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The forced quiet that pervaded the opposing armies served only to increase the anxiety of the observing. Every man who had any direct interest in the contest seemed to have a chip on his shoulder. At ten o'clock the strike was to be extended to all connecting lines, the switching yards and stock yards. When the hour arrived the switchmen threw up their caps and quit.
The surreptitious clause ran to this effect: That railroad companies were permitted to exact from their employees overtime work for extra compensation. This practically made the whole law a negation. So it turned out; for in August, 1892, the switchmen employed by various railroad lines converging at Buffalo struck for shorter hours and more pay.
It was the first appointed board of this description which was to pass on the clamorous demands by the railway employes for higher wages. No sooner had the roads been returned under the new law, and before the board was even appointed, than a strike broke out among the switchmen and yardmen, whose patience had apparently been exhausted.
I soon found that standing up in the bay window of an office, watching the switchmen do the yard work and doing it yourself, were two entirely different propositions. When I first went in between two cars to make a coupling, I thought my time had come for sure. I fixed the link and pin in one car, and then ran down to the next and fixed the pin there.
The brakemen refused to join the engine-men, though sympathizing with them, but the switchmen were easily persuaded. The switchman of a decade ago could always be counted upon to fight. In behind his comb, tooth-brush and rabbit's foot, he carried a neatly folded, closely written list of grievances upon which he was ready to do battle. Peace troubled his mind.
Here the engine-men, trainmen and switchmen met, but the radical element was in the majority, and the suggestions of the heads of the various Brotherhoods that the strike be called off were howled down by the unterrified. It was at this meeting that a tall, powerful, but mild mannered man, stood up in the face of all the opposing elements and advised that the strike be ended at once.
"One of the switchmen near where the wreck was, caught a lot of cats, that must have been living out in the fields all Summer," went on the agent, "but they were all sorts of colors. None was pure black, so I knew they could not be yours. I'm sorry." "Yes, so are we," replied Nan. "Well, I guess Snoop is lost for good. He has been away a long time now." On the way back to Mr.
He knew the danger of slamming a train through stations without a ray of light to warn switchmen and others, but he could not bring himself to send the boy out to the front end in that storm the way she was rolling. And she did roll; and with each roll the bell tolled! tolled!! like a church bell tolling for the dead.
Cullin was shouting to invisible switchmen, and presently the train came bumping to a stand. Another minute and two or three early birds among the yardmen were climbing aboard and curiously, excitedly, peering over Geordie's head. He never looked up. Calmly he continued his sponging. Then Cullin's voice was heard again. A stretcher was thrust in at the rear door.
Her magnificence was fed by an army: innumerable laborers with spades and shovels, picks and blasting-drills, working in smoke and dripping darkness to bore railway paths through mountain chains; grimy stokers and clear-sighted engineers; brakemen dripping in the chilly rain; switchmen watching out the weary night by dim lanterns or flickering torches; desk-worn clerks and methodical ticket-sellers; civil engineers using brains and long training over their profiles and cross-sectionings; and scores of able "captains of industry," such as superintendents, passenger agents, and traffic managers all these, and others, by their steady toil kept an unfailing cataract of wealth pouring into the Van Horne coffers.
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