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

I 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 ruthlessly put down the gunmen few sporadic strikes that occurred between 1878 and 1830. After the of Labor's triumphant tiff Knights with Jay Gould, workers regained courage sufficiently to flock back to the unions, but this revival was short-lived. Public reaction to the riot demoralized the Haymarket movement and put a stop to the workers' rush to the unions. The of Labor lost over 200,000 Knights in a few months after the members riot. Finally, in the late 80's, labor to organize again, this time began under the tough but conservative leadership of the A.

F. of L. warfare broke out in 1892 Open the Homestead strike of the with Iron and Steel Workers. Three years earlier the Carnegie Steel Company had recognized this powerful union, at the expiration of its but now, 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 destrike, Frick locked them out. clare a He put up a three-mile fence around and sent in a call for 300 the plant gunmen from the Pinkerton agency. Knowing that the agents would be fully armed, union members prepared for their arrival. Ten men killed and thirty wounded were when the boatload of "Pinkertons" tried to land at Homestead.

The workers managed to capture the Then and Now Educational Eye Opener by Clara Gruening Stillman recommend more highly than the OR INSOMNIA I have found them suthere is nothing I book on education by an educator. wishfully "I am average perior to counting sheep, reciting Merely thinking about the poetry, murmuring sleeping, I am sleeping," education or I even have hot read (for I was once professionally milk! many books on history of, philosophy of, principles of, connected with the dread subject), of educators who seem to their thoughts on, methodologies, existed only biographies to enunciate educational "truths," biographers to have and objectives," induces profound yawns; and if "principles" or "aims either I or you would be asleep beI were to go on writing about them, fore I got to the bottom of page. discovered (rather belatedly, I admit, the I therefore think it news to annual volumes) a book dealing have for the series has run through of coffee than a dose of veronal. twenty-one with education that is more a cup it, for it is called "A Handbook like Its title would never lead you to suppose and Girls: An Annual of Private Schools for Sargent of Boston, Mass. The American Boys compiled, written and published well as to parent and educator by Porter matter of interest to of 174 stimulating The aims the general reader as is packed into an and prospective pupils find the private introductory essay pages.

of the book are: to help parents support private initiative in educaschools best suited to their needs, to education in its larger setting, not tion and to survey such as to "broaden horizons, critically the field of merely social but biological, in a way vision and stimulate the imagination. lengthen the book is a sort of natural history of private IN ITS first capacity emphasizing personalities, tendencies and atmospheres, schools, communicable through catalogs. matters of primary importance alive and functioning. They change not Private schools, we learn, are modifications of varyrapidly, persisting, dying, being about 11 percent of the school born, undergoing ing size, tempo and more than locally important. and import.

They educate population. Some 4,000 are permanent and girls react, how special needs may What parents want, schools what they are, what currents how boys be met, what graphically set down. Public and private factors make private run left and right are and need each other. matters schools, Mr. Sargent education supplement leads us into anthropology (which thinks, The larger setting of and economics.

grows fields, the author surveys the increasingly important), physiology, psychiatry In the light of the done, thought, written, and contributions from these current year, commenting oriented in regard to the latest on what is being how our educational event in this country was the institutions are knowledge. The discussed from every angle from scholoutstanding educational Harvard academic Tercentenary, freedom. Mr. Sargent finds most of our educational which is arship to absurd. Fear reigns in schools and procedure deplorable, stultifying heavy-handed and domination of the wealthy and colleges, caused by affecting college presidents, intimidating the the professionally patriotic, subjects, throwing teachers, prescribing free inquiry into confusion in the out brilliant but too other but the picture is not wholly independent instructors.

All is educational field for this and reasons, educators to meet A new and vital attempt is among and vision discernible black. the challenge of reaction the ferment of ideas out of and infuse some life, imagination education, to bring into the classroom into which the future, whatever it will be, must come. the author's comments on such DITHY, vigorous and illuminating are schools (trustees Pitfalls for parents in learning about topics as these: commission grabbers, catalog bunk, and bankers, interested alumnae, (confused Hutchins, antiadvertising What is stupidity? Why does the forlure); present educational chaos quated Butler); what is education? the latter? Aristotle vs. Dewey, intelmer predominatingly perpetuate challenged, how to lectual poisons, educational and antidotes, culture, the ignorance of the educated, our culture material and human, the study and science meet the challenge, science how we waste our resources, educational effort, ideals ancient and modof man, goals for social fashions, the new economics, the biological and ern, far, what's ahead? with dozens educational politics, approach, the ideal school, the results so relevant books. Regardless of agreeof thumbnail reviews feel ideas sprouting, you make marginal of most ment or disagreement, read you all the books mentioned (well, nearly all), your you notes, you decide to feel (surprise!) that education is a vital, thrilling matter.

BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE 2 recent weeks, have not been uncommon in the history of American labor. Superficially, American labor struggles have been a succession of of just such episodes, characterized by the savagery with which capital has fought the worker's efforts to imhis status and by the ruthprove lessness with which the worker has back. Both sides have used fought at their disposal. The every weapon ha used the blacklist, the employer police intimidation, hired lockout, gunmen, espionage and agents prothe worker has resorted vocateurs; not merely to the strike and boycott, but to dynamite, sabotage and assassination. There have been periods in which the war was many if not more bitterly at least fought, than it is today.

As a more openly, review of American labor brief show, violence has struggles may been an essential part of our long at least, of our way of settling disputes between capital tradition--or, and labor. the decade after the Civil DURING when labor was still in a War, helpless confusion, by far state of the most effective workers' organization was the Molly Maguires, a miners' society operating in secret the anthracite region of Pennsylvania. The Mollies' principle method of achieving their ends was systematic beating and assassination. Displeased with his job at the mines, a Molly could have his boss soundly thrashed by reporting his grievance local committee. The committo a would appoint two other Mollies, tee from another part of the preferably to do the job, and if the boss State, not sobered by the thrashing, was an assassination would promptly follow.

By 1873 bosses were dropping dead with fearful regularity; of the Mollies were at the height Just at this time, howtheir power. secret action was initiated ever, a them by that part of Pennagainst society not under their sylvania and spies within the order control, succeeded in identifying the leaders. After a number of particularly unmurders, several of the leadsavory arrested; in the next few ers were Mollies were executed. The years ten disintegrated rapidly thereorder after. The verdict of contemporary sociologists is that the Mollies, though methods were scarcely laudtheir served a useful social function.

able, of their killings were motiMany vated 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 1 month after the Molly executions, the great strike epidemic of 1877 broke out on the Baltimore Ohio Railroad. It began casually July afternoon, but enough one spread rapidly throughout the day evening until by midnight the and system was paralyzed. The entire next day the first shots were exbetween strikers and milichanged tiamen called out by the Governor West Virginia at the request of of company officials.

President Hayes sent out Federal troops wherever asked for them. For the company three days there were riots in Baltiwhere soldiers marched in more, platoons and fired on leaderless mobs of strikers and unemployed. In Cumberland, the militiamen killed ten 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 unemofficials again called for the ployed; militia and for Federal troops. Within a few days soldiers had killed twenty workmen and wounded others. Later in the month the fifty hit Chicago, where switchepidemic of the Michigan Central struck men the threat of a wage cut. against The entire Mid-Western transportation system was tied up.

Over 20,000 police and citizens were under arms, and militiamen were urged by capi- whole battalion and, aler 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 of starvation, they went back to work on a non-union basis. head of 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 brickthrowers; 2,000 cars were wrecked and burned for an estimated loss of $75,000,000.

Chicago business men appealed directly to President Cleveland and by July 4, 10,000 soldiersinfantry, 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, fugitive from American law. A a good example of his direct-action methods is provided by the Colorado and silver mine strike of 1901. gold The mines had been idle for a few weeks when the company superintendent decided to bring in scabs. An enraged 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 leaving the mine.

After a were fight several hours, the scabs lasting called a truce and a parley was arThe union took over the ranged. mines, but there was a second enbefore the scabs finally left counter and the "rest of the gang," in Haywood's phrase, "was escorted over mountain." Two years later the the proclaimed martial law in Governor district. The militia threw the wholesale into bull-pens and miners escorted many of the union officiais county line, where they told to the them to keep going. The war ended with the owners once again in control of the mines. the bloodiest fights ever Some of capital and labor waged between the I.

W. W. bewere conducted by 1906 and 1916. At McKees tween Pennsylvania, the wabRocks, in employes of the blies led 8.000 Pressed Steel Company in an open fight against the State Constabulary. TWO years later Eugene V.

Debs, (Continued on page 8).