Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/327

 as an opportunity for the sensation lacking in their monotonous lives. There were several hulking fellows loafing about whom the Chief of Police recognized as private detectives, and as a first step in preventing disorder, he ordered these away. Presently the whistle blew its long, lugubrious blast, the crowd gathered in closer groups, and a silence fell. Sitting there with the Chief in his official buggy, I waited; the great gates of the high stockade swung slowly open, and then there issued forth a vehicle, the like of which I had never seen before, a sort of huge van, made of rough boards, that might have moved the impedimenta of an embassy. In the rear there was a door, fastened with a padlock; the sides were pierced with loop holes, and on the high seat beside the driver sat an enormous guard, with a rifle across his knees. This van, this moving arsenal containing within its mysterious interior the strike breakers, and I was told other guards ready to thrust rifles through those loop holes, moved slowly out of those high gates, lurched across the gutter into the street, and rumbled away, and as it went it was followed by a shout of such ridicule that even the guard on the front seat lost his menacing gravity and smiled himself, perhaps with some dawning recognition of the absurdity of the whole affair.

There was no riot, though when the employer came to see me the next day I could assure him of my surprise that there had been none, since there was an invitation to disorder almost irresistible in that solemn and absurd vehicle, with its rifles and loop