Part 15 (1/2)

The night watchman whose duty it was to enter the office hourly was killed, and his bleeding body was now being moved to a temporary morgue, which had been established in an adjoining old town-hall. Already over fifty mangled forms had been brought in and laid in rows on the floor, and more dead workmen were arriving every moment.

The mayor and Colonel Harris were everywhere directing what to do. Scores of the wounded were hurried in ambulances to a large Catholic Church, an improvised hospital. Here were sent physicians, volunteer nurses, beds, and blankets. Fortunately the seats in the church, being movable, were quickly carried into the streets, and on beds and blankets the suffering men were placed, and an examination of each wounded person was being made. Names and addresses were taken by the reporters, and ambulances began to remove the severely injured to the city hospitals.

Colonel Harris left Gertrude to minister to the wounded in the church, and sought out Wilson his manager, and George Ingram. Everybody worked till daylight. Many wounded and dead men, and women and children were brought up to the morgue and hospitals from the wrecked tenements that stood near the exploded mills. Several bodies of the dead workmen, and the wounded who could not escape from the burning works were consumed.

When the sun rose on that dreadful scene, thousands of workmen and their families and tens of thousands of sympathizers witnessed in silence the awful work of anarchists. At daylight Colonel Harris rode with George and Gertrude home to breakfast.

In the evening press a call for a public meeting at 8 o'clock next morning of the prominent citizens resulted in the forming of an emergency committee of one hundred earnest men and women to furnish aid to the afflicted and needy work-people. The most influential people of Harrisville were enrolled on this committee, which to be more thoroughly effective was subdivided. Every house occupied by the mill-people was visited, and every injured person was cared for.

The women on the committee visited the hospitals and for a time became nurses ministering to every want. Money and abundance of food were also contributed, and such kindness on the part of the rich the work-people had never known before.

The evening papers gave the authoritative statement that the total number of those killed outright by the explosions at the steel mills was one hundred and twenty-seven. Of this number eighty-six were workmen, fourteen were men who lived in the vicinity, but were not employed in the mills, ten were women, and seventeen were children. The total number of wounded was sixty-eight.

A public funeral was decided upon by the committee. The Harrisville Iron & Steel Co. sent their check for $5000 to the committee and many others contributed money. The time fixed for the public services was Sunday at 2 o'clock. Ten separate platforms for the clergy and church choirs of the city had been erected on the same open fields where the great strike meetings had so often been held. By 1 o'clock people began to a.s.semble.

Workmen came from all parts of the city, till over fifty thousand laborers with their wives were on the ground. Most wore black crepe on their arm.

Fifteen minutes before 2 o'clock solemn band music gave notice to the crowd of the approach of an imposing procession. Platoons of police led the column who were followed in carriages by the mayor, his cabinet, and the city council; then another platoon of police, followed by a long line of hea.r.s.es, the black plumes of which seemed to wave in unison with the solemn tread of over a thousand workmen, acting as pall-bearers, walking in double file on either side of their dead comrades.

It was some moments before the speaking could begin. By concerted action all the clergy preached on the ”Brotherhood of Mankind,” the text used being, John XV.-12. ”This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.” The speakers were moved by the Holy Spirit. The services closed with the hymn, ”Nearer my G.o.d to Thee.”

The funeral procession was several miles in length. Public and private buildings along the route to the cemetery were draped with the emblems of mourning. Twenty-five of the bodies were given private burial. Over one hundred of the victims of the dynamite disaster were buried in one common grave. Together they had died, and together they were buried. The mantle of charity covered them.

Soon after the funeral, the press contained an account of a great meeting held by the surviving workmen of the Harrisville Iron & Steel Co., and of resolutions that were unanimously adopted:--

”Resolved, That we, the surviving workmen of the Harrisville Iron & Steel Co., hereby desire to express our deep sympathy with the bereaved families of our late comrades in toil.

”That further we desire to contribute from the pay-roll due us the wages received for two days' services, the same to be paid to the emergency committee, one-half the proceeds of which is to apply to the relief of the bereaved workmen's families, the balance to be used for the purpose of erecting suitable monuments over the graves of our unfortunate comrades.

”Resolved, That we, employees of the Harrisville Iron & Steel Co., extend our sympathy to the company in their great financial loss.

”That we hereby declare ourselves as law-abiding citizens, and that we neither directly, nor indirectly, were connected in any manner with the late dynamite explosions and fires which destroyed the plant of The Harrisville Iron & Steel Co., and we denounce those acts as dastardly and inimical to the best interest of labor and civilization.”

Following the resolutions were appended the signatures of over four thousand workmen. It was also voted that the resolutions, and names attached, should be printed in the press of the city, and that a copy should be delivered to the president of the steel company. This action freed the atmosphere of distrust, and business in Harrisville returned to its accustomed ways.

At a meeting of the directors of the Harrisville Iron & Steel Co. it was voted ”Not to rebuild our mills at present.” Manager Wilson was instructed at once to so advise the employees, also to dispose of all the manufactured stock and raw material on hand, and to clean up the grounds of the old mill site.

Colonel Harris remembered the action of Herr Krupp of Germany when a letter once reached him, threatening to destroy with dynamite his vast works at Essing. Herr Krupp immediately called a meeting of his tens of thousands of workmen, and read the letter to them, and then said, ”Workmen, if this threat is executed, I shall never rebuild.” This settled the matter.

The city council of Harrisville and the county commissioners offered rewards for the arrest and conviction of the dynamiters. The sum was increased to $10,000 by the steel company, and notices of these rewards were mailed far and wide.

By aid of an informer of the band of conspirators, Mike O'Connor and his confederates were arrested as they were about to embark for South America. In the hotly contested trial it was disclosed that O'Connor had directed the placing of dynamite beneath engines and boilers before the high board fence was constructed about the works, that electric wires to ignite the dynamite had been laid underground from the mills to an old unused barn, nearly half a mile distant, and that O'Connor was seen to come from the barn just after the explosion. Within two months after the arrest, the whole band were convicted and sentenced for life to hard labor in the penitentiary.

It was decided that Colonel Harris and Gertrude should soon sail to rejoin Mrs. Harris and party in England, and notice of this decision was cabled next day to them at London. The colonel was busy examining carefully George Ingram's detailed drawings of a new, enlarged, and much improved plan for a huge steel plant. The improvements were to be up to date, and his plans involved an entirely new process of converting ores into steel. It was agreed that George and his father, James Ingram, should perfect their inventions on which both for a long time had been zealously at work, and that later George and the colonel should make a tour of observation of leading iron and steel works in Europe.

Gertrude was now very happy. The selled together, concerning the proper relations of capital and labor, and since the explosion they studied the question more earnestly than ever. Their scheme involved not only improved works in a new location, but also a plan to harmonize, if possible, capital and labor, which they hoped might work great good to humanity. Gertrude told George Ingram that his golden opportunity had come, and she resolved to render him all the a.s.sistance possible.

CHAPTER XIV

COLONEL HARRIS FOLLOWS HIS FAMILY ABROAD