Troops employed against such a riotous mob will act
with all the moderation and forbearance consistent with
the accomplishment of the desired end; but the stern
necessities that confront them will not with certainty permit
discrimination between guilty participants and those who are
mingling with them from curiosity and without criminal intent.
The only safe course, therefore, for those not actually
participating, is to abide at their homes, or at least not to
be found in the neighborhood of riotous assemblages.
While there will be no vacillation in the decisive treatment
of the guilty, this warning is especially intended to protect
and save the innocent.
On the 10th of July, Eugene V. Debs, the president of the American
Railway Union, together with its vice-president, general secretary, and
one other who was an active director, were arrested upon indictments
found against them for complicity in the obstruction of mails and
interstate commerce. Three days afterward our special counsel expressed
the opinion that the strike was practically broken. This must not
be taken to mean, however, that peace and quiet had been completely
restored or that the transportation of mails and the activities of
interstate commerce were entirely free from interruption. It was only
the expression of a well-sustained and deliberate expectation that the
combination of measures already inaugurated, and others contemplated
in the near future, would speedily bring about a termination of the
difficulty.
On the seventeenth day of July an information was filed in the United
States Circuit Court at Chicago against Debs and the three other
officials of the Railway Union who had been arrested on indictment
a few days before, but were then at large on bail. This information
alleged that these parties had been guilty of open, continued, and
defiant disobedience of the injunction which was served on them July
3, forbidding them to do certain specified acts tending to incite and
aid the obstruction of the carriage of mails and the operation of
interstate commerce. On the footing of this information these parties
were brought before the court to show cause why they should not be
punished for contempt in disobeying the injunction. Instead of giving
bail for their freedom pending the investigation of this charge against
them, as they were invited to do, they preferred to be committed to
custody--perhaps intending by such an act of martyrdom either to revive
a waning cause, or to gain a plausible and justifying excuse for
the collapse of their already foredoomed movement. Debs himself, in
speaking of this event afterward, said: “As soon as the employees found
that we were arrested and taken from the scene of action they became
demoralized, and that ended the strike.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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