The Torch Applied to Hundreds of Cars and Untold
Quantities of Merchandise Destroyed
Six Persons Killed and Innumerable Wounds From
Clubs, Bayonets, and Rocks The Day’s Record
A WILD CARNIVAL OF CRIME
On account of the troops in the field being insufficient to hold the strikers and prevent them from destroying property Mayor Hopkins called upon Governor Altgeld for further military assistance. So, on July 6th, two brigades of the National Guard, Illinois, were ordered into Chicago.
On July 7th the strikers had their first conflict with the National Guard, and the streets of Chicago became moistened with blood. A mob of strikers, 8,000 strong, bent on mischief was gathered around the Grand Trunk round-house with the intention of burning the same. Company F, of the Second Infantry, National Guard Illinois, commanded by Captain Kelly, was ordered to the spot, and succeeded for a time in forcing the crowd back. The mob becoming larger and more aggressive the troops began to withdraw and in a corresponding degree as the troops withdrew the strikers became more abusive, and finally commenced to throw bricks, stones, chunks of coal and coupling-pins at the troops. Under this heterogeneous fire the men behaved nobly and remained under the strict control of their officers. Several times the advance of the mob was stopped by being steadily met with elevated rifles. But patience is an exhaustible quantity, so, when the second lieutenant of the company was struck upon the head by several stones and felled to the ground, the men were immediately given the command to charge. One of the strikers with his hand in the air, in the very act of throwing a chunk of coal, had a bayonet plunged through his body. The mob gave away before the charge, but quickly rallied and discharged a number of shots at the troops. No further orders were needed by the men. Rifles were leveled and a sheet of lead mowed down the front rank of the strikers. The mob then fled in the wildest confusion. Too much credit cannot be bestowed upon this company for the manner in which it behaved. No company of regular troops ever acquitted themselves with greater honor, and none showed more loyalty and courage. May their example be ever imitated by the rest of the National Guard.
On July 8th the President’s proclamation was issued, the text of which has been set forth in the previous chapter. From this time on the strike in Chicago and in the East moved gradually toward the catastrophe, while on the surface it appeared all the time to be getting greater in magnitude. A new element which resembles somewhat the last kick of the mule was now about to enter upon the stage. President Sovereign of the Knight’s of Labor threatened to inaugurate a general strike. A sympathetic strike, to be a factor in the settlement of a direct strike, must be so related to it as to directly influence the person against whom the direct strike is waged, either by preventing him from manufacturing his goods or else from disposing of them. But when workmen threaten to inaugurate sympathetic strikes of the third, fourth, or fifth degree, which can only affect the person against whom the direct strike is waged in an indirect way, if it affects him at all, they threaten to inaugurate movements which contain within themselves the germs of suicide. How absurd it is to inaugurate a strike among the journeymen tailors, because their employer furnishes clothes to the man who sells groceries to the person who operates mines which supply coal to the railroad companies that use Pullman cars. This string might run back in ad infinitum.
The arrest of President Debs on July 10th added another force to increase the downward impetus of the movement towards the end. This, together with the failure to make good the threat to order a general strike and especially the proposal made by Debs to the railroad companies, and which was not accepted, to declare the strike off provided the men were allowed to return to their old positions, gave evidence of an early dissolution of the strike. And though the strike was not settled until sometime later, and while rioting did not cease though it became lesser in degree, until the very end of the strike, still the ranks of the strikers from this time on became gradually thinned out and the men showed a strong inclination to return to work. It might be said that the climax of the strike in the East was passed on July 10th.