It seemed that nothing could slow J.P. Morgan's drive to power, but in 1901, a bullet put an end to the business-friendly presidency of William McKinley. A new chief executive bounded into office: Theodore Roosevelt, who was sure that the government had to check the influence of the wealthy. By March 1902, battle lines were drawn: the government sued Northern Securities for antitrust violations. But as Susan Berfield explains here, the coal miners went on strike and the anthracite pits that fueled Morgan's trains and heated the homes of the citizens went silent. With winter bearing down and revolution in the air, it was a crisis that neither man alone could solve.