Part 12 (1/2)

At all events, in this particular instance, it was not pretended either that the strikers had invaded property or person, or that the police or militia in Albany had betrayed reluctance or inability to cope with the situation. On the contrary, the facts are undisputed that the moment the men went out Mr. Pinkerton and his myrmidons appeared on the scene, and the police of Albany declared their competency to repel any trespa.s.s on person or property. The executive of the State, too, denied any necessity for the presence of the military.

”I do not impute to the railroad officials a purpose, without provocation, to precipitate their ruffians upon a defenseless and harmless throng of spectators; but the fact remains that the ruffians in their hire did shoot into the crowd without occasion, and did so shed innocent blood. And it is enough to condemn the system that it authorizes unofficial and irresponsible persons to usurp the most delicate and difficult functions of the State and exposes the lives of citizens to the murderous a.s.saults of hireling a.s.sa.s.sins, stimulated to violence by panic or by the suggestion of employers to strike terror by an appalling exhibition of force. If the railroad company may enlist armed men to defend its property, the employees may enlist armed men to defend their persons, and thus private war be inaugurated, the authority of the State defied, the peace and tranquillity of society destroyed, and the citizens exposed to the hazard of indiscriminate slaughter.”[23]

Perhaps the most extensive use of these so-called detectives was at the time of the great railway strike of 1894. The strike of the workers at Pullman led to a general sympathetic strike on all the railroads entering Chicago, and from May 11 to July 13 there was waged one of the greatest industrial battles in American history. A railway strike is always a serious matter, and in a short time the Government came to the active support of the railroads. At one time over fourteen thousand soldiers, deputy marshals, deputy sheriffs, and policemen were on duty in Chicago. During the period of the strike twelve persons were shot and fatally wounded. A number of riots occurred, cars were burned, and, as a result of the disturbances, no less than seven hundred persons were arrested, accused of murder, arson, burglary, a.s.sault, intimidation, riot, and other crimes. The most accurate information we have concerning conditions in Chicago during the strike is to be found in the evidence which was taken by the United States Strike Commission appointed by President Cleveland July 26, 1894. There seems to be no doubt that during the early days of the strike perfect peace reigned in Chicago. At the very beginning of the trouble three hundred strikers were detailed by the unions to guard the property of the Pullman company from any interference or destruction. ”It is in evidence, and uncontradicted,”

reports the Commission, ”that no violence or destruction of property by strikers or sympathizers took place at Pullman.”[24] It also appears that no violence occurred in Chicago in connection with the strike until after several thousand men were made United States deputy marshals.

These ”United States deputy marshals,” says the Commission, ”to the number of 3,600, were selected by and appointed at the request of the General Managers' a.s.sociation, and of its railroads. They were armed and paid by the railroads.”[25] In other words, the United States Government gave over its police power directly into the hands of one of the combatants. It allowed these private companies, through detective agencies, to collect as hastily as possible a great body of unemployed, to arm them, and to send them out as officials of the United States to do whatsoever was desired by the railroads. They were not under the control of the army or of responsible United States officials, and their intrusion into a situation so tense and critical as that then existing in Chicago was certain to produce trouble. And the fact is, the lawlessness that prevailed in Chicago during that strike began only after the appearance of these private ”detectives.”

It will astonish the ordinary American citizen to read of the character of the men to whom the maintenance of law and order was entrusted.

Superintendent of Police Brennan referred to these deputy marshals in an official report to the Council of Chicago as ”thugs, thieves, and ex-convicts,” and in his testimony before the Commission itself he said: ”Some of the deputy marshals who are now over in the county jail ...

were arrested while deputy marshals for highway robbery.”[26] Several newspaper men, when asked to testify regarding the character of these United States deputies, referred to them variously as ”drunkards,”

