and all had smashed down it groups attacked the groups and also at needed mo ments and destroyed property so as to afford the the pretext of calling out the ck the iron heel had been a bloody strike the police had broken countless heads with their riot clubs and the death list had been by the turning loose of a machine gun on the from the of the special delivery company in consequence the men were sullen and they wanted bloody and revenge beaten on their chosen field they were ripe to seek revenge by means of political action they still maintained their labor organization and this gave them strength in the struggle that was on s chance for election grew stronger and stronger day by day and more their support to the until even laughed when the and the chicken fell into labor became while it packed the meetings with mad enthusiasm it was to the of the old party the old party were usually greeted with empty halls though occasionally they encountered full halls where they were so roughly handled that more than once it was necessary to call out the police history was making fast the air was with things happening and impending the country was on the verge of hard times caused by a series of under the these periods of hard times were as inevitable as they were absurd prosperity always brought calamity this of course was due to the excess of profits that was piled up the years wherein the difficulty of abroad of the had become difficult were working short time many great were standing idle against the time when the should be gone and wages were being cut right and left also the great strike had been broken two thousand along with their five thousand in the metal working trades had been defeated in as bloody a strike as had ever the united states pitched battles had been fought with the small armies of armed put in the field by the associations the black hundreds appearing in scores of wide scattered places had destroyed property and in consequence a hundred thousand regular soldiers of the united states had been called out to put a frightful end to the whole affair a of the labor strike � these were in purpose and practice and everything except name the private soldiers of the they were thoroughly organized and well armed and they were held in readiness to be hurled in special trains to any part of the country where labor went out on strike or was locked out by the only those curious times could have given rise to the amazing spectacle of one a notorious commander of strike who in swept across the united states in special trains from new york to san with an army of twenty five hundred men fully armed and equipped to break a strike of the san street car men such an act was in direct of the laws of the land the fact that this act and thousands of similar acts went goes to show how completely the was the creature of the the iron heel leaders had been executed many others had been to prison while thousands of the rank and file of the had been into bull pens and treated by the soldiers the years of prosperity were now to be paid for all were all were falling and amidst the general of prices the price of labor of all the land was with labor was striking here there and and where it was not striking it was being turned out by the the papers were filled with tales of violence and blood and through it all the black hundreds played their part riot and wanton destruction of property was their function and well they performed it the whole regular army was in the field called there by the actions of the black all cities and pen � in a strike in in the latter part of the nineteenth century it happened that many of the were confined in a bull pen by the troops the practice and the name continued in the twentieth century the name only and not the idea was imported from russia the black hundreds were a development out of the secret agents of the and their use arose in the labor struggles of the nineteenth century there is no of this no less an authority of the times than d united states of labor is responsible for the statement from his book entitled the battles of labor is quoted the declaration that in some of the great historic strikes the themselves have acts of violence that have deliberately provoked strikes in order to get rid of stock and that freight cars have been by agents during railroad strikes in order to increase the towns were like armed and were shot down like dogs out of the vast army of the the strike were and when the strike were by the labor the troops always appeared and crushed the then there was the as yet it was not necessary to have recourse to the secret law only the regularly organized was out and it was out everywhere and in this time of terror the regular army was increased an additional hundred thousand by the government never had labor received such an all around the great captains of industry the had for the first time thrown their full weight into the breach the struggling had made these associations were practically middle affairs and now compelled by hard times and crashing and aided by the great captains of industry they gave organized labor an awful and decisive defeat it was an all powerful but it was an of the lion and the lamb as the middle class was soon to learn labor was bloody and sullen but crushed yet its defeat did not put an end to the hard times the banks 