The Brooklyn Daily Eagle from Brooklyn, New York • Page 63

BROOKLYN DA 11 EAGLE whole battalion anu, aer holding them "prisoners of war" for a day, ran them out of town. Frick brought in the State militia and in a few days converted the town into an armed camp. The workers held out until November. With Winter coming on and with their families on the verge ol starvation, they went back to work on a non-union basis. under the tough but conservative leadership of the A.

F. of L. Open warfare broke out in 1892 with the Homestead strike of the Iron and Steel Workers. Three years earlier the Carnegie Steel Company had recognized this powerful union, but now, at the expiration of its contract, it tried to impose a reduction in wages. The workers declined and Andrew Cargenie, scenting bloodshed, put the company's superintendent, Henry C.

Frick, in command and hastily left for Europe. Before the workers had time to declare a strike, Frick locked them out. He put up a three-mile fence around the plant and sent in a call for 300 gunmen from the Pinkerton agency. Knowing that the agents would be fully armed, union members prepared for their arrival. Ten men were killed and thirty wounded when the boatload of "Pinkertons" tried to land at Homestead.

The workers managed to capture the talists to put down the "ragged Commune wretches." They did. The strike was broken when a battalion of United States regulars arrived under the command of the son of Ulysses S. Grant. The warfare throughout the country ended late in July with the total defeat of the strikers. It was some time before labor recovered from the blow.

Police and hired gunmen ruthlessly put down the few sporadic strikes that occurred between 1878 and 18J0. After the Knights of Labor's triumphant tiff with Jay Gould, workers regained courage sufficiently to flock back to the unions, but this revival was short-lived. Public reaction to the Haymarket riot demoralized the movement and put a stop to the workers' rush to the unions. The Knights of Labor lost over 200,000 members in a few months after the riot. Finally, in the late 80's, rabor began to organize again, this time 2F recent weeks, have not been uncommon in the history of American Superficially, American labor struggles have been a succession of just such episodes, characterized by the savagery with which capital has fought the worker's efforts to improve his status and by the ruth-lessness with which the worker has fought back.

Both sides have used every weapon at their disposal. The employer ha used the blacklist, the lockout, police intimidation, hired gunmen, espionage and agents provocateurs; the worker has resorted not merely to the strike and boycott, but to dynamite, sabotage and assassination. There have been many periods In which the war was fought, if not more bitterly at least more openly, than it is today. As a brief review of American labor struggles may show, violence has long been an essential part of our tradition or, at least, of our way of settling disputes between capital and labor. DURING the decade after the Civil War, when labor was still in a state of helpless confusion, by far the most effective workers' organization was the Molly Maguires, a secret miners' society operating in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania.

The Mollies" principle method of achieving their ends was sys 'T'WO years later Eugene V. Debs, head ot the American Railway Union, unwittingly provoked the greatest labor outbreak in the history of the country. The workers in George R. Pullman's "model town" in Illinois called a strike after they were served a 30 percent cut in wages. Pullman told Debs there was "nothing to arbitrate," so the union leader ordered a boycott against all Pullman cars on Western railways.

Since roads between Chicago and San Francisco were bound by contract to use Pullman cars', the order automatically suspended all operations between those points. The rest of "Debs' Rebellion," however, was as much of a surprise to its author as it was to any one else. When the railroads fired the boycotters, all unions affiliated with the A. R. U.

immediately struck. Engines were crippled and capsized; corpulent officials who tried to handle the switches were targets for brick-throwers; 2,000 cars were wrecked and burnsd for an estimated loss of $75,000,000. Chicago business men appealed directly to President Cleveland and by July 4, 10,000 soldiers infantry, cavalry and field artillery had encamped in the city. Livestock supplies were dwindling and the Mid-West faced a famine. But the strike was broken on July 7 and Debs, along with other leaders, was clamped into jail for disobeying an injunction.

The workers who could returned to work; the others starved. At this time the most aggressive and revolutionary labor group in the country was the Western Federation of Miners. Its leaders were fighters and avowed radicals; they believed In violence, carried guns and fought it out in the open with the enemy. They dynamited mines and mills and served time in jails and "bull-pens" along with thousands of fellow workers. At one time every member union was urged to form a rifle corps so that, in the words of President Boyce, "we can hear the inspiring music of the martial tread of 25,000 armed men in the ranks of labor." The most potent figure of this group was Big Bill Haywood, an ardent Socialist who later went over to the I.

W. W. and died in Russia, a fugitive from American law. A good example of his direct-action methods is provided by the Colorado gold and silver mine strike of 1901. The mines had been idle for a few weeks when the company superintendent decided to bring in scabs.

