"The Cruel Striker War" - NIU Digital Projects

happy in their retirement." For even more hostile accounts, see the Burlington Saturday
Evening Post, March 3, 1888 which expressed shock that the strikers would "go so far as
to fix the price per mile for both engineers and firemen." That of April 14 repeated the
CB&Q story that the strike had "totally collapsed."
32. A report on this initial incident appeared in the RR, March 24, 1888.
33. Such clashes, sometimes armed encounters, took place regularly through the spring
and summer. See, for example, "A Shooting Episode," RR, June 9, 1888, and Salmon, The
Burlington Strike, 400-09.
34. Citizens filed complaints against the special police in the council meetings reported in
RR, April 14, 21, 1888. Initially, authorities may have replied to citizens' formal protests
by filing of criminal charges against them. See Cases 1128, 1130, 1199, 1248, 1288.
1289, 1290, 1291, 1292, 1310and 1311, filed on April 13, June 8, 13, and November 12,
1888 in the previously cited volume of Knox County Criminal Records, 128, 129, 130,
139, 140, 155, 171. Cases 1279, 1280, 1292 where the accused were released on their
own recognizance or where charges were dropped seemed to have involved non- strikers
or, perhaps, strikebreakers involved in such clashes. For the discussion of the election in
this and the following two paragraphs, see "Citizens' Convention" and "Liberal
Primaries," RR, March 31, and "City Election," RR, April 7, 1888.
35. Colville's Directory lists the labor aldermen for 1883-84, 75, 90 and 1887-88, 152,
172. For Charles, N.P. and A. W. Ericson—all locally well-known Swedish employees of
the railroad at Galesburg, see Johnson, Svenskarne i Illinois, 449-50, or Williamson's
translation, Swedes in Knox County, 62. Peter E. Erickson enlisted as a private from
Morris, Illinois March 3,1862 in Co. H, 53rd Illinois. Adjutant General, State of Illinois,
Roster of Officers and Enlisted Men (9 vols.; Springfield: State of Illinois, 1900) which
material is posted on the WWW as part of the Civil War Research Database at
. A Charles Erickson was, incidentally,
an officer of the Scandinavian branch of the SLP in Chicago according to the directories
in The Socialist. Hinckley's name is sometimes given as "Louis" as well as "Lewis."
36. See Fink, Workingmen's Democracy, 224-25.
37. This and the following paragraph are based largely upon "Shot to Death," RR, May 5,
1888, although Salmon discussed the incident as well in The Burlington Strike, 408-12.
Heburg's warrant is filed as Case 1282 in Knox County Criminal Records, 142.
38. The Rev. J.W. Bradshaw, who presided over Newall's funeral, had also delivered
lectures on such topics as "The Labor Problem" and other social issues. Before the close
of the strike, he moved on, perhaps under pressure from his church. RR, March 10, 17,
September 29, 1888. See also, for Newall, Colville's Directory . . . 1887-88, 216.
39. McMurry, Great Burlington Strike of 1888, 193-94, and for accounts in the RR, see
infra, note 39.
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