Volume V Part 10 (2/2)

A view along Oklahoma Avenue on May 10, 1889.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Several two story buildings on a crowded street.]

Oklahoma Avenue as it appeared on May 10, 1893, during Governor n.o.ble's visit.

THE BUILDING OF A WESTERN TOWN, GUTHRIE, OKLAHOMA.

In addition to the prospect of thus losing all their lands, the Indians were, in the winter of 1890, famine-stricken through failure of Government rations. With little hope of justice or revenge in their own strength, the aggrieved savages sought supernatural solace. The so-called ”Messiah Craze” seized upon Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Osages, Missouris, and Seminoles. Ordinarily at feud with one another, these tribes all now united in ghost dances, looking for the Great Spirit or his Representative to appear with a high hand and an outstretched arm to bury the white and their works deep underground, when the prairie should once more thunder with the gallop of buffalo and wild horses. Southern negroes caught the infection. Even the scattered Aztecs of Mexico gathered around the ruins of their ancient temple at Cholula and waited a Messiah who should pour floods of lava from Popocatapetl, inundating all mortals not of Aztec race.

[1892]

While frontiersmen trembled lest ma.s.sacres should follow these Indian orgies, people in the East were shuddering over the particulars of a real catastrophe indescribably awful in nature. On a level some two hundred and seventy-five feet lower than a certain ma.s.sive reservoir, lay the city of Johnstown, Pa. The last of May, 1889, heavy rains having fallen, the reservoir dam burst, letting a veritable mountain of water rush down upon the town, destroying houses, factories, bridges, and thousands of lives. Relief work, begun at once and liberally supplied with money from nearly every city in the Union and from many foreign contributors, repaired as far as might be the immediate consequences of the disaster.

Along with the Johnstown Flood will be remembered in the annals of Pennsylvania the Homestead strike, in 1892, against the Carnegie Steel Company, occasioned by a cut in wages. The Amalgamated Steel and Iron Workers sought to intercede against the reduction, but were refused recognition. Preparing to supplant the disaffected workmen with non-union men, a force of Pinkerton detectives was brought up the river in armored barges. Fierce fighting ensued. Bullets and cannon-b.a.l.l.s rained upon the barges, and receptacles full of burning oil were floated down stream. The a.s.sailants wished to withdraw, repeatedly raising the white flag, but it was each time shot down. Eleven strikers were killed; of the attacking party from thirty to forty fell, seven dead. When at last the Pinkertons were forced to give up their arms and ammunition and retire, a bodyguard of strikers sought to s.h.i.+eld them, but so violent was the rage which they had provoked that, spite of their escort, the mob brutally attacked them. Order was restored only when the militia appeared.

[Ill.u.s.tration: City street piled with debris several feet thick.]

Main Street, Johnstown, after the flood.

[Ill.u.s.tration: River front, factories in the background, fires in the foreground.]

Burning of Barges during Homestead Strike.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Man standing behind a large curved steel plate.]

The Carnegie Steel Works. Showing the s.h.i.+eld used by the strikers when firing the cannon and watching the Pinkerton men. Homestead strike.

This bloodshed was not wholly in vain. Congress made the private militia system, the evil consequences of which were so manifest in these tragedies, a subject of investigation, while public sentiment more strongly than ever reprobated, on the one hand, violence by strikers or strike sympathizers, and, on the other, the employment of armed men, not officers of the law, to defend property.

That, however, other causes than these might endanger the peace was shown about the same time at certain Tennessee mines where prevailed the bad system of farming out convicts to compete with citizen-miners.

Business being slack, deserving workmen were put on short time.

Resenting this, miners at Tracy City, Inman, and Oliver Springs summarily removed convicts from the mines, several of these escaping. At Coal Creek the rioters were resisted by Colonel Anderson and a small force. They raised a flag of truce, answering which in person, Colonel Anderson was commanded, on threat of death, to order a surrender. He refused. A larger force soon arrived, routed the rioters, and rescued the colonel.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Several hundred men.]

Inciting miners to attack Fort Anderson.

The grove between Briceville and Coal Creek.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Train.]

State troops and miners at Briceville, Tenn.

[1891]

The year 1891 formed a crisis in the history of Mormonism in America.

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