Anti-Syllabus and Tom Strang Killed/Tom Strang Killed
[Reprinted from John Swinton's Paper.]
TOM STRANG KILLED.
John Swinton:—I send you this account of the killing of Thomas Strang, who was shot here, a few nights ago.—John Brophy.
Troy, N. Y., August 20, 1885.
"Poor things! they have no one to steal vegetables for them now."
There was a powerful sermon in these simple words, as they were uttered, with a bitter laugh, over a dead body, a few nights ago, here in Troy. There was also a glint of that grim, terrible kind of humor in them that flashes out of a bold-spirited, reckless man when, rendered almost insane by some terrible evidence of human misery, he is full ready to curse his God.
It was in an iron-worker's cabin in South Troy, where poverty's pinch makes even little children look old, where a wolf is chained at every door, and where the Iron King rules with an iron hand.
The speaker was a stalwart iron-worker, standing beside a blood-stained pallet, upon which lay the dead body of his friend. The "poor things" he referred to were the nine starvelings of the dead iron-worker. The eldest was a pale, sad-faced boy of twelve; the youngest, a tiny infant, four weeks old. Their widowed mother, a wan, starved-looking woman, sat beside the pallet, not a tear in her eyes, but her quivering, bloodless lips giving vent to moans of anguish. Looking at the famished breast of the widow, there was something terribly suggestive in the way in which the little Infant sucked its tiny fingers. The stamp of hunger was upon the faces of the dying ten; the stamp of death was upon the face of their natural protector. Dying they, because they have feasted by stealth for the last few weeks upon the proceeds of robbery; and now the guilty thief, who has just paid the penalty of his crime, lies dead on yonder pallet; and "they have no one to steal vegetables for them now."
The interior of the cabin, though scantily furnished, bears every sign of neatness. The pine table and floor are scoured white, and a tallow dip stands flickering in a tin candle-stick that shines like silver. Everything within is neat and clean, but there is very little to be kept so. It is indeed the home of poverty, and the wolf's red eyes seem to gleam in every corner.
This is the cabin of the widow and orphans of big, brave-hearted TOM STRANG, who now lies dead on yonder pallet, shot in his tracks while gathering a trifling share of nature's bounty to feed his starving children.
A few years ago TOM STRANG was in comfortable circumstances, and had the respect and good-will of all who knew him. He had a little home of his own that he had toiled for in the mills night and day. He had a good wife and a young family growing up around him. He was steady and temperate In his habits, a model of health and strength, and he had been guaranteed life and a few other things by the Constitution of his country.
Poor STRANG was happy and hopeful of the future. He was generous, too; and, strangely enough, in one incident of his life he himself pointed the moral for the story of his death. A friend who had been crippled In the mill came to TOM STRANG one day and asked him for assistance to save his home, which was about to be sold over his head. "Certainly," said STRANG, In his prompt, manly way. "I am a poor man, of course, and often find myself pinched to pay the taxes on my own little place, but I guess I can give you a lift, for I'll live anyway, and that's all the Burdens can do." Poor STRANG! The sequel proves that he could not live unless the Burdens saw fit to allow him to live.
There came a dullness in the iron business, and shut-downs at the mills became frequent. STRANG and hundreds like him, who depended on the mills for a living, bore it patiently. They did not ask for double pay, and, because the mills only ran half time, they were willing to stand their share of reverses, waiting for better times.
But the Burden Brothers, of Troy, were not so patient, and struck for double pay; they wanted their usual dividend of $80,000 out of the iron works, whether they ran six months or twelve—their usual profits, work or play. To accomplish this capitalist feat, they resorted to the usual policy of reducing the force, lengthening their hours, and cutting their wages.
Finally, after serving fifteen years In the employ of the Burden Iron Company, it came his turn, and TOM STRANG walked the plank to drift with the tide. Thus he had drifted for the past few years, picking up odd jobs here and there, struggling along as best he could. But debts accumulated rapidly; his little home was soon mortgaged to the last penny. The usual signs of poverty began to appear in the STRANG family, in patched clothing, shoeless children, and the absence of the family from the little chapel from which young STRANG, then the finest specimen of manhood in Troy, led his young bride, thirteen years ago.
