At last the agony was over--at least the agony of suspense. The poor
misguided men knew now that all hope had died. They would be re-employed
when the company needed them, but it was January--the dullest month in
the year. Every railroad in the West was laying men off. Hundreds of the
new men were standing in line waiting for business to pick up, and this
line must be exhausted before any of the old employees could be taken
back. The management considered that the first duty of the company was
to the men who had helped to win the strike. There was no disposition on
the part of the officials to make it harder for the vanquished army.
They admired the loyalty and self-sacrifice, though deploring the
judgment of the mismanaged men; but they were only officers in an
opposing army, and so fought the fight for the interest they
represented, and for the principles in which they believed.
Nothing in the history of the strike shows more conclusively that the
men were out-generalled than the manner in which the company handled the
press. It is not to be supposed for a moment that the daily papers of
Chicago, with possibly one exception, willfully misrepresented the men,
but the story of the strikers was never told. Mr. Paul, the accomplished
"bureau of information," stood faithfully at the 'phone and saw that the
public received no news that would embarrass the company or encourage
the men. The cold, tired reporter found a warm welcome and an easy chair
in Mr. Paul's private office, and while he smoked a fragrant cigar the
stenographer brought in the "news" all neatly type-written and ready for
the printer. Mr. Paul was a sunny soul, who, in the presence of the
reporter laughed the seemingly happy laugh of the actor-man, and when
alone sighed, suffered and swore as other men did. Mr. Paul was a
genius. By his careful manipulation of the press the public was in time
persuaded that the only question was whether the company, who owned the
road, should run it, or whether the brotherhoods, who did not own it,
should run it for them. Every statement given out by the company was
printed and accepted, generally, as the whole thing, while only two
papers in all the town pretended to print the reports issued by the
strikers. The others cut them and doctored them so that they lost their
point. But all is fair in love and war, and this was war--war to the
knife and the knife to the hilt--so Mr. Paul should not be hated but
admired, even by his foes. He was a brilliant strategist. Many there are
who argue to this day that Mr. Paul won the strike for the company, but
Mr. Paul says Watchem, the detective, did it. At all events they each
earned the deathless hatred of the strikers. But, leaving this question
open, the fact remains that the general in command--the now dead hero of
that fierce fight--deserves a monument at the expense of American
railroads, if, as American railroad managers argue, that war was an holy
war.
There had never been a moment when the management feared defeat. They
had met and measured the amateur officials who were placed in command of
the strikers. They were but children in the hands of the big brainy men
who were handling the company's business. They could fire a locomotive,
"ride a fly," or make time on the tick of the clock. They could awe a
convention of car-hands or thrill an audience at a union meeting, but
they had not the experience, or mental equipment to cope with the
diplomatic officials who stood for the company. Their heads had been
turned by the magnitude of their position. They established themselves
at a grand hotel where only high-salaried railroad officials could
afford to live. They surrounded themselves with a luxury that would have
been counted extravagant by the minister of many a foreign land. They
dissipated the strength of the Brotherhood and wasted their substance in
high living. They had gotten into clothes that did not fit them, and,
saddest of all, they did not know it. The good gray chief of the
Brotherhood, who was perfectly at home in the office of a president or a
general manager, who knew how to meet and talk with a reporter, who was
at ease either in overalls or evening dress, was kept in the background.
He would sell out to the company, the deep-lunged leaders said. He could
not be trusted, and so from the men directly interested in the fight the
strikers chose a leader, and he led them to inglorious defeat; though
defeat was inevitable.
At last, made desperate by the shadow of coming events, this man, so the
officials say, issued a circular advising old employees to return to
work and when out on the road to disable and destroy the company's
locomotives, abandoning them where they were wrecked and ruined. The
man accused of this crime declared that the circular was a forgery,
committed by his secretary, who was a detective. But that the circular
went out properly signed and sealed is beyond dispute, and in reply to
it there came protests from hundreds of honest engine-drivers all up and
down the land. The chief of a local division came to Chicago with a copy
of the circular and protested so vigorously that he was expelled from
the Brotherhood, to the Brotherhood's disgrace.
Smarting under what he deemed a great wrong, he gave the letter into the
hands of the officials, and now whenever he secures a position the road
that employs him is forced to let him go again or have a strike. He is
an outcast--a vagabond, so far as the union is concerned. Ah, the scars
of that conflict are deep in the souls of men. The blight of it has
shadowed hundreds of happy homes, and ruined many a useful life.
With this "sal-soda" circular in their possession the managers caused
the arrest of its author, charging him with conspiracy--a serious
offense in Illinois.
A sunny-faced man, with big, soulful blue eyes and a blond mustache, had
been living on the same floor occupied by the strike committee. He had
conceived a great interest in the struggle. For a man of wealth and
culture he showed a remarkable sympathy for the strikers, and so won the
heart and confidence of the striker-in-chief. It was perfectly natural,
then, that in the excitement incidental to the arrest, the accused
should rush into the apartments of the sympathetic stranger and thrust
into his keeping an armful of letters and papers.
As the officers of the law led the fallen hero away the blond man
selected a number of letters and papers from the bundle, abandoned the
balance and strolled forth. For weeks, months, he had been planning the
capture of some of these letters, and now they had all come to him as
suddenly as fame comes to a man who sinks a ship under the enemy's
guns.
This blond man was a detective. His victim was a child.
Yes, the great struggle that had caused so much misery and cost so many
millions was at an end, but it was worth to labor and capital all it had
cost. The lesson has lasted ten years, and will last ten more.
It had been a long, bitter fight in which even the victorious had lost.
They had lost at least five million dollars in wrecked and ruined
rolling stock, bridges and buildings. The loss in net earnings alone was
nearly five millions in the first five months of the strike that lasted
nearly a year. It would cost five millions more to put the property in
the same excellent condition in which the opening of hostilities had
found it. It would cost another five millions to win back the confidence
of the travelling and shipping public. Twenty millions would not cover
the cost, directly and indirectly, to the company, for there were no
end of small items--incidentals. To a single detective agency they paid
two hundred thousand dollars. And there were others.
It has taken nearly ten years to restore the road to its former
condition, and to man the engines as they were manned before the strike.
It would have taken much longer had the owners of the property not
settled upon the wise policy of promoting men who had been all their
lives in the employ of the Burlington road, to fill the places as fast
as they became vacant, of men--the heroes of the strike--who were now
sought out by other companies for loftier positions. In this way the
affairs of the company were constantly in the hands of men who had gone
through it all, who could weed out the worthless among the new men, and
select the best of those who had left the road at the beginning of the
strike. The result is that there is scarcely an official of importance
in the employ of the company to-day who has not been with it for a
quarter of a century. The man who took the first engine out at the
beginning of the strike--taking his life in his hands, as many
believed--is now the general manager of the road.
There was something admirable, even heroic, in the action of the owners
in standing calmly by while the officials melted down millions of gold.
As often as a directors' meeting was called the strikers would take
heart. "Surely," they would say, "when they see what it costs to fight
us they will surrender." The men seem never to have understood that all
this was known to the directors long before the sad news reached the
public. And then, when the directors would meet and vote to stand by the
president, and the president would approve and endorse all that the
general manager had done, the disheartened striker would turn sadly away
to break the melancholy news to a sorrowing wife, who was keeping lonely
vigil in a cheerless home.