Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/162

 126 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS think sufficiently ill; therefore it is worth while to record that later, when its effects were ascertained, Mr. George F. Baer, president of the Reading Railroad, publicly characterized it as the most beneficial thing that had ever happened to coal operators. Mr. Roosevelt had to deal with another strike in another manner in December of the year following, when he sent Federal troops to Gold- field, Nevada, to protect life and property from the violence inspired by the Western Federation of Miners. But a far worse trouble than either of these occurred at Fort Brown, Brownsville, Texas, the rights and wrongs of which were so confused in the public mind that Mr. Roosevelt s course was open to severer and more lasting criticism. On the night of August 13, 1906, a riot took place in which one citizen was killed, another wounded, and the Chief of Police seriously injured. Soldiers of the regular army of a colored regiment were accused of this by the townspeople. Bad blood had been existing for some time, and the theory (adopted by the Secretary of War after an investi gation) was that from nine to twenty men from a battalion of 170 had planned this riot by way of revenge upon the civilians. A midnight sortie from barracks, a firing into certain houses, a re turn to their places in the ranks following a call to arms, appeared to be what had happened. But as silence and concealment impenetrably veiled