Iron Police” which anteceded the more orderly State Constabularly of today. Other States produced equally lawless types. The strike-breakers of the Baldwin-Felts agency are described as follows in the official report of the West Virginia Mining Commission investigation in 1912:

There emerges clearly and unmistakably the fact that these guards while personally brave men, openly, recklessly, and flagrantly violated, in respect to the miners on Paint and Cabin Creek … the rights guaranteed by natural justice and the Constitution, to every man, however lowly his condition and estate. Many crimes and outrages laid to their charge were found to have no foundation in fact; but the denial of the right of peaceable assembly and freedom of speech, many and grievous assaults on unarmed miners show that their main purpose was to overawe the miners and their adherents, and if necessary, beat and cudgel them into submission. We find that the system employed was vicious, strife-promoting, and un-American. No man worthy of the name likes to be guarded by others armed with blackjacks, revolvers and Winchesters, while he is endeavoring to earn his daily bread.

The difficulty of securing these deputy-sheriffs, often privately paid and obtained from strike-breaking agencies outside the state, and the cost of such service to the employers is told in the Report on the Michigan Copper Strike, 1913. The characteristic methods of these armed guards are shown in this:

Thereupon the Waddell detectives and deputies surrounded the house on two sides and began firing at the inmates. They claimed a shot was fired from the house. When the firing began, there were 15 people in the house, including 2 women and 4 children … 4 men were shot and a baby in its mother's arms was powder-burned. One man was killed instantly, another died next day … one killed while at a table eating supper. The neighbors testified that the deputies had gathered up stones and bottles and had put them around the house to indicate

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