Q. Could you tell from their dress what class of people they were?
A. It would be very hard to tell that. I saw a great many of our own men walking around looking on that were employed with us at our mills.
By Senator Yutzy:
Q. Have you an extensive acquaintance with the laboring men?
A. I know a great many of them by sight, and where they work. At the two mills were employed six or seven hundred men, one way or another; and back and forwards I have become quite familiar with them, without knowing their names. Indeed, all the laboring men about the mills, as a general rule they know me by sight, and I know a great many that have worked with us, that are not working with us now, among the better class of mill men and laboring men about the mills. I do not think they were engaged. We have some men engaged with us that are very bad men.
Q. What was it that alarmed you on Saturday and made you apprehensive of the future on Saturday afternoon?
A. What alarmed me first was this, when I began to make an inquiry—that our mills all stopped on Saturday from eleven to twelve o'clock, and the men about the mills had from one to two o'clock. They usually dressed, and generally we see them about in the city, and they are free from any employment. You can imagine the number of laboring men there are about the city; and that, as a rule, would apply to nearly all branches of manufacture.
Q. From your knowledge of the city and manufacturing establishments, give us an estimate of the number of laborers that would be out of employment and at leisure on Saturday afternoon.
A. I could not give you an estimate. I should say you could count it at thousands, though—thousands of men that would be unemployed at that time.
Q. Have you any idea of the number of thousands of laborers employed in and about Pittsburgh?