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All trains in motion at the moment when the strike was to take effect were run to their destination, or to divisional stations, rather, and there abandoned by the crew. The conductors, brakemen and baggagemen were not in the fight, and when directed by the officials to take the engines and try to run them or fire them, they found it hard to refuse to obey the order.
I have twice before urgently called the attention of Congress to the necessity of legislation for the protection of the lives of railroad employees, but nothing has yet been done. During the year ending June 30, 1890, 369 brakemen were killed and 7,841 maimed while engaged in coupling cars. The total number of railroad employees killed during the year was 2,451 and the number injured 22,390.
The engineers, firemen, brakemen, and conductors took no active part and had to be forced to leave their posts under threats from the strikers. The leader, one Martin Irons, accurately represented the feelings of the strikers. Personally honest and probably well-meaning, his attitude was overbearing and tyrannical.
A case in point was a couple of brakemen on local who, after unloading a half-dozen reapers and a threshing machine at Mendota, had gone into a saloon with the shipper and killed their thirst. While Patsy was gleaning this interesting information the man writhed and twisted, fought and fumed, but it was in vain, for the hand of the Philosopher was upon his throat.
The commotion soon brought the colonel and a crowd, and while they were cursing each other all round, the firemen and most of the brakemen slipped off, and here we were with no means of getting ahead. All this time I had stood on the engine, rather enjoying the mêlée, but taking no part in it, when Colonel Williams, turning to me, said, "Can not you run the engine?" I replied, "No, sir."
This is a special carrying ammunition for General Beauregard, and I must have the right of way clear along the line!" The dispatcher scanned the train. He saw nothing to excite his suspicions. The baggage cars were closed, and might easily be filled with powder and shot; the men in the engine, and the two brakemen on the top of one car had a perfectly natural appearance.
It was really inspiring to encounter here the familiar conductors and brakemen, engineers and firemen, who had voluntarily, and for an ideal, left their homes in a remote and peaceful republic three thousand miles away, to find contentment and a new vitality, a wider vision, in the difficult and dangerous task they were performing.
The students have come largely from among railroad clerks, bank clerks, bookkeepers, teachers, preachers, mechanics, salesmen, drug clerks, city and United States government employees, widows, nurses, housekeepers, brakemen, firemen, engineers, motormen, conductors, and shop hands.
When we go east now, we take a lunch along, and when the other passengers are in to supper, we sit on the woodpile at Sparta, eat our lunch and gaze at the fountains, talk with the brakemen, and wonder if the landlord would know us if we should go in and take a toothpick off the counter. Not any more bummer for us, and no man must ever tell us how to save two shillings on a meal.
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.
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