HALF-WAY TO WAR.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10018, 14 April 1910, Page 3

HALF-WAY TO WAR.

! THE PHILADELPHIA STRIKE. } FIGHT NEAR A FACrOEY. I MILITARY BI2ATEN. Details received by ilm lute Ameri- ' can mail show that the tram strike ! raging in Philadelphia was at one j timt! about haif-w<ty to a civil war. ! At I p.m. on 19th February the curs | were deserted. By 24th February ; tiiei'B were twelve victin.s dead or \ dying, ninety-one seriously wounded, ; and one thousand injured. At one crisis in the fighting the city police—on the third day of the strike—were, so insufficient that the authorities had ro reassure the public by swearing in for riot duty the "Fencibles"—a body of militia that fought in the Spanish-American war. Also the commanders of , the three regiments of National Guards met to arrange plans for mobilisation at a moment's notice. Tle Fencibles. if called out, would have their uniforms on, and rifles and bayonets. THE FENCIBLES. The next day the Fencibles were called out. They were marched into the quarter where the feeling was rifles were loaded. In the first skirmish they were badly beaten by the mob. No one paid the least attention to the drawn bayonets. The crowd snatched muskets from tne hands of the militiamen. The Mayor of the place said afterwards that the Fencibles acted as if chfy were on a picnic. They allowed the factory girls to wear their helmets, and to cut the brass buttons off their uniforms for ornaments. A Dart of the crowd caught one of the Fenibels, stripped him of his coat, hat. cartridge belt, and rifle, and pinched him into a sewer. " ) After that the authorities went back *o the police. They sent for 200 of the country police. Meanwhile the city police were sent to the quarter which had bten guarded by the Fencibles the day before. Whenever a group formed anywhere along the tramiine detectives, in motor cars rushed it, followed the scattered members of it even into houses, and' captured the ringleaders. So many car windows were smashed that day that the trams had sheet iron put into them instead of glass panes. But the trams ran that day. The police were not so diffident as the soldiers. The labourers at Baldwin's locomotive works," when they came out for their lunch hour, took side with the strikers.The police fired about fifty shots at them, and they took refuge in the upper floors of buildings round about. From there they flung bolts and nuts at the policemen. The policemen, in return, whenever they saw a head appear at a window, let fire at it. This was not Constantinople during an Armenian massacre. It was in the park city of America —last month. They fought like that till 1 p.m., when the whistle blew in the works. THE MEN KILLED. The first man was killed on the third day of the strike. The skull of a policeman was fractured .the same day. The next day, in attacks on tramcars, three boys were shot. One of them, John Heugh, died the day after. A policeman shot him in the neck, Heugh made a statement to the coroner before he deid. He said he was one of an organised gang of 150 workers from carpet mills who had j agreed fo attack the cars. A great part of the rioters were; boys. The city high schools began to bombard the cars with bolts. The Board of Education, in order not to endanger the lives of the pupils, decided to close for the time being the two schools for girls. A great part of the crowd in the streets, those, days, had come out, as it would in j Australia, simply to see the fun. It j did not prevent the fun from beinjr serious. • j FIGHTING WITH LAMP BULaS. | Early in the strike an 'extraordin-1 ary scene too place. As a car was passing quite close to the Central police station a small boy jerked the trolley-pole from the wire. A line of . cars immediately became blocked there. .. A pile of material tHat was being used for building happened to ( be almost opposite the cars. A ! rowdy company in the crowd took |

heir position there, and kept up a I regular bombardment >o 1 the cars, \ Most of the crowd was not taking I part; it had .comu there to look on. Almost at thirf moment three electric patrols filled with police rolled up. The crowd was at that moment scrambling into a waggon belonging to an electric company which happened to be near. They obtained a supply of .incandescent lamp globes from this waggon, and started a bombardment with tnese. Whenever a lamp broke it exploded with the report of a pistol. Explosion after exlosion, here, there, everwyhere, gave some of the crowd the idea that the track was being dynamited. There was a wild rush. Workmen were still bombarding the cars from the roofs around. After a fight of an hour the police drove back the rioters, and battered, scratched, with scarcely a whole window pane in the whole line of them, the long aeries of cars trailed off to the terminus. Within! tfour days 750-.car3 were demolished. The reckoning came later Ellwood Carr, said to have been a ringleader in one riot, was sentenced on the fifth day of the strike to six 3 ears in the county gaol. John Eiine—who could scarcely understand Englishgot two years. Boys were sent f'it' to the reformatory for anythnig from j two to thirteen r months. By the sixth day a fair portion of ' the cars were running, and the streets wers comparatively quiet.