The record-union., 1894-07-07
Special to the REcoRp.UxroN.

Special 10 the hECORD-ON1ONs
CHICAGO. July 6.-With flaming torches
lawless hordes of firebugs are at work at
a score of points in the south half OF Chi
cago. Fires are raging in every direction
among the numerous railroad yards,
hundreds of cars and tens of thousands
of dollars worth of merchandise have
gone up in smoke or been carried off by
the now frenzied mob of rioters. In
cendiarism is rampant. Alarm after
alarm has followed in quick succession
all day, and tonight at IL O'Clock glare
reflected from the heavens shows that the
disorderly pastime continues unabated.
From early morning until this hour
(midnight) reports of fresh fires followed
each other with startling rapiditY, being
confined, however, principally TO rail-
road rolling stock and buildings, against
which thus far the greatest part of the
mobs' fury has been directed.
Early this marning a blaze started
among some overturned cars at Kensing
ton, quickly communicating to other
tracks filled with long lines of cars.
Many containing merchandise were soon
raging furiously, famed by a strong
wind. There was at this point total Of
eighty cars wiped out.
At the stockyards one blaze after an
other was reported, and from the outly-
ing districts came urgent calls for engines
and police protection, increasing in fre-
quency.
But with the falling shades of night
came the climax of the fiery festival. In
the Panhandle yards. from Fifty-fifth to
Sixty-third streets, eighty stock cars are
on fire. Fhe tracks, containing from
1000 to 1000 cars, half of them loaded,
will be total loss. No water being at
hand the fire must burn itself out.
The Panhandle station at Sixty-third
street was also fired and destroyed.
The Grand Trunk yards at Elston are
sea of flame. Five hundred boxcars are
supposed to have been burned, and all
efforts to check the flames have been
futile.
While directing the movements of the
Eleventh Battalion at Fifty-frst street,
Fire Marshal Fitzpatrick was seized by
thoroughly frenzied mobs of fire. bugs
and thrown into pond. from which he
was rescued by the police more dead than
alive. Everything at this point will
probably be total loss.
At Hyde Park, near the Worlds Fair
grounds, the ashes of forty cars are now
smoldering, and word has just come in
that after numerous efforts the mob has
succeeded in firing the Illinois Central
shops at Burnside.
At the stock yards tonight about fifty
toughs. some of whom are railroad men,
were skulking from point to point, and
set large number of fires. Their meth
DDS were thoroughly unique. Loading
several handcars with buckets of waste
and oil, they would glide around among
the cars in the darkness, lighting wads of
stuff. which would be thrown into the
open doors of the cars as they passed by
them. Fires sprang up on every hand.
and no organized effort on the part of the
police seemed to be under way to inter-
cept them. This is the banner district of
the city, if not of the entire country, for
all-around toughs, and it is as much as
mans life is worth to interfere with
them.
Troops are hurrying south; company
after company, under heavy marching
orders, are moving to the turbulent
scenes in the center of the city. The
aggregate losses of 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 mechanism, are utterly ruined.
Thousands of cars and untold quantities
OF merchandise of every imaginable de-
scription have fed the flames and gorged
the larders of the thieves. the valuable
locomotives have been wrecked and dis
abled and miles of tangled wires and
prostrate poles litter the ground.
Telephone. telegraph, electric light and
fire alarm wires are now the special OBJ
iect of attack, the plugging of fire alarm
boxes constituting new and doubly
dangerous clement in the tremendous
wave of ineendiarism sweeping over the
southwest portion of the city, prevent
inq. as it does, notice being received OF
the starting of the fires, until. with the
moor water supply in these outlying dis
tricts. fire has attained such headway