CHAPTER LI.

IN that epoch which we are now considering, one event of the most portentous character occurred. The coal strike practically ended on the 18th of June, 1894. The losses entailed upon the coal-mine owners and the operatives were estimated at twenty millions of dollars. On the 26th of June, just afterward, the American Railway Union, a powerful organization of operatives, declared a boycott against the Pullman Palace Car Company, having its offices and manufacturing establishments at the town of Pullman, near Chicago.

This boycott was proclaimed as an act of sympathy with the striking employes of the Pullman Company. The Company refused to submit to arbitration. Notwithstanding the enormous profits of the corporation regularly declared on a capital which had been watered until it was more than twelve times as great as at first, the wages of the employes had been time and again reduced, and other oppressive measures had been taken until the operatives were brought to the verge of desperation. When they struck against further oppression, the Railway Union declared the boycott against the cars, and immediately a tremendous array of power was exhibited on both sides of the controversy. A great blockade of railway freight and of passenger trains on the roads centering in Chicago was established. The mails in some cases were delayed. The strike spread as far as San Francisco, and in two days traffic was practi cally suspended. The organic forces of society now rallied.

On the 2d of July the United States courts in Chicago issued sweeping injunctions against the strikers. Regular troops under command of General Miles were sent to the scene to suppress rioting. On the 6th of July a great riot occurred; many were killed, and two hundred and twentyfive cars were burned.

Eugene V. Debs, president of the American Railway Union, and his fellow-officers were arrested. President Cleveland issued a proclamation on the 8th of July, and ordered a division of the standing army to suppress the riots in California. Gradually the strikers in Chicago were put down, and by the 15th of the month the movement was suppressed. Soon afterward a commission, headed by the Honorable Carroll D. Wright, was appointed by the President of the United States to investigate the origin, character and results of the strike. By this commission the true nature of the event was discovered and established. The report showed that the whole blame for the disaster rested upon the Pullman Company, and that the strikers, except in a very few desultory instances, had not been guilty of either breaking the law or doing other violence to society. In course of a few months, Debs and his fellow-officers of the American Railway Union were brought to trial for an alleged contempt of court, in not answering a summons thereof; for this they were convicted and sent to prison.

During the administration of Harrison and the second administration of Cleveland, a number of prominent Americans passed away by death. On the 16th of November, 1893, ex-President James McCosh, of Princeton College, died, at the age of eighty-three. On the 13th of the following April, David Dudley Field, of New York, one of the most distinguished jurists of the United States, expired, at the advanced age of eighty-nine. On the following day, Senator Zebulon B. Vance, of North Carolina, passed away,

aged sixty-four, and at nearly the same hour, General Henry W. Slocum, who had reached his sixty-seventh year, died in Brooklyn. On the 7th of June, Dr. William Dwight Whitney, the greatest philologist of our country, passed away, at the age of sixty-seven.

On the 20th of February, 1895, the distinguished Frederick Douglass died at his home in Washington. He had long been recognized as the leading African of the world. Since the days of Toussaint l'Ouverture, no man of black visage in any part of the world had been the peer of Frederick Douglass. At the time of his death he had entered his seventy-ninth year. It would appear that although white blood mingled with the Nigritian in his veins he was nevertheless a true African. His attainments were remarkable. His patriotism was as conspicuous as his humanity. Born a slave, he had lived to become one of the greatest leaders of his epoch. Having on his shoulders the cruel marks of the driver's lash, he had in his brain, none the less, the visions of the dawn and in his soul all the music of the song-birds of freedom.

The work of transforming territories into States of the Union was continued during the second administration of Cleveland. In the early summer of 1894 an act was passed to enable Utah to become a State, and this act was signed by President Cleveland on the 17th of July. A constitu tion was prepared and voted on by the people. This being found to accord with the Constitution of the United States, and to comply with the provisions of the Edmunds Law, that State, after remaining for forty years in the territorial condition, was formally admitted into the Union on the 6th of January, 1895.

In the last quarter of the century, the progress of civilization into the great Northwest, and perhaps some changes of climate in that region, have brought the disastrous ac

companying circumstance of the destruction of great forests by fire. On several occasions, in the States of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, these fires have broken out, spreading from neighborhood to neighborhood, and from county to county, devastating the country for many square miles and leaving nothing behind but earth and ashes. On the 10th of September, 1894, one of these fires broke out in northern Michigan and raged for about a week. For two or three days the conflagration was appalling. The forests were swept down like fields of stubble. Similar fires. occurred in Wisconsin and parts of Minnesota. In the last named State the towns of Hinckley and Mission Creek were utterly destroyed. So sudden and dreadful was the visitation that in these two towns alone 350 persons perished in the flames. In the various neighborhoods that were ruined by these conflagrations it was estimated that from 1,200 to 1,500 lives were lost. The destruction of property was quite incalculable.

On the 3d of December in this year, the last session of the Fifty-third Congress began. In his message President Cleveland recommended the increase of the American army to its full legal strength of 25,000 men. He also indorsed the project for building additional battle-ships and torpedoboats, thus following the line of policy laid down nearly twenty years previously by Samuel J. Tilden. It was one of the peculiarities of public opinion, at this time, that it seemed to fall back upon the notion of making strong the republic by increasing its military power-this in the face of the well-known fact that such preparations are a sign of decadence rather than of strength.

The President also urged such modifications in the tariff schedule as would transfer coal and iron to the free list, and would remove the so-called differential duties from refined sugar. He also recommended the increase of the gold reserve

in the treasury by the issuance of gold-bearing bonds. The enormous expenditures which had been made by the Fiftysecond Congress and also by the Fifty-third had threatened with depletion the gold reserve, which was kept without war. rant of law in the treasury of the United States. In accordance with this policy, the Secretary of the Treasury, on the 20th of February, 1895, issued $62,500,000 in thirty-year bonds at 4 per cent. These were taken by a syndicate of New York bankers, who secured the bonds at the rate of about 4 per cent. above par, and succeeded in selling them at about 12 per cent. above par. The loss to the government from this nefarious transaction was very great; but it was only the beginning of the process by which the bonded debt of the United States was, in the period which we are here considering, increased by $262,000,000-this in a time of profound peace, and at a period when the people of the nation were profoundly concerned to have the national debt extinguished rather than augmented and perpetuated.

On the 4th of March the Fifty-third Congress came to an end. The appropriations for the second session amounted to more than half a billion of dollars. The principal things which had been accomplished by the body were, first, the repeal of the purchase clause of the Sherman silver law; secondly, the amendment of the McKinley tariff bill by the substitution therefor of the Wilson-Gorman bill, which included a tax of 2 per cent. on the excess of incomes above $4,000 annually; thirdly, the restoration of the duties on sugar with a bounty of $5,000,000 to the sugar-growers. Negatively, this Congress refused to pay the sum awarded by the arbitration at Paris in favor of the British North American sealers-though the Secretary of State had agreed to the award, and though the agreement had received the indorsement of the administration.

It was in the spring of this year that those difficulties,