”loafers,” ”b.u.ms,” and ”criminals.” The now well-known journalist, Ray Stannard Baker, was at that time reporting the strike for the _Chicago Record_. He was asked by Commissioner Carroll D. Wright as to the character of the United States deputy marshals. His answer was: ”From my experience with them I think it was very bad indeed. I saw more cases of drunkenness, I believe, among the United States deputy marshals than I did among the strikers.”[27] Benjamin H. Atwell, reporter for the _Chicago News_, testified: ”Many of the marshals were men I had known around Chicago as saloon characters.... The first day, I believe, after the troops arrived ... the deputy marshals went up into town and some of them got pretty drunk.”[28] Malcomb McDowell, reporter for the _Chicago Record_, testified that the deputy marshals and deputy sheriffs ”were not the cla.s.s of men who ought to be made deputy marshals or deputy sheriffs.... They seemed to be hunting trouble all the time.... At one time a serious row nearly resulted because some of the deputy marshals standing on the railroad track jeered at the women that pa.s.sed and insulted them.... I saw more deputy sheriffs and deputy marshals drunk than I saw strikers drunk.”[29] Harold I. Cleveland, reporter for the _Chicago Herald_, testified: ”I was ... on the Western Indiana tracks for fourteen days ... and I suppose I saw in that time a couple of hundred deputy marshals.... I think they were a very low, contemptible set of men.”[30]

In Mr. Baker's testimony he speaks of seeing in one of the riots ”a big, rough-looking fellow, whom the people called 'Pat.'”[31] He was the leader of the mob, and when the riot was over, ”he mounted a beer keg in front of one of the saloons and advised men to go home, get their guns, and come out and fight the troops, fire on them.... The same man appeared two nights later at Whiting, Indiana, and made quite a disturbance there, roused the people up. In all that mob that had hold of the ropes I do not think there were many American Railway Union men.

I think they were mostly roughs from Chicago.... The police knew well enough all about this man I have mentioned who was the ringleader of the mob, but they did nothing and the deputy marshals were not any better.”[32] For some inscrutable reason, certain men, none of whom were railroad employees, were allowed openly to provoke violence.

Fortunately, however, they were not able to induce the actual strikers to partic.i.p.ate in their a.s.saults upon railroad property, and every newspaper man testified that the riots were, in the main, the work of the vicious elements of Chicago. They were, said one witness, ”all loafers, idlers, a petty cla.s.s of criminals well known to the police.”[33] Malcomb McDowell testified concerning one riot which he had reported for the papers: ”The men did not look like railroad men....

Most of them were foreigners, and one of the men in the crowd told me afterward that he was a detective from St. Louis. He gave me the name of the agency at the time.”[34]

Mr. Eugene V. Debs, the leader of that great strike, in a pamphlet ent.i.tled _The Federal Government and the Chicago Strike_, calls particular attention to the following declaration of the United States Strike Commission: ”There is no evidence before the Commission that the officers of the American Railway Union at any time partic.i.p.ated in or advised intimidation, violence or destruction of property. _They knew and fully appreciated that, as soon as mobs ruled, the organized forces of society would crush the mobs and all responsible for them in the remotest degree, and that this means defeat._”[35] Commenting upon this statement, Mr. Debs asks: ”To whose interest was it to have riots and fires, lawlessness and crime? To whose advantage was it to have disreputable 'deputies' do these things? Why were only freight cars, largely hospital wrecks, set on fire? Why have the railroads not yet recovered damages from Cook County, Illinois, for failing to protect their property?... The riots and incendiarism turned defeat into victory for the railroads. They could have won in no other way. They had everything to gain and the strikers everything to lose. The violence was instigated in spite of the strikers, and the report of the Commission proves that they made every effort in their power to preserve the peace.”[36]

This history is important in a study of the extensive system of subsidized violence that has grown up in America. Nearly every witness before the Commission testified that the strikers again and again gave the police valuable a.s.sistance in protecting the property of the railroads. No testimony was given that the workingmen advocated violence or that union men a.s.sisted in the riots. The ringleaders of all the serious outbreaks were notorious toughs from Chicago's vicious sections, and they were allowed to go for days unmolested by the deputy marshals--who, although representatives of the United States Government, were in the pay of the railroads. In fact, the evidence all points to the one conclusion, that the deputy marshals encouraged the violence of ruffians and tried to provoke the violence of decent men by insulting, drunken, and disreputable conduct. The strikers realized that violence was fatal to their cause, and the deputy marshals knew that violence meant victory for the railroads. And that proved to be the case.

