Unfortunately Gould, in New York, decided to take a hand. Being impatient and perhaps rather scared he had a conference with Powderly on Sunday, March 28, from which there resulted nothing but a misunderstanding between him and the Grand Master Workman of the order. Powderly deemed himself justified in sending a despatch to Irons saying Gould "has consented to our proposition for arbitration and so telegraphs Hoxie. Order men to resume work at once." Hoxie first learned of the telegram through a newspaper and must have felt that his cautious policy was in danger of being invalidated through the ill-considered action of his chief. Luckily further correspondence, the misunderstanding between Gould and Powderly, the strife between Powderly and Irons,' and the probable insistence of Hoxie enabled Hoxie to continue the policy which he had inaugurated and which had worked so well. On April 4 the operation of the railroad was almost normal, and a month later the strike was declared off by the recognized Missouri officials of the Union. The Knights of Labor were beaten and gradually disappeared as a labor organization. Powderly's later action cannot fail to inspire regret. Up to the meeting with Gould his course had been conservative, but afterwards, possibly because of irritation caused by the misunderstanding, it was influenced by the radical sentiment of the order. His published letters during April reveal nothing but desperation in view of the defeat of the Knights of Labor.2

1 An engineer began to repair a disabled locomotive. He was told to desist. "But Powderly has called the strike off." "Never mind Powderly; Martin Irons hasn't called it off." Taussig, 214 n.

2 My main authority for this account is a thesis prepared for me by D. M. Matteson and based on the testimony taken by the committee

V

For three weeks Irons had enjoyed great notoriety. But during the strike he had the misfortune to lose his wife and after it he had a succession of troubles. His furniture was seized for debt. Through the aid of a lecture bureau he attempted the platform but utterly failed. Keeping a lunch counter in a small basement saloon in Kansas City, selling candy, peanuts and the like at a stall in the Old French Market in St. Louis were some of his occupations before his death in Texas in 1900.1

Hoxie passed away before the end of the year [1886]. A prey to disease, his death was hastened by his work and anxiety during the strike. His epitaph was written in The Nation: "He has fallen a martyr to high duty and

of the House of Representatives during the last days of the strike and their report; also on the Official History of the Great Strike of 1886 by Oscar Kochtitzky. Furthermore I have found of great use F. W. Taussig's article in the Quar. Journal Economics, Jan. 1887. The Nation for the first half of 1886 has been helpful; also Dewey's National Problems; Carroll D. Wright's article on the Knights of Labor, Quar. Journal Econ., Jan. 1887.

Perfect harmony among the labor unions did not exist. In 1888, a strike of engineers ordered by P. M. Arthur, the Chief of the Brotherhood, occurred on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad; they were joined by the firemen. Under the wise management of Charles E. Perkins, the President of the C. B. & Q., the strike utterly failed. It was broken up by the Knights of Labor, retaliating for the attitude of the engineers during the Southwestern strike. Powderly, Master Workman of the Knights, said that the Brotherhood had stabbed the Knights in the back in 1886 and had caused the failure of that strike. "It is to the eternal shame of the Brotherhood men that they stoop to such acts [another strike is also referred to] of meanness and treachery. . . . If these actions were taken with the sanction of the Chief of the Brotherhood, he too is mean and dastardly. . . . But no Knight of Labor should belittle his manhood by stooping to such dirty work"; he should "stand back and allow this struggle to go on." (New York Herald, Feb. 29, 1888.) But the Knights did not follow Powderly's advice. There is no doubt that they worked the C. B. & Q. engines. (New York Herald, Feb. 26, March 3: Arthur's testimony before the Industrial Com. (Report, iv. 123); The Nation, first half of 1888.)