An enrag2d union official at once wrote out an order for 250 rifles and 20.000 rounds of ammunition and sent it to a Denver firm with a check in payment. One day the strikers opened fire on the scabs as they were leaving the mine. After a fight lasting several hours, the scabs called a truce and a parley was arranged. The union took over the mines, but there was a second encounter before the scabs finally left and the "rest of the gang," in Haywood's phrase, "was escorted over the mountain." Two years later the Governor proclaimed martial law in the district. The militia threw miners wholesale into bull-pens and escorted many of the union officia.s to the county line, where they told them to keep going.

The war ended with the owners once again in control of the mines. Some of the bloodiest fights ever waged between capital and labor were conducted by the I. W. between 1935 and 1916. At McKees Rocks, in Pennsylvania, the wab-blies led 8.000 employes of the Pressed Steel Company in an open fight against the State Constabulary.

Then and Now Educational Eye Opener br Clara Gruening Stillman -OH INSOMNIA is no.h.n, fCffl SZ u- with education that is more like a cup of coiiee A Handbook Its title would never lead you to PV'nual Survey' lengthen vision and stimulate the imagination. Slip run leu thinks supplement and need each other. togersemng of Education leads us into anthropology (which arows increasingly important), physiology, psychiatry and economics Kl ight of the contributions from these fields, the author surveys the current yea commenting on what is being done, thought, wrn ten and how our educational institutions are oriented in dJJlf knowledge The outstanding educational event in this country wo the Harvard Tercentenary, which is discussed from every angle from fo academic keedorn. Mr. Sargent finds most of our educational TrocedSe deplomble, stultifying and absurd.

Fear reigns in schools and Ks caS by the heavy-handed domination of the wealthy and me professionally patriotic, affecting college presidents, mtimidahng teachers ibinglree inquiry into "controversial" subjects, throwing out brill ant but too independent instructors. All is confusion in the out brilliant dui 10 reasons, but the picture is not wholly Hack A "new and vjaf aemptls discernible among educators to meet Se chaLngl of "reaction and infuse some life, imagination and v.s.on mfo edSton, to bring into the classroom the ferment of ideas out of which the future, whatever it will be, must come. D1THY, vigorous and illuminating are the author's comments on such 1 top es as these: Pitfalls for parents in learning about schools (trustees and bke interested alumnae, commission grabbers, catalog bunk, adveSng lure); present educational chaos (confused Hutch ins anti-auafed BuUer)- what is education? What is stupidity? Why does the former predc rn natmgly perpetuate the latter? Aristotle vs. Dewey intel-aa poisons, educational antidotes, our culture challenged how to the challenge, science and culture, the igntrance of the eiucuted meet me cumc wl human, the study and science tematic beating ana assassinate. Displeased with his job at the mines, a Molly could have his boss soundly thrashed by reporting his grievance to a local committee.

The committee would appoint two other Mollies, preferably from another part of the State, to do the job, and if the boss was not sobered by the thrashing, an assassination would promptly follow By 1873 bosses were dropping dead with fearful regularity; the Mollies were at the height of their power. Just at this time, however a secret action was initiated against them by that part of Pennsylvania society not under their control, and spies within the order succeeded in identifying the leaders. After a number of particularly unsavory murders, several of the leaders were arrested; in the next few years ten Mollies were executed. The order disintegrated rapidly thereafter. The verdict of contemporary socir ologists is that the Mollies, though their methods were scarcely laudable, served a useful social function.

Many of their killings were motivated by spite, but by murdering bosses by the score and beating innumerable others they helped to improve working conditions throughout the anthracite area. Many a union leader today regards them as revolutionary heroes. Hardly a month after the Molly executions, the great strike epidemic of 1877 broke out on the Baltimore Ohio Railroad. It began casually enough one July afternoon, but spread rapidly throughout the day and evening until by midnight the entire system was paralyzed. The next day the first shots were exchanged between strikers and militiamen called out by the Governor of West Virginia at the request of company officials.

President Hayes sent out Federal troops wherever the company asked for them. For three days there were riots in Baltimore, where soldiers marched in platoons and fired on leaderless mobs of strikers and unemployed. In Cumberland, the militiamen killed tea workmen; in Reading thirteen were slain in a single day. Shortly after the B. O.

outbreak the strike gripped the Pennsylvania Railroad. In Pittsburgh the streets filled again with mobs of unemployed; officials again called for the militia and for Federal troops. Within a few days soldiers had killed twenty workmen and wounded fifty others. Later in the month the epidemic hit Chicago, where switchmen of the Michigan Central struck against the threat of a wage cut. The entire Mid-Western transportation system was tied up.

Over 20,000 police and citizens were under arms, and militiamen were urged by capi- K'SfaT National effort, ideals ancient and modem educational fashions, politics, the new economics the L.oio. al or roach the ideal school, results so far, what ahead? with of hSmtaa reviews of the most relevant books. Regardless of agree-raent or disagreement, you feel your ideas sprouting, you marginal notes you decide to read all the books mentioned (well, nearly all), you ieel (surprise!) that education is a vital, thrilling matter. (Continued on f9e 8).