o show
how completely the judiciary was the creature of the
Plutocracy.

** Bull-pen--in a miners' strike in Idaho, in the latter
part of the nineteenth century, it happened that many of the
strikers were confined in a bull-pen by the troops. The
practice and the name continued in the twentieth century.

The years of prosperity were now to be paid for. All markets were
glutted; all markets were falling; and amidst the general crumble
of prices the price of labor crumbled fastest of all. The land was
convulsed with industrial dissensions. Labor was striking here, there,
and everywhere; and where it was not striking, it was being turned out
by the capitalists. The papers were filled with tales of violence and
blood. And through it all the Black Hundreds played their part. Riot,
arson, and wanton destruction of property was their function, and well
they performed it. The whole regular army was in the field, called there
by the actions of the Black Hundreds.* All cities and towns were like
armed camps, and laborers were shot down like dogs. Out of the vast
army of the unemployed the strike-breakers were recruited; and when
the strike-breakers were worsted by the labor unions, the troops always
appeared and crushed the unions. Then there was the militia. As yet, it
was not necessary to have recourse to the secret militia law. Only the
regularly organized militia was out, and it was out everywhere. And
in this time of terror, the regular army was increased an additional
hundred thousand by the government.

* The name only, and not the idea, was imported from Russia.
The Black Hundreds were a development out of the secret
agents of the capitalists, and their use arose in the labor
struggles of the nineteenth century. There is no discussion
of this. No less an authority of the times than Carroll D.
Wright, United States Commissioner of Labor, is responsible
for the statement. From his book, entitled "The Battles of
Labor," is quoted the declaration that "in some of the great
historic strikes the employers themselves have instigated
acts of violence;" that manufacturers have deliberately
provoked strikes in order to get rid of surplus stock; and
that freight cars have been burned by employers' agents
during railroad strikes in order to increase disorder. It
was out of these secret agents of the employers that the
Bl