The Pullman Boycott Part 6

Mr. Wickes: "Gentlemen, the Pullman company has nothing to arbitrate, we want to see no committee, the Pullman company cannot recede from its position. This is final."

When the committee met again at 4:30 to make its final report, it was completely discouraged. Mr. Elderkin stated the proposition that had been made to the Pullman company and its direct refusal. The alderman begged the labor representatives not to strike and cause widespread suffering.

The general manager's and Pullman's position was so clearly defined that it would be impossible for the public to fail to see it in any but its true light.

The companies were losing millions of dollars but the general managers had determined if necessary to bankrupt every system in the United States in order to crush labor organizations out of existence. The Pullman matter was something of the past, with them they were after the labor organizations, and they were after them with a vengeance.

The government was backing them. The attorney general of the United states,--a corporation attorney as well,--had pledged himself to disrupt every labor organization in the country. President Cleveland, another railroad attorney, had encouraged and abetted them to the same end.

With the subsidized press, the bankers unions, the moneycrat manufacturers and the federal courts arrayed against them, what in the name of justice could they expect?

Surely the martyred president and savior of mankind, the immortal Lincoln, must have antic.i.p.ated the present deplorable condition when in his message to the second session of the thirty-seventh congress,--to be found in the appendix to the Congressional Globe of the thirty-seventh congress, second section, page 4--when he said: "Monarchy itself is sometimes hinted at as a possible refuge from the power of the people.

In my present position I could scarcely be justified were I to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism. It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular inst.i.tutions, but there is one point with its connections not so hackneyed as most others to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is a.s.sumed that labor is available only in connection with capital, that n.o.body labors unless somebody else owning capital somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. * * * Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration. * * * No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty; none less inclined to take or touch aught which they have not earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already possess and which, if surrendered, will surely be used to close the door of advancement against such as they, and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them till all of liberty shall be lost."

CHAPTER XI.

INDICTMENT OF PRESIDENT DEBS.

The railroad managers and federal courts were leaving no stone unturned to secure the indictment and incarceration of Eugene V. Debs. If successful, it was their intention to dispose of all the officers and directors of the American Railway Union in the same manner.

Attorney General Olney, acting for the railroads, was hatching a scheme to incarcerate the officers of the union and refuse them bail. Attorneys Walker and Milchrist were ready to prove that Debs ordered the boycott, that he conspired against the lives and liberty of the people, that he conspired to overthrow the government, in short, they were ready to prove anything that would further the ends of the corporations which they represented.

These diabolical plotters never doubted for one instant that the officers of the American Railway Union were innocent of the charges preferred against them. They knew very well that they (the officers) had no authority to order a boycott or strike, and that it was ordered by a majority vote of the men employed on each system. They also knew that from the inauguration of the strike, not one word or act of Eugene V. Debs could be construed into an offense and make him amenable to the law.

That he counseled moderation and appealed to the men to refrain from acts of violence from the start, was a well known fact. This was very clear to them, but the powerful magnetism of his presence in restraining the men from acts of violence would also have a tendency to keep their ranks firm and intact. This was also known to them and they must devise some scheme to shackle him or get him out of the way. With consummate skill they proceeded with the avowed effort to accomplish this end.

At 3:00 P. M., July 10, the special grand jury summoned by Judges Wood and Grosscup set the machinery of federal law in motion, and after one hour and seven minutes--most of which time was occupied in waiting for advice from the Western Union Telegraph Co., in New York, to its manager in Chicago--returned indictments against E. V. Debs, G. W.

Howard, L. W. Rogers and Sylvester Kelliher. No sooner were the four officers of the American Railway Union indicted than they were arrested and the private papers as well as the doc.u.ments of the union were seized.

The four men were admitted to bail and the joint bond of $10,000 was signed by J. W. Fitzgerald and Wm. Skakel.

The special grand jurors selected by the court for the express purpose of indicting the officers of the American Railway Union were well chosen. An elaborate charge from his honor, the judge, a pretense of examining a lone witness, just a farcical formality, and Debs, Howard, Rogers and Kelliher were indicted. These men were virtually indicted before the grand jury went into session. This is a fact that defies contradiction, Z. E. Holbrook, one of the jurors, was a man who two years ago went to Homestead, Pa., at the request of H. C. Frick, manager of the Carnegie Company, and after obtaining a supply of alleged facts from Mr. Frick, returned to Chicago and made a speech before the Sunset Club, in which he charged the Homestead strikers with being conspirators, anarchists and murderers, and he denounced and abused in no measured terms all labor unions and sympathizers. So bitterly did he attack labor that he was roundly hissed by members of his own club.

