A. Business is iron commission merchant, in Pittsburgh.

Q. You may state to the committee any facts—any information—you are in possession of, in regard to the riot, and the means used to suppress it, that have not been already fully gone over?

A. You have got most of the facts that I am conversant with, I expect, Mr. Chairman. During the week preceding the Sunday of the riots, I had learned, through the papers and by hearsay, that the Pennsylvania Railroad Company were going to enforce what was known as the double-header order. I heard of the attack upon Mr. Watt, and the question came up as to what was to be done in reference to it, and on inquiry of some parties, we learned that the railroad company did not suppose it was going to be a very serious strike, or would be very difficult for them to run their trains, as they had a large number of loyal men that would run trains as soon as they issued the order, and the rest would be taken care of. I paid no special attention to the matter, until I heard the military were coming that day. Failing to get their double-header order put into effect by the police, that they had arranged for military, and the excitement began to get up a little; and I remember very well how I felt, for the reason that I had a boy just about the age that boys want to go to such places. He was anxious to go to the scene of the trouble. I charged him that he must not go, and that everybody that went to a place of that sort was a rioter, unless he went there to help put down the strikes, and he had better stay away. As the consequence, I stayed at home, even after the shooting took place that evening. I might say, however, about that, that on Saturday evening I visited the house of my brother, on the hill above, on Centre avenue, and after leaving his house, along about five or six o'clock, to go to my own home, I met some of these soldiers coming, without their guns, on the street. Saw one of them talking to a girl immediately in front of my brother's house, and overheard him say that he had abandoned the field; that the Philadelphia troops had fired on the crowd, and there were a good many people killed and a terrible riot there, and he had abandoned the field, and was going home. I followed to my own home, and stayed there until the citizens were called out, on Sunday at noon, with this exception, that I had watched a little of the operations of what was going on in Allegheny, at the outer depot, and I went that Saturday evening down to the transfer station to see what they were doing there, and found a large number of people—railroad men and others—and in talking with them, I asked what they were doing. They said that they were stopping all trains that came into Allegheny, housing the freights, and seeing that nobody went to Pittsburgh on the passenger trains that had any arms, or was likely to interfere with the strike at the Pennsylvania railroad. One of the men I talked to was a railroad employé, working in the machine shop—the son was a fireman, and the son and father were standing together. Said I, "You do not seem to be among the strikers." "No," he said, "we think it is best to keep off the railroad property in times like this, and we are leaving that to some other fellows." As to my own part, it began on Sunday noon. I was appointed on a committee of twenty-five to see what could be done to stop the burning and riot, and went with the committee to the scene of the fire about one o'clock, and you have heard from Mr. Scoville and others all that Mr. Bennett and Mr. Tuigg, the bishop, and Doctor Donnelly, and Mr. Barr did and said while they were in the railroad yards. I remained in my buggy outside of the railroad yards, and saw a good many people that I knew, and a great many that I did not know, and in answer to a question that was put to me as to what we were doing there, I said these gentlemen that had gone in the yard came there to see if they could not devise some means to stop this burning before there was any further destruction of railroad cars, and especially to save the Union depot. They asked me, "How do you propose to do it?" I stood up in the buggy, and addressed the crowd—told them we wanted to find some of the railroad strikers that could handle the cars, and then we would take them up with citizens to stop the burning. If we could find ten railroaders to handle the cars, we would go into the depot grounds, and stop that fire and save the depot. A fellow on top of the cars says: "You can't do that. We are going to burn clear to the river, and the lower depot as well, before we are done." I looked at the fellow, who was on top of one of the burning cars. They had run it down, and checked the brakes at the side of a freight train, so that the fire would communicate. I had a curiosity to hitch my horse, and climb up and see that fellow. There was three of them. He appeared to be guiding the others, and had charge of the car, and checked it alongside of two other box cars, so that the fire might communicate. He said they were going to burn the whole train—they were going to continue until they burned everything the railroad owned. I got into my buggy and drove a square further toward the round-house, and stopped again and asked the crowd if there was any railroad men who were strikers in that crowd, and at that point a young man came to me in his shirt sleeves, with a handkerchief, says he, "Slagle, you don't remember me. I am a railroader, but not a P.R.R. man." I said, "Can you find any P.R.R. men? They all abandoned the property last night." Says I, "Will you take me to where they can be found?" He said he would, and he jumped in my buggy, and drove me down to Twenty-fourth street. He wouldn't take me any further. Says he, "You stop here, and I will bring them to you." I stopped and sat in my buggy a little while, and, after a while, he came back, and he said he could only find two, but we will go to Twenty-sixth street, and I can find you two or three. I got into the buggy, and drove to Twenty-sixth street, I stopped again at the corner of Twenty-sixth, and he went up toward the railroad, and came back with one man. This man said, "What do you want?" Says I, "We want from ten to twenty railroaders to go to stop this firing before it reaches the depot." Said I, "I don't know you." Says he, "You have got no advantage of me, for I don't know you, and we will go on one condition, that is, I think we can get the men to go on one condition, and that is, that we are protected against arrest for what we have done in the way of striking, for," says he, "we have destroyed no property, and we abandoned it as soon as the mob begun to burn, and we fear we will be arrested, and if you will guarantee us against the arrest, we will arrest the men." I asked him to arrest the men, and I would see about the other. So I took my buggy and drove back, and met some of the other committee coming up—Tuigg, Scoville, Park, and McCune, and others—and we arranged a meeting at Twenty-sixth street, and on the curb-stone we talked it over, and told them we could not guarantee them against arrest, but, if they would come down and help us to put out the fire, and they were arrested, we would go their bail. Three men stepped out, and said they were strikers, and they would go. They started then to find more, and we met again at Twenty-fourth street, I think it was, and had another meeting. At that meeting they arranged to go down to the city hall, and they began to back out a little. At that point I left them, and they arranged with Park and McCune to meet at the city hall, at half past