1906, swept across the United States in special trains from
New York to San Francisco with an army of twenty-five
hundred men, fully armed and equipped, to break a strike of
the San Francisco street-car men. Such an act was in direct
violation of the laws of the land. The fact that this act,
and thousands of similar acts, went unpunished, goes to show
how completely the judiciary was the creature of the
Plutocracy.

** Bull-pen--in a miners' strike in Idaho, in the latter
part of the nineteenth century, it happened that many of the
strikers were confined in a bull-pen by the troops. The
practice and the name continued in the twentieth century.

The years of prosperity were now to be paid for. All markets were
glutted; all markets were falling; and amidst the general crumble
of prices the price of labor crumbled fastest of all. The land was
convulsed with industrial dissensions. Labor was striking here, there,
and everywhere; and where it was not striking, it was being turned out
by the capitalists. The papers were filled with tales of violence and
blood. And through it all the Black Hundreds played their part. Riot,
arson, and wanton destruction of property was their function, and well
they performed it. The whole regular army was in the field, called there
by the actions of the Black Hundreds.* All cities and towns were like
armed camps, and laborers were shot down like dogs. Out of the vast
army of the unemployed the strike-breakers were recruited; and when
the strike-breakers were worsted by the labor unions, the troops always
appeared and crushed the unions. Then there was the militia. As yet, it
was not necessary to have recourse to the secret militia law. Only the
regularly organized militia was out, and it was out everywhere. And