Great praise has been poured upon the State Constabulary for their supposedly wonderful bravery and efficiency, because a few hundred of them, scattered thinly through a score of towns, have been able apparently to overawe many thousands of strikers. But the credit is undeserved. In strikes they always form, in point of actual weight, an insignificant part of the armed forces arrayed against the strikers. For instance, in a steel town, during the strike, there would usually be a dozen or so State Police and from 3,000 to 4,000 deputy sheriffs, company police, etc. The latter classes of gunmen make up the body of the real repressive force; the State Police are merely raiders. It is their particularly dirty job to harass the enemy; to break the strike by scientifically bulldozing the strikers in their homes and on the streets. Thus they are thrown into the limelight, while the company thugs remain in comparative obscurity. The State Police feel reasonably sure of their skins when carrying on their calculated campaigns of terrorism, for behind them are large numbers of armed guards of various sorts ready to spring to their support at an instant's notice, should the workers dare to resist them. Besides, they know they have _carte blanche_ to commit the greatest excesses, since the highest state officials, not to speak of local courts and other authorities, give them undivided support. They are above the law, when the rights of the workers are concerned. Moreover, they realize fully that they can depend upon trade-union leaders to hold the strikers in check from adopting measures of retaliation. Few of them are hurt during their depredations. Once in a while, however, they drive their victims to desperation and get themselves into trouble. For example, a few days after a fight in Farrell, Pa., that cost the strikers two dead and a dozen seriously wounded, the local secretary there, S. Coates, was on his way to Ohio to hold a meeting, when the delivery truck upon which he was riding overturned, rendering him unconscious. He woke up in a Sharon hospital. The six beds adjoining his were occupied by Cossacks, injured in the riot started by themselves in Farrell. The public knew nothing of their injuries, it being the regular thing to suppress such facts, in order to surround the dreaded Cossacks with a reputation for invulnerability. The way the latter "get even" for their casualties is to victimize and outrage as many workers as they think necessary to balance the score. But such methods cannot go on indefinitely. It will be marvellous, indeed, if some day the State Constabulary, with their policy of deliberate intimidation, are not the means of causing riots such as this country has not yet experienced in labor disputes. Not always will the unions be able to hold their men as steady in the face of brutal provocation as they did in the recent steel strike.