Toronto—An Interest in a Mine—The Railway Strike of 1894—Stranded at La
Junta, Colorado—Strike Incidents—Troops called out.
This young hobo friend of mine was about the smoothest card-sharp I ever
came across. He never played for money, as a man does not live long
cheating at cards in the west or south. He could deal from any part of
the pack of cards, and could shuffle the cards into any position he
wished. My wife’s uncle considered himself a champion player, and one
night this young fellow proposed to me that he and I should play the old
man and one of his sons, and that we would not let them win one single
game. We started about 8 P.M.; at 6 A.M. we were still playing, and had
won every game.
My health was now all right again, and I had no excuse for further
lingering. I had written to Mr. Townsley in Toronto, to whom I had a
letter of introduction, asking him about work. He wrote back inviting us
to stay with him, and said he could get me a position in the Canadian
Public Works Department. So off we started for Toronto.
I found the Townsleys very hospitable, but the promised job did not
materialise. Mr. Townsley was a general broker, buying and selling
anything on which he could make a profit, and into every sort of scheme.
He was also financing an inventor who could invent more useless things
of rare mechanical ingenuity than any man I ever came across.
Mr. Townsley was much interested in a mine in British Columbia; he had
not, however, the necessary funds to carry it through alone, and there
was another gentleman, a Mr. Sayers, interested with him. On Mr.
Townsley’s suggestion I wrote for funds to buy an interest, and also
went down to Guelph to see a college chum of mine who had recently
fallen heir to a small fortune. When the money arrived I bought an
interest, and Cursin, my Guelph friend, invested some $11,000.
Meanwhile, however, I had received a letter from my friend Bole in New
York advising me to go slow. It was decided that I should go and take a
look at the mine, and take out samples myself, and have them assayed.
Mr. Townsley and the lawyer Sayers thought they would go too, as they
wished to see personally the work that was being done at the mine. I was
to go on ahead to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I was to go up into the
Espinola Valley to look at a Bucyrus dredge, at work there on a placer
field, that Mr. Townsley and some associates were thinking of buying if
it turned out all right. There Townsley and Sayers were to join me
later.
Everything went well till I reached La Junta, Colorado. Here, at the
division terminus, the engineer and fireman refused to go on, as the
great railroad strike of 1894 was in progress; and there our train and
six others were stuck for ten days. The railway company issued us
meal-tickets free, and we ate at the station restaurant. We certainly
kept them busy, as they had to serve meals in three detachments, there
being so many of us that there was not the necessary seating
accommodation; for, besides the passengers, there were some 350 deputy
United States marshals guarding the trains and the mails, which were
stacked up in a mountain on the platform. At night it was like war
times, for when you stepped out of your car you were challenged at every
turn by pickets, and had to show your railroad tickets. The strikers did
not try to molest any one or anything at first, but instead gave dances
and entertainments in their lodge hall to raise funds to help their
cause. To these the passengers used to go, as they were glad to break
the monotony of sitting in the cars reading and playing cards all day.
But one night there was a terrific thunderstorm, such as they have in
Colorado, and in the morning it was found that the strikers had been
busy; for they had cut off the rubber hose connections of the air-brakes
from every car, while our noble guards were hunting cover from the rain.
These guards were a queer conglomeration, and had the greatest
assortment of weapons I ever saw—from the 32-calibre bulldog to the
45-calibre frontier sixshooter with its 7-inch barrel, from the
sawed-off double-barrelled shot-gun to the latest thing in pump-guns.
Most of the men were college students out for excitement, and glad to
earn something at the same time during the long vacation; but there was
a sprinkling of Western gun-men amongst them.
At Trinidad, a little farther down the line, the strikers turned some
loaded coal-cars loose down the long incline through the tunnel.
Luckily, the railroad officials got wind of it, and were able to throw a
switch and ditch the runaway cars before they had a chance to crash into
the passenger trains which were held up there. When news of this reached
La Junta, 150 deputy marshals were put aboard a train and run down to
Trinidad, officials acting as firemen and engineer. They were a noble
band of bad-men when they started out, telling us what they would do to
the strikers; but it was a sorry-looking crew that returned next morning
minus their guns. The strikers at Trinidad had got news of their coming,
and, reinforced by some miners from Cripple Creek, they, some 2000
strong, surrounded the train of deputies when it arrived, disarmed them,
but allowed them to return to La Junta unhurt. If there had not been a
sprinkling of older heads amongst the deputies, who had sense enough to
know that they had bitten off more than they could chew, there would
have been some shooting, and probably a massacre.
This victory, however, was the finish of the fight in Colorado; for when
it was discovered that deputy marshals could not handle the situation
and give the necessary protection to the mails, two companies of United
States regulars were sent down from Denver to La Junta, and from there
we all moved on together to Trinidad, where, after a delay of one day,
we went on through to our destinations, and the strike was broken.
When we reached Trinidad, the platform was covered with strikers and
sympathisers, and many of us got off the cars or went to points of
vantage to see the fun. The major commanding the troops detrained his
men, and lined them up on the platform. He made a little speech to the
strikers and passengers on the platform, saying he had to have the
platform clear, and would give so many minutes for every one to clear
out; and as he could not distinguish between passengers and strikers,
all the former must get back into their cars, or they would be treated
as strikers. At the end of the time stated he closed his watch, put it
in his pocket, and the fun began. The soldiers, using the butts of their
rifles as tampers, went up and down the line dropping them on people’s
toes, and the platform was clear in a few minutes. Not a shot was fired,
as the strikers knew better than to tackle the regulars, though they
outnumbered them ten to one.
The next day we went on to Lamy, where I took the train to Santa Fe, and
from there on to Espinola. While we were tied up at La Junta, there
happened to be a poor woman, wife of one of the strikers, who was
travelling on a pass, and in consequence the railway company refused to
issue her a meal-ticket, more especially as her husband was one of the
strikers living in Trinidad. As soon as the local lodge heard of the
matter, and that she was without funds, they took her over to their
hall, fed her, and, hiring a buggy, took her overland to Trinidad.
The Bucyrus dredging operations turned out a fiasco; for, though the
gold is there, and probably millions of it, the sand running from 25
cents to 75 cents per cubic yard, it is fine flake gold, so fine and
thin that it just floated on the water over the amalgam tables, and the
plates caught nothing.
I stayed there about three weeks, and then, being joined by Townsley and
Sayers, we went on to San Francisco. There we took boat to Vancouver and
on to Golden over the Canadian Pacific Railroad, the trip being well
worth many days’ travel; but one may read all this in the guide-books
issued by the Canadian Pacific Railway. From Golden we had to make
arrangements for pack and riding animals to take us over to the mines, a
distance of about eighty-five miles.