Before leaving this phase of anarchy I want to refer as briefly as possible to that series of fiercely fought political and industrial battles that occurred in Colorado in the period from 1894 to 1904. The climax of the long-drawn-out battles there was perhaps the most unadulterated anarchy that has yet been seen in America. It was a terrorism of powerful and influential anarchists who frankly and brutally answered those who protested against their many violations of the United States Const.i.tution: ”To h.e.l.l with the Const.i.tution!”[37] The story of these Colorado battles is told in a report of an investigation made by the United States Commissioner of Labor (1905). The reading of that report leaves one with the impression that present-day society rests upon a volcano, which in favorable periods seems very harmless indeed, but, when certain elemental forces clash, it bursts forth in a manner that threatens with destruction civilization itself. The trouble in Colorado began with the effort on the part of the miners' union to obtain through the legislature a law limiting the day's work to eight hours in all underground mines and in all work for reducing and refining ores. That was in 1894. The next year an eight-hour bill was presented in the legislature. Expressing fear that such a bill might be unconst.i.tutional, the legislature, before acting upon it, asked the Supreme Court to render a decision. The Supreme Court replied that, in its opinion, such a bill would be unconst.i.tutional. In 1899, as a result of further agitation by the miners, an eight-hour law was enacted by the legislature--a large majority in both houses voting for the bill. By unanimous decision the same year the Supreme Court of Colorado declared the statute unconst.i.tutional. The miners were not, however, discouraged, and they began a movement to secure the adoption of a const.i.tutional amendment which would provide for the enactment of an eight-hour law.

All the political parties in the State of Colorado pledged themselves in convention to support such a measure. In the general election of 1902 the const.i.tutional amendment providing for an eight-hour day was adopted by the people of the State by 72,980 votes against 26,266. This was a great victory for the miners, and it seemed as if their work was done.

According to all the traditions and pretensions of political life, they had every reason to believe that the next session of the legislature would pa.s.s an eight-hour law. It appears, however, that the corporations had determined at all cost to defeat such a bill. They set out therefore to corrupt wholesale the legislature, and as a result the eight-hour bill was defeated. After having done everything in their power, patiently, peacefully, and legally to obtain their law, and only after having been outrageously betrayed by corrupt public servants, the miners as a last resort, on the 3d of July, 1903, declared a strike to secure through their own efforts what a decade of pleading and prayers had failed to achieve.

I suppose no unbiased observer would to-day question that the political machines of Colorado had sold themselves body and soul to the mine owners. There can surely be no other explanation for their violation of their pledges to the people and to the miners. And further evidence of their perfidy was given on the night of September 3, 1903, at a conference between some of the State officials and certain officers of the Mine Owners' a.s.sociation. Although the strike up to this time had been conducted without any violence, the State officials agreed that the mine owners could have the aid of the militia, provided they would pay the expenses of the soldiers while they remained in the strike district.

Two days later over one thousand men were encamped in Cripple Creek. All the strike districts were at once put under martial law; the duly elected officials of the people were commanded to resign from office; hundreds of unoffending citizens were arrested and thrown into ”bull pens”; the whole working force of a newspaper was apprehended and taken to the ”bull pen”; all the news that went out concerning the strike was censored, the manager of one of the mines acting as official censor. At the same time this man, together with other mine managers and friends, organized mobs to terrorize union miners and to force out of town anyone whom they thought to be in sympathy with the strikers.

In the effort to determine whether the courts or the military powers were supreme, a writ of _habeas corpus_ was obtained for four men who had been sent by the military authorities to the ”bull pen.” The court sent an order to produce the men. Ninety cavalrymen were then sent to the court house. They surrounded it, permitting no person to pa.s.s through the lines unless he was an officer of the court, a member of the bar, a county official, or a press representative. A company of infantrymen then escorted the four prisoners to the court, while fourteen soldiers with loaded guns and fixed bayonets guarded the prisoners until the court was called to order. When the court was adjourned, after an argument upon the motion to quash the return of the writ, the soldiers took the prisoners back to the ”bull pen.” The next day Judge Seeds was forced to adjourn the court, because the prisoners were not present. An officer of the militia was ordered to have them in court at two o'clock in the afternoon, but, as they did not appear at that time, a continuance was granted until the following day. On September 23 a large number of soldiers, cavalry and infantry, surrounded the court house. A Gatling gun was placed in position nearby, and a detail of sharpshooters was stationed where they could command the streets. The court, in the face of this military display, cited the Const.i.tution of Colorado, which declares that the military shall always be in strict subordination to the civil power, and pointed out that this did not specify sometimes but always, declaring: ”There could be no plainer statement that the military should never be permitted to rise superior to the civil power within the limits of Colorado.”[38] The judge then ordered the military authorities to release the prisoners, but this they refused to do.

