Johnstown High School - Spectator Yearbook (Johnstown, PA)

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THE SPECTATOR 9 A Strike Breaker’s Reverie FRANK R. GEIS, ’l2. William Keene, Division Superintendent of the C P. R., left the elevator and entered the outer office of the President’s suite, on the sixth floor of the $30,000,000 Chicago depot, which housed the headquarters of the line. “The President has requested me to come and talk over some matters of business with him,” he said to the clerk who now greeted him. “Yes, sir; he said that he was expecting you, and he request- ed, in case you appeared while he was engaged, that you wait, as the business which he wished to discuss with you is of great importance.” Seating himself in a chair, Keene picked up a magazine, but after listlessly turning a number of pages, he found that he could not concentrate his thoughts. From below came the click of typewriters and the soft drone of voices, as letter after' letter was dictated to countless stenographers in the correspondence depart- ment of the railroad. Restlessly Keene arose from his chair, walk- ed over to a window, and looked out. Spread out before his gaze was a broad vista of shining tracks, formed into countless labyrinths, with many signal towers placed between them, and with hundreds of shrieking, puffing locomo- tives and thousands of freight and passenger cars upon the vari- ous byways. Some of the locomotives were at rest: others were in motion. Here a swift passenger train was tearing down a central track; there upon a side track day coaches, sleepers, ob- servation cars, and diners were enjoying a thorough renovation at the hands of the cleaning force; here a long serpent-like freight train was leaving the domain of the “Windy City officials; there a screeching yard engine was transferring freight cars from one iron-shod path to another; in the foreground and growing dim in the distance were thousands of the diverse members of a freight train in all stages of loading and unloading cargoes. As his eye gathered in detail after detail, his glance rested upon a toiling freight train, far in the distance. As he watched its laborious progress, his thoughts turned to the time not more than ten years previous, when he himself had guided the destinies of a train from the cab of a locomotive. Left an orphan in the world at the age of seven. Willie Keene had been taken into the county orphanage. At the age of 17 he accepted a position with the railroad. Strict attention to duty and a willing disposition had caused him to rise from one position to a higher one. At the age of 24 he was one of the

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8 THE SPECTATO R teaching the student the first steps of good citizenship. Greater than all it gives the student character. The student» is not entirely educated until he has learned to control himself. The world is quicker to criticize an educated man for lacking self-control than an uneducated one. The self-government organ- ization teaches the student self-control. In this way he gains character, for self-control is the primary basis of individual char- acter. It is the key to all virtues. No matter what profession the student takes up, if he be a religious, business, or political man, he will need self-government; without it he will lack pa- tience, be wanting in tact, and have neither the power of govern- ing himself or of managing others. The student will find that self-control smooths the way of life. “In the supremacy of self- control.” says Herbert Spencer, “consists one of the perfections of the ideal man. Not to be impulsive—not to be spurred hither and thither by each desire that in turn comes uppermost—but to be self-reliant, self-balanced, governed by the joint decision of the feelings in council assembled, before whom every action shall have been fully debated and calmly determined, that it is which education, moral education at least, strives to produce.” Indeed, it is by means of self-government that the truly heroic character is perfected. So we see the necessity of student government. There are some people wfa hesitate to introduce this form of government into our High School. They sav that the students would not feel their responsibility enough; if a popular person, such as a football palver, should do something wrong the students would overlook his wrongdoing. At such a time the student’s honor is tested. Tn Kansas, at the Wichita High School, a self-govern- ment school, a number of the boys became disorderlv during chapel exercises. Speaking of this, this school’s paper said that the Students’ Council had proved its sterling worth to the school by its recent action in regard to the members who participated in the disturbance. The Council was not influenced by the faculty opinion, but acted on its own judgement and. by punishing the offenders, did what it considered its duty to the school. Nine cases out of ten. the students will prove loyal to the laws of the organization. High Schools all over the United States are using this form of control. So far. there has not been one of these known to be a failure. On the contrav, each has been a won- derful success. The Johnstown High School, if it wishes to produce students measuring up to the ideal student of today, must fall in line with the other High Schools and introduce the system of student gov- ernment.

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10 THE SPECTATOR best known and most trusted freight engineers on the line. His run began at Millvale, a town of 30,000 inhabitants, four hours’ ride from Chicago, and extended to Lewistown, five hours’ jour- ney farther west. He clearly recalled the gray morning of April 9, 1908, when the major portion of the company’s employees, because of the refusal of that concern to grant higher wages, had struck. Of the 4,300 employees of the company at Millvale, only about 200, among them Keene, had reported for duty. Day succeeded day, and while the company steadily refused to treat with the strik- ers, the amount of unmoved freight in the yards tripled, quadrupled, and increased further until the corporation decided to employ thousands of strike-breakers. This method of dealing with the strike relieved the congestion, but the strikers, seeing their hope of re-employment and of a settlement vanishing, re- sorted to violence. The clashes between them and the strike-breakers daily increased in number and ferocity; the police, aided by the company’s officers and by numerous special depu- ties, had their hands full maintaining order. On the night of the 4th of March the strikers, in a monster mass meeting, decided to resort to their last and trump card, violence. With the break of the next dawn the rioting began and in- creased in fierceness as hour succeeded hour. The Mayor had three days before ordered all saloons closed, but nevertheless the strikers were supplied with liquor, and their conduct became accordingly much worse. By 10 o’clock even the discharge of firearms had failed to quiet the mob. By half-past to the riot- ing assumed such proportions that the Mayor telegraphed the Governor for the militia. Shortly after noon the Mayor received the following reassuring telegram: “Chicago, 12:40 p. m. “Mayor Schillts, Millvale, Illinois. “Eight companies of the First Regiment, Illinois National Guard, with the regiment’s machine gun platoon, left here about twenty minutes ago. The train will go as a special and should reach Millvale about 3 :30. “BELL, Adjutant-General.” As this news reached the men in the roundhouse and in the other buildings, whom a hundred and twenty police and deputies were with labor protecting, a loud cheer arose. As the hands of the clock crept past 2 and the strikers in wild charges were with difficulty driven back by the discharge of firearms or the use of the fire hose, the tension became almost unbearable. At twenty-five minutes past 2 the telegraph officer from the signal station adjacent to the roundhouse, in a state of great ex-