Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1894 — The Great Strike Increases. [ARTICLE]

The Great Strike Increases.

AND ITS END NO MAN CAN SEE. A Militia Company Organized Here. The hoped for ending of the greatest of all strikes is still apparently as far off as ever. Yesterday Grand Master Sovereign issued orders to all members of the great order of Knights of Labor, to join the strike, throughout the entire country. This order alone, it is estimated, will take out a million men. President Debs, vice president Howard, and several other officers of the American Railway Union were indicted Tuesday by the federal grand jury, in Chicago, charged with conspiracy. They were arrested and gave bail. The presence of U. S. regulars and Illinois militia, at Chicago, and of Indiana militia at Hammond, has raised the railroad blockade, so that all passenger trains are running with a reasonable regularity. Freight trains also are beginning to move. Of the numerous small battles between soldiers and the mobs, that at Hammond Sunday was one of the most important. A of U. S. regulars, on a patrol train, Was keep, ing the Monon track clear, and fired on a mob of strikers who were trying to drag a wrecked Pullman across the track, and who refused to desist, when ordered by the troops. One man was killed and quite a number wounded. The imn killed was a carpenter named Chas. Fleisher. His friends claim that he was an innocent on-looker. Last Thursday was the only day when no train at all from Chicago passed Rensselaer. Now all trains are running.

The Monon bridge over the Little Calumet, 3 miles south of Hammond, was fired early Tuesday morning, and about 60 feet of it burned. Monon trains got into Chicago over the Grand Trunk. The latest information indicates that the other labor unions will be very reluctant to go out as ordered by their head officers. If they refuse to join, the strike will probably soon end. • The situation on the Pacific Coast is worse than anywhere else; and a bloody battle was looked for yesterday, at Sacramento. The neighboring town of Monon is quite a strike center. About all the railroad men located there are out, and train crews have to heave their own coal and work their own switches. In Rensselaer the strike is the subject of all absorbing interest. Public sympathy is nearly all on the side of law and order, and so strongly so, that Capt. Erastus Peacock, had no trouble, Tuesday, in getting 100 signatures to a paper tendering the services of the signers to Gov. Matthews, to help put down the insurrection, if he needed them. Most of the signers are young fellows, but some of the old veterans could not be kept off.

Sun Bros.’ “world’s greatest circus” exhibited in Rensselaer last Thursday, pitching their tents on the vacant lots across the river, just below the bridge. It is perhaps needless to say that in a few minor particulars, the circus did not give all It advertised; it would be a phenomena among circuses, in fact, if the parts that were left out did not outnumber those that were given. There was no horse riding, for instance, and no trained animals, no female performers in diaphanous attire, no injin rubber contortionists, roosting on the backs of their own heads, no sinuous serpents from the tropics, no maneating savages from central Africa; but there was considerable pretty fair tumbling, turning and trapezing, a right good slack-wire performer, and horse-play and funny business in sufficient profession. In fact a very good small circus, and pretty well patronized, too.

Rensselaer Wilkes won another big race, last Monday, at Columbus, Ohio. There were 16 starters and Wilkes won in three straight heats. Best time 2:18|. Goguac, another Stock Farm horse, will trot at Columbus today. Remember that Alter & Yates have a full line of staple and fancy groceries, and that everything is new and fresh, of the best quality, and sold for cash, as cheap as the cheapest. Most if not all of the young fellows who left town a few weeks ago to sell books for the Lafayette firm, have returned home, finding it a bad year for selling books. Chase Kelley still remains in the field, however, and is selling lots of books. He is a phenomenally successful book agent, the best in the firm’s whole lot. For the “Minneapolis Binders,” go to N. Warner & Son. Also the Woods Mower. The store of Collom Bros., in Mill Creek, LaPorte Co., is a bad one for burglars to monkey with. Last week two fellows broke into it and one of them was killed and the other badly wounded, by the proprietors; while of those who have previously attempted its robbery, two or three have gone to the penitentiary, and one was filled with shot. The Woods Mower is sold by N. Warner <fc Sons. Don’t forget that fact, if you need a mower. An exchange gives the following hint to farmers. “We were a little surprised a few days ago to find fifty dollars in the road beside the hedge at the corner of a prominent farmer's home and more so to find it had lain for several months unmolested, but beginning to look much the worse for exposure. The money was in the shape of a corn planter, that will have to be replaced . with a new one before long unless cared for better. If we had the money that is lost eveiy year in this county by neglect of farm machinery we would not be running a newspaper.”

Quite a number of our neighboring exchanges came out reduced to half their usual size, last week, owing to failure to receive tneir regular shipments of paper, on account of the great strike. The Whiting News is said to have resorted to the old war time expedient, of . printing on wall paper. C. B. Landis, of Delphi, senior partner in the well known firm of Landis & Johnston, in the Republican Congressional candidacy line, was in town last Thursday, on his way home from DeMotte. Mr. Landis flew the eagle there on the Fourth, and did it in grand shape, too. M. E. Baylor, a former resident of Rensselaer, was a conspicious strike victim, in Hammond, last week. He had been acting as a detective, it is said, and the strikers [discovered the fact and beat him nearly to death. Subsequently he was notified to leave town, and was taken away by his friends.

The Southers-Price Dramatic Company gave a spectacular version of Goethe’s great drama, Faust and Marguerite, at the opera house, Tuesday evening. The company, though not large in numbers is of a high order of merit, and their performance was received with universal commendation. The company will remain in Rensselaer until the settlement of the great strike makes railroad travel safe again, and from here as a base of operations will visit * neignboring towns that can be reached by other means of transportation than by railroads. They will also give at least one more performance in Rensselaer. The play of “Ingomar, the Barbarian,” which like Faust is one Of the gn at standard dramas, will be given Saturday night. The members of this company are not only thorough actors, but are also entirely estimable and well conducted people. They act only in the legitimate drama, and in their performances there is nothing to offend the most refined tastes.

M. L. Spitler, who was on the program for a Fourth of July speech, at DeMotte, was taken sick, the afternoon previous, while at the depot, waiting for the train, and was unable to keep his appointment. His sickness was quite severe and confined him to his bed for several days. Milliron & u Martindale have sold their bake-shop and lunch counter business to Wilber Tharp and Joe Adams. Mr. Milliron will run a confectionery and similar goods business in a building to be erected for him by Ellis <t Murray, adjoining Morgan’s barber shop One result of the strike was that dealers failed to receive their supplies of repairs for harvesting machines, and that again has made the blacksmiths keep “on the strike” to make repairs that otherwise would be ordered from the dealers. At Ike Glazebrook’s shop, for instance, the pressure of work of that character, the latter part of but week kept Mr. Glazebrook and Squire Castor at work the whole night long, Friday night, they never letting up until sunrise the next day. John W. Paris was promptly granted a new trial, by Judge Kent, at Frankfort, last Thursday. The evidence did not justify a conviction least of all a convictions for false pretenses, and on the grounds that it did not, the new trial was granted. The second trial will be held in September. The only plausible explanation that has been given for this unlooked for and unjustifiable conviction, was that the foreman of the I jury had lost a large sum of money ■in a failed bank, some time ago, and he naturally had it in for the hankers, and his fellow jurors sympathized with him in that view.