of
the strike, "will be countenanced, though of course we cannot guarantee
that it won't occur. Our men are bitter at the refusal to comply with
their just demands, and they have thousands of friends and sympathizers
whom we can't control." Whether friends of the striking switchmen and
trainmen or not, there could be no question about the number of
so-called sympathizers. They swarmed to the yards from every slum in the
city, a host of tramps and thugs, vagabonds and jail-birds, re-enforced
by bevies of noisy, devil-may-care street boys, and scores of
shrill-voiced, slatternly women. The men who ventured to handle switches
under instructions of the yard foremen were stoned and driven off. Loyal
train hands who had refused to strike and came out with the mail and
express trains were hooted, jeered, and assaulted, despite the deputy
marshals and the widely scattered police. Some strange apathy chained
the city authorities and its battalions of uniformed and disciplined men
who were held in reserve at the police stations, while the pitiably
small force, distributed by twos and threes along ten miles of
obstructed track, made only shallow pretence of resistance to the
efforts of the mob or of protection to the objects of its wrath. Mail
trains and some few passenger trains, heavily guarded, had managed to
crawl through the howling throng, and this partial success of the
management served to fan the flame of fury, and every window was smashed
by volleys of stones and coupling-pins in the last train to be pulled
through. The track behind it was suddenly and speedily blocked by the
overturning, one after another, of dozens of freight-cars. The rioters,
guided by graduates of the yard, now worked in most effective and
systematic fashion. There was no need of assaulting switchmen when they
could so readily block the tracks. The last train got in at noon. At 2
P.M. no trains, even the mails, could get either in or out.

Then the authorities had to take a hand. The law of the United States
prohibited any interference with the carriage of its mails. The railway
officials represented their tracks blocked by mobs and obstructed by
overturned cars, spiked switches, and unspiked rails. A wrecking train,
under guard of both police and deputy marshals, was pushed out to clear
the way. The rioters jeered the deputies and cheered their friends among
the police. The work was attempted, but was not done. Fifty deputies
couldn't cover four m