The years following the war marked an era of extraordinary industrial and commercial activity. Inventive genius was taxed to provide machinery and the power necessary to operate it in factory, mill and mine. Manufacturing developed at an enormous rate. The railroads were penetrating the great west and the population spread over the vast domain. Then came the symptoms of congestion, the glutted markets and the clogging of productive machinery. The “good times” had come to a sudden end; factories and workshops closed down; railroads reduced wages and discharged thousands. The country swarmed with unemployed workingmen; everybody was ominously discussing the “panic” and the “hard times.” Discontent was brewing and strikes were threatened by the idle workers. The railroad strikes and many others broke out in the financial crisis of 1873. It was a period of financial bankruptcy, industrial stagnation and general gloom. The sheriff’s hammer was heard everywhere beating the dolorous funeral marches of departed prosperity. It was during this panic that the “tramp” era was inaugurated in the United States and the tramp became a recognized factor in our social life. The trades-union movement had organized rapidly during the years of industrial prosperity. Many of the trades had formed national organizations and when the crash came, the strikes followed in rapid order. In July, 1877, the railroad strikes, supported by the railroad brotherhoods, notably the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, waged with intense severity and resulting in widespread rioting, bloodshed and destruction of property, spread over a vast area of the country and threatened the direst consequences if the grievances of the strikers were not adjusted. This was among the first strikes in which the writer had an active part and many incidents and scenes are remembered which would make an interesting chapter of proletarian history. The stories of these strikes were written by Allan Pinkerton, the detective, in a curious volume entitled “Strikers, Communists, Tramps and Detectives.” The volume has the portrait of the late P. M. Arthur, grand chief of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, who was then regarded as a radical labor agitator, as the frontispiece. It also contains a complete expose of the brotherhood, illustrated with diagrams and including its ceremony of initiation, signs, passwords and all of its secret inner workings. The strikes spread rapidly east and west and were followed by rioting and violence in most of the railroad centers. The Pittsburg riots were the most disastrous in the loss of life and destruction of property. In his account of it, colored to suit the capitalistic interests he represented, Allan Pinkerton, describing the charge of the militia upon the mob, says: