worker in the country shall work more than
eight hours a day." "It is the good, practical sense of an American
which says that,"[1] comments Kropotkin. This act of the Supreme Court
and this statement of the _Labor Standard_ were very welcome news to the
anarchists. They were convinced that the Americans had abandoned
political action and were turning to what they had already begun to call
"direct action."

Another event, a month later, added to this conviction. In its issue of
July 29 the _Bulletin_ published this article: "'Following a strike of
the machinists of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, a popular insurrection
has burst forth in the states of Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania,
and Ohio. If at Martinsburg (West Virginia) the workmen have been
conquered by the militia, at Baltimore (Maryland), a city of 300,000
inhabitants, they have been victorious. They have taken possession of
the station and have burned it, together with all the wagons of
petroleum which were there. At Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), a city of
100,000 inhabitants, the workers are at the present time masters of the
city, after having seized guns and cannon.... The strike is extending to
the near-by railroads and is gaining in the direction of the Pacific.
Great agitation reigns in New York. It is announced that the troops will
concentrate, that Sheridan has been named commander, and that the
Western States have offered their help.' In the following number, a
detailed article, written by Kropotkin, recounted the _denouement_ of
the crisis, the recovery of Pittsburgh, where two thousand wagons loaded
with merchandise had been burned, the repression and the disarray of the
strikers following the treachery of the miserable false brothers, and
the final miscarriage of the movement. But if there had been, in this
attempt of popular insurrection, weak sides that had brought about the
failure, Kropotkin rightly praised the qualities of which the American
working people had just given proof: 'This movement will have certainly
impressed profoundly the proletariat of Europe and excited its
admiration. Its spontaneity, its simultaneousness at so many distant
points communicating only by telegraph, the aid given by the workers of
different trades, the resolute character of the uprising from the
beginning, call forth all our sympathies, excite our admiration, and
awaken our hopes.... But the blood of our brothers of America shall not
have flowed in vain. The