This, in substance, was the attitude of the great bulk of the manufacturers. The workers, however, thought differently about the matter. Even before the date of the ultimatum had expired shop strikes were occurring throughout the city and both the national and local officers of the organization used every possible effort to keep the workers in the shop until a strike was found unavoidable.

It soon became clear that the manufacturers would refuse to negotiate with the union or to submit the union's demands to arbitration. Even before September 27th they had already requested police protection for their factories, and, as in all past strikes in Chicago, the police responded. Chief Healy announced that "parades and demonstrations of the strikers will be prevented. Captains have received orders to halt any street speeches or large gatherings. Details of patrolmen and mounted police will be stationed in the immediate vicinity of all clothing houses. The manufacturers will be given the same police protection that any individual or business house merits. Though I do not expect any outburst, I am not taking any chances." At the same time President Hillman announced: "There will be no violence. Even picketing of the shops will not be undertaken. Our union is strong enough not to require this move. The leaders of each shop have been given orders to walk out quietly. The same day the strike began we called out four thousand workers from the shops of Royal Tailors, Lamm & Co., Fred Kaufman and Alfred Decker & Cohn." Together with the strike call President Hillman made the following state

ment:

"The clothing manufacturers have been given ample opportunity to settle this controversy amicably and have denied our request for a conference. Instead of meeting us in a spirit of co-operation to work out an agreement such as is now in force in the largest clothing establishment in the city they have, through their paid agents, sought to ridicule our efforts and belittle our organization. Organized in strong associations and speaking