The snow fall was light and intermittent, but now and then the crystal facets glittered in the vivid bluish glare of quivering electric globes.
Three hours later Father Temple, passing through the city on his way south, stood, valise in hand, on a street corner, waiting for a downtown car, and fearful he might miss the train where his sleeping berth had been engaged. No car came from any quarter, and he walked on, hoping to be overtaken. Soon a steady, rapid tread of many feet sounded from the rear, and a squad of police dashed past him.
"What is the matter with the cars?" he shouted to the hurrying column.
One man looked over his shoulder.
"The strike is on. Street car track torn up."
In a marvellously short time the crowded pavement became a dense mass of men and women struggling slowly forward; then a dull, deep, sullen roar, that shook windows and doors, rolled up to the starless sky where snow feathers fluttered. A woman screamed:
"The brutes are firing cannon into the poor strikers!"
"Not much! Some devilish striker throwing a bomb," answered her husband.
Father Temple, finding progress impeded, stepped down into the street and hurried on. At the end of the next square the hospital ambulance clattered by at emergency speed, and behind it another detachment of police at double-quick step. The street was bare as mid-desert of vehicles, save those from hospitals, and down the double railway track flowed a human stream, panting to reach the fray, eager to witness the struggle as old Romans who fought for places under the velarium, and shrieked "Habet!" Two officers on horseback galloped by, and then came reports of shots, followed by the wild, thousand-throated whoop and hoot of maddened men drunk with hate and fury. At the intersection of three streets, where a small park lay, the strikers had massed the cars from every direction, shut off the current, cut the wires, and taken their stand. Expecting trouble next day, the company had prepared guards and provided extra police protection for their barns and power-houses, where a few non-union men had been secured, but the strikers frustrated these plans by refusing to run as directed to the defended terminus. Where the line of clustered cars ended on both tracks, iron rails had been torn up and piled across the road bed, and here, in front and rear, motormen, conductors, carpenters, machinists, and linemen were massed, stubbornly defying all attempts to repair the tracks or move the cars.
A half hour before Father Temple reached the outskirts of the crowd at the square, a woman had elbowed her way to the front car and sprung upon the platform. Just below her Max Harlberg was distributing pistols to a group of men, all gesticulating angrily.