Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/324

 What the manufacturers wanted, as they put it, was "protection," a term with vague and varying connotations. As was the case in all the strikes of all the years of my experience in the mayoralty, they felt that the police were not sufficiently aggressive, or that the Chief of Police had not detailed sufficient men to afford them protection. I did not raise the question, though it occurred to me, as to what the police were doing to protect the strikers, who were citizens, too, and tax-payers, or at least rent-payers and so indirect tax-payers, but when I asked the Chief, the big-hearted Perry Knapp reported that the strikers were complaining, too, and out of his collection of works on Lincoln, he brought me one which contained a letter the great president wrote to General John M. Schofield, when he assigned that officer to the command of the Department of the Missouri, in May, 1863, to succeed General Curtis. Curtis had been the head of one party as Governor Gamble had been the head of the other, in what Lincoln called the pestilent factional quarrel into which the Union men had entered. "Now that you are in the position," wrote Lincoln, "I wish you to undo nothing merely because General Curtis or Governor Gamble did it, but to exercise your own judgment, and do right for the public interest. Let your military measures be strong enough to repel the invader and keep the peace, and not so strong as to unnecessarily harass and persecute the people. It is a difficult rôle, and so much the greater will be the honor if you perform it well. If both factions, or neither, shall abuse you, you will probably be about