At Victor certain mine owners commanded the sheriff to come to their club rooms, where his resignation was demanded. When he refused to resign, guns were produced, a coiled rope was dangled before him, and on the outside several shots were fired. He was told that unless he resigned the mob outside the building would be admitted and he would be taken out and hanged. He then signed a written resignation, and a member of the Mine Owners' a.s.sociation was appointed sheriff. With this new sheriff in charge, the mine owners, mine managers, and all they could employ for the purpose arrested on all hands everybody that seemed unfriendly to their anarchy. The new sheriff and a militia officer commanded the Portland mine, which was then having no trouble with its employees, to shut down. By this order four hundred and seventy-five men were thrown out of employment. In these various ways the mobs organized by the mine owners were allowed to obliterate the Government and abolish republican inst.i.tutions, under the immediate protection of their leased military forces.

At Telluride, also, the military overpowered the civil authorities. When Judge Theron Stevens came there to hold the regular session of court he was met by soldiers and a mob of three hundred persons. Seeing that it was impossible for the civil authorities to exercise any power, he decided to adjourn the court until the next term, declaring: ”The demonstration at the depot last night upon the arrival of the train could only have been planned and executed for the purpose of showing the contempt of the militia and a certain portion of this community for the civil authority of the State and the civil authority of this district. I had always been led to suppose from such research as I have been able to make that in a republic like ours the people were supreme; that the people had expressed their will in a const.i.tution which was enacted for the government of all in authority in this State. That const.i.tution provides that the military shall always be in strict subordination to the civil authorities.”[39]

While this terrorism of the powerful was in full sway in Colorado, the entire world was being told through the newspapers of the infamous crimes being committed daily by the Western Federation of Miners.

Countless newspaper stories were sent out telling in detail of mines blown up, of trains wrecked, of men murdered through agents of this federation of toilers engaged day in and day out at a dangerous occupation in the bowels of the earth. Not loafers, idlers, or drunkards, but men with calloused hands and bent backs. Stories were sent around the world of these laborers being arraigned in court charged with the most infamous and dastardly crimes. Yet hardly once has it been reported in the press of the world that in ”every trial that has been held in the State of Colorado during the present strike where the members.h.i.+p has been charged with almost every perfidy in the catalogue of crime, a jury has brought in a verdict of acquittal.”[40] On the other hand, a mult.i.tude of murders, wrecks, and dynamite explosions have been brought to the door of the detectives employed by the Mine Owners' a.s.sociation. It was found that many ex-convicts and other desperate characters were employed by the detective agencies to commit crimes that could be laid upon the working miners. The story of Orchard and the recital of his atrocious crimes have occupied columns of every newspaper, but the fact is rarely mentioned that many of the crimes that he committed, and which the world to-day attributes to the officials of the Western Federation of Miners, were paid for by detective agencies.

The special detective of one of the railroads and a detective of the Mine Owners' a.s.sociation were known to have employed Orchard and other criminals. When Orchard first went to Denver to seek work from the officials of the Western Federation of Miners he was given a railroad pa.s.s by these detectives and the money to pay his expenses.[41] During the three months preceding the blowing up of the Independence depot Orchard had been seen at least eighteen or twenty times entering at night by stealth the rooms of a detective attached to the Mine Owners'

a.s.sociation, and at least seven meetings were held between him and the railroad detective already mentioned.