1 New York Herald, March 25, 1888; Appletons' Ann. Cyc. 1900.

his name and example will be long cherished by his countrymen as those of a true hero." 1

The President was perturbed by the Southwestern Railroad strike and on April 22 sent a special message to Congress suggesting a scheme of voluntary arbitration for the settlement of similar disputes; in the next annual message he repeated this suggestion. In 1888 Congress enacted a law with such a purpose in view. It is almost unnecessary to add that these acts of the President and of the Congress did not settle the conflict between capital and labor.2

The American people admire courage and the brave words of Joseph R. Hawley of Connecticut uttered in the Senate deserve a record. General Logan desired to increase the army from 25,000 to 30,000 men, and in opposing the measure Senator Van Wyck of Nebraska insinuated that those who favored this addition "wanted to use the soldiers to 'put down the people' and to sustain Jay Gould and his confederates as the army used to be employed to sustain slaveholders." Hawley said: "There are times when I would be with the laboring man for a strike and I would strike to the end of the contest. I would not work sixteen hours a day for any man, with half an hour for my dinner. I would strike; I would organize; I would work for a better day; but I would not permit the thieves of the city of New York to rush out when I was striking, to destroy the property of the company from which I expected to get my living; and if the Sheriff could not do anything with them, if they were too strong for him and too strong for the police I

1 Dec. 2, 1886.

2 Richardson, viii. 395, 526; Dewey, 47; 25 Stat. at large, 501.

would have the Sheriff do what I saw done in New York once myself, call out the old Seventh Regiment and shoot the defiant wrong-doers down." 1

The general strike on May 1 for an eight-hour day produced results in Chicago of national significance. Some while previous there had been a local trouble at the McCormick Reaper Works which at this time was operated by men who had not joined the strikers, "scabs," as they were called in derision. The large number of idle men consequent upon the eight-hour strike was the cause of the mischief that ensued. Many of them on the afternoon of May 3 gathered about the McCormick works, listened to an incendiary speech by an anarchist and attacked the so-called "scabs" as they emerged from the works on their way home. Police came to their defence, charged the rioters and, using their revolvers freely, overpowered the mob of whom a number were hurt but no one killed, although one died later from injuries received during the conflict. Reporting that six men had been killed the anarchists called a meeting of working-men for the next evening "to denounce the latest atrocious act of the police"; one of their circulars was headed "Revenge! Working-men to Arms! ! !"

From this time forward the story has nothing to do with the eight-hour movement or with diligent workingmen striking for a better day. We have now to do with a contest between the anarchists on the one hand and society on the other as represented for the moment by the Chicago police. In the words of one of the anar

1 The Nation, Apr. 22, 1886, 330; Cong. Record, Apr. 7, 1886, 3183. I heard this debate.

????

1

chistic leaders they desired "to arouse the working people who are stupid and ignorant to a consciousness of the condition they were in." Under the screen of high regard for the laborer the anarchists used his supposed grievances to propagate their ideas and support their overt acts. "The real passions at the bottom of the hearts of the anarchists were envy and hatred of all people whose condition in life was better than their own, who were more prosperous than themselves." The misery in the world, they argued, "arises out of the institution of private property": it must therefore be abolished. Had they confined themselves to writing and to preaching they would have been left unmolested, but they advocated "a destruction of the existing order of society by rebellion and revolution" and proposed to bring this about by the use of an explosive which had been adapted to peaceful pursuits. "Dynamite!" declared one of their newspapers. "Of all the good stuff this is the stuff." A bomb can be made by putting some pounds of this "sublime stuff" into a gas or water pipe cut to desirable lengths, plugging up both ends and inserting a cap with a fuse attached. "A pound of this good stuff beats a bushel of ballots all hollow." "One man with a dynamite bomb is equal to a regiment of militia." hardly surprising that such preaching constantly repeated was soon translated into action.

It is

The evening of May 4 was fixed for the meeting. At that time a crowd assembled near Haymarket Square

1 Anarchy and Anarchists, Michael J. Schaack.

2 Joseph E. Gary, the judge who presided at the trial of the anarchists. Century Magazine, April 1893, 809.

3 Ibid., 818.

4

* Ibid., 812.

Gary, 815 et seq.; Schaack, 311.