In a single week Colonel Harris had secured over fifteen hundred new men.
Smoke-stacks were again pouring forth huge volumes of smoke. The renewed
and familiar hum of machinery was audible beyond the high board fence.
This activity in the mills was to the old employees like a red flag
flaunted before an enraged bull. Inflammatory speeches were the order
of the hour. It was three o'clock on the eighth day of the strike, when
three thousand of the old employees left their halls and marched directly
to the steel mills. Hundreds of women and children joined the long
procession.
The strike leaders in advance carried the American flag, and their band
played the "Star Spangled Banner." Most of the men, and some of the
women, carried clubs and stones. Radicals concealed red flags and pistols
within their coats. Detectives reported by telephone the threatening
attitude of the strikers to Colonel Harris at his home, to Manager Thomas
at the mills, and to the mayor who ordered more police in patrol wagons
to proceed immediately to the steel works. Following the police rode the
Harrisville Troop, one hundred strong. Gertrude would not let her father
go to the steel plant, so he sat by the telephone in his own house.
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