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VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
in Colorado during the labor wars of 1903-1904 detectives
were employed on a large scale. For reasons of space I
shall limit myself largely to these cases, which, without
exaggeration, are typical of conditions which constantly
arise in the United States. Within the last year West
Virginia has been added to the list. Incredible outrages
have been committed there by the mine guards. They
have deliberately murdered men in some cases, and, on
one dark night in February last, they
sent an armored
train into Holly Grove and opened fire with machine guns
upon a sleeping village of miners. They have beaten,
clubbed, and stabbed men and women in the effort either
to infuriate them into open war, or to reduce them to
abject slavery. Unfortunately, at this time the complete
report of the Senate investigation has not been issued,
and it seems better to confine these pages to those facts
only that careful inquiry has proved unquestionable. We
—
are fortunate in having the reports of public officials
certainly unbiased on the side of labor — to rely upon
for the facts concerning the use of thugs and hirelings
in Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Colorado during three terrible
battles between capital and labor.
The story of the shooting of Henry C. Frick by Alexander
Berkman is briefly referred to in the first chapter,
but the events which led up to that shooting have wellnigh
been forgotten. Certainly, nothing could have
created more bitterness among the working classes than
when it ordered
the act of the Carnegie Steel Company
a detective agency to send to Homestead three hundred
men armed with Winchester rifles. There was the prospect
of a strike, and it
appears that the management
was in no mood to parley with its employees, and that
nineteen days before any trouble occurred the Carnegie
Steel Company opened negotiations for the employment