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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday March 10, 1910
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Thousands Quit Work to Support Carmen
From the Duluth Labor World of March 5, 1910:
Philadelphia, March 4.-Ten times ten thousand union workers of this city have consented to quit work and to join forces with the striking carmen as a rebuke to the arrogant attitude of the officials of the Philadelphia Transit company towards the strike.
This action was decided on at a meeting of the union workers of this city Wednesday night and promptly at midnight Friday went into force.
Throughout the week the company’s officials have been obdurate in regard to arbitration. Delegations of business men, ministers and other Quaker City interests have appealed to them in vain but could not induce them to recede from their position.
Late last week after a few gays of turmoil they with Mayor Reyburn and Director of Safety Clay weakened and were ready to go to arbitration.
The overwhelming force of “Cossacks” as the State constabulary is called, which was poured into Philadelphia to awe the striking carmen, however, stiffened the spines of the autocrats and they now refuse to entertain anything but an absolute surrender on the part of the men.
Strike-Breakers Can’t Mend Traffic.
But a small portion of street car traffic has been resumed and the force of strike-breakers brought into the city, the scum of the big cities of the continent, has been entirely inadequate to cope with the situation.
The general strike was the only weapon left the men in the face of the insolent and defiant attitude of the street car officials and the sympathy of the public, at first withheld, has now turned to the men fighting for better wages and conditions of work.
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HE agitation of the I. W. W. and free speech fight in Spokane, Washington, if it brought no other effects has been valuable in that it has forced the officials to take action against the employment agencies. In the beginning of the difficulty they were admitted by Judge Mann to be the cause of all the trouble. Since that time Mayor Pratt has frankly admitted refunding thousands of dollars to working-men who had been sold fictitious jobs by the employment agencies. There were about thirty-one in the city of Spokane but the licenses of all but twelve of these were revoked.
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