“In the name of God, take heed.”
The Hod-Carriers’ Union and Mortar-Mixers’ Protective Association, of
San Francisco, adopted a resolution in February, 1894, to fix the rate
of wages of its members at $3.00 per day, and admitting no new members
for a period of one year. The immediate cause of this resolution was the
letting, by certain capitalists, of contracts for the construction of
several blocks of buildings on Market Street, including the new
post-office building.
Phelim Rafferty, in proposing the resolution, said:
“The owners and the contractors, Mr. Prisident and gentlemen, are min of
large means, sor, yit they propose to pay us, the sons of honest toil,
sor, widout whose brawny muscles they could not build at all, sor, they
propose to pay us a beggarly $2.00 a day, sor. Why, the min in the
public schools who taich the pianny to our gurls, sor, recaive more nor
that! Now, sor, if we pass this risolution we put our wages to $3.00 a
day, and hould them there. We have the mortal cinch on the contractors,
sor, for if any mimber of our union works for less than $3.00 we’ll
expel him; and by passin’ this risolution we’ll keep min from the East
away, and keep the mimbership in San Francisco shmall, and we’ll be sure
of a job.
“Faith! the bosses will have to be mighty civil to us to git us at all,
sor. And if they thry to put to work min who are not mimbers of the
union, their buildings will niver rise out of their cellars, sor, for
the other thrades are compilled to sthand by us, sor.”
Mr. Lorin French, the millionaire contractor and owner of the great San
Francisco Iron Works, read in the journal next morning an account of the
action taken by the Hod-Carriers Union and Mortar-Mixers’ Protective
Association, and he smiled a grim smile. That day he sent invitations to
a number of capitalists and contractors to attend a meeting at his
offices, and the result of the conference was the formation of a
Manufacturers’ and Builders’ League, of which Mr. Lorin French was
chosen permanent president.
The daily papers the next morning contained the following
advertisement:—
WANTED.
On the first day of next month, two hundred hod-carriers and
mortar-mixers to work on the new post-office block. Three dollars per
day will be paid until further notice. Men who have applied for and
been refused admittance to membership in the Hod-Carriers’ Union will
be preferred.
LORIN FRENCH.
_1099 Market Street._
This base attempt of capital to coerce or bribe the worker into allowing
another worker an equal chance of obtaining employment, was denounced by
Rafferty the next night in a ringing speech at a special meeting of the
Hod-Carriers’ Union, which meeting resulted in a convention of the
Federated Trades being ordered.
At this convention it was resolved by a three-fourths majority, after a
hot debate, that no member of any trade organization would, on penalty
of expulsion, be permitted to work in or upon or in aid of the
construction of any building, or in any shop, mill, foundry, or factory,
or in or upon any work where any person not a member of some
trade-organization was employed, or where any material was used which
had been manufactured by non-union labor.
“My frent from the Plumbers’ Association speaks of this resolution, Mr.
President, as a poomerang,” said Gustave Blather, a labor lecturer, who
on this occasion represented the Dishwashers’ Lagerbund. “I don’t know
as such languitch is quite broper coming from him, for a goot many
beople haf their doubts whether plumbing is really a trate or only a
larceny. But, my fellow pret-winners, if the resolution is a poomerang,
it is one that will knock the arrogance out of the ploated
wealth-owners, and teach them that in this republic—established by the
ploot of our fathers [Blather’s great-grandfather was a Hessian soldier
in the British army, and returned to Darmstadt after the surrender of
Cornwallis]—in this republic the time is close at hand when suppliant
wealth will be compelt to enture the colt and hunger it has gifen to
labor for many years.” And, amid a storm of applause, Blather sank to
his seat.
The post office block was begun on the day appointed, with a force of
men, all of whom were members of the trade organizations, and the work
progressed steadily for a week. At the Saturday-night meetings of the
several trade organizations, the members congratulated themselves that
“old French” had concluded not to carry out his programme, and in
several lodges it was proposed to signalize the magnificent victory of
labor over capital by demanding a general advance of twenty per cent in
the wages of all mechanics; but some of the wiser heads discouraged the
movement as premature, and one pessimistic house carpenter observed,
amid expressions of dissent from his colleagues, that if all the
mechanics followed the example of the hod carriers, it would “bust wide
open every builder and contractor in Frisco, or else put a stop to all
building.”
