Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/326



There was one of the employers, indeed, who grew so alarmed that he came one morning to the office predicting a riot at his plant, that very afternoon at five o'clock, when the works were to shut down for the day. This man was just then operating his factory with strike breakers and he was concerned for their safety. Indeed his concern was expressed in the form of a personal sympathy and love for them which was far more sentimental than any I had ever been accused of showing toward workingmen. He was concerned about their inalienable right to work, and about their wives and little children, and about their comfort and peace of mind; indeed it was such a concern, such a love, that, had he but shown the moiety of it to his former employees, they never could have gone out on strike at all.

At five o'clock that day then, with the Chief of Police, I visited the plant to observe, and if possible to prevent the impending riot. The works had not yet closed for the day, but in the street before the black and haggard and ugly buildings where they had toiled, the strikers were gathered, and with them their wives, with bare and brawny forearms rolled in their aprons, and their children clinging timorously about their skirts. It was a gray and somber afternoon in spring, but there was in the crowd a kind of nervous excitement that might have passed for gayety, a mood that strangely travestied the holiday spirit; perhaps they regarded the strike