Q. You, as a business man, would have closed up all business at that time, under this state of excitement?
A. As a business man, when I found it was necessary to get the military in there, I would not have undertaken to have done that on Saturday afternoon. I would have waited until the men were employed on Monday, or Tuesday, and then there would not be the danger that there was in doing it on Saturday.
Q. The majority of men being off, of course there was great travel on the streets?
A. Yes, sir.
By Senator Yutzy:
Q. You felt satisfied and easy that there would not be any disturbance up to Saturday—why did you feel easy and satisfied that there would be no trouble up to Saturday?
A. I understood that the military were here, and that would intimidate them. I was tending to my own business, and really. I had not gone out at all to see what was going on on the railroad, although we have a mill opposite, within a mile, perhaps, of the outer depot, across the river, and I came back and forward and everything was quiet; but when I heard of the loss of life and of the firing, which, I think took place on Saturday, and the men coming across and going into the gun shops in the town, breaking them open and destroying them, then I felt that there was danger, because there is this fact: there is a large number of men that were through the war that are not afraid as those who have never smelled powder—they are not very much afraid of it, and they are brave men, and if you understood that there is danger, they say "we know," and you cannot do anything with them. The idea was this: The first I heard of it that they had shot into a crowd, killing men, women, and children indiscriminately. These men are men who are ready to believe anything of the kind, and they will believe what is said among themselves quicker than they would from you or me or anybody else on the outside. They were excited and exasperated, and then you cannot control them, but the men about our mills are not bad men, all of them. We have bad men there and they will get into the mills, but I do not think there is a better class of men anywhere than in Pittsburgh. My own theory is, that these tramps along the line of the railroad had a knowledge of this strike, and might have been congregating in here for two weeks, and these men are always ready to apply the torch at any moment. They came in here and got into it. I think a great many of the railroad men had nothing to do, and had no idea whatever of getting anything but their wages—no idea of any loss of life or destruction of property; but when they got in there they had no control of this thing, and they did not know themselves whether the men that had been in the lodge room, perhaps, were with them or against them. The people were paralyzed at the magnitude of this thing.
By Senator Yutzy:
Q. You have a general acquaintance and knowledge of the manufacturing interests of this State. Is there a larger proportion of employés in the manufactories and mining in this vicinity than there is elsewhere in this State?
A. I think there is; I am not familiar with any place where the proportion is so large as it is just here in our city.