The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-03-06
Congressional Committee Hears Testimony By Com missioner of Public Safety Lynch and Marshal Sulli- van.
 Former Had Never Read Law Under Which He Pretended to Act 1T Should Think Not," Re m ark d Congressman Stanley.
Mrs. Taft Again Present and
 Listens Attentively to the Evidence = Seven Chil- dren Were Routed for Bridgeport When Police Interfered. \
fspe..ial from United Press }

Washington, March 6-Comfortably furred and richly gowned Washing. tn society rubbed elbows with scan. tily clad strikers from Lawrence. to- day, while the Lawrence police off cials, Commissioner of Safety c. E. Lynch and Chief J. J. Sullivan. told of their encounters with strikers and denied clubbing women and children.
 Mrs. Taft, wife of the President, ar rived early in the session. accom- panied by her niece, Mrs. Anderson The two forced their way through
 she motley crowd standing in the big committee room until they reach. ed the dais. For few moments they stood watching Lynch on the stand until the wife of Representative Rainey. of Illinois, arose and gave Mrs. Taft a chair.
 Mrs. Taft sat next to Victor Ber ger, the Socialist from Wisconsin. N-lo Is, making the fight for the strik- CTS. AS the hearing progressed, the Presidents wife and the Socialist conversed earnestly discussing the testimony. Both leaned forward eag- erly as Sullivan. who was in charge of the police at the railway station.
 = rested after the children had been prevented from leaving Lawrence. described the scene. Sullivan flatly contradicted the testimony of the Philadelphia committee and the strike leaders.
 No one was c1ubhed or beate or abused,' he said "There was no vio- Hence. I was there to see that those women and children were treated properly. I was never 10 feet away from them and not one of them w:.s injured in any way"
 He said that he arrested the women and children because the adults in the crowd refused to tell him or not if they were the parents of the chil- dren and whether they were willing that they should leave Lawrence.
 ''The children were not thrown irl- to an auto truck" he declared. "They were picked up by strong men and placed in the truck. The women made no resistance. They were will- ing to go. They wanted to be mar tyrs"
 "You and your men made no ef- fort to prevent them making martyrs of themselves. did you?' asked Rep rensentative Stanley. "No. we were there fore anther purpose" responded Sullivan.
 Mrs. Taft and the other fashionable women in the crowd listened to Sul- livan's account of how he policed the city of Lawrence with 22,0O0 mill workers on strike with evident in- terest. They watched him eagerly as he told of women, out to picket the mill district at four o'clock in the morning. in little groups of three or four, who were anxious to be arrest ed, who wanted to offer themselves as martyrs.
 The women and children who were crowded into cells in Lawrence police tations, according to yesterdays tes- timony. were these pickets and not the women arrested at the depot, Sul- livan claimed.
 The husbands and friends of the jailed pickets brought their little cl1il- dren to the police station to- be cared for and when the women were sent to jail, the children were taken from them to be sent to the poor farm. This, he added. was the reason for the scene in the station, when weep. ing children and screaming women were parted.
 Washing gton, March 6-The Lawrence defense was continued before the House Rules committee today, when city officials appeared to answer strik- CTS charges that defenseless women and children were clutbed and inno- cent strikers "railroaded" into police courts.
 C. r. Lynch, commissioner of pub lie safety, declared that while he saw the women and children in the lookup, he did not know just why they were there. except that they were being held until their cases could be disposed of. He said they were not arrested but merely detained
 Just what do you mean by the term placed under arrest'?" demand ed Representative Lenroot, (Rep, Wis.) Lynch admitted that he knew nothing about law. He explained that, he was in charge of the po- lice he had no authority over the mili- tia.
 William D. Haywood, one of the strike leaders, arrived here today and expects 70 take up the defense of the Industrial Workers of the World the conducting the strike, which was denounced by President Golden of the Textile Workers Union. ard Preeident Gompers of the Ameri- can Federation of Labor as not rep resenting real labor sentiment.
 Again, today. Mrs Taft took her place on the dais behind the commit tee and followed closely Lynch's ex- planation. The commissioner discuss ed an attempt to send seven children to Bridgeport, Conn.,, on Feb 22
 Captain Sullivan asked the fathers of several said Lynch. "why they wanted to send the children away. The captain told them that the city would take care of them. The fathers said that they had been told that if the city took care of the children they vnpld bp rIaced in institutions vphara