Millheim Journal. [volume] (Millheim, Pa.) 1876-1984, 1877-08-09


store order, to re-establish the main
tenance of law and raise the embar-
ga on trade, which was crippling
every industry, taking money out of
every taxpayers pocket and taking
bread from the mouth of the hun
CRY. were shut up in a kennel, sur
rounded by an infuriated mob of
bowling fiends, shrieking for their
blood and using every element Of
destruction, the torch, the bullet,
and the bludgeon. And the next
day when these same mon were
driven by the flames into the streets
and were murderouslY pursued hy
fiendish wretches, not man went
forward to their resue or defense.
Aye, they were scarcely offered a
cup of cold water with which to
moisten their parched lips and quench
their raging thirst, engendered by
Imprisonment in an atmosphere of
smoke and flame
And then what was done toward
suppressing the infamous work of
the red. handed murderers, who,
with such diabolical GOODNESS and
systematic daring, were destroying
millions of valuable property, level
ing some of the proudeSt monuments
of CONNER cial industry and imperil-
ing the existence Of the whole city 2
For twelve hours the storm Of arson
and pillage reigned in all its fright
full fury, and then how feeble and
Ineffective was the response to the
call to duty, prompted simply by
the first law of nature, viz, self
preservation. The city was at the
mercy of the mob and only escaped
because overwrought human nature
in the persons of the rioters and pill
layers, could go no further.
There was 2 cause for all this
amazing apathy and suicidal supine-
ness. And we find it right here:
Fanatieal prejudice against capital
lists and mistaken sympathy with
men who had placed themselves out
side the pale of laws protection
and were defiantlY resisting the exc,
cution Of its cardinal mandates.
Whom the gods wish to destroy
they first make mad," was never
more strikinglY illustrated. Sow
ing the wind and reaping the
whirlwind," was never more terri
bic realized. The very moment the
strikers at Twenty eighth street
forcible compelled engineers, under
threat of their lives, to abandon
their freight trains, and thereby in
terrupted legitimate traffic, they
were clearly violators of the law.
They had a perfect right to stop
working, but they had no right to
compel other men so to do, and in
doing SO they rendered themselves
liable, under the common law and
under the statute law of this State,
to be indicted as common felOns.
And when they refused to heed the
lawful command of the Seeriff to
disperse the offense was aggravated,
and a second indictment, viz, for
riot, was rendered, liable. And
again, in forcibly OBTAINING and vir-
tually holding possession of the prop
erty of the company and of shippers
and consignees, they again deliber-
ately and wilfully violated the crimi-
nal code and rendered themselves
liable to Indictment for theft and for
grand larceny, for here they were
with the stolen property in their pos
session. -
Here, then, were men who had
thrice violated the law, who had re-
peatedly refused to disperse and sur
render to its rightful owners the
property Of which they held unlaw-
full possession, the reel pients on
every hand of the most ELUSIVE and
encouraging public sym pathy, and
this, too, not from one particular
set of men, but from almost every
class in the commu nifty, and tic
their everlastin G disgrace be it re-
corded-from none moro heartily
than from many of our citizen
soidiery! These men had been called
out, when all other measures had
failed, to maintain the majesty of
the law, which they had solemnly
sworn to uphold and enforce when
called upon so to do by the coEstitu-
ed authority of the commonwealth.
1t was not their place to utter one
syllable in regard to the merits OF
the controversy, and to do so was