Tom Axton made a speech, in which he set forth the grievances of the men, and told them, out of his previous experience, how a strike must be conducted. One thing above all others, they must keep public sympathy with them, by obeying the law and avoiding every suggestion of disorder; this would not be easy, because the Employers’ Federation knew this, as well as the strike leaders, and would do everything possible to provoke the men to violence; that was the purpose for which the “guards” were coming, the strikers’ difficulty would be to keep out of the way. That was generally the case in strikes, if you could believe Axton; he said that the guards were men of a low type, hired by the big detective agencies out of the city’s underworld, and supplied with a gun on their hip-pocket. Whether the whiskey-bottle on the other hip-pocket was supplied by the employers, or got by the men themselves, was something Tom Axton did not know. Anyhow, they were brought here by the truck-load, and on the way they stopped at the sheriff’s office in San Elido—kept open day and night for the purpose—and were sworn in wholesale as “deputy-sheriffs,” and supplied with a silver shield to wear on their coat-lapels, and after that, anything they did was according to law. A few of these deputies were standing about, listening to Axton’s speech, and needless to say, they did not appreciate it. The president of the union, who had come to the field to conduct the strike, also made a speech; and the secretary of the union, and the organizer of the carpenter’s union—there could not be too many speeches, for the men were full of enthusiasm, and their minds were open to ideas; it was an education in the meaning of solidarity. They signed up by hundreds, and paid their assessments out of their scanty savings. Committees were appointed, and these got down to work in an old barn which had been hired for headquarters, the only vacant place of any size to be found in the midst of this oil boom. The place was crowded with men, coming and going, and there was not a little confusion, officials and volunteer helpers working as if such things as rest and sleep were unknown to the human organism. There were temporary lodgings to be found—for not many oil operators were being so generous as to provide shelter for strikers! The union had ordered a lot of tents, and would need more yet, when leases expired on shacks which had been rented on company property. Fortunately, not many of the men had families in this field; your oil worker is a migratory bird—he moves to a new field, and has to work quite a while before he gets enough money to bring his wife and children from the last field.