New-York tribune., 1919-06-21
A SeruantIess Citv
By Stanley Frost

(%AN you imagine city from which
all the-more less-kndly, cour-
teous and serviceabe people who min
lister to the thousand daily wants of modern
life have vanished? One without walters
in the hotels, "hello girls" on the phones,
cooks in the kitchens, emptyers of garbage,
icemen, milkmen, breadmen, deliverymen,
chauffeurs laundresses? One without
even motormen to leave you standing on
the corner or tiremen to put you out when
you catch fire? One without even news
papers or postmen?
That was Winnipeg during the general
strike. Of course, industry was completely
stopped, and the cost of that ran high into
millions. But the stoppage of the mills
does not bother most of us till months
afterward, when a shortage of something
we want has sent the price up, or the COM
pany where we have invested our savings
reports that there will be an assessment
instead of a dividend this year.
The lack of telephones, though, hits us
mighty hard and mighty promptly The
garbage accumulates fast. We miss our
daily papers. 1t is discomforting to think
we have got to try the old line of buckets
system if house catches fire. We know
Immediately that there is a strike when
these things happen. 1t was on these, far
more than on the stoppage of industry that
the strikers there counted to force the city
to surrender to whatever they might de-
mand.
But it didn't work There was a counter
revolution of indignant citizens, and every
thing necessary done and done fairly
we'll and promptly Too many Americans were
raised on farms; there are too many jack of
all trades among US. 1t was, nevertheless, an
experience unique among American cities
that Winnipeg went through
The city hremen struck among the first.
The. danger was immediate. So the first
duty of the counter revolutionary Citizens
Committee of One Thousand, with it's six
thousand members, was to man the fire
houses. 1t put in two men for every one
that walked out, and put them there inside
of ten minutes. There has been no real con-
aagration in Winnipeg, though there have
been many fires. And you will find old city
officials who will tell you that on at least
two occasions the volunteer forces saved
situations which would have brought dis
ooeoA uHuCi Ihe, Cuey say, leSS elllCleHC
methods of the regulars
Winnipeg had great resource in its
avators. The boys from that town took to
the air in droves, and there were nearly
hundred veterans ready for daredevil duty
Part of them were put on the fire trucks
as drivers There was time when Chief
Croker's "Red Devil" had reputation for
speed in New York, but the man who has
seen one of those aviators swing a ladder
turn on one wheel would turn with ennui
from anything New York ever observed
One of them hit bridge rail once and
went up six feet. He never looked around
but stepped on the gas, and when the truck
lit it going the right way
There was great fear of rioting for a
while, for at first the forces of law and
order were small. The precautions taken
are gossip, for the officials in charge do not
tell. But the whispered word is that there
are thirty heavy trucks, each with a mounted
machine gun and each with two moro avia-
tors, one to drive and one to shoot
There is n story whispered even more
softly Outside the city, at Fort Garry, are
six aeroplanes, which came IN on the wing
Aviators with them, of course, and bombs
In the racks. But tho bombs are something