On the next Monday morning there appeared on the scene ten men clad in
blouses and overalls. Three of them worked at mixing mortar, three of
them carried hods, three of them commenced laying brick, while the tenth
man directed the labors of the other nine. Each had buckled about his
waist in plain sight a cartridge belt from which hung a dragoon
revolver.
As soon as their presence and labors became known, word was sent to
labor headquarters, and Delegate Brown was deputed to interview the
strangers and ascertain the situation.
Pap Brown was a journeyman stone cutter on the other side of the
sixties, who did not often work at his trade. The salary he received
from the trade unions was sufficient for his support, and he fully
earned his salary. He was shrewd, suave, and persistent, and his
fatherly way with “the boys,” and deferential manner to employers, often
secured to the former favorable adjustments of contests that would have
been denied to the “silver-tongued” Raffertys and Blathers.
Pap Brown approached one of the men who was engaged in mixing mortar,
and inquired whom he was working for. The man addressed made no reply,
but signaled the foreman, who came forward and curtly answered:—
“We are all working for Mr. Lorin French.”
“What wages do you get?” asked Brown.
“Well,” replied the foreman after a pause, “strictly speaking, I don’t
know as that concerns you, but I have no objection to telling you. The
mortar-mixers and hod-carriers get $3.00 a day, the bricklayers $4.00,
and I get $5.00.”
“Them’s union wages,” said Brown, approvingly. “You are strangers in
Frisco, I jedge?”
“We arrived last Friday night from Milwaukee,” replied the foreman.
“Have you got your cards as members of the union?” said Brown.
“No,” replied the party addressed, “we belong to no union.”
“Hum! I suppose you are calkilatin’ to jine the unions here?” inquired
Brown in a persuasive accent.
“I am told,” replied the foreman, “that so far as the Hod-Carriers’
Union is concerned, we cannot join if we wish to; that they have
resolved to admit no new members.”
Pap Brown slowly revolved his tobacco quid in his mouth, and rapidly
revolved the situation in his wise old brain. “Hum!” said he at length,
“I reckon that can be arranged for ye, so that ye can all jine.”
“Well,” replied the man from Milwaukee, “I may as well tell ye that we
don’t calculate to jine anyhow. We don’t much believe in unions
nohow—too many fellers a settin’ around drinkin’ beer, which the fellers
that work have to pay for.”
“Mebbe you don’t know,” said Pap Brown, “that only union men will be
allowed to work here.”
“Who will stop us?” said the stranger.
“There are a good many thousand of the brotherhood in this city,” said
Delegate Brown, still persuasively, “and there are only ten of you.”
“Well, we ten are fixed to stay,” said the foreman, glancing
significantly at his cartridge belt.
“Hum!” remarked Pap Brown, as he walked away.
That night there was a conference at the labor headquarters of the
Executive Committee of the Federated Trades, and Delegate Brown was
called upon to report.
“I find,” said he, “that these ten men have all worked at their trades
somewhere, and our watchers say that they are good workmen; but clearly
they have been hired more as fighters than as hod carriers or masons. I
jedge, from what I hear, that there is an organized force behind them.
They sleep and take their meals in old French’s building on Market
Street, and don’t go out to the saloons, and we can’t very well get at
them. Old French is as cunning as Satan, and he has fixed the job upon
us, and put these men to work to bring things to a point. There is a big
force of Pinkerton’s men in the city all ready to be sworn in as deputy
sheriffs in case of a row, and I reckon it is put up to call in the
soldiers at the Presidio and from Alcatraz in case of trouble, for the
post-office building, where the men are working, is government
property.”
“What action do you suggest we should take, Mr. Brown?” said the
chairman.
Pap Brown rolled his quid from one cheek to the other, and then solemnly
deposited it in the cuspidor.
“It won’t do,” he replied, “to monkey with Uncle Sam; my jedgment is to
jist let them ten men alone.”
“But,” interposed a member of the committee, “old French will never stop
there. Those ten men are merely the small end of a wedge with which he
intends to split our labor unions to pieces. He will not give us the
sympathy of the people by lowering wages, but he will put on scabs, a
dozen at a time, and discharge our members, until the city is filled
with new workmen, the unions broken up, and we can all emigrate to
Massachusetts or China.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Pap Brown, “but violence to them ten men
would simply be playin’ into old French’s hand. He has figgered for a
fight, but we mustn’t give it to him.”
