The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1894-07-12
APPLIED THE TORCH
fNCENDIARIsM is RAMPANT IN THE
CHICAGO YARDS

is RAMPANT IN THE
CHICAGO YARDS.
thousands OF Cars Arc Burned and
nm Enormous mount of MerchlM-
disc Is Destroyed or Stolen a
Night OF Terror.
Chicago, July with flaming torch
lawless hordes of firebugs were at work
last night at IL score OF points in the
south half Of Chicago Fires We're rag
ing in every direction among the nClner-
GUS railroad yards, thousands Of cars and
tens of thousands of dorrars worth Of
mel chandise went up i'll smoke or We're
carried off by the now frenZied mobs Of
rioters. Incendiarism was rampant,
alarm after alarm followed in quick sue
cesson all night and from early morn
ing until midnight reports of fresh fires
followed each other with startling rapid
ity, being confined, however, principally
to railroad rolling stock and buildings,
against which, thus far, the greater part
of the mob's fury has been directed.
Early in the morning blaze started
among some overturned cars at kensing-
ton, quickly communicating to other
tracks filled with long lines of cars,
many containing valuable merchandise
were soon blazing furiously. Famed by
strong winds there were at this point u
total of eighty cars wiped out. At the
stock yards one blaze after another was
reported, and from the outlying districts
came urgent calls for engines and police
protection, increasing in frequency.
But with the falling shades of night
came the climax of the fiery festival.
The Pan Handle yards from Fifty-hfth
to Sixty-third streets, eight blocks, were
a mass of fire. Ten tracks, containing
from a thousand to two thousand cars,
half of them loaded, is total loss No
water being at hand the fire burned itself
out. The Pan Handle station at Sixty
third street was also fired and destroyed.
The Grand Trunk yards at Elston was
sea of flames. Five hundred box cars
are supposed to have been burned. All
efforts to check the flames were futile.
The flag shanties and other railroad prop
erty also burned, and no water except
one stream from a plug at Fifty-frst
street could be obtained. While directing
the movements of the Eleventh battalion
at this point Fire Marshal Fitzpatrick
was seized by thoroughly frenzied mob
of firebugs and thrown into pond, from
which he was rescued more dead than
alive.
At Hyde Park, near the worlds fair
grounds, the ashes of forty cars are now
ismouldering and after numerous efforts
the mob has succeeded in firing the Hi
nois Central shops at Burnside.
At the stock yards about fifty toughs,
few of whom were railroad men, skulked
from point to point and set large hum-
Der of fires. Their method was thor
oughly unique. Loading several hand
cars with buckets of waste and Gil,
they would glide around among the cars
in the darkness, lighting wads of the in
fammable stuff, which would be thrown
into the open doors of the cars as they
passed by them. Fires sprung up OH
every hand and no organized effort on the
part of the police seemed to be under way
to intercept them. The aggregate Of the
losses to the railroads will be enormous.
Miles of their tracks have been ruined by
the fierce heat, hundreds Of switch and
signal towers with their expensive
nechr nism utterly ruined. Thousands
of cars and untold quantities of merchan-
disc of every imaginable description have
fed the flames and gorged the larders OF
thieves. Locomotives have been wrecked
and disabled; miles of tangled wires and
PROSTATE poles litter the ground.
Only One residence has been burned
thus far as direct result of the III
cendiaries work, and that one was il
the stock yards district, and business
buildings have escaped altogether. But
the wanton destruction of railway prop
erty continues, unchetked and with in
creasing destructiveness. The maddenct
mobs, worked UP to the highest pitch ol
fury, paralleled the scenes of the com
mune, and it appears as though nothing
short of a miracle can prevent an armet
demonstration against them and the sac
rifice of many lives. ~
To illustrate the tactics resorted to by
the incendiaries to hamper the work O.
the fire department empty i cartridge:
were forced into the key holes of the fir,
alarm boxes, fremen were knocked dow1
with stones and bricks, and while work
ing at fires the horses Of the department
were stolen.
The stoning of incoming trains was
common pastime with the mobs, and sew
eral persons were more or less injured
by flying missiles. One engineer on
Rock Island train was so badly injured
that it was at first supposed that he wa
dead. The assaults of the mob, how
ever, were not met with passive re
sistance which characterized the cours
pursued yesterday. On two occasions a
least, their attacks were met with &C
curately aimed lead During a riot in tn
morning over an incoming milk train a
Kensington a deputy United State
marshal shot and killed two strikers, an,
during the afternoon the deputies guard
ing an incoming Baltimore & Ohio pas
senger train replied to volley of shot
and stones which the strikers Showers
upon them by turning their revolver
loose, killing four of their assailants an,
wounding number of others. !k{ tY
Of the situation in general it may
said to have broadened and strengthene
it's grip. The most significant feature o
it is the carrying of the strike East t
Cleveland, tying up all the connection
of the seaboard trunk lines there, wit
the promise that by tomorrow it wi
reach the trunk lines themselves and S
practically reach the Atlantic seaboar
by tying up all roads at Buffalo. Thu
the strike would extend from ocean t
ocean. There is no notable relief at til
points heretofore placed under embargo
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