869 by the miners, whose association embraced the entire anthracite region, for the avowed purpose of curtailing the production, was alike disastrous to coal companies, to the miner, and to the consumer.

The only safe remedy for over-production is the natural law of trade, and to mine no more coal than can be readily sold and consumed, for coal is a necessity rather than a luxury.

Concessions were made upon each side and work resumed in the mines upon terms considered more favorable to the miners than before.