730 



STRIKES. 



3,000 rioters had assembled. They had been 

 aroused by their leaders to a pitch that made an 

 encounter with the soldiers certain. Several 

 times they rushed upon the company of troops, 

 but were met by fixed bayonets and driven back. 

 At last, however, the entire body of strikers 

 made a determined rush, and the regular troops 

 fired several volleys, resulting in the death of 12 

 or 15 rioters. President Cleveland issued a 

 proclamation calling on all disorderly persons 

 to disperse by noon on the following day. 



On July 10 Sovereign, the General Master 

 Workman of the Knights of Labor, issued a 

 manifesto to that organization, ordering out its 

 members throughout the country. A part of it 

 read thus : " Sincerely believing that the flames 

 of discord are being purposely fanned by the 

 railway corporations at the risk of the life of the 

 Government, I take the liberty to appeal to you, 

 and through you to the conscience of the whole 

 people, imploring you to lay down the imple- 

 ments of toil for a'short season, and, under the 

 banner of peace, and with a patriotic desire to 

 promote the public welfare, use the power of 

 your aggregated numbers through peaceable as- 

 semblages to create a healthy public sentiment 

 in favor of an amicable settlement of the issues 

 growing out of the recent strike of the Pull- 

 man palace-car employees, and you are further 

 required not to return to your usual vocations 

 until a settlement of the pending troubles is 

 made known to you through some authentic 

 source." A conference of the Executive Com- 

 mittee of the American Federation of Labor 

 was called for the 12th. No trains were moved, 

 but the strikers remained quiet, pending action 

 by the Arbitration Committee of the Common 

 Council of Chicago. A special Federal grand 

 jury to investigate the strike was sworn in, 

 and was instructed to make a sweeping in- 

 quiry into the conditions that prevailed in the 

 city and their causes. The jury was instructed 

 by Judge Grosscup as follows : 



You have been summoned here to inquire whether 

 any of the laws of the United States in this judicial 

 district have been violated. You have come, into an 

 atmosphere and amid occurrences that may well cause 

 reasonable men to question whether the Government 

 and laws of the United States are yet supreme. . . . 

 Insurrection is a crime against civil and political au- 

 thority the open and active opposition of a number 

 of persons to the execution of law in a city or State. 

 Xow the laws of the United States fortiid, under 

 penalty, any persons from obstructing or retarding 

 the passage of the mail, and make it the duty of the 

 officer to arrest such offenders and bring them before 

 the court. If, therefore, it shall appear to you that 

 any person or persons have willfully obstructed or 

 retarded the mails, and that their attempted arrest 

 for such offense had been opposed by such a number 

 of persons as would constitute a general uprising in 

 that particular locality, and as threatens for the time 

 being the civil and political authority, then the fact 

 of an insurrection within the meaning of the law has 

 been established. When men gather in such force 

 that the; civil authorities are inadequate to put them 

 down, and a considerable military force is needed to 

 accomplish that result, they become insurgents, and 

 every person who knowingly incites, aids, or abets 

 them, no matter what his motives may be, is likewise 

 an insurgent. The mails are in special keeping of 

 the Government and the laws of the United States. 

 To insure their unhindered transmission, it is made 

 an offense to "knowingly and willfully obstruct or 



retard the passage of the mail, or any carriage, horse r 

 driver, or carrier carrying the same." The Constitu- 

 tion places the regulation of commerce between the 

 several States, and between the States and foreign 

 nations, within the keeping of the United States Gov- 

 ernment. Anything which is designed to be trans- 

 ported for commercial purposes from one State to 

 another, and is actually in transit, and any passenger 

 who is actually engaged in any such interstate com- 

 mercial transaction, and any car or carriage actually 

 transporting, or engaged in transporting, such passen- 

 ger or thing, are the agencies and subject matter of 

 interstate commerce, and any conspiracy in restraint, 

 of such trade or commerce is an offense against the 

 United States. Any physical interference, therefore, 

 which has the effect of restraining any passenger car 

 or thing constituting an element of interstate com- 

 merce forms the foundation for this offense. But to 

 complete this offense, as also that of conspiracy to 

 obstruct the mails, there must exist in addition to the 

 resolve or purpose the element of criminal conspiracy. 

 If it shall appear to you that any two or more persons 

 corruptly or wrongfully agree with each other that 

 trains carrying the mails and interstate commerce 

 should be forcibly arrested, obstructed, and restrained, 

 such would clearly constitute a conspiracy. If it ap- 

 pears to you, therefore, that any two or more persons, 

 by concert, insisted or demanded, under effective 

 penalties and threats, upon men quitting their em- 

 ployment, to the obstruction of the mails or inter- 

 state commerce, you may inquire whether they did 

 these acts as strangers to these men, or whether they 

 did them under the guise of trustees or leaders of an 

 association to which these men belonged. And if the 

 latter appears, you may inquire whether their acts 

 and conduct in that respect were in faithful and con- 

 scientious execution of their supposed authority, or 

 were simply a use of that authority as a guise to ad- 

 vance personal ambition or satisfy private malice. If 

 it does so appear, if any person is shown to have be- 

 trayed the trust of these toiling men, and their acts 

 fall within the definition of crime as I have given, it 

 is alike the interest, the pleasure, and the duty of 

 every citizen to bring them to swift and heavy 

 punishment. 



The jury returned indictments against Eugene 

 V. Debs, President of the American Railway 

 Union ; George Howard, its vice-president ; Syl- 

 vester Keliher, secretary; and L. W. Rogers, one of 

 its directors. Shortly thereafter the 4 men were 

 arrested. They were charged with conspiracy 

 to block the progress of the United States mails. 

 Joined in the indictment with the 4 leaders 

 of the Railway Union was James Martin, who 

 threw the switch that derailed a mail train at 

 Blue Island on the night of June 30. Debs, 

 Howard, Keliher, and Rogers were taken into 

 the office of the district attorney, and, after a 

 few hours' detention, were released on bail, their 

 bonds being $10,000 each. 



By this time, July 11, the strike had extended 

 to North Dakota, Montana. Idaho, Washington, 

 Wyoming, Colorado, California, Utah, and New 

 Mexico, and President Cleveland called on all 

 persons engaged therein to disperse. There 

 was considerable violence at Sacramento, Cal. 

 In the East the Knights of Labor disregarded 

 the manifesto of Sovereign, but in Chicago they 

 stopped work to the number of several thousands. 

 The Executive Committee of the Knights of La- 

 bor threatened to impeach the Attorney-General 

 of the United States for his opinion as to the 

 power of the Federal Government. On July 13 

 Mr. Pullman declared publicly that the case was 

 not one for arbitration : that his men had been 

 treated kindly ; and that they had been kept in 