three o'clock, and said they would go with the citizens, and stop the burning. From that point, I had left my young friend, and took the buggy and started, when a fireman says to me, "You are going down town?" Says I, "I guess you are the man I am hunting. We want some one to put out this fire." Says I, "Who are you?" Says he, "I am the chief. I would like to borrow your buggy a little bit. I have got a message to bring men to the elevator." I whipped my horse up a little until we found his own horse, and then he jumped from the buggy. I told him we wanted to get a hose company to go in there, and I thought we could water the fellows off the cars. Says he, "We will get you one, and we will try it." When I got down, he had got a hose company, and started in. They had not thrown long, I think, till somebody cut the hose, and they were backed out, or pushed out of the crowd, and were not allowed to throw water for some cause. This took two hours or more of time, and we came back to a point a short distance above the Union depot, and, while we were conferring with these firemen and some others, a fire was started down below in the back shed. Then I left, and attended this meeting at the city hall. At the city hall you have heard was done there. From there I went to the Duquesne depot, and met this man that Colonel Monroe and Doctor Dixon told you about, and I saw what they were doing. In the meantime, the elevator was burned. I went over to Allegheny, and took some little steps to protect the railroad property at the outer depot and the dispatcher's office. The only point I would like to say anything about after that was this: From that time until the end of the strike, and the trains were running, I was busy every day and every night going back and forth between the railroad employés and officials, and the mayor, and committee of safety. There is one point I have heard much said about, and it is this: I had been in the immediate vicinity of the dispatcher's office in Allegheny, back and forth to see what was going on. I happened to be there about the time that Ross vacated his place, and Ammon took it, and watched a little of the operations by which the trains were run under Ammon's administration, and I saw, with my own eyes, what the trainmen appear very unwilling to testify to, and that was whenever an engine came into that yard it was immediately assailed by from three to twenty men, and the men that were on it were told, called generally by their first name, "You get off, and let that engine be just where she is; this thing has got to be fought out now." Whilst they did not use personal violence in taking a man off a train, I saw a passenger train stand there one hour after it had come away from the Union depot before they could get a crew, for the reason that as fast as they got one fireman on they would intimidate him by threats of violence. It would not be safe for him if he got out of town with the mob and crowd somewhere else, and he had better stay where he was. I have seen three sets of men taken out in an hour before they got enough men to take a passenger train out. I was sent for after the strikers begun to disagree. A man had been displaced from his position there by his fellow strikers, and Ross had been re-instated. It was rumored that man was going to be arrested, that they had a warrant out for him. I was sent for to go to the Chronicle office one day, to know if I would go with Bob Ammon, and see Layng, McCullough, and Thaw, of the railroad. I said I did not want to do so. I didn't want to have anything to do with Ammon; thought he was a bad man; didn't care about it. Ammon had a proposition to make by which he could break the blockade. As a merchant interested in shipping, I agreed to go with Ammon, and I met him at the Chronicle office, went to the railroad office, and stayed there in the building while he was making his proposition to Layng and McCullough and others to break the blockade. I did not hear what his proposition was, for while he was talking to them I was with Solicitor Scott, talking with him. After he came down to Layng's office again they had a warrant for him, but they concluded they would not arrest him then. Then afterwards, it was proposed that Ammon said he could break that blockade—would I go to Allegheny with him, and see if we could. I didn't want to go to Allegheny with Ammon. I thought they were going to kill him over there; finally I consented to go to Allegheny, and did so. This was early in the week after the Sunday. I went over there with him, down Penn street, and went in the street cars, and on the way he introduced me to a railroad passenger conductor, and appeared to be on good terms with him. We went down to the dispatcher's office, and walked along the track, and now says he, "You will see if they are going to kill me or not." We walked together and joined the crowd—one hundred and fifty or two hundred railroaders. I was introduced to one whose name was Cole, from Chicago. I asked Cole what he was doing there, and he had been advised that there was going to be a strike, and he had come there, because he was one of the officers of the union, at Chicago, and he was there in the discharge of his business. I asked where those other men were from. I would not know him again if I would see him. I said, I don't see many of our Allegheny boys, where are they? He said, You can see them over at the hall directly, we are going to have a meeting. Nobody molested Ammon at all. We went to the dispatcher's office, and he looked in and spoke to people that were there, and stayed with me there, for I was going to see what he was going to propose. We then went to a meeting of railroaders in the hall, and at that meeting this citizens' committee and the mayor was present, and as I had not been appointed for that office, I took my place in the back part of the hall. There was about three hundred or four hundred railroaders there, so they said. The hall was jammed full—there was not room for more. They organized by having a chairman and secretary. McCune and Captain Gray, and Mr. Morehead, Mayor Phillips, and somebody else was the committee. They began to call for Slagle, knowing me, being an Allegheny man, and living near there, and knew a good many of their faces. I told them I hadn't anything to say at that meeting; I had come with one of the railroaders, and Mr. McCune was foreman of that committee, and then after awhile they talked the matter over, back and forth, those citizens and railroaders went over their grievances. Here was Ammon's proposition: "Now, I am going to make my proposition; I want you to wait." He got up and addressed the chairman, and they began to hoot at him—howl, you have no right here, you are a scamp, and abused him as though he was a man they did not want to associate with, and the meeting got very boisterous, and the chairman took his position and tapped on the table, and, says he, "Ammon has a right to speak here." Ammon said, "I propose we break this blockade by organizing two or three crews, and I am authorized to say that the engines will be furnished, if we can get the crews to run. I propose that we organize two or three crews, and take the first freight train that is on the track below the city, and run it through to Chicago." I never heard such yelling: throw him out the window, kill him—all sorts of threats were made—but they quieted down, and the result of that meeting was an interview between nine railroaders appointed by that meeting, at the office of the mayor, at which I was invited to be present, and we sat three hours.

