When
the whistle blew on the appointed morning, they gathered at the
gates, refused to enter, and continued to shout "Two dollars a
day!" Though the manager feared violence and posted guards, no
violence was offered. Suddenly at the end of two hours the men
quietly resumed their work, and the management believed the
trouble was over. But for several successive mornings this
maneuver was repeated. Strike breakers were then sent for. For a
week, however, the work went forward as usual. The order for
strike breakers was countermanded. Then came a continued
repetition of the early morning strikes until the company gave
way.
Nor were the subtler methods of sabotage forgotten in these
demonstrations. From many places came reports of emery dust in
the gearings of expensive machines. Men boasted of powdered soap
emptied into water tanks that fed boilers, of kerosene applied to
belting, of railroad switches that had been tampered with. With
these and many similar examples before them, the public became
convinced that the mere arresting of a few leaders was futile. A
mass meeting at Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1913, declared, as its
principle of action, "We have got to meet force with force," and
then threatened to run the entire local I.W.W. group out of town.
In many towns vigilance committees acted as eyes, ears, and hands
for the community. When the community refused to remain neutral,
the contest assumed a different aspect and easily became a feud
between a small group of militants and the general public.
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