gave life or movement to the place. The very snow upon the paths that crossed the yard, paths trodden daily in happier times by human hundreds, lay now untracked and undisturbed. Idle men loitered along the streets of the city, or stood aimlessly on sunny corners. Merchants were despondent and fearful. The business of the town was in a state of alarming depression. The saloons alone retained their normal prosperity. By and by came hardship, destitution, misery. Not all workmen are sufficiently provident to lay by enough to tide them over a rainy day. Many of those who were, found their resources drained as the days of the strike grew long. The strike-fund voted by the union was but a pittance in comparison with the needs which it helped to supply, and even that fund drew toward exhaustion with the prolongation of the struggle.
Perhaps those who suffered most were day-laborers not affiliated with any union, employed outside the mills and factories, whose occupations, indirectly affected by the strike, and by the general business depression, were now closed to them. They, indeed, were in sore straits. Public aid was asked for, but the response was neither quick nor liberal. It is one thing to sympathize with the victims of disaster; it is quite another thing to open your purse to them.
It was the first of February when the strike was called. Through all that month severe weather prevailed. There were howling blizzards, unprecedented snowfalls, arctic temperatures. It is no wonder that by the first of March the suffering among the poor had become wide-spread, intense and tragic.
And all because the Malleson Manufacturing Company had dismissed, and would not take back into its employ, one big, red-haired, raw-boned, good-natured workman; and because his fellow-laborers would not work without him.
High cause indeed for which to plunge and hold a