“We will carry out,” said the Chairman, “in a peaceful way, the
resolution adopted by the Congress of Federated Trades.”
“That,” said Pap Brown, “means a gineral strike and an all-around
tie-up, that’s what it means, jest at the beginnin’ of the buildin’
season, with our union treasuries mostly empty, and our brethren East in
no fix to help us, for the coke strikes and the shettin’ down of the
cotton factories and iron foundries this winter have dreened them all. I
was agin that resolution of the Federated Trades at the time, and I’m
mighty doubtful about it’s workin’ any good to us now. It was well
enough for a bluff, but if we are called down we haven’t got a thing in
our hands, that’s a fact.”
“Well, what can we do, Mr. Brown?”
“I believe that the best thing all around would be to give in to old
French now, repeal that fool resolution, and wait for a better time to
strike.”
“What! surrender without a blow? That, Mr. Brown, we can never do.”
“Well, then,” rejoined Pap Brown, “I reckon we’ve got a long siege
ahead.”
The Executive Committee appointed a delegation to wait on Mr. Lorin
French and inform him that unless the employment of the ten non-union
men was discontinued, the resolution of the Federated Trades would be
enforced, and all Trade Union members working for him, or for any member
of the Manufacturers’ and Builders’ Union, would quit work.
Mr. French received the committee very curtly.
“Those ten men,” said he, “will continue their labors though they shall
be the only ten men at work in the city of San Francisco. If one, or one
thousand, or ten thousand of you are fools enough to quit work at the
high wages you have yourselves fixed, simply because I have given work
at the same wages to men who don’t choose to join one of your bullying
unions, why, you can quit. You can’t hurt me by quitting as much as you
will hurt yourselves. My money will keep and your work won’t. But take
notice that every man who does quit work will be blacklisted, and he can
never get another job in this city from me, or any of the gentlemen who
are members of the association of which I am president, and we include
about all the large employers of labor in this city.”
“You know, Mr. French,” said the Chairman of the committee, “that if you
insist on keeping these ten non-union men at work we can order a general
strike.”
“Yes, I know it,” replied French. “I know that you can bite off your own
noses to spite your own faces. I feel sorry for you workingmen at times,
you are such unreasoning and unreasonable and everlasting fools. When
you order a strike, you order the absolute destruction of the only
property you have—your labor—and you do this in order to prevent a few
men from selling their labor; a few men whose only offense is that they
don’t believe with you in the wisdom of harassing and plundering
capitalists.”
“Well, I suppose we have a right to strike, haven’t we?” said the
Chairman angrily.
“No,” said French, “you have not. The worker who joins a strike faces at
least the possibility of capital closing its works and retiring from the
field, and the men who have been extravagant, idle, unthrifty, or
unfortunate, and most of you have been one or the other, have no moral
right to bring upon themselves or those dependent upon them, either
suffering or mendicancy.”
“Mr. French,” said the Chairman, “you know a good many things, but you
don’t know the power of the labor organizations of the land. If we
willed it, we could in one day stop production and transportation all
over the United States.”
“You would do well to think three or four times,” replied French,
“before exercising any such power as that. You workingmen are
overstepping the bounds not only of moderation, but of common justice
and common sense. Suppose you should do what you threaten, what do you
suppose the capitalists would do in turn? You don’t know? Well, I can
tell you. We would say that we were weary of your exactions, your
interference, and your airs. We would say to you: ‘You have stopped the
wheels; very well, we will not start them. You have extinguished the
furnace fires, we will not rekindle them. You have disabled the engines,
we will not repair them. With the downward stab of your vicious knife
you have cut our surface veins, but you have received the force of the
blow in your own vitals—bleed to death at your leisure. We will retire
for a while and nurse our scratches.’
