There seemed at this time to be an epidemic of strikes running through the country, not only among the railroad men, but among all classes of laborers, and this helped to precipitate and bring about strikes at all the places about which this report will treat. The general feeling of uneasiness existing among the laboring classes of the country before mentioned, and the sympathy felt by these classes for each other made them very susceptible to anything which affected their fellow laborers, and, to use a medical phrase, the labor system was in a good condition to receive the epidemic which was spreading over the country, and in a very poor condition to resist and throw off the disease. The strike once inaugurated at Pittsburgh, was strengthened and encouraged by the sympathy the strikers received from nearly all classes of the citizens, and more especially by the sympathy shown by the city officials. Had the community frowned on the attempt of the strikers to prevent, by force, the running of freight trains, as it should have been done, and had the civil authorities shown a firm determination to enforce the law at the outset, as it was their sworn duty to do, there can be no doubt but the mob would have been dispersed without bloodshed and riot, as it was in Philadelphia, Scranton, and other places. Philadelphia and Scranton are particularly mentioned, for at these places there is a much larger proportion of the turbulent class than at Pittsburgh, and consequently a great deal more of the material of which riotous mobs are composed. When any community winks at a small violation of the law, by any person, and more especially by a combination of persons, it is laying the foundation for trouble and difficulty. A crowd of people assembled for the purpose of accomplishing, however worthy, a purpose in a questionable manner, is very easily converted into a riot, and when a crowd proposed to carry out an unlawful object by violence it soon becomes an uncontrollable mob, if encouraged in its purposes by the sympathy, either expressed or passive, of the community and the civil authorities. The small show of force made by the police in the spasmodic manner, it was on July 19th and 20th, was worse than if no police force had ever appeared on the ground, for the strikers knew they had nothing to fear from them, and the lawless characters, who had begun to gather around, construed this action as a sort of license to do what they chose as long as they interfered with nothing but railroad interests.