nd we formed a Association. In es, the Bunker he largest leadin the world), Burk, Wallace, amps. We well rouble was brewminers at work rict was utterly with any decent Our own miners an organization, Touble with the briefly from Siociation's records ringo performed hazards he coolly ey will paint the n days in a Nen a later union Hill & Sullivan with severe loss at Gem, worked the union at the and two months ording secretary. uent reports of ked four miles to > us via St. Paul Gem, where the inion man of the arged from the ge of dereliction Il of his time to n miners while recording secre asion by relaved ers Association: Cœur d'Alene a vicious, heartMany of them e of anarchy at while others are ighs from other :en a union symin contact with STRONG MEN OF THE WILD WEST killing "scab" miners when they should be brought in from other points for resumption of operations. A train-load of strike-breakers ("scabs") brought by myself from San Francisco was followed by other trainloads. Siringo reported plans for a "bloody revolution" in July. On the Fourth of July the American flag was riddled with bullets and trampled and spat upon. The unions became suspicious of a spy in their councils, and a friend warned Siringo to flee. He refused. He was told he "had been making too many trips to Wallace to mail letters." At a big union meeting, held at night, Siringo was accused of having cut from the minutes-book a page recording the union's decision to creep up in the night on two of the mines and flood them by "pulling" the pumps, and to "do away with" Clement, manager of the Bunker Hill & Sullivan mine, and myself, the president of the company. The book was exhibited with its mutilation. Pandemonium. Siringo was glad of his .45 in a scabbard under his left arm, but did not think it possible to escape from the hall with his life. He got the floor, and asserted he had been ordered by the president of the union to cut out the incriminating page and burn it, for safety. He declared he had done this. (The truth was he had mailed it to us from Wallace via St. Paul, and we had it in our possession, and later used it as convicting evidence in the federal court.) Siringo finally got away with the deadly situation by his amazing nerve, and the meeting broke up. He bought a small building on the town's one street and established a store and rooming-house; put a widow with child in charge; established his own lodgings there and witnessed repeated and all but mortal beatings of our miners who had strayed from our fortified properties into the town for pleasure after work. Siringo was again warned to flee. Knowing it was futile and would be fatal to him to attend further meetings of the union, he remained away from the 123 He told them to go back and he would be there in ten minutes. They went away, muttering. Siringo at once wrote a letter resigning his secretaryship and his membership in the union, explaining he had been "tipped off" that the union had foolishly come to the conclusion he was a detective spy and meant to knife him to death at this meeting. He sent the letter to the hall. The union meeting adjourned and a dance followed. Siringo scouted around outside union headquarters and learned. from miners who had not yet heard of his "downfall" that a bloody uprising against mine owners and strike-breakers was scheduled to occur within a few days. He acted on another "tip" that two "scabs" were in Dutch Jake's saloon and that when they got drunk enough their throats were to be cut and their bodies submerged in the river, mutilated so they would never rise. Siringo hastened to the saloon and found union miners patting their two victims on the back and plying them with liquor. He sat down and waited for opportunity to warn them. A crowd gathered in front of the building, and one of their number entered and advised Siringo to "duck out of town-quick." He replied he would go when he was ready. Siringo walked out to the crowd and they tried to surround him. Cocked pistol in hand, he leaped into the street and backed away until he reached his lodging, the crowd following and cursing him for a traitor. Men with rifles surrounded his rooming-house. Winchester in hand and pockets full of ammunition, he crept down a ladder from his window to an alley and crawled on hands and knees into a swamp, the night covering him. He ran thence to Gem Mine and reported the situation to Superintendent Monihan. A constable arrived with information that two "scabs" had been "slugged" in Dutch Jake's and that one of them (a boisterous, foolishly fearless giant of a man) was "about dead." Monihan and two mine guards went down the hill and into the town and got the one "about dead" and corvind him to l teered to walk four miles, past unionarmed guards in the shadows, to fetch a doctor for the dying man. Siringo then reported to Secretary John A. Finch of the Mine Owners Association and warned him of what was to come in two or three