The Story of Civil Liberty in the United States
The Story of Civil Liberty in the United States - Civil Liberty and Labor (1870-1917) - Page 228
of strikers were arrested, but that only a small number were brought to trial and relatively few were convicted of any serious offense … were as a rule required to give heavy bail … or detained without trial until their effectiveness as strikers was destroyed…. In each of the strikes investigated the charges as made were in essentials substantiated….
In Paterson, N. J…. 2,238 arrests were made charging unlawful assembly or disorderly conduct…. In all, there were 300 convictions in the lower courts. Men arrested for unlawful assembly were held in bail of $500 to $5,000. The right of trial by jury was generally denied. Men were arrested for ridiculous reasons, as, for example, standing on the opposite side of the street and beckoning men in the mills to come out. This was the allegation on which the charge of unlawful assembly was placed against four men, and for which they were sent to jail in default of $500 bail, and although never indicted, the charge still stands against them as a bar to their rights as citizens and voters…. One was fined $10 for permitting strikers to sit on a bench in front of his house…. Not more than $25 worth of damage was done during the entire strike, involving 25,000 workers, and there was no actual violence or attempt at violence on the part of the strikers during the entire strike.26
In the Lawrence strike, 900 arrests were made without warrants and without the right of getting bail.
Sometimes the illegal detention is by guards and detectives who keep imported strike-breakers from leaving their precarious jobs. In a car of miners imported during the “West Virginia strike, in 1912, two guards watched the doors at Philadelphia; at “Washington, when the strike-breakers changed cars they passed through a lane of guards, some armed. Here is the affidavit of James A. Fleming:27
I was assigned to house 56 in Kayton, Kanawha County, West Virginia. Once I tried to lead a break from this house and they threatened me with jail. There was a little Jew boy by the name of Heim…. He had
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