A DEMORALISED CITY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10014, 9 April 1910, Page 4

A DEMORALISED CITY.

The New York correspondent of £ London paper describes Philadelphia during the recent tramway strike as "reduced to a state of shameless demoralisation, almost without preceI dent in the annals of modern civilI isation." The temper of the strikers and their womenfolk could not have been fiercer. Early in the strike a typical scene took nlace close to the central police station. As a car was passing a small boy jerked the trolley pole from the wire, and 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, and a numoer of demonstrators took their position there, and kept up a regular bombardment of the cars. After a fight, lasting for an hour, the police drove back the rioters, and battered and scratched, with scarcely a whole window pane in the line, ( a iong series of cars trailed off to the terminus. The tramway people were obliged to fill the tram windows with sheets of corrugated iron. Gars were run, but it was more in defiance of the strikers than for business, for scarcely any civilians dared to travel in them. The cars moved along with policemen armed to the teeth sitting at the ends. Bricks and steel bolts were hurled at the cars, and even dynamite used. A bomb cut a car in two, and the infuriated crowd demolished the halves, and "scragged" the driver. A mob a thousand strong surrounded a car and dragged the driver from his seat. Suddenly a shout went up, "Lynch him." Someone produced a rope, which was tied to the nearest lamp post, and fasten ed round the neck of the terrified strike-breaker. Just in time a body of mounted polices,en swept round the corner, broke through the crowd, and I cu'4 the terror-stricKei driver tree. I The wives and daughters of the strikets displayed Amdzonian fury. While their husbands and fathers were asleep they assembled in the street, greeted each passing car with cries of "Scab," and threw stones at the drivers. Workmen at, the Baldwin works .took the side of the strikers, and were driven by the > revolvers of the police to take refuge in the upper floors of buildings close by. Prom there they flung bolts at the police, who in return, whenever they saw a head at a window, fired at it. But the city police, armed with long truncheon and revolver, proved quite unable to stem the strikers' fury. They were beaten with the butts of their own weapons. It was only a fter the rough, fearless country police— ex-soldiers, exsailors, and ex-cowboys—had been called in that order was restored.