days. Finch begged Siringo to get out of the country while he could and save his life. Siringo replied he had "enlisted for the war." He stood guard all night with a rifle, then returned to his room. All day captains drilled union miners in their hall. By dark the town was jammed with miners from other camps. Siringo again crept down his window ladder and "listened in" on hands and knees to union pickets conversing. He learned that the attack on the mines was to begin before daylight, and made his way circuitously to Superintendent Monihan and reported. Monihan armed one hundred and twenty strike-breakers with rifles. Returning to his rooms at daybreak, Siringo passed through a guard of men armed with rifles in front of his house. Presently shooting began in the streets and at Frisco Mill. A number were killed. Siringo, peeping from behind a windowblind, saw that his house was surrounded. He sawed a hole in the floor of his bedroom (the building stood on stilts) and climbed through. His landlady-storekeeper-partner bolted the doors and drew carpet over the hole and placed a trunk on it. Miners soon broke into the building An explosion shook the earth. Frisco under the sidewalk by crawling Union miners under a white Siringo escaped up the mour United States troops arrived Siringo testified in the federal His job finished, Siringo concl of o erty. In these telegrams I said that our The object of this bogus telegram was When we arrived at Tekoa, the junction near the Washington-Idaho border of the branch line to Wardner, I assumed charge of the train in accordance with an understanding I had with the railroad officials; and I switched our cars onto the branch line. My wife insisted upon riding in the engine cab with me. We had about fifty more miles to go. The engineer said: "Mr. Hammond, I suppose you want me to pull her wide open?" I said, "Yes; go as fast as you can without jumping the track." We made record time over that halfhundred miles of tortuous road. Instead of ending our journey (and perhaps our lives) at Wardner, I stopped the train at the Bunker Hill & Sullivan Mill, a mile short of Wardner-where a strikers' "reception committee" I knew would be waiting for us. It probably would have been a massacre, for I had been prevented by State laws from arming my train-load of one hundred; they hadn't even pistols. It was with great difficulty that we disengaged my wife's hands from the deathgrip hold she had on the engine-cab rails; but presently we lifted her down, and she was taken care of by the wife of the mine manager, who was there to meet her. The manager and I hurriedly took our train-load of men up the hill and into the barricade, where arms had been provided against attack by the strikers. Siringo, brave man, is in his grave, and the Coeur d'Alene strike belongs to the troubled past; but does its lesson? That lesson, as I read it, is that no organization, be it of labor or of capital, industrial or social, economic or spiritual, can either succeed or long exist that is not founded upon a fair intent to its fellow men and conducted in the main by honest leaders. This truth applies as unalterably to a nation as to a trades-union, a bank, or a church. And in so far as a government fails to honestly and speedily enforce laws made to protect the individual and the corporate bodies against lawless attacks on life and property, it invites upon itself a disaster that must involve all. I am a friend of fair labor. I have often said that were I an employee I would join some organization. But my indictment is against such savage unionism as held red sway for a time in the tragic days of the Cœur d'Alene. [A second article by Mr. Hammond will appear in the March number.] rain HEAD of the state did Abbé Lantaigne arraign the Third Republic, Professor Bergeret nodding approval. A quarter of a century has gone by since that memorable "under the elm of the Mall"; but, as recent events have shown, Abbé Lantaigne's indictment has lost none of its cogency. President Millerand was dismissed because he wanted "to act, and even to think." We, of course, follow a different principle altogether. We want strong men, and, through the infallible methods of Western Democracy, we get the men we want. At any rate, a cynic would say, we get the men we deserve. So we are well pleased with ourselves, and a little contemptuous toward our Sister Republic, and her figureheads that are not even Has it ever crossed our ornamental. minds that the French policy might be the fruit of experience, and not of unmitigated imbecility? Like the Frogs of ancient fable-are not the Frogs their symbol in Anglo-Saxon minds?