American Labour Troubles.

Manawatu Herald, 10 July 1894, Page 2

American Labour Troubles.

Some 300,000 men are now involved in the American railway t strike.

President Cleveland has deoided to prosecute the leaders in the strike movement on a charge of criminal conspiracy. Numerons arrests have been made.

Severe conflicts have taken place between the police and the strikers in Chicago. The rioters are apparently indisposed to interfere with the military. The Knights of Labour have ordered all the members between Chicago and San Francisco to strike, and thus paralyse all labour. Serious disorder has taken place in Indianopolis and Chicago. The troops refused to fire upon the strikers, the Mayor having declined to give a written order to that effect, but they charged with the bayonet. The police, however, fired on the rioters. A mob numbering 10,000 fought the police in Chicago with bludgeons, and wrecked a portion of the railway buildings. Civil war is threatened in the city. The rioters have burnt 2000 Pullman cars, and a million dollars' worth of cars in Wisconsin, and have burned the railway and other buildings. Twenty city centres were fired simultaneously. The mob cut the wires, and stopped the fire alarm signals being used. The strike is extending to the eastern railways, and the men in Buffalo, Pittsburg and New York have been ordered to strike. The troop in Chicago are unable to cope with the rioters. The troops charged the mob, and were allowed to fire. The rioters dispersed at the approach of the military, but immediately afterwards resumed an aggressive attitude. Obstruction to the railway traffio was also resumed, the strikers wrecking, plundering and burning a thousand cars, besides derailing cattle trains. The losses to the railroad companies are enormous. Miles of tracks are torn up, and a number of engines disabled. Over one hundred switch signal towers have been destroyed. A hundred thousand men in Chicago have been dismissed from the factories owing to lack of fuel. Armed rioters attacked a train leaving Chicago, and after .a. lively fusilade retired with four killed. Similar scenes are enacted at other chief termini out West. The Government is massing teflßP thousand troops in the Chicago district, as an attack on Pullmantown is feared. The Governor of Illinois asks for the withdrawal of the Federal troops. The President declines, on the ground that the mails are obstructed and the process of the Federal Courts impeded. The Knights of Labour have ordered the members of the order in New York State to join the movement. Nine-tenths of the people in California are aiding the strikers, and even the militia are assisting them. ■'..'