Q. At the mayor's office? What mayor?

A. Mayor Phillips. I did not participate in that discussion only to be a witness at the interview between those nine men and the committee, which was all in reference to their illegal possession of property that did not belong them, and they ought to abandon their possession, and give the property back to the railroad company in the condition they left it the first day of the strike. It was understood that the railroad officials had abandoned the property to the strikers, insisting that it had been taken away from them illegally, and they wanted to get possession of their property in a legal way. I believe, Mr. Chairman, except the little part I took with this safety committee in raising money and men to do whatever might be needed, that that is all I know about the strike.

By Senator Reyburn:

Q. Did these men state what their grievances were?

A. It was very clear. They said they had no double-header order to be rescinded, but they were bound to get back this reduction of ten per cent. and to break up this classification of engineers, and they said a great deal on that subject in this boisterous meeting. Some of the speeches were very intemperate and very boisterous—bread or blood—and all that sort of thing, but they were hot-headed fellows. Then other men thought they had made a mistake. They all admitted they had made a mistake in striking and holding possession of the property. They admitted that when we argued it quietly. The mayor argued it with them, and they admitted to him that they had made a mistake in striking, and in abandoning their jobs to the road, and they said they were so organized that the road could not run a train out without the consent of the strikers. Mayor Phillips said to them, "What do you mean by so organized?" Says he, "We have our Brotherhood of Engineers and Trainmen's Union, and they extend all over, and if one man or the association says strike, his train is not to go, and you cannot get any man to run that train, and the road will have to give us what we demand." You have been aware of this movement to save the freight on Saturday, when it was run down the road, and it is not necessary for me to detail that. I might just say this about that: Having lived in Allegheny for twenty years, and several years right down there in the neighborhood of the depot, that I was surprised to find so few of these men that were on the track that afternoon, and other afternoons, to be our own Allegheny railroaders, and in answer to a question that I put to these men, calling to a man named Sourbeer, and one or two others, he said, You must understand that a great many of these trainsmen that are young men that are not married, and have no fixed home, and they are just where their train happens to be. There is a man, for instance, who has a wife and family, lives near Union. The day he is in Allegheny he boards at the house, and a large number of those men that are striking are men that live at the places along the line of the road, and that accounted for why I didn't know more of them.

James P. Barr, being duly sworn, testified as follows: