The mayor ordered his chief of
police to dispatch immediately in patrol wagons fifty men to the steel
works, to guard the property and keep the peace.
After the committee retired, the mayor said, "Well, Colonel Harris, what
will be the outcome?"
"Mr. Mayor, we cannot foretell anything. You never know what workingmen
in their lodges will do. There, as a rule, the 'Walking delegate' and a
few agitators rule with despotic power. If a workman, whose large family
forces him to take conservative views, dares in his lodge to suggest
peaceful measures, an agitator rises at once in indignation and demands
that traitors to the cause of labor be expelled. This throttles freedom
of action in many labor unions, so that often what appears on the surface
to be the unanimous action of the members of workingmen's leagues, is but
the exercise of despotic power by a few men who have nothing to lose, and
whose salary is paid from the slim purses of honest labor.
"Usually those who talk much and loudly think little and unwisely, and
the opposite to their advice is safest to follow. The greatest need
to-day in most of our labor organizations is wise leadership, and this
will result when the best element in the labor lodges asserts itself.
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