Johnstown High School - Spectator Yearbook (Johnstown, PA)

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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-

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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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THE SPECTATO R 11 citement, rushed up to Mr. Carey, the foreman of the roundhouse, and handed him the following message: “Strikers blew up two hundred feet of track here. Train with soldiers stalled. Send help. “McCRANE, Operator, Williamsburg.” As soon as the vital significance of the news had impressed Carey, he turned to the men, read the telegram aloud and said: “You all know what will happen should the soldiers not arrive here in time. I need not, therefore, warn you of the necessity of immediate action upon our part. I purpose to hook a couple of empty freight cars from the yards to an engine, attempt to run the gauntlet of the strikers, cover the fourteen miles to Williams- burg and then return with the troops. I need two men to ac- company me and as it is an extremely hazardous undertaking, I prefer men with no family connections.” A hundred voices shouted, “I will go,” “Take me.” Carey running his eye over the assemblage picked Keene as engineer and a man named Myers as his fireman. As Keene’s engine left the shelter of the roundhouse ten min- utes later missiles were thrown at them. On their left they could see a party of strikers setting freight cars afire. Seeing several empty freight cars on a siding nearby, Keene backed the engine so that the cars could be connected with it. Carey sprang off to couple them, but as his feet touched ground a brickbat hurled by a striker knocked him senseless. Myers, the fireman, then leap- ed down, made the connection, and the train pulled off, just as the leaders of the strikers reached the spot. Keene was just con- gratulating himself upon his escape, the town having been left a mile behind, when over the top of the tender appeared the leer- ing eyes of three strikers. Myers seized a shovel, Keene a wrench, and there on the top of the tender, they closed with the enemy. Myers’ first blow knocked a striker senseless, but an- other had meanwhile leaped on Keene and was slowly choking him. Keene’s assailant was a larger man than himself, and was besides armed with a stout stick. The struggle, however, soon resolved itself into a wrestling match. Keene had downed his assailant and had put him hors de combat by a blow on the chin, when the third striker, who had vanquished Myers, leaped at him. The two met and on the top of the swaying, speeding tender, the struggle continued. Keene soon realized that it would tax even his enormous strength developed by hard exercise and a clean life, for him to hold his own. For five, six, eight minutes the struggle was prolonged; now one, now the other had the ad- vantage ; knowing that his strength would not much longer en- dure the enormous strain, Keene, by a last desperate attempt,