“You don’t know what you are talking about,” continued the old man. “You
don’t conceive the misery and ruin that would result from sixty days’
stoppage of labor in the fields and foundries and factories and
furnaces, and sixty days’ suspension of traffic over the railroads of
our land. With the disabled engines in the roundhouses, and the cars
covered with dust in the deserted yards; with ships and steamers lying
idle at the wharves or sailed away to trade between the ports of other
lands, whose governments, wiser or more powerful than ours, would not
suffer the moral law to be violated by either individuals or societies;
with moss gathered upon the turbines; with chimneys towering smokeless
to the skies; with the music of forge and anvil hushed; with almshouses
crowded, asylums filled, and jails overflowing; with men suffering and
women growing gaunt from hunger, and little children sobbing themselves
to the fevered sleep of famine; with the furniture in the auction room,
trinkets and clothing in the pawn shop, and families once comfortable
wandering shelterless under the stars; with even disease welcomed as a
friend who should pilot the sufferer to the deliverance of death, would
you find consolation for it all in the reflection that you had, maybe,
carried your point and prevented non-union men, who are as good as
yourselves in every way, from working alongside you at the same wages
you demanded for yourselves?”
“Mr. French,” said the Chairman, “what do you wish us to do?”
“I don’t care what you do,” was the response, “but if you have any
sense, you will go home and repeal your fool resolution to strike if
non-union workers are employed.”
“That, Mr. French,” said the spokesman, “we cannot and will not do.”
“No?” replied the millionaire. “Well, you must go to destruction then in
your own way. Goodmorning.”
At noon the next day the hod-carriers dropped their hods, not only at
the post-office block, but at all buildings in process of construction
by any capitalist or contractor belonging to the Builders’ and
Manufacturers’ Union. The brick-masons stopped work because they would
not lay brick with mortar mixed or carried by a non-union laborer. The
house carpenters declined to drive a nail in aid of the erection of any
building in which a brick should be laid by one not belonging to the
Bricklayers’ Union. No plumber or gasfitter would carry his tools to a
building whose timbers had been put in place by a scab carpenter. The
teamsters would not haul sand, brick, lime, or lumber for use in any
building to be erected by any member of the association of which Lorin
French was president. The iron-moulders abandoned in a body the great
shops, rather than work on columns or fronts which had been ordered for
the tabooed buildings. Engineers and firemen struck, rather than attend
to the running of machinery in factories where non-union men were
employed, and all workers engaged in any factory, foundry, mill, shop,
or business owned, in whole or in part, by any member of the Builders’
and Manufacturers’ Union, joined the general strike, while the railroads
were compelled, in self-protection, to refuse freight offered by any
member of the organization of which Lorin French was president.
No attempt was made by French or his colleagues to supply the places of
the strikers with non-union workers, although every mail from the East
brought hundreds of applications for employment, but each factory,
foundry, and shop was closed, one after the other, as the workers joined
the strike. The ten men whose labors on the post-office building had
begotten all this commotion, continued steadily at work. They were
surrounded each day, while at their labors, by hooting thousands, who
gathered in the vicinity, but any near approach to them was prevented by
a company of Pinkerton’s men, armed with Winchesters, who had been sworn
in as deputy sheriffs, and who escorted them to and from their labors,
to French’s building, No. 1099 Market Street, where they, as well as
their guards, were accorded quarters, and in the upper story of which
Mr. Lorin French had, under existing circumstances, deemed it expedient
to establish his residence as well as his offices.
After a fortnight had elapsed these ten men were withdrawn from their
labors, in deference to the request of the Mayor of San Francisco and
the governor of California.
A committee from the Federated Trades then waited upon Lorin French, and
informed him that, as the _causa belli_ had been removed by the
withdrawal of the ten obnoxious non-union laborers, the strikers were
willing to resume work. His reply was that whenever work should be
resumed generally, the ten “obnoxious” men, as well as all other
non-union men he might see fit to employ, would resume work; and so
negotiations came suddenly to an end.
At the close of the third week of the strike the Congress of Federated
Trades assembled and declared a boycott against all members of the
Builders’ and Manufacturers’ Union, and against all who should violate
the boycott; the boycott to run also against any railway or steamship
line that should accord them or their families transportation out of San
Francisco.
