Enraged at this defection, the strikers who held their ground, aided by a large body of men from Homestead, who had camped at Duquesne on the previous night, took possession of the mill gates and beat back those who were returning to work. Deputy sheriffs who were on the ground sent to General Wiley for assistance, which was promptly rendered, six companies of the Sixteenth Regiment being sent to the scene of disturbance on a work train. Eleven of the rioters were captured and taken to Pittsburgh, where they were held for a court trial. On the morning of August 8, the mill was again opened for work and the strikers, thoroughly disheartened, resumed their jobs in a body, every man, with the exception of those arrested for riot, getting his old place. The strike at Beaver Falls, where 900 men are employed, with a weekly pay-roll of $12,000, lasted four months. It was free from disorder, the mill being shut down from the time the strike was declared. The financial loss to the town was so heavy and affected the business people so severely that it was deemed useless to stay out, and, when the firm re-opened the mill, the three Amalgamated lodges formally abandoned the strike and marched back to work in a body. Sentiment at Homestead was kept warm by the unflagging efforts of the Amalgamated officials and of President Gompers, of the Federation of Labor. Mr. Gompers clung tenaciously to his idea of imposing a universal boycott upon Carnegie products, and the Homestead men accepted the suggestion with enthusiasm, believing that by this means the firm could be brought to its knees. Hugh O'Donnell was one of the most earnest advocates of the plan and stated through the press that it was bound to furnish a solution for the Homestead problem. As a preliminary step, the strikers issued a printed appeal to workingmen not to "work up the material shipped from the works of the Carnegie Steel Company during the present strike." At a conference of the general officers of the Federation with Mr. Weihe on August 12, the boycott plan was considered and finally negatived, probably because of the well-known attitude of the Allegheny County courts towards persons concerned in this form of conspiracy. As Mr. Gompers and his colleagues had been holding up the boycott as a panacea, their backdown was regarded with much disfavor by the strikers, but a few red-hot speeches at a mass meeting on the following day, including the famous address by Mr. Gompers, an extract from which appears in the preceding chapter, put the rank and file in good humor again. There are times when oratory covers a multitude of sins.