shot in a new war on the rights of the city's workingmen; and he did not hesitate to so express himself, nor did he hesitate to offer his sympathy, and such assistance as he was able to give, to the strikers.
The businessmen of the city, whose interests were likely to suffer severely in the event of a prolonged strike, presented a formal request, both to the company and to its employees, to submit the matter in dispute between them to arbitration. And both refused. The men on the ground that their demand was too unequivocally plain and just to be submitted to the uncertain judgment of arbitrators; and the company on the ground that it could not, without loss of self-respect, concede to any one the right to say whom it should or should not employ at its works.
So the strike went on. The plant remained idle. The fires in the furnaces were drawn. Only watchmen remained on duty. Some half-finished orders, sent to a smaller mill of another company to be completed, precipitated a strike at that plant also; and then the workmen of a third mill, infected with the spirit of revolt, determined to take advantage of the situation to better their own condition, and joined in the general upheaval. The original strike had not been called in exact accordance with union rules. The men had been too precipitate in their action, and some of the union officials felt that they should have been sent back to work in order that union discipline might prevail. But their cause was so entirely just, the conduct of the company had been so flagrant, and its purpose so plain, the sympathy of union labor in the city was so overwhelmingly with the men, that their strike was endorsed, not only by the union to which they belonged, but by the federated unions of the city as well. With this backing the fight went on. Silence hung over the Malleson mills. No smoke ascended from the chimneys. No roar of forge or rattle of machinery was heard there. No sight or sound or soul of industry
