A. We left that, to some extent, to the civil authorities of Reading. In connection with them, prosecutions were commenced against a great number. Two of them who were known to have actually set fire to the bridge, or participated in the actual burning, who ran away, were arrested at a distance, and plead guilty.
Q. Were they men who had been in the employ of the company?
A. One of them had been at one time.
Q. In what capacity?
A. I think as a brakeman, and he had left the service of the company, at the time the locomotive engineers left, and at this meeting I spoke of as taking place at the hall in Reading, he had been promised by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers to be paid so much a month, if he left the service of the company. The other one had never been in the service of the company—not that I am aware of.
Q. Do you know what steps were taken by the civil authorities at Reading to suppress the riot at that time?
A. There was very little done at the time. I think that all disturbance at Reading could have been prevented, if the sheriff of the county had shown the slightest amount of pluck or appreciation of his position. He had full knowledge—in fact, he was informed that it was to take place, but he did nothing practically, except when it was too late, to issue a proclamation that amounted to nothing.
Q. Do you know how long before it took place that this information was communicated to him?
A. Information was communicated to him of the intended rising. He was told of the facts in the possession of the party informing him, and an offer was made to him of men to act as a posse comitatus, about eight or ten o'clock in the morning of the day in which the trouble culminated. He did nothing until late that afternoon. I am quite confident that a determined man, armed with the law, in the position of the sheriff of Berks, at Reading, with twenty men—ten times which number he could have gotten from the citizens—could have prevented the whole disturbance.
Q. Do you know whether he made any call for help from the State?