Previous to all this--in September and in November, 1903--attempts were made to wreck trains. A delinquent member of the Western Federation of Miners was charged with these crimes. He involved in his confession several prominent members of the Western Federation of Miners. On cross-examination he testified that he had formerly been a prize-fighter and that he had come to Cripple Creek under an a.s.sumed name. He further testified that $250 was his price for wrecking a train carrying two hundred to three hundred people, but that he had asked $500 for this job, as another man would have to work with him. Two detectives had promised him that amount. An a.s.sociate of this man was discovered to have been a detective who had later joined the Western Federation of Miners. He testified that he had kept the detective agencies informed as to the progress of the plot to derail the train. The detective of the Mine Owners' a.s.sociation admitted that he and the other detectives had endeavored to induce members of the miners' union to enter into the plot; while the railroad detective testified that he and another detective were standing only a few feet away when men were at work pulling the spikes from the rails. An engineer on the Florence and Cripple Creek Railroad testified that the railroad detective had, a few days before, asked him where there was a good place for wrecking the train. The result of the case was that all were acquitted except the ex-prize-fighter, who was held for a time, but eventually released on $300 bond, furnished by representatives of the mine owners.[42]

On June 6, 1904, when about twenty-five non-union miners were waiting at the Independence depot for a train, there was a terrible explosion which resulted in great loss of life. It has never been discovered who committed the crime, though the mine owners lost no time in attributing the explosion to the work of ”the a.s.sa.s.sins” of the Federation of Miners. When, however, bloodhounds were put on the trail, they went directly to the home of one of the detectives in the employ of the Mine Owners' a.s.sociation. They were taken back to the scene of the disaster and again followed the trail to the same place. A third attempt was made with the hounds and they followed a trail to the powder magazine of a nearby mine. The Western Federation of Miners offered a reward of $5,000 for evidence which would lead to the arrest and conviction of the criminal who had perpetrated the outrage at Independence. Unfortunately, the criminal was never found. Orchard, a year or so later, confessed that he had committed the crime and was paid for it by the officials of the Western Federation of Miners. The absurdity of that statement becomes clear when it is known that the court in Denver was at the very moment of the explosion deciding the _habeas corpus_ case of Moyer, President of the Western Federation of Miners. In fact, a few hours after the explosion the decision of the court was handed down. As the action of the court was vital not only to Moyer but to the entire trade-union movement, and, indeed, to republican inst.i.tutions, it is inconceivable that he or his friends should have organized an outrage that would certainly have prejudiced the court at the very moment it was writing its decision. On the other hand, there was every reason why the mine owners should have profited by such an outrage and that their detectives should have planned one for that moment.[AF]

The atrocities of the Congo occurred in a country without law, in the interest of a great property, and in a series of battles with a half-savage people. History has somewhat accustomed us to such barbarity; but when, in a civilized country, with a written const.i.tution, with duly established courts, with popularly elected representatives, and apparently with all the necessary machinery for dealing out equal justice, one suddenly sees a feudal despotism arise, as if by magic, to usurp the political, judicial, and military powers of a great state, and to use them to arrest hundreds without warrant and throw them into ”bull pens”; to drive hundreds of others out of their homes and at the point of the bayonet out of the state; to force others to labor against their will or to be beaten; to depose the duly elected officials of the community; to insult the courts; to destroy the property of those who protest; and even to murder those who show signs of revolt--one stands aghast. It makes one wonder just how far in reality we are removed from barbarism. Is it possible that the likelihood of the workers achieving an eight-hour day--which was all that was wanted in Colorado--could lead to civil war? Yet that is what might and perhaps should have happened in Colorado in 1904, when, for a few months, a military despotism took from the people there all that had been won by centuries of democratic striving and thrust them back into the Middle Ages.

Chaotic political and industrial conditions are, of course, occasionally inevitable in modern society--torn as it is by the very bitter struggle going on constantly between capital and labor. When this struggle breaks into war, as it often does, we are bound to suffer some of the evils that invariably attend war. Certainly, it is to be expected that the owners of property will exercise every power they possess to safeguard their property. They will, whenever possible, use the State and all its coercive powers in order to retain their mastery over men and things.

The only question is this, must people in general continue to be the victims of a commerce which has for its purpose the creation of situations that force nearly every industrial dispute to become a b.l.o.o.d.y conflict? When men combine to commit depredations, destroy property, and murder individuals, society must deal with them--no matter how harshly. But it is an altogether different matter to permit privately paid criminals to create whenever desired a state of anarchy, in order to force the military to carry out ferocious measures of repression against those who have been in no wise responsible for disorder.