o secure two men to
undertake what proved to be a fatal assault upon a trade-union leader
named Peter J. Cramer. When arrested and brought into court they
testified that they received twenty dollars per day for their services.

Equally direct and positive evidence concerning the character of the
men supplied by detective agencies for strike-breaking and other
purposes is found in the annual report of the Chicago & Great Western
Railway for the period ending in the spring of the year 1908. "To man
the shops and roundhouses," says the report, "the company was compelled
to resort to professional strike-breakers, a class of men who are
willing to work during the excitement and dangers of personal injury
which attend strikes, but who refuse to work longer than the excitement
and dangers last.... Perhaps ten per cent. of the first lot of
strike-breakers were fairly good mechanics, but fully 90 per cent, knew
nothing about machinery, and had to be gotten rid of. To get rid of such
men, however, is easier said than done.

"The first batch which was discharged, consisting of about 100 men,
refused to leave the barricade, made themselves a barricade within the
company's barricade, and, producing guns and knives, refused to budge.
The company's fighting men, after a day or two, forced them out of the
barricade and into a special train, which carried them under guard to
Chicago." Here was one gang of hired criminals, "the company's fighting
men," called into service to fight another gang, the company's
strike-breakers. The character of these "detectives," as testified to in
this case by the employers, appears to have been about the same as that
of those described by "Kid" Hogan, who, after an experience as a
strike-breaker, told the New York Sunday _World_: "There was the finest
bunch of crooks and grafters working as strike-breakers in those
American Express Company strikes you would ever want to see. I was one
of 'em and know what I am talking about. That gang of grafters cost the
Express Company a pile of money. Why, they used to start trouble
themselves just to keep their jobs a-going and to get a chance to swipe
stuff off the wagons.

"It was the same way down at Philadelphia on the street car strike.
Those strike-breakers used to get a car out somewhere in the suburbs and
then get off and smash up the windows, tip the car over, and put up an
awful holler about being attacked by strikers, just so they'd have to be
kept on t