The Forrest City times., 1894-07-06
THE CRUCIAL POINT

CHcAeo, July 2.-The crucial point in the railroad strike will be req .hed within twenty-four hours from mid night. This is the opinion confidently expressed at headquarters of the rail- road managers at late pour. It is likewise the first expression emanating from the managers end since the com mencement of hotilities, with which the representatives are in complete ac cord Both elements are sanguine that the beginning of the end will be in sight before sundown Tuesday.
 As to the means by which this desira- ble consummation is to be attained, however, there is radical difference of opinion. The general managers pro- fcss to believe that the extraordinary injunction issued to-day by Judges Wood and Grosscup will prove to be worthy of the terse yet ephigrammat- ical designation given it by the first named members of the federal judi B veritable dragnet of verbage: one of those peculiar instruments that punishes an individual for doing cer- tain thing and is equally merciless if he doesn't do it-it is difficult to under stand how the strikers can maintain their present policy and at the same time evade its operation or escape its influence. Even personal service is not an absolute necessity to its legal en- forcement. According to the law as expounded by United States District let ,rl lication of the degree in a widely-cir- culated paper, its posting in a public place where it is certain to be read and its contents disseminated; or the formal reading to demonstrative crowd by a deputy marshal, may be re- lied upon as constituting sufficient service to place those guilty of breach of its provisions under the ban of the law. Under this construction thou sands of strikers might be arrested day after day and summarily dealt with for contempt of court. If it is carried out there will be no need, so it is believed, for the employment either of state militia or federal troops. A goodly force of deputy marshals armed with power to make arbitrary arrests, and with the knowledge on the part of the strikers that, once within the clutches of the law, peremptory sen- tence to prison for contempt instead of preliminary hearing, bail. and a final trial months hence, when the echoes of the strike may have died away-will be their portion, should the managers create such combine of circumstance as to cause the strikers to pause and reason before acting.
 But the strikers themselves reason differently. At their headquarters this evening the interference of the federal court was denounced in vigor- ous language by one and all of the hundreds if not thousands of railroad men that passed in and out, and the most intelligent of the number voiced the general sentiment in the declaration that the far-reaching and dragnet character of the iniunc- tion would tend toward defeating the very ends to which it was directed. Instead of inducing men to return to work, so it was contended, it would re- suit in driving out the thousands of members of railroad organizations af- tiliated with the union or apparently in sympathy with it's present operators. simply because these men would not tolerate the cracking over the shoul- ders of their fellows the lash which, some day or other, under similar cir, cumstances, might he used as lash for their own shoulders.
 The opinion was confidently ex- pressed in the camp tonight that the engineers and fremen of every road that attempted toresume operations by virtue of the injunction would immediately leave their posts, and that consequently the last state of such roads would be worse than the first. Not only this, but it was asserted that it needed simply the formal request of the officers of the union to bring out every man. woman and child in Chicago identified with organized la bor in accordance with the formal resolution adopted yesterday.
 The federal and county officers con- tinue to swear in deputies, and an army of over 2,000 of the toughest look ing citizens that Cook county can pro duce, armed to the teeth and wearing the insignia of state or national dig nifty, is subject to orders tonight, and will, doubtless, be brought into service tomorrow. Lights were burning in the windows of the government and county buildings alike at midnight, and the authorities were preparing for any emergency.
 THE PlII MAN ROXCOTT