The Rathdrum tribune. (Rathdrum, Idaho) 1903-1963, 1917-02-02
REIGNs OF TERROR
Times During Which Law and Or
der Are Dethroned.
WHEN CITIES GO STARK MAD.
This Has Happened Many Times In
Different Lands, the Most Notable
Example Being Frenzied Paris In the

Revolution and In the Commune.
During the instruction in Ireland,
which had its center in the historic old
capital of that long troubled isle and
which resulted in the execution of sew
eral of its leaders, including Sir Roger
Easement, Dublin went mad-stark,
raving mad. 1t is a way cities have
sometimes. Then, just as single indi-
diduals do when smitten with insanity,
they perpetrate all sorts of horrible
deeds that in their saner moments they
would be the first to repudiate and con
denim.
Paris was attacked by just such a
violent fit of mental alteration during
the stormy and blood soaked days of
the revolution and again Immediately
after the last Franco German war.
Her revolutionists in the latter event
called themselves Communists, and
these frenzied people did pretty much
as did the Dublin insurrectionists-that
is to say, they seized public buildings,
threw up street barbados and in
trenched themselves in open strategic
spaces. The result in the end, too
was the same. They were overpowered
by the regular troops, and the bulk Of
them were killed or made prisoners,
but not until fourth part of Paris
had been laid in ruins, property worth
I32 100000 being destroyed
To find anything in London approx
mating to the Dublin madness we
must go back to the year 1880, when
Lord George Gordon's armed rioters
held England's capital at their mercy
for several days. On this occasion
Newgate jail was stormed and set on
fire, after the prisoners had been re-
leased, the Bank of England was be-
sieged and hundreds of houses,
churches, shops and other buildings
We're set on fire and destroyed.
Bristol's turn came fifty years later,
during the reform agitation of 1881.
The city, long seething with political
excitement, suddenly exploded like a
! powder magazine to which lighted
match is applied, and in the course of
a day and night 800 of her citizens
were killed by the military or burnt
to death in the fires they themselves
had kindled, and most of her princi-
pal buildings, including the mansion
house, the bishops palace and above
! 100 shops and private dwellings,, were
heaps of blackened ruins.
In 1885, Newport, Monmouthshre.
underwent a similar experience, but
the mayor called out the troops with
commendable promptitude, and after
a brief but bloody conflict in the mar
ket square the maddened rioters fled
| leaving the place a shambles. Or
what n fiery Welsh mob is capable
however, when it is allowed to get out
of hand, was shown In 1882 at Trede
gar in the same county, when the
| miners there, infatuated by an attack
made on n Protestant religious meet.
ing by some Irish Roman Catholics
stormed the quarter of the town In
which the latter lived and literally
wiped 1t off the face of the earth.
In 1913 five white mechanics work
Ing underground at the New Kleinfon-
tein mine, near johannesburg. were
asked to assent to an alteration of
hours that would involve their work
ing for the future on Saturday after
Moons. They refused and We're dis
missed whereupon practically all the
white miners on the Rand came out on
strike
That week saw johannesburg given
up to scenes similar to those enacted
in Dublin. Bands of armed madmen
fought the soldiers with rifles, with re-
yolvers, with dynamite bombs. The
railway station was set ON fire and de
stfoyed. The offices of the Star news
paper We're blown to pieces with giant
powder. To venture into the streets
was to gamble with death. In the end.
of course, the military got the upper
hand-they always debut not until
some 200 of the strikers and their sym.
pathizers had been killed and wounded.
Hunger sometimes drives cities crazy.
The people suffer until they feel they
can suffer no longer. Then the mad
ness mounts into their brains, and
things-terrible things-happen. Milan,
for instance, went mad from this cause
in 1898 owing to the long continued
scarcity and dearness of bread. Gaunt.
skeleton like women, stripped to the
waist, led the rioters and urged them
by fanatic cries and gestures to try
conclusions with the soldiers.
Milan ran red with blood. In one
short afternoon eighty-two of the hun
ger maddened people were shot dead
Many hundreds were wounded Not a
bakers shop in the city escaped being
looted, and most of them were utterly
destroyed into the bargain. But in the
end the people got their way. The
price of bread was reduced.
Belfast has periodical crazy fits. One
of the worst occurred in 1856, when
eleven people We're killed outright and
more than 200 were wounded
New York city, too, had flash of
This Kind ll1l.i1nc tho Il rn e. ,in+.. nf LII.