Time passed and things began to assume a more serious aspect. The strike became general and trouble was feared. The strikers would not work themselves nor would they allow others to work; and when men came to take their places they won them over to their side, or assaulted them with clubs and stones and drove them away. The lawless element of the country, the “dangerous classes,”—the thieves, loafers, tramps and socialists, who had everything to make and nothing to lose, joined with the strikers; and although the latter repudiated and denounced them in strong language, they did not send them away. The police could do nothing, and finally the National Guard was called out; but its presence did not seem to have any effect. The most of the guard were working men, and the strikers did not believe they would use their weapons even if ordered to do so. At Buffalo the mob threw aside the bayonets that were crossed in front of the door of a machine shop, and went in and compelled the men to stop work. Not satisfied with that they attacked the company that was guarding the shop and put it to flight. A Chicago paper announced, with much trepidation, that there were twenty thousand well-armed socialists in that city, who were threatening to do all sorts of terrible things; a Baltimore mob stoned and scattered the soldiers who had been sent there to preserve order; New York was like a seething cauldron, almost ready to boil over; the strikers and their allies had got beyond control at Pittsburg, and were destroying the property of the railroad companies; and thus were ushered in “those dark days in July, 1877, when the whole land was threatened with anarchy.”
“I tell you, boys, this is becoming interesting,” said Egan, as he and his particular friends met one morning on the parade ground, each with a paper in his hand. “Just listen to this despatch from Pittsburg: ‘A large force of strikers has captured a train, and is running about the country, picking up arms and ammunition wherever they can be found. A regiment is expected from Philadelphia this evening.’”
(This regiment didn’t do any good after it arrived. It was whipped at once, driven out of the city, and every effort was made by the strikers and their friends to have its commanding officer indicted for murder, because he defended himself when he was attacked.)
“That’s the worst news I have heard yet,” said Curtis, anxiously. “We’ve got about four hundred stand of arms and two thousand ball cartridges in the armory.”
“That’s so!” exclaimed the boys, in concert.
“And if the men who are employed on this railroad should take it into their heads to come here and get them—eh?” continued Curtis. “It would be worse than the fight with the Mount Pleasant Indians, wouldn’t it?”
“I should say so,” cried Hopkins, growing alarmed. “But these Bordentown fellows are all right yet.”
“They’ve struck,” said Don. “My paper says that Hamilton is in an uproar, that business is virtually suspended, that the mob is growing bolder every hour, and that the 61st has been ordered to hold itself in readiness to march at a moment’s notice.”