These were Edwin Walker’s justly celebrated guardians of the peace.
Page 370: Harold I. Cleveland, reporter for the Chicago _Herald_, testified: “I was on the tracks of the Western Indiana fourteen days.” * * * “I saw in that time a couple of hundred deputy marshals. I think they were a very low, contemptible set of men.”
Now follows what the Strike Commissioners themselves have to say about the deputy marshals, and their words are specially commended to the thoughtful consideration of their chief, President Cleveland: “United States deputy marshals, to the number of 3,600, were selected by and appointed at request of the General Managers’ Association, and of its railroads. They were armed and paid by the railroads, and acted in the double capacity of railroad employes and United States officers. While operating the railroads they assumed and exercised unrestricted United States authority when so ordered by their employers, or whenever they regarded it as necessary. They were not under the direct control of any government official while exercising authority. This is placing officers of the government under control of a combination of railroads. It is a bad precedent, that might well lead to serious consequences.”
Here we have it, upon the authority of President Cleveland’s own Commission, that the United States government under his administration furnished the railroad corporations with government officers in the form of deputy marshals to take the places of striking employes, operate the trains and serve in that dual capacity in any way that might be required to crush out the strike. This is perhaps more credit than the ex-President expected to receive. His own Commission charges him, in effect, with serving the railroads as strike-breaker by furnishing government employes to take the places of striking railroad men and arming them with pistols and clubs and with all the authority of government officials.
Page after page bears testimony of the disreputable character of the deputy marshals sworn in to the number of several thousand and turned loose like armed bullies to “preserve the peace.”
The report of the Strike Commission contains 681 pages. I have a mass of other testimony, but for the purpose of this article have confined myself to the report of Mr. Cleveland’s own Commission.