It began to be whispered about that the STRANGS were seeing hard times; but, if they were, they uttered no complaint, tor they were proud, and their distress was a family secret.
At last, however, there came a ray of sunshine through the clouds, and TOM secured what promised to be a steady job for several months on city improvements. Hope sprung again into a breast easily made happy. He could be heard every morning before daybreak whistling cheerfully as he took his long journey clear to the farthest end of the city where his work lay, and a little of the old brightness began to enter the gloomy home of the STRANGS.
But, alas for the man who cannot live without depending on his fellow-men to let him! He had scarcely worked a week when a body of men met, drew a line, and said that no man who lived outside that line should work inside it. Poor Strang's little cabin was just twelve feet over the line, and Tom was discharged, denied once more honorable access to the bounty of nature through the medium of honest labor.
This was Strang's last job. He went sadly home to his wife and little ones, his big, brave heart crushed. How they lived since no one knew. Men saw the powerful form of Tom Strang wasting away day by day, yet never knew that the disease that was gnawing at the noble fellow's vitals was Hunger. His children never begged, and even they, poor innocents! never dreamed that he was starving himself to keep life in them as long, as possible.
But before brutal man had finished his work, Mother Nature came to the rescue. The crops appeared, and as Tom Strang stood perhaps on the brow of the hill near the little cabin which contained his starving family, and his hungry eyes, sweeping the Hudson, feasted upon fields of corn and vegetables on Erastus Corning's Island—is it a wonder if he said to himself, "Necessity knows no law," or cried, in the bitterness of his spirit: "First my family, next my God, and curse my country and all its laws!"?
On that island, one night after midnight, TOM STRANG met his death. While leaving the island with a pillow-case full of potatoes, he was pursued by a watchman, and, although his burden impeded his progress, he clung to it with the clutch of a miser to gold, while bullets whistled past his head. He clung to it because it contained the morrow's food for his starving children. He clung to it until the cowardly, murderous brute behind drove two bullets into his defenseless body, and he tumbled headlong in the path. Then, true to his cowardly nature, the brute who shot him dared not touch him.
Bleeding to death, he crossed the Hudson; suffering agony, he dragged his bleeding body up the steep bank, and, with a last effort, pushed open the door of his cabin and fell in, to die among his starvelings, for whom he had made his last effort and gave up his life.
Their pitiful cries pierced the hearts of the men in the Steel Works. Borne across the river on the still morning air, they rung in the ears of his slayer on Corning's Island. But they never reached the ears of the Burdens.
Yet the weak, pitiful cries of that widow and her starvelings may linger in our native air until their thin volume is swelled by oppression, until it assumes the proportions of a mighty roar of maddened men. And then, Retribution!
"Justifiable homicide," says the coroner's jury. "Justifiable Hell!" grinds out a brawy iron-worker. "A cow would have been simply driven out of that potato field, not riddled with bullets. But, then," he continued, "animals are valuable; animals have owners, and STRANG had none."
Among men "live and let live" is a thing of the past; and, as civilization progresses, Murder assumes newer, safer and more enticing shapes.
Next year three costly blast furnaces will mark the spot where TOM STRANG fell, but not a stick will mark TOM STRANG'S grave.
Let me here write his epitaph :
IN MEMORY OF
THOMAS STRANG,
Who was shot on Corning's island,
Aug. 7, 1885,
while Stealing a few Potatoes to feed his Starving
Children.
MAY HE REST IN PEACE.
Note.—This outrage is only one instance of the hundreds of thousands occurring every day under all climes of the globe, and which never come to daylight If Socialism were the law of America, such outrages would be impossible. Socialism guarantees to every man and woman an independent human existence. Abolish the wage system, and join the
SOCIALISTIC LABOR PARTY.