The city directory sets him down as a capitalist, and he is known throughout the city as a bitter enemy to labor unions. Such is the character of one of the men who was chosen to indict Eugene V. Debs. Was ever court of justice so utterly debauched?

What has become of our boasted liberty? Are we freemen? No! in the burning words of Rienzi, the Roman, we are slaves, the bright sun rises to its course and sets on a race of slaves. Slaves, not such as conqueror led to crimson glory and undying fame, but base, ign.o.ble slaves, slaves to a horde of petty tyrants, feudal despots.

The same conditions that emanated these immortal utterances from the ancient Roman is absolutely the condition of the working people of America to-day.

The federal courts had now accomplished a master stroke; they had indicted the president of the American Railway Union for conspiracy.

When the wires flashed the news to the various local unions throughout the country, the excitement was intense. The illegal proceeding was condemned by every good citizen, regardless of vocation or station in life. Millions of men in every branch of labor threatened to strike, but were held in check by the a.s.surance of their leaders that all would be well in the end.

Mr. Debs, fearing the bad effect his arrest would have on the working people, sent out the following appeal for order:

"To all striking employes and sympathizers:

"In view of the serious phases which the strike has a.s.sumed, I deem it my duty to again admonish you to not only refrain from acts of violence but to aid in every way in your power to maintain law and order. We have everything to lose and nothing to gain by partic.i.p.ating, even by our presence in demonstrative gatherings. Almost universal unrest prevails.

Men are excitable and inflammable. The distance from anger to vengeance is not great. Every precaution against still further aggravating conditions should be taken. In this supreme hour let workingmen show themselves to be orderly and law abiding by freely co-operating with the authorities in suppressing turbulence and preserving the peace. Our position is secure and the people are with us. We have made every effort that reason and justice could suggest to obtain redress for our grievances.

"Our advances have been repelled. The responsibility for the grave situation that confronts the country is not with us. The indications now are that the stoppage of work will become general. This in itself will be a calamity, but if order be maintained it may yet prove to be a blessing to the country. I appeal to every workingman to entirely keep away from places where trouble would be likely to occur. What, under normal conditions, would probably be a peaceable gathering may now become a demonstrative mob. All good citizens deprecate the loss of life and the destruction of property. Grave as these complications are, our civilization is far enough advanced to find and apply a remedy without resort to violence. We are merely contending for justice for our fellow workingmen, who have been reduced to want by a power that now defies public opinion. Strong in the faith that our position is correct, that our grievances are just, we can afford to await the final verdict, with patience. The great public may be slow to act, but in the fullness of time it will act. Then the wrong, wherever found will be rebuked and cloven down, and the right will be enthroned. However serious the situation may become, let it not be intensified by lawlessness or violence.

Eugene V. Debs."

If there is anything tending to conspiracy, any anarchistic sentiment in the above appeal then it is certain that Debs was guilty as indicted, but if there is not, then the railroad managers and federal court were guilty of a greater conspiracy and should be dealt with accordingly. In all the appeals, instructions or advice given verbally or otherwise by E. V. Debs, not a solitary one was of a more inflammatory nature than this, and yet this man was accused of this serious crime.

The Chicago Times in an editorial on the indictment of Debs says in part: "We can perhaps leave to the lawyers who are so eager to indict Mr. Debs, determination of the legal position of this rebel Wickes, declaring that his tottering corporation will brook no interference national, state, county, or munic.i.p.al. The times has learned many things of late showing the power of corporations over the national government but we still cling to the belief that Uncle Sam is bigger than Duke George, and if either the national, state, county or munic.i.p.al government determines to interfere with the affairs of the Pullman corporation, Mr. Wickes will have to brook it or take refuge in Canada with his t.i.tled chiefs, embezzlers, boodlers, forgers and other harpies of society, who from time to time have fled thither."

CHAPTER XII.

A PROTEST BY THE PEOPLES PARTY.

