"The Cruel Striker War" - NIU Digital Projects

gained credibility if sabotage could be blamed for derailments and
"hundreds of minor mishaps" otherwise "chargeable to
incompetency." 40
Historians must acknowledge that the "evidence" for the
Galesburg "Dynamite Conspiracy" is pathetically thin. Of course,
the authorities never investigated whether this represented an
attempted management set-up, so it should be no surprise that the
evidence indicating this would remain circumstantial as well. Still,
circumstantial evidence against management and its agents was
much stronger than that against labor for several important reasons.
First, the Galesburg charges marked but one of a series of
sensational and unprecedented claims by detectives to have
unearthed "dynamite conspiracies" in the late 1880s. These grew
from the successful prosecution of eight anarchist labor leaders in
Chicago's Haymarket Affair of 1886. The conviction and hanging
for a bomb explosion in police ranks near a rally for the eight-hour
workday inspired similar investigations, trials and prosecutions.
From the start of the strike, some of the CB&Q's partisans had
charged local unionists with "the same spirit that landed [August]
Spies & Co. on the gallows." 41 It is more likely that detectives and
police agencies found an effective charge than that workers became
suddenly and nationally violent.
The indictment targeted veteran unionists rather than young
and less prudent hotheads in the ranks of the strikers. George A.
Clark had started on the CMT, served as sergeant in the
community's regiment during the Civil War, and returned to
become an early member of the BLE; he had particularly irritated
the special police by repeatedly filing formal complaints against
them with the municipal authorities. Another worker active in the
strike, George D. Meily, had actually retired from the railroad. The
two faced criminal charges filed in mid-summer, supplemented
with a November indictment for "conspiracy to do an unlawful
act." 42 Most importantly, the prosecutors offered their own honest
judgment of the evidence. In December 1888, they dropped the
charges of criminal activity entirely and, after several continuances,
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