A. I could not give any correct estimate of that.
Q. Have you had experience before with strikers? Has there been strikes?
A. I have had a great deal to do with them at one time and another in our own business—men that we had employed ourselves.
Q. Is it a thing of very frequent occurrence—strikes among laboring men?
A. It is a common thing, but not so very frequent, these large strikes—what we would call large strikes, where the mill hands in all the mills strike. We frequently have difficulties of that kind in our own mill when it does not occur in any others—upon a particular branch of the business; something of that kind. We have had a number of very large strikes here in the city where all the rolling mills were stopped at one time.
Q. And it was your experience with the strikes, and knowing the number of men that would be idle Saturday afternoon, that made you apprehensive of the result?
A. That made me apprehensive; because these men were idle. They were all idle, and a great many of them are men. For instance, to explain more fully to you: A man comes along and he wants labor. We have our labor bosses. We do not inquire into his character, or anything else. If we need a man badly we put him in. He may be one of the worst men possible, and we may have quite a number of these men about our mills without knowing it. Tramps may come into our town, and if it is a time that labor is a little scarce, we might have fifty of them about us without knowing it—if they behave themselves just whilst they are employed. Bad men may come in and settle down upon us in that way.
Q. Had you been up at the scene of the riot before Sunday?
A. No, sir; I had not been there before that.
Q. Did you at any time during the riot have any talk with the rioters themselves, or the railroad employés, to ascertain their grievances, or the causes of the strike?