Foreword
There are few behavioral scientists in this day and age who will argue the point that man is prone to a violent nature, his primitive instincts held in check and balance by a set of complex rules and regulations which have been laid down by society for the protection of society.
"We all suffer to some extent from the necessity to control our natural inclinations by the exercise of moral responsibility," states Konrad Lorenz in ON AGGRESSION.
Man, over the years, though, has consistently found ways and means to assuage his overpowering needs.
"Uprisings, riots, revolutions, and minor skirmishes . . . have all provided an outlet.. . " says Susan Brownmiller in AGAINST OUR WILL: MEN, WOMEN, AND RAPE.
"A key stimulus which contributes enormously to the releasing of intense militant enthusiasm is the presence of a hated enemy," continues Lorenz. "This enemy . . . can be of a concrete or of an abstract nature. It can be 'the' Huns, Bodies, tyrants, etc., or abstract concepts like . . . capitalism."
No part of history has been so fraught with indications of man's inclinations toward violence than those uprisings, riots, and even killings which have accompanied the growth of labor unions in the United States: those battles of the capitalists, who want to retain what they have, against the "have nots", who want to gain more for themselves and for their families.
In the following story, revolving as it does around a dispute between the management and the union of a large coal mining operation, men with starving families come not only to look upon the system, in general, as their enemy but, more specifically, upon the mine owner Talbot McKnight and his beautiful daughter Susie.
Frustrated in being unable to make headway in settling the strike over the negotiating tables, it's only a matter of time before a couple distraught men begin looking elsewhere for a solution to their problems.
Read, then, the following story of how desperate men use a sheltered and spoiled young woman as a pawn in their struggle to achieve leverage in a game played for more power.
And as you read, you might keep in mind Susan Brownmiller's pronouncement: "Man's discovery that his genitilia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries . . . along with the use of fire and the first crude stone axe."
-The Publishers