People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 December 1895 — SENSATIONAL BOOK. [ARTICLE]

SENSATIONAL BOOK.

STARTLINQ REVELATIONS REGARDING PULLMAN STRIKE. ■Ten the Regular Soldier* and Army Officer* Thought It Disgraceful to Kill Workingmen for the Benefit of Corporation* and Threatened to Revolt. Mayor Pingree of Detroit, Mich., has written a book, which, In Its introductory chapter, makes certain startling disclosures which every patriotic American should hall with acclamations of delight. Mayor Pingree is built upon the pattern of Gov. Altgeld of Illinois. He Is honest, earnest and courageous. He loves his fellow men who are in distress. He abhors plutocrats and all their devilish machinations. He regards them as the arch enemies of the republic who would, if they could, debauch angels and wreck the government of heaven to carry out their satanlc policy. Mayor Pingree introduces the Pullman strike that he may give the public an astounding secret connected with that affair in Chicago! He speaks like one who knows whereof he speaks, and the public has learned to place implicit confidence in his utterances.

The secret disclosed by Mayor Pingree is that the officers of <he regular United States troops brought to Chicago by order of President Cleveland, who foolishly took the advice of Olney, the corporation lawyer, who was attorney general in Cleveland’s cabinet, met at one of the hotels and denounced the policy of using the army to perpetuate wrongs and by so doing to degrade it in the eyes of the people. . . . Whenever opportunity offered they (the army officers) compared the information gathered by their own men and themselves, and when they exhausted inquiry and were satisfied, they met in one of the Chicago hotels. That meeting was one of the most extraordinary for its significance that was ever held in this country. It was a calm and quiet comparison of notes gathered by the officers themselves, and the conclusion was clear that the army had been brought to Chicago under a pretense for the purpose of siding with the corporations In an industrial struggle. Mayor Pingree, in what he says, states what multipled millions of men believed at the time was true, that it was clear there was no emergency of sufficient moment to demand the appearance of the United States army. The troops were in a dilemma. “The unhappy operatives at Pullman,” says Mayor Pingree, “were not armed men, nor were the men of the Railway Union who took their part cutthroats or armed rebels. It was clear that it was a fight for Just wages. It was clear that it was a fight for Just wages against Pullman and his sympathizing corporation gang, who refused arbitration. Pullman had said, There is nothing to arbitrate,’ and a misguided President of the United States had sent the troops to back Pullman. It was clear to the eyes of those officers that the police, or at the utmost the state troops, were equal to the disturbance that had been going on, and it was clear to them that such work for the army would, when the real facts were known, render the army obnoxious to the thinking people, as showing that it waß at the beck and call of corporations and as showing that a corporate aristocracy had the control of the army, and that if a republic were to be maintained it would call for the total abolition of an army that could be made use of for such anti-republican methods.” “There in that room,” says the author, “officers who had seen service in the great war of the rebellion, expressed their indignation that they were called out to be used, as was patent to them, not so much to quell a riot as to crush labor unions, in a city where cowardice and greed for money predominated over common sense; where howling newspapers egged on rather than allayed the excitement of a badly misinformed city, and all under the flimsy plea of enforc- i ing the interstate commerce act. They were to be used as the general managers might deem best.”

“These officers,” says Mayor Pingree, “did not confine themselves to the mere expression of Indignation. Their patriotic feeling led them further than I that. They denounced among them- | selves the advisers of the President of the United States who had sent them on such a mission. It was not the spirit of insubordination, but of righteous indignation against being used against the defenseless and the weak, an& to bolster up wrong and greed, which animated many regular officers. “In their righteous anger they were willing to give their views to the public, and a second meeting was to be held to formulate those views, which were to be spread over the length and breadth of the land to the people of the republic. It is a pity these did not see the light of day at the time. Had they been published there might have been a different; end of the great strike. The people! would have known the truth. All the facts of this meeting were, however, well known to newspaper men of the Chicago dailies, and those from other cities who were on the ground, and some day it will be history, and be to the credit of our army, although now it may not appear so. “By some means the particulars of this first meeting leaked out before the second meeting was held, and a courtmartial of the officers who participated was ordered. Hhis created great excitement among the railroad managers, to whom the particulars had come. The facts were also known to the newspapers—at least they were known those in the interests 6t the corporations; but they were told not to DUblish

them, and they kept these important (acta from the public. • • • "The facta,” says Mayor Pingree, “of the court martial also leaked out at the time, and the publication of that, too, was suppressed. Among the officers to be court martialed for expressing an ipinion against using the army for such unholy purposes was a colonel of a regiment, who had served through the war if the rebellion, and whose name is well known in this state. But the courtmartial never took place. The commanding officer was discreet enough to ; forward particulars to Washington, and the President, aghast at the front of independent American citizenship which he had aroused in his subordinates by his anti American methods, squelched the court-martial, but the colonel was retired from active service, and the other officers were cowed by pressure from Washington authorities. “This action on the part of these thoroughly American officers is one of the bright spots on a black page of American history; a page as black as that of Homestead, where workingmen were on the defensive against bogus philanthropy and hypocritical patriotism. Their action shows clearly that the intelligent ; men of the nation are holding to the opinion that Justice, and not gatling guns, is the best recourse of this nation under all circumstances. “It shows that men who have seen serious service in armß are averse, except under direct necessity, to sweeping the streets of great cities with machine i K l >ns; that the men who have defended , the flag want the arms of the nation . dignified by placing them against the I rea l foes of the country, and not against the workingmen, who constitute the bone and sinew of our population, and the bulk of our soldiery in time of real war. The troops of the United States should never be called into any struggle that does not involve a conflict between civil authorities and the mob, with the express intention on the part of the latter of overturning the government. They should never be called on to interfere in industrial struggles between employer and employed, as there has never been a time, and the time can never arise, when the constabulary, the police, and the militia of any given state can not handle the matter, however grave. “No matter how loud the call of corporationists and their managers, a deaf ear should be turned to their frantic appeals for the Interference of the United States troops. They were never intended for this purpose by our forefathers.” Little by little the well planned corporation infernallsm of calling out the regular army to sweep the Btreets of Chicago with machine guns for the benefit of corporations is leaking out, and In due time Cleveland, Olney and Mills, and their coadjutors, will stand eternally photographed in the mlndß of the American people as inhuman beasts of j prey, and the story told by Mayor Pln- ! gree lifts the rank and file of the regular army to the serenest elevation of paI triotism. The secrets disclosed by j Mayor Pingree show to what depths of I depravity Cleveland’s administration could descend to defeat the American Railway Union, whose only crime was to assist famishing men and women to escape from the Jaws of George M. Pullman, a millionaire man-eating tiger.— Railway Times.

Rev. Walter A. Evans of Malden, Mass., is another preacher who is liable soon to find himself out of a job. In the Arena for October he has a striking paper entitled: "Preacher and Plutocrat: or the Corruption of the Church Through Wealth.” "The favoring nod of the plutocrat,” writes Dr. Evans, “is the open sesame to good standing and promotion in the aristocratic church; and the shrug of the plutocrat’s shoulders, his very praise (whispered in secure secrecy), judiciously faint, will apply to the preacher, through the denomination machinery, the ecclesiastical gag and boycott by which, in the Bmooth usage of the modern inquisition, God's prophets of righteousness are reduced to silence.” The preachers all feel more or less the tightening of plutocracy’s grip on the church, and we are pleased to note that many of them prefer to preach the simple creed of Jesus and live on the homely fare which the hard-hearted old world bestows on its reformers.

If the free coinage men in the two old parties don’t soon join the Populists, they will be wandering about, gloomily, hopelessly singing: “Fatherless, motherless, sadly we roam, our nursing bottle stolen, our reputation gone.” The gold-bugs will steal their old party nursing bottle; their reputation will be shattered among the people, and they will be without any party at all. Come and join us, boys, before the gold-bugs sell the roof from over your heads. You fellows are old enough to begin taking care of yourselves. Let the nursing bottle'and the bosses go to England if they will. Another fine specimen of municipal corruption under old party rule has been uncovered at Pittsburg, Pa. A press dispatch says: “Sensational developments continue as the result of the investigation of the affairs of the city attorney’s office by the subcommittee of councils. The authorities have already figured out a shortage of SIOO,000, and it is said that before the investigation is closed it will be shown that the city is a loser of at least $500,000 or more.” S 3 Our public debt increased last year about one hundred million dollars more than the total amount of gold mined in the world during the same period. A hard problem for the single gold stands ard advocates to explain.