Q. How many men were engaged in burning cars, or in the actual destruction of property there, during Sunday?
A. That is a hard matter for me to say. The track in some places—I suppose there are three or four or five rows—and the freight cars were packed in alongside of one another, and on the top of those cars and in between them, there was a crowd of people all the time. Some of them may not have had a hand in doing any damage, but I think that most everybody that was on the track—of course there were some spectators that didn't have any hand in it—but the majority of the people there would break open a car or gut a car whenever they could. I could not say how many, but a great many, three hundred or four hundred anyhow.
Q. Were those men armed? Had they weapons?
A. I didn't see any weapons except a few revolvers.
Q. As chief of police, I ask you if you do not think you could have taken one hundred policemen, with their maces, or the weapons that they usually carry, and have thrown them across the track there, and driven back that crowd?
A. No.
Q. Why not?
A. Because the crowd was on all sides, and I would not know how to form the men to do that to have a solid line. The crowd was along the track and in between the cars as much as five hundred or six hundred yards at a time, and they would come rushing in and yelling every way, from below and above.
Q. I ask you if, in your judgment, you do not think that you could have taken one hundred policemen and stationed them across the track in front of Union depot, from the hill down to the block of buildings, and have driven back the crowd as they came up?
A. If I had had one hundred men there that might have been accomplished. I did try it with what men I had.