It was expected that this last and most drastic measure would bring the
capitalists to terms, for its enforcement would deprive them and their
families of the necessities of life. Their employes left them under the
pressure, and their offices and places of business were closed. Their
house servants departed, and they were unable to obtain substitutes even
among the Chinese, for the Celestial who should labor for a boycotted
household was given his choice between exile and death. Hotel
proprietors were compelled to refuse a boycotted person as a guest, or
lose their own waiters, cooks, and chambermaids. The restaurant
proprietor who should serve one of them with a meal would be compelled
to close his doors for the want of help; and the grocer, fruiterer,
butcher, baker, or provision dealer who sold supplies for their use,
would be posted, and lose his other customers, for the boycott was
declared against all who violated the boycott.
Mr. French was equal to the exigency. He caused representations to be
made, and influence exerted at Washington, and the United States steamer
_Charleston_ was detailed for special service. The members of the
Builders’ and Manufacturers’ Association, with their families, were
taken on board of the war-ship, guarded by the Pinkerton men, and
carried to Vancouver, where they were dispatched East over the Canadian
Pacific Railroad. Lorin French, with a few of his fellow-members,
refused to go, but, establishing themselves comfortably on the upper
floor of the building No. 1099 Market Street, they managed to provision
themselves and their guards, despite the boycott, and announced their
determination to see the contest out.
It was the last week in April, 1894, and the tenth week of the great
strike. Business was almost suspended in San Francisco. Thousands of the
strikers had wandered out into the country, and every farmhouse within a
hundred miles of San Francisco was besieged by men glad to work for food
and shelter, while the highways were crowded with tramps. In the city
the streets were filled with idle thousands, and at the daily meeting at
the sand lots twenty or thirty thousand auditors were addressed by
favorite speakers.
The orators made no appeals which were calculated to incite violence,
and there was no police interference with the meetings. Indeed, there
seemed logically no place or opportunity for violence. The offending
employers had done absolutely nothing that the workers could even
denounce. They had discharged nobody, and they had not attempted to fill
the places of those who reluctantly left. They had simply suspended
operations. They had accepted the refusal of the workers to work,
apparently, as final. They had locked up their factories and places of
business, and, with their families, had left the State.
The strikers generally regarded Lorin French as the prime mover against
them, but his property they could not reach for the purposes of
destruction if they had been so inclined. It consisted of mines in
Nevada and Utah and Montana, of sheep and cattle in New Mexico and
Arizona, of vineyards and orchards and grain-fields in California, of
mortgages and bonds, and of unimproved real estate in San Francisco. On
this latter he was now preparing to erect business blocks. But the
buildings were in embryo. The mob could neither burn nor dynamite an
unbuilded structure, and there was no visible property upon which to
wreak vengeance.
Yet the most ample provisions had been made against any mob uprising.
Two batteries of artillery, with guns shotted with grape and canister,
two companies of cavalry, and four companies of infantry of the
California National Guard, were in readiness, a portion being under
arms, and signals were arranged for calling the entire force together at
the armories, ready for action, on less than half an hour’s notice.
On Saturday night, late in April, 1894, the Congress of Federated Trades
again met, and, after a short debate, it was sullenly resolved to accept
the situation. The strike was declared at an end, and all the
resolutions adopted since the preceding February, including the original
resolution of indorsement of the action of the Hod-Carriers’ Union, were
rescinded, and it was enacted that hereafter the employment of non-union
workers should not be a cause of strike except by workers associated in
the same work, and against the same employer.
A committee of three, to consist of the President of the Congress of
Federated Trades, the Mayor of San Francisco, and the Chief of Police,
was appointed to wait, early next morning, upon Mr. Lorin French,
communicate to him the action taken by the Federated Trades, and receive
his reply.
It was surrender on the part of the workers—absolute and unconditional.
It was a blow to their pride, and a relinquishment of that which, with
many of them, was a cherished principle; it was brought about by hunger
and suffering, and they gave up the contest utterly, and placed
themselves at the mercy of the conqueror. Only a brute could have
misused the vanquished, but Lorin French had worked himself into a
relentless fury during the progress of the strike, and, unfortunately,
he had been left in full charge and invested with plenary power by the
departed members of the Builders’ and Manufacturers’ Association.
