One young lady was shot while standing on the roof of her own house, and fell a corpse in her brother's arm.
Still another victim was a man who was shot while standing in the doorway of his home and a rioter by the name of Burke was shot and killed in the charge.
In an editorial the Chicago Times says: "Let us examine the net results of the activity of the troops on Saturday; results of which the amateur soldier Brigadier General Wheeler remarked: "I am glad that the troops made a stand and that blood was shed." There is some conflict in the reports of the day's carnage, but the salient facts seem to be these:
"Three persons in all were shot dead, one of these, an eighteen year old girl, was standing on a distant house top watching the fray, when a bullet pierced her heart. Of course she was not a striker nor was her continued life a menace to American institutions.
"John Burke, identified by the police as a professional crook, was another victim and his presence in the mob adds evidence to the claim of the Times that the rioting was the work of chronic toughs and criminals and not of workingmen. Joseph Warzouski, the third to fall before a military bullet, was sitting smoking before his house door when wantonly shot down by a regular. He was not a striker, and not within one hundred yards of railroad property when murdered.
"Of the wounded five were women, one of whom looses an arm and another a leg. Six were boys under nineteen years of age, and one was a baby.
"The points which these facts demonstrate, is that the rioting is not the work of members of the American Railway Union, or in fact of workingmen of any organization, but the acts of toughs and pluguglies and boisterous boys, with whom this city like other large cities, abound. Though the crowd looks large and dangerous, the actual number of combatants is comparatively small, and the clubs of the police instead of the bullets and bayonets of the soldiers, would have been the proper weapons to use. Then Chicago would not have been disgraced by shedding the blood of women and children and taking innocent lives."
On July 6, Mr. Debs issued the following clear and succinct statement of the causes and status of the present condition of affairs:
"To the public:—So many misleading reports have been given currency in reference to the great railroad strike now in progress that I am prompted, in the interest of justice and fair play, to give the public an honest, impartial statement of the issues involved and the facts as they actually exist. My purpose in this is to have the great American public—the plain people—in every avenue of life conversant with the situation as it really is, that they who constitute the highest tribunal we know, may pass judgment upon our acts, condemn us if we are wrong, and uphold us if we are right.
"First of all let it be said that the Pullman employes who struck May 6th, last, did so entirely of their own accord."