ewspaper man testified that the riots were, in the main, the work of
the vicious elements of Chicago. They were, said one witness, "all
loafers, idlers, a petty class of criminals well known to the
police."[33] Malcomb McDowell testified concerning one riot which he had
reported for the papers: "The men did not look like railroad men....
Most of them were foreigners, and one of the men in the crowd told me
afterward that he was a detective from St. Louis. He gave me the name of
the agency at the time."[34]

Mr. Eugene V. Debs, the leader of that great strike, in a pamphlet
entitled _The Federal Government and the Chicago Strike_, calls
particular attention to the following declaration of the United States
Strike Commission: "There is no evidence before the Commission that the
officers of the American Railway Union at any time participated in or
advised intimidation, violence or destruction of property. _They knew
and fully appreciated that, as soon as mobs ruled, the organized forces
of society would crush the mobs and all responsible for them in the
remotest degree, and that this means defeat._"[35] Commenting upon this
statement, Mr. Debs asks: "To whose interest was it to have riots and
fires, lawlessness and crime? To whose advantage was it to have
disreputable 'deputies' do these things? Why were only freight cars,
largely hospital wrecks, set on fire? Why have the railroads not yet
recovered damages from Cook County, Illinois, for failing to protect
their property?... The riots and incendiarism turned defeat into victory
for the railroads. They could have won in no other way. They had
everything to gain and the strikers everything to lose. The violence was
instigated in spite of the strikers, and the report of the Commission
proves that they made every effort in their power to preserve the
peace."[36]

This history is important in a study of the extensive system of
subsidized violence that has grown up in America. Nearly every witness
before the Commission testified that the strikers again and again gave
the police valuable assistance in protecting the property of the
railroads. No testimony was given that the workingmen advocated violence
or that union men assisted in the riots. The ringleaders of all the
serious outbreaks were notorious toughs from Chicago's vicious sections,
and they were allowed to go for days unmolested by the deputy
marshals--who, although representatives of the United States Government,
w