Having exhausted its catalogue of murder, riot and conspiracy charges, obtained true bills against 167 strikers, and buried the leading spirits among the Homesteaders beneath an avalanche of bail bonds, Mr. Frick now proceeded to play what he considered to be his trump card. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, of which at this time Hon. Edward Paxson, a close friend of C. L. Magee, was Chief Justice, came to Pittsburgh to hold its annual session. It was deemed possible that the Homestead affair might come before this body in some shape, after the lower courts disposed of it, but to nobody aside from the members of the Carnegie Company and their attorneys did it occur that the superior judiciary would, of its own motion, undertake to deal with the labor trouble at first hand.
This, however, was what Mr. Frick counted on as the culminating stroke which was to break the back of the Homestead strike. The step from the alderman's office to the supreme court room was one which probably no other individual or corporation in the state would have dreamt even of suggesting; but Mr. Frick managed to take it seemingly with as much ease as his secretary exhibited in getting a ward constable to lock up a few dozen of workingmen for riot or conspiracy.
The blow fell on the morning of September 30. The Chief Justice and his six associates met in the supreme court chamber of the county court house and held an hour's conference, at the expiration of which Judge Paxson sent for District Attorney Clarence Burleigh, and P. C. Knox, Esq., principal counsel for the Carnegie Company. When these two gentlemen arrived another hour was spent in consultation. Judge Paxson then sent for County Detective Harry Beltzhoover, whom he instructed to subscribe to an information made before him (Paxson) and to arrest the persons named therein. The information was worded as follows:
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,
versus
David H. Shannon, John McLuckie, David Lynch, Thomas J. Crawford, Hugh O'Donnell, Harry Bayne, Elmer E. Ball, Isaac Byers, Henry Bayard, T. W. Brown, George Champene, Isaac Critchlow, Miller Colgan, John Coyle, Jack Clifford, Dennis M. Cush, William McConeghy, Michael Cummings, William Combs, John Durkes, Patrick Fagan, W. S. Gaches, Nathan Harris, Reid Kennedy, John Miller, O. O. Searight, John Murray, M. H. Thompson, Martin Murray, Hugh Ross, William T. Roberts, George Rylands and George W. Sarver.
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, County of Allegheny.
Before me, the subscriber, Edward H. Paxson, chief justice of the supreme court of Pennsylvania and ex-officio justice of the court of oyer and terminer of Allegheny county, and a justice of the peace in and for the county of Allegheny, in the state of Pennsylvania, personally came Harry Beltzhoover, county detective, who upon oath administered according to law, deposeth and says that heretofore, to-wit, on or about the first day of July, A. D. 1892, the defendants above named, being inhabitants of and residents within the commonwealth of Pennsylvania and under protection of the laws of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania and owing allegiance and fidelity to the said commonwealth of Pennsylvania, not weighing the duty of their said allegiance, but wickedly devising and intending the peace and tranquility of the said commonwealth to disturb and stir, move and excite insurrection, rebellion and war against the said commonwealth of Pennsylvania, did at the borough of Homestead, and in the township of Mifflin, both within the county of Allegheny and state of Pennsylvania, and elsewhere within the state of Pennsylvania and beyond the borders of the state, unlawfully, falsely, maliciously and traitorously compass, imagine and intend to raise and levy war, insurrection and rebellion against the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and in order to fulfil and bring into effect the said compassings, imaginations and intentions of them, the said defendants, afterward, to-wit, on the first day of July, A. D. 1892, and at divers other times at the borough of Homestead and in the township of Mifflin, with a great multitude of persons, numbering hundreds, armed and arrayed in a warlike manner, that is to say, with guns, revolvers, cannons, swords, knives, clubs and other warlike weapons, as well offensive as defensive, did then and there unlawfully, maliciously and traitorously join and assemble themselves together against the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and then and there with force and arms did falsely and traitorously and in a hostile and warlike manner, array and dispose themselves against the said commonwealth of Pennsylvania and did ordain, prepare and levy war against the said commonwealth of Pennsylvania to the end that its constitution, laws and authority were defied, resisted and averted by the said defendants and their armed allies, contrary to the duty of allegiance and fidelity of the said defendants.
All of which the deponent states upon information received and believed by him, and he therefore prays that a warrant may issue, and the aforesaid defendants may be arrested and held to answer this charge of treason against the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
The law under which the proceeding was brought is the Crimes act of 1860, under which the penalty for treason is fixed at a fine not exceeding $2,000 and imprisonment by separate and solitary confinement at labor, not exceeding twelve years.
ONE OF THE TRAITORS.
It was announced that Judge Paxson would hear in person the application of any of the accused strikers for bail; that when the cases came before the grand jury he would instruct the jurymen as to what constitutes treason under the statutes of Pennsylvania, and that, if the cases should be brought to trial, he would sit on the bench in the court of oyer and terminer and try them himself. In short, Edward H. Paxson, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, was master of the situation. The court of last resort had been by a Frickian turn of the wrist, converted into a court of preliminary resort, intermediate resort and all other known varieties of resort, and the strikers were led to understand accordingly that with Paxson armed to the teeth and ready to bring them to bay at all points, they might as well throw up the sponge at once and be done with it.
Detectives Farrell and Mills, assisted by a half dozen deputy sheriffs, were detailed to capture the defendants named in Beltzhoover's information. The task was not an easy one, for most of the reputed "traitors," realizing the difficulty of procuring bail, went into hiding and their friends took care to throw the officers off the track. Five of the men—Thomas Crawford, George Rylands, T. W. Brown, W. H. Baird and John Dierken—were caught on Friday, the day on which the warrant for their arrest was issued.
On Saturday, Attorneys Brennen and Cox went before Judge Paxson with a petition for the admission of the accused to bail. Messrs. Burleigh and Knox were called in, and, after a consultation, the Chief Justice made an order authorizing the release of any of the defendants on $10,000 bail at the discretion of any judge of the oyer and terminer court. Judges Kennedy and Porter heard the applications, but rejected the bondsmen offered except in the case of William Baird.