The newsboys of Chicago now decided to join the boycott by dropping the papers unfavorable to the American Railway Union, and after a noisy session in which parliamentary rules were freely discussed, and several amusing antics were indulged in, they voted to boycott the Tribune, Herald, Mail, Inter-Ocean, Post and Journal. When the Times was mentioned, they yelled themselves hoa.r.s.e, and declared that it was the only paper they would sell. Hill, the circulator of the Post, caused the arrest of five of the little fellows and they were locked up.

L. W. Rogers, editor of the Railway Times, the official organ of the American Railway Union finally succeeded in getting the attention of the boys and informed them that the union could not accept any sacrifice from the newsboys of Chicago. He a.s.sured them that the men were strong enough to do their own boycotting and requested them to continue the sale of the papers. He said: "We do not want to take one red cent out of your earnings, if things were as they should be, you lads would be at school in the day time and in comfortable homes at night instead of selling papers on the street."

At the conclusion of Mr. Rogers' remarks they all sped away to the Times office, where cheer after cheer was given for the peoples paper.

Notwithstanding the remarks of Mr. Rogers, the Times, Record, Dispatch and News were the only papers to be had on the streets.

The Knights of Labor and Trades Unions as well as business men's unions were holding meetings all over the country, denouncing the action of Cleveland and the courts and endorsing the American Railway Union in its manly fight for rights. The strike situation had not changed to any great extent with the exception of pa.s.senger service. Pa.s.senger trains were beginning to run with more regularity, but the freight business was to all practical purposes dead. The men whom the companies had succeeded in getting so far to fill the places of strikers were green men, entirely unused to that kind of work, and incompetent men who had previously been discharged for drunkenness and other causes. The yard service was a failure, and as an ill.u.s.tration--to show the kind of men the different roads had secured to make up trains--I was pa.s.sing a certain yard and stopped to watch a switching crew, and carefully noted how they performed their work. An engine with one car backed up to couple unto some cars on a lumber track. Two of the would-be switchmen with a long stick were holding up the link, one men on either side of the coupling, but just as the link was about to enter the drawbar one of them jumped away, at the same time stumbling over a pile of lumber, and the way that fellow scrambled about in his frantic endeavor to get out of the way, would lead a person to believe he had fallen upon a hornet's nest.

After several such attempts they finally succeeded in making the coupling. This is the kind of men with which the company proposed to fill the places of the strikers.

The Grand Trunk engineers, who up to this time had refused to work with other than brotherhood firemen decided to work with scabs, and their decision was hailed with delight by the officials. They said that the strike was now settled and they could run their trains without difficulty.

The engineers and firemen on the Chicago & Alton road also decided to stand by the company. The firemen, switchmen and other employes of the Grand Trunk called a meeting, and after denouncing the action of the engineers, voted to stand by the American Railway Union to the end.

One amusing incident that occurred about this time, was the refusal of the Was.h.i.+ngton National Guards to ride on a train that was run by scabs.

The entire company of sixty men refused to ride on a Northern Pacific train for this reason, and they were promptly placed under arrest, put into box cars and taken to Sprague.

General Master Workman Sovereign had at this time an order drawn up for a general walk out of members of the Knights of Labor, but it was withdrawn after a consultation with other labor leaders. Many comments were made by newspapers throughout the country on this order, of which a copy was furnished the papers under the impression that it would go into effect at once.

People who had remained pa.s.sive up to this time were now aroused to the gravity of the situation. The pending crisis was near at hand, and a general uprising of the laboring people to a.s.sert their rights was imminent. The tyrannical and dogged persistency of plutocratic capital to dominate over the laboring cla.s.ses with utter disregard for their const.i.tutional rights, was nothing more or less than an open declaration of despotic supremacy, and the outcome was looked forward to with the gravest apprehension.

The following communication addressed to the chairman of the National Committee of the Peoples Party was sent to Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C.

"To the Hon. H. E. Taubeneck, chairman National Committee, Peoples Party:

"Through the gloom of civil war the enemies of human liberty laid the foundation upon which the giant monopolies of to-day have been built. On public lands, with public funds they built the railroads which they now use to plunder the producers of this nation, and with the wealth and power thus obtained they now usurp the power and functions of government to reduce the people of this country to a condition of serfdom. The workmen in the cities, the miners in their isolated communities, and the railroad men throughout the land have risen in manful protest against a threatened military government of the railroads and their a.s.sociate monopolies.