American capitalists often refer to the “splendid service” of the militia and the regular troops in Chicago in 1894 in “protecting railway property from being burned by the strikers.” But let us see:
Certain railway companies in 1894 knew that the government of Chicago could be forced or “persuaded” to pay for all the cars destroyed within the city limits during the strike by claiming insufficient protection of property had been furnished. If, then, hundreds of old worn-out cars worth “old-iron” prices could be destroyed by fire within the city limits during the strike, and if the railway companies could by trickery collect from the city, say, $500 for each such car burnt, it would be “good business” to have such cars set on fire by paid incendiaries. The burning of this precious property would also create powerful sentiment against the strikers when “played up” luridly by the capitalist newspapers. Thus there was powerful motive for having the precious property burnt. It would be both awful and profitable. Employees of some of the railways entering Chicago have told the writer that old worn-out cars from railway shop towns far out in Iowa were actually hauled to Chicago and burnt within the city limits in 1894.
Did you know that in 1895 in court the railway union men were charged with burning the cars during the strike; and did you know that when the union men brought into court the proof that detectives were caught in the act of setting fire to cars, court adjourned, and the case has never been called since, though there has been a standing challenge to the courts to do so? Thousands of such facts as these are suppressed.
“It is in evidence and uncontradicted,” says Carroll D. Wright,[[186]] “that no violence or destruction of property by strikers or sympathizers took place in Pullman [Illinois], and that until July 3d [when the federal troops came upon the scene] no extraordinary protection was had from the police or military against even anticipated disorder.”
(8) In 1907 there was a bitter strike at the iron mines in northern Minnesota. In all the “strike” mining towns, except one, armed men, “special guards,” were officially placed on duty at once—ready to “keep order,” ready to “quell the riots,” etc. In Sparta, an iron-mining town, there were over three hundred men on strike, hotly eager to win the strike. But the strikers and the town officials united in an urgent request that no special armed guards be sent to Sparta. The strikers and the town officials agreed that “the guards only stir up trouble,” and without the guards they could and would keep order themselves.
Guards were sent to all the “strike” towns but Sparta.
Turmoil and bitterness promptly broke out and continued for weeks in every “strike” town except Sparta.
There was no trouble whatever in Sparta during the entire strike. The only man arrested in Sparta for disorder during the entire strike was a special guard that sneaked into the town and got viciously drunk. He was promptly thrust into jail by the police, with the glad sanction of the strikers, and on the following morning he was escorted to the town limits and forced to get away and stay away. Another day during the strike several special guards came to the borders of the town, plainly seeking trouble. They were promptly forced to leave.
Well-fed, well-paid, well-armed men in a strike town ready to bayonet poor fellows struggling for crusts against a brutal corporation—simply stir up trouble. And the capitalist employers know this well.
Surely you have noticed that during troublous times of strike the chief use made of police, militia, cossacks and “regulars” is to protect the haughty employer who blurts out: “Nothing to arbitrate!” He would promptly come to terms—there would instantly be “something to arbitrate”—if he did not feel sure that the toilers would be promptly jailed or shot if they became maddened in their fear and hunger and humiliation.