unions over jurisdiction. Slowly, but
predictably. Since the earliest days of the first industrial revolution,
conflict between these elements had often broken into violence,
sometimes on a scale comparable to minor warfare. An early example was
the union organizing in Colorado when armed elements of the Western
Federation of Miners shot it out with similarly armed "detectives" hired
by the mine owners, and later with the troops of an unsympathetic State
government.

By the middle of the Twentieth-Century, unions had become one of the
biggest businesses in the country, and by this time a considerable
amount of the industrial conflict had shifted to fights between them for
jurisdiction over dues-paying members. Battles on the waterfront,
assassination and counter-assassination by gun-toting goon squads
dominated by gangsters, industrial sabotage, frays between pickets and
scabs--all were common occurrences.

But it was the coming of Telly which increasingly brought such conflicts
literally before the public eye. Zealous reporters made ever greater
effort to bring the actual mayhem before the eyes of their viewers, and
never were their efforts more highly rewarded.

A society based upon private endeavor is as jealous of a vacuum as is
Mother Nature. Give a desire that can be filled profitably, and the
means can somehow be found to realize it.

* * *

At one point in the nation's history, the railroad lords had dominated
the economy, later it became the petroleum princes of Texas and
elsewhere, but toward the end of the Twentieth Century the
communications industries slowly gained prominence. Nothing was more
greatly in demand than feeding the insatiable maw of the Telly fan,
nothing, ultimately, became more profitable.

And increasingly, the Telly buff endorsed the more sadistic of the
fictional and nonfictional programs presented him. Even in the earliest
years of the industry, producers had found that murder and mayhem, war
and frontier gunfights, took precedence over less gruesome subjects.
Music was drowned out by gunfire, the dance replaced by the shuffle of
cowboy and rustler advancing down a dusty street toward each other,
their fingertips brushing the grips of their six-shooters, the
comedian's banter fell away before the chatter of the gangster's tommy
gun.

And increasing realism was demanded. The Telly reporter on the scene of
a police arrest, preferably a murder, a rumble between ri