Certain railway companies in 1894 knew that the government of Chicago
could be forced or “persuaded” to pay for all the cars destroyed within
the city limits during the strike by claiming insufficient protection of
property had been furnished. If, then, hundreds of old worn-out cars
worth “old-iron” prices could be destroyed by fire within the city
limits during the strike, and if the railway companies could by trickery
collect from the city, say, $500 for each such car burnt, it would be
“good business” to have such cars set on fire by paid incendiaries. The
burning of this precious property would also create powerful sentiment
against the strikers when “played up” luridly by the capitalist
newspapers. Thus there was powerful motive for having the precious
property burnt. It would be both awful and profitable. Employees of some
of the railways entering Chicago have told the writer that old worn-out
cars from railway shop towns far out in Iowa were actually hauled to
Chicago and burnt within the city limits in 1894.
Did you know that in 1895 in court the railway union men were charged
with burning the cars during the strike; and did you know that when the
union men brought into court the proof that detectives were caught in
the act of setting fire to cars, _court adjourned_, and the case has
never been called since, though there has been a standing challenge to
the courts to do so? Thousands of such facts as these are suppressed.
“It is in evidence and uncontradicted,” says Carroll D. Wright,[186]
“that no violence or destruction of property by strikers or
sympathizers took place in Pullman [Illinois], and that until July
3d [when the federal troops came upon the scene] no extraordinary
protection was had from the police or military against even
anticipated disorder.”
(=8=) In 1907 there was a bitter strike at the iron mines in northern
Minnesota. In all the “strike” mining towns, _except one_, armed men,
“special guards,” were officially placed on duty at once—ready to “keep
order,” ready to “quell the riots,” etc. In Sparta, an iron-mining town,
there were over three hundred men on strike, hotly eager to win the
strike. But the strikers and the town officials united in an urgent
request that no special armed guards be sent to Sparta. The strikers and
the town officials agreed that “the guards only stir up trouble,” and
without the guards they could and would keep order themselves.
Guards were sent to all the “strike” towns but Sparta.
Turmoil and bitterness promptly broke out and continued for weeks in
every “strike” town except Sparta.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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