Page:Karl Liebknecht - Militarism (1917).djvu/178

146 with militarism and contributed so much to the defeat of the workmen by means of the famous injunctions and wholesale imprisonments that the leader of the strike, Debs, attested: “Not the railroads, not the army defeated us, but the power of the courts of the United States.”

It still remains true that, though the militia failed frequently and though the strikers were frequently armed, it was the military power that decided the defeats of the workers in all the cases mentioned; and subsequently, too, the strikers in America “were in a majority of cases quelled by the aid of the local police, state militia or Federal troops,” also aided, to be sure, by “government by injunction.” Almost without an exception the strikes ended thus with the defeat of the workmen, according to Hillquit, who seems to be somewhat too pessimistic in this connection.

Canada's “free” soil was reddened by the blood of workmen at Hamilton on November 24, 1906. During a collision with striking railroadmen the