-the French have tried, repeatedly, King Stork after King Log. King Stork they found by far the more exciting and picturesque; King Log immeasurably the more comfortable. So here is to King Log, twelfth President of the Third French Republic! When the Revolution broke out, there was at first no feeling against the monarchy, or even against a strong executive. Indeed, there lurked in the French mind, masses and bourgeoisie alike, a craving for the enlightened tyrant, the beneficent despot, so dear to the philosophers of the The leader ship of the reform movement, hi Yet so great was the desir Now was the chance for King Louis XVIII, old, obese, coldcool-headed, amiably sceptical a issues except his personal comfo had his reward, and alone of all sovereigns from Louis XVI to N III, he died quietly in the trappin kingly office. But as soon as it pected that his successor, Charles ent, his power the crisis acional, purged sm, no longer able privileges rovinces. But vy of wit as of rious, was una course. He revolutionary Is with closed ce at the very had become So all parties s own family vas clipped so > years of his he throne. It ho killed the ooted so deep ce: the Grand and extravath his cynical 1, Louis XVI desire for a after seven ve herself ana master!Stork with a teen years he laughter, lost spiritual heriut recovering He fell unhe universal ophesied. King Logcold-hearted, cal about all He planning "to act, and even to think," the "three glorious days" of July, 1830, sent him into exile. And the best of Republics was found in the person of Louis-Philippe, the citizen-king, whom posterity remembers as wielding an umbrella in lieu of a sceptre, and who was sharply reminded that a King should "reign but not govern." Thereupon the Frogs clamored to Jupiter that King Log was insufferably dull. Peace at any price abroad, immobility at home: he could do nothing but "stand pat," after the manner of all Logs. 'France is bored!" said Lamartine, the most musical of all Frogs in the romantic pond. And in February, 1848, King Log, under the appropriate name of Mr. Smith, booked his passage for England. What did the Frogs want: Log or Stork? Then it was that Monsieur Thiers was inspired with a wonderful idea: why not pick out a Log who happened to be called a Stork? So he and his astute friends supported the candidacy of LouisNapoleon Bonaparte, to all appearances the most loggish of logs, dull-eyed, awkward of gesture and of speech, a safe ruler with a dazzling name. Two years later, the Log was evincing considerable activity, and M. Thiers cried out in dismay: "The Empire is made!" A prophecy strictly in accordance with Chesterton's dictum: political prophets foretell only what happened a few years before. By December, 1851, the transformation was complete, and, in 1852 the world had to bow to Napoleon III, a Stork of singular vigor. Louis-Napoleon was the first and last French President of the American type. He was duly elected-against official pressure-after a "solemn referendum," and repeatedly confirmed by plebiscites. Even as Emperor, he could claim that his power came "from the grace of God and the will of the people." He had a philosophy of history at the service of his cause. It was, according to him, the very nature of Democracy to become incarnated in one man-a "providential man," to be mod Leguia. It is not radically different from the ultimate development of Wilsonism. It is well to remember that, in one of its important aspects, Bonapartism was identified with "the appeal to the people." This inspired ever after in the democrats a wholesome dread that Demos be too freely consulted. But the Bonaparte Stork was aging, long before his time. In 1870, there was little more life left in him than in a good average Log, and the constitution of the Empire was altered accordingly. It was the mob, the press, Parliament, the Cabinet, that, with a light heart, stampeded the French into Bismarck's trap. Emperor followed, like a log. And the tide of battle, which he neither directed nor even understood, left him stranded at Sedan. The Thereupon he was vilified as a Log and a Stork, and a Scapegoat to boot. Once again, the Batrachian throne was vacant, and the Frogs had their choice. It was little Monsieur Thiers who first hopped onto the ill-fated seat. He was selected because he was a defeatist-for patriotism has many strange avatars, and a Thiers may be lauded to the sky for the very policy that sent Caillaux to jail. His powers were ill-defined, for the new régime had no constitution as yet, and hardly a name. But they were extensive, and his septuagenarian vim made them very real. He had been chosen by the Conservatives on the strict understanding that, in home politics, he would do nothing at all. But he was growing fond of the pitiful young Republic intrusted to his care; he was showing dispositions to act and even to think in matters political. So, in spite of his services, he was set aside, and Marshal de Mac-Mahon stepped in. The Marshal was an honest soldier, whose personal bravery had won him laurels in the Crimea and in Italy. In 1870, he had, at any rate, escaped heavy responsibilities. If he had drifted with his army into Sedan, he had redeemed his fame by recapturing Paris from the |