carried firearms and in one or two instances went so far as to display a noosed rope and threaten its use if necessary to compel compliance with their demands. To all the official vacancies men were appointed who were known to be in one way or another identified with the monopoly powers.

One of General Bell's declarations over his signature was: "I am going to banish the agitators, and then I will establish a military quarantine that will keep them banished.” This was no idle boast. He meant it, and he acted upon it so long as his soldiers were on duty. Indeed, in an interview with me, he said that he would not, if he had his way, restrict the use of soldiers to the mining regions. He would use them in the metropolis and capital of the State, Denver, and "run out the bad men and ballot-box stuffers."

And what was the net result of the strike-military term in Colorado? That in round numbers a thousand men were locked up in the military prisons without charges being preferred against them; that six hundred and fifty coal and metal miners were arbitrarily deported, some of them put down on the open prairie without food or shelter; that houses were searched and stores looted by so-called citizens' committees acting under the protection of soldiers; that local courts were prevented from exercising their functions; that regularly elected local officials were coerced into resigning and monopoly appointees substituted; that the Governor and militia, passively supported by an abdicating Supreme Court, did or helped to do all this; that the cost for the militia exceeded $800,000, which the great parties at interest - the Colorado monopolies-paid, and for which they purposed some day to be reimbursed by a special legislative appropriation.

How could a strike win in face of such odds, no matter how justifiable the cause? And the metal miners and smelters' strike failed as utterly as had the coal struggle. The strike went down in utter ruin, and with it for the

time being the labor unions in Colorado to which those men belonged.

Now, as has been said, a strike is not according to the natural order of things. It is only a temporary expedient of combined laborers. But if, under cloak of protecting life and property against strikers, a military despotism is for a season to be erected, what is to become of the sacred principles of liberty. And if this can be done in one State, why should it not be done in others? If miners in one part of the United States, because they are labor unionists, can be thrown into prison or deported, why cannot miners in other places be similarly treated? If the owners of Colorado can substitute bayonet for ballot rule, why should not the coal, steel and transportation lords of Pennsylvania take it as a precedent? Why should not the railroad masters of California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington hail it and follow it? Why bother with popular suffrage in New York, Ohio, Connecticut, Illinois or Massachusetts? If a Governor of Colorado can, on the pretext of protecting life and property, set aside civil government and establish in its stead arbitrary military rule by which citizens are cast into prison or deported without charges, and by which regularly elected public officials are deposed to give place to appointees of Privilege, why should this not some day be done by a President over the country at large?

Nor can the fulfillment of these possibilities appear so remote when we realize that what has been done in Colorado has really only been in the free exercise of principles clearly established by a President of the United States, who sent Federal troops to Chicago at the behest of railroad powers there and despite the protests of the Governor of Illinois.

CHAPTER IV

FEDERAL ARMY IN STRIKES

THE two most remarkable instances of the use of United States regulars occurred in Chicago in 1894 and in the Cœur d'Alene Mountains in 1899.

At the close of the Chicago strike President Cleveland appointed a Commission of three to investigate fully into its causes and its course. The three men were: Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner of Labor, John D. Keenon of New York and Nicholas E. Worthington of Illinois.

From the report of that Commission1 it appears that in 1886 the twenty-four railroads centering or terminating in Chicago formed a voluntary, unincorporated body called the General Managers' Association. The functions of this association were to consider questions of management, to deal with questions of transportation and to fix car service, rates, wages and the like. The President's Commission could find no legal status for such an association, saying: "If we regard its practical workings rather than its professions as expressed in its constitution, the General Managers' Association has no more standing in law than the old Trunk Line Pool. It cannot incorporate, because railroad charters do not authorize roads to form corporations or associations to fix rates for services and wages, nor to force their acceptance, nor to battle with strikers. It is a usurpation of power not granted." The Commission might have added that the association was obviously in conflict with the Sherman Anti-Trust Law.

1 Senate Ex. Doc. No. 7, Fifty-third Congress, third session.

Until June, 1894, the General Managers' Association dealt incidentally and infrequently with wages. The railroad employees did not awake to the seriousness of this situation until March, 1893, when the switchmen of each road demanded more pay. The General Managers' Association, speaking for each and all of the twenty-four roads, told the men that they were paid enough; if anything, too much. "This was the first time," says the Commissioners' Report, "when men upon each line were brought face to face with the fact that in questions as to wages, rules, etc., each line was supported by twenty-three combined railroads. . . . This association likewise prepared for its use elaborate schedules of the wages upon the entire lines of the twenty-four members. The proposed object of these schedules was to let each road know what other roads paid. . . . It was an incident of the General Managers' Association to 'assist' each road in case of trouble over such matters, one form of assistance being for the association to secure men enough through its agencies to take the places of all strikers."

This powerful and aggressive organization of the railroads compelled the employees of those roads to form a general union, for, says the Commissioners' Report, "it should be noted that until the railroads set the example, a general union of railroad employees was never attempted." Accordingly, in 1893, the entire railroad labor service was organized into the American Railway Union. Mr. Eugene V. Debs, who for two terms had been city clerk of Terra Haute, Indiana, and for several years secretary and treasurer of the Brotherhood of Firemen and editor of the Locomotive Firemen's Magazine, became president of the Railway Union. The new organization very rapidly acquired strength. In May, 1894, it won a strike on the great Northern Railroad.

Among the members of the Railway Union were the employees of the Pullman palace car shops just outside the city of Chicago. Believing that the union was in

vincible and that their hour had come for relief from oppressive grievances, they insisted upon striking. The Strike Commission says that the officers and directors of the Railway Union "did not want a strike at Pullman" and "they advised against it, but the exaggerated idea of the power of the union which induced the workmen at Pullman to join the order, led to their [the Pullman men] striking, against their [the Railway Union's] advice;" and, "having struck, the union could do nothing less, upon the theory at its base, than support them." It was therefore unanimously voted in convention "that the members of the union should stop handling Pullman cars on June 26 (1894), unless the Pullman Company would consent to arbitration." The Pullman Company refused to arbitrate. "On June 26 the boycott and strike began. Throughout the strike, the strife was simply over handling Pullman cars, the men being ready to do their duty otherwise."

Then, continues the Strike Commissioners' Report: “On June 22 an officer of the Pullman Company met the General Managers by invitation, and the General Managers, among other things, resolved: 'That we hereby declare it to be the lawful and right duty of said railway companies to protest against said proposed boycott; to resist the same in the interest of their existing contracts, and for the benefit of the traveling public, and that we will act unitedly to that end."" And adds the Commission: "From June 22 until the practical end of the strike the General Managers' Association directed and controlled the contest on the part of the railroads, using the combined resources of all the roads to support the contentions and insure the protection of each. ... Headquarters were established; agencies for hiring men opened; as the men arrived they were cared for and assigned to duty upon the different lines; a bureau was started to furnish information to the press; the lawyers of the different roads were called into conference and combination in