At nine o’clock the next morning, in the sunshine of an April Sabbath,
the committee appointed by the Federated Trades was permitted to pass
the Pinkerton guard, and mount the five flights of stairs—for the
elevator service had long been discontinued—which led to the top story
of the building No. 1099 Market Street, where they were received by
Lorin French, who arose from his breakfast table to greet them. He
listened without changing his countenance while the Mayor, as Chairman
of the committee, communicated to him the substance of the resolution
adopted the night before by the Congress of Federated Trades.
“I expected exactly such a result,” said French; “it would have saved a
great deal of money and a great deal of suffering to these Federated
fools if they had adopted a similar course two months ago.”
“Well, Mr. French,” said the Mayor, “these misguided men, with their
families, have been the greatest losers and the severest sufferers by it
all. I will not discuss the rights and wrongs of it with you. There is
more than one side to it, and we might not agree. I am rejoiced, for
their sake and yours, and for the sake of the city and State, that it is
all over, and that the workers can now return to their work, and
business resume its usual channels.”
“These misguided men, as you call them, Mr. Mayor,” said French, “will
be compelled to transfer their opportunities for future misguidance to
some other locality. They are all blacklisted here. Their own signatures
to receipts for wages when they quit, constitute the blacklist. Not one
of them shall ever earn another day’s wages in this city in any
enterprise owned, controlled, or influenced by me.”
“But, Mr. French,” remonstrated the Mayor, “this is unworthy of you.
These men have homes here; they have families to support; the long
strike has left many of them utterly without resources, either to go
away with or to establish themselves elsewhere. The industries of San
Francisco need them. Why bring in others to take their places? They have
abandoned their strike. They have already been sufficiently punished for
that which was, after all, only an error of judgment. If work be refused
them, they will starve.”
“Let them starve,” savagely replied the millionaire; “not one of them
shall ever get a job of work from me.”
The President of the Congress of Federated Trades, who was one of the
committee, had hitherto been silent. He was an iron worker by trade,
who, in twenty years of residence in San Francisco, had almost lost the
Scotch burr which, as a lad, he had brought with him from Glasgow. In
moments of feeling or excitement it returned to him. He addressed
himself to French:—
“Oh mon,” said he, “but thou art hard; and thou art a fool as well! ’Tis
a mad wolf that cooms oot of the mountain shingle to make a trail
through the heather for the hoonds. Gin ye hae no mercy for God’s poor,
hae ye no fear frae the divil’s dogs that your words may loosen on ye?
Dinna ye ken there be ten, aye, twenty thousand men on the sand lots
this blessed Sabbath morn, who love ye not, and who, if they get your
words just spoken, and get them they maun, unless ye recall them, would,
if they but reach ye, and reach ye they will, for a’ your guards and
guns, would send ye to God’s throne wi’ your bad heart a’ reekin’?”
“Go and tell the loafers and brawlers of the sand lots exactly what I
have said,” shrieked French. “It is what I mean to say, and mean for
them to hear. If you don’t take the message I will send it through the
press. Let them do their worst. I do not fear the blackguards, and I am
ready for any who choose to visit me,” and the old man snapped his
fingers as the members of the committee sorrowfully departed.
Half an hour later a speaker who was addressing an audience of thirty
thousand people from the central stand at the sand lots, paused as he
saw the President of the Congress of Federated Trades making his way
through the crowd. The orator had been commenting on the resolutions
adopted by the Workers’ Congress the previous night, and had been
congratulating the people upon the approaching end of the distress
occasioned by the long strike, and on the days of peace and plenty which
were in store for them, and it was with beaming faces and glad shouts
that the multitude welcomed the man who was to announce to them a
resumption of their labors in factory and shop.
“My friends,” said the tall Scotchman, “I have just come from an
interview with Lorin French, and I am vara vara sorry to bear you the
message with which I am charged. He bids me tell you that the notice he
gave to us all before the strike begun shall be carried out, and that no
man who quit work then shall ever again have work in this city, if he
can help it.”
The temper of the vast multitude changed in an instant. Shrieks and
yells of anger filled the air, and for many minutes the crowd gave way
to demonstrations of rage and indignation. All at once there walked to
the front of the central platform a tall, angular woman dressed in a
gown of plain black stuff. Her features were unprepossessing, to the
verge of ugliness, but a wealth of white hair crowned a low brow,
surmounting eyes of fierce blue. As she stretched forth a long arm, the
multitude hushed to silence, for they recognized the renowned female
agitator, Lucy Passmore.
“Friends, brethren, men,” said she, in a voice whose magnetic quality
vibrated to the farthest edges of the crowd, “it seems that it is the
malignant will of one man which savagely condemns thousands to suffering
and starvation. If the rattlesnake is coiled for ye, will ye strike
first or wait for him to strike? If the wolf is waiting upon your
doorstep, will you feed to him the babe he is seeking or will ye give
him the knife to the hilt in his hot throat? The death of Lorin French
would end this struggle, and your wives would cease to weep and your
children to cry with hunger. Men, since God has so far forgotten you as
to suffer this devil to live so long, why do you not remedy God’s
forgetfulness? Are you ready to march now or do you want an old woman to
lead you?”
A yell arose from the surging crowd, as, with one mind, thousands
comprehended and were ready to act upon the suggestions of Lucy
Passmore.
Most of the men had long before furnished themselves with arms of some
sort, and their lodge organizations had provided them with elected
leaders, who usually attended the sand-lot meetings. As if by magic they
formed themselves into companies and battalions and marched, an orderly
and almost an organized army, forth from the sand lots, and down to the
building No. 1099 Market Street, which they speedily surrounded.
The iron shutters of the upper story were at once closed, and the
muzzles of rifles pushed through loopholes previously prepared for such
purpose. An attempt was made from the inside to close the iron gate in
front of the main staircase, but the mob surged past the guard, took
possession of the lower hall, and started up the stairs. They were met
at the top, just below the first landing, by twenty Pinkerton men
standing upon the top five steps—four on each step—who, after vainly
warning the ascending crowd to desist, at last lowered the muzzles of
their Winchesters, and opened a murderous fusillade, which covered the
stairs with dead and dying.
The mob hesitated for an instant, but only for an instant, for those
below pushed forward those who were above. A hundred revolvers were
fired at the Pinkerton men, half of whom fell, and the other half were
borne down, shot, clubbed, and stabbed as the mob rushed past and over
them, and gained the first landing. The crowd continued to push from
below, and in the same way, with great loss of life on each side, they
gained successively the third and fourth stories. By this time, however,
the forces on the fifth floor had opened fire on the mob outside. Two
riflemen at each of the eighteen windows commanded the main entrance to
the building, and such a rapid and accurate fire was maintained that
Market Street for a hundred feet on each side of the entrance was piled
with bodies, and further re-inforcements prevented from reaching those
within the building.
At this juncture Battery X came galloping into Market Street from
Fourth. Two guns were placed in position, and one, loaded with
grapeshot, was fired just above the heads of the crowd. The whistling of
the shot in the air above them gave notice to the mob of what was
coming, and, with cries of terror, they fled, panic-stricken, into the
adjacent streets. The assailants inside the building, hearing the noise
of the cannon, followed by the triumphant shouts of the Pinkerton men in
the upper story, and finding no further pressure or re-inforcements from
below, desisted from further assault, and, turning from the fourth
landing, fled down the stairs.
Lorin French, from a loophole in an iron shutter, watched the firing,
and the dispersion of the mob outside, and in a few minutes he was
informed by a Pinkerton sergeant that the contest was over.
“It’s a sorry day’s work, sir,” said the officer; “we have lost over
thirty of our best men, and there must be two hundred rioters dead and
wounded on the stairs and in the halls, beside those killed in the
street.”
“I will help you with the wounded,” said French, starting for the
passage.
“Better remain here, sir,” said the officer. “It may not be quite safe
for you yet in the lower halls.”
“Nonsense,” replied French, “the fight is over,” and so saying, he
walked out into the hall, and descended the stairs to the fourth story.
He paused in horror at the sight which met his eyes. The floor was wet
and slippery with blood, and the cries of the wounded pierced his ears.
He stood for a moment as if dazed, and then, turning his back upon the
scene, prepared to ascend the staircase and gain his room.
And as he turned, a man who was sitting propped up against the wall
twenty feet away, raised a revolver which had been lying in his lap,
and, clearing with his left hand the blood which obscured his eyes, took
rapid yet careful aim and fired.
The bullet struck Lorin French in his backbone, which it shattered, and,
with a cry of agony and fear, the owner of $20,000,000 fell forward upon
his face on the stairway.