amiliar hum of machinery was audible beyond the high board fence.
This activity in the mills was to the old employees like a red flag
flaunted before an enraged bull. Inflammatory speeches were the order
of the hour. It was three o'clock on the eighth day of the strike, when
three thousand of the old employees left their halls and marched directly
to the steel mills. Hundreds of women and children joined the long
procession.

The strike leaders in advance carried the American flag, and their band
played the "Star Spangled Banner." Most of the men, and some of the
women, carried clubs and stones. Radicals concealed red flags and pistols
within their coats. Detectives reported by telephone the threatening
attitude of the strikers to Colonel Harris at his home, to Manager Thomas
at the mills, and to the mayor who ordered more police in patrol wagons
to proceed immediately to the steel works. Following the police rode the
Harrisville Troop, one hundred strong. Gertrude would not let her father
go to the steel plant, so he sat by the telephone in his own house.

Captain Crager in charge of the fifty police on guard in and around the
steel plant at once concentrated his force at the great gateway leading
into the fenced enclosure. His men were formed in three platoons, the
reserve platoon being stationed fifty feet in the rear. Captain Crager
himself took position in the center of the first line. He had time only
for a few words to his men. "The city expects each policeman to do his
duty. No one is to use his revolver till he sees me use mine. Stand
shoulder to shoulder, use your clubs, and defend the gateway."

Probably not one of his fifty men had ever read of the 300 Spartan heroes
at Thermopylae, who for three days held at bay the Persian army of five
millions. To pit fifty policemen against three thousand enraged strikers
was too great odds. Captain Crager's orders were "to defend the
property of the steel company." The reserve police force and troops en
route might or might not reach him in time. The strikers purposed driving
out of the mills all the non-union men, and taking possession. Nearer
came the mob, determined to rule or ruin, O'Connor in the lead holding
the Stars and Stripes. The last fifty feet of approach to the gateway,
the mob planned to cover by a rush. On they came swinging their clubs
and filling the air with stones.

Captain Crager and his platoons used their short iron-wood clubs
vigorously. The s