A strike would greatly affect the supply of munitions, and for this reason the military have adopted rigorous precautions.
On the same date the following brief cable was sent to The New York Times from London:
A telegram to The Daily Express from Geneva says many men have already left the Krupp works because they are unable to bear the strain of incessant labor, and would rather take their chances in the trenches than continue work at Essen under the present conditions.
Some minor cases of sabotage have already been reported.
REMINGTON ARMS STRIKE
In a special dispatch to The New York Times, dated Bridgeport, Conn., July 14, appeared the following news of labor trouble in the American munitions factory:
One hundred workmen, twenty guards, and the Bridgeport police reserves took a hand in a riot tonight at the new plant of the Remington Arms Company, where it is planned to make small arms for the Allies. The riot brings to fever heat the labor excitement of the last week, which yesterday caused the walkout of the structural ironworkers at the plant and today a walkout of the millwrights and the ironworkers on the new plant of the sister company, the Remington Union Metallic Cartridge Company.
The three thousand workmen have been stirred into a great unrest in the last week by some unseen influence. Major Walter W. Penfield, U.S.A., retired, head of the arms plant, says pro-Germans are back of the strike. This the labor leaders deny.
On July 15 the spread of the strike was reported in a special dispatch from Bridgeport to The New York Times:
The strike at the giant new plant of the Remington Arms Company under construction to make arms for the Allies, as well as, it is supposed, for the United States Government, spread today from the proportions of a picayune family labor quarrel to an imminent industrial war which would paralyze Bridgeport, curtailing the shipment of arms and ammunition from this centre, and which threatens to spread to other cities in the United States, especially to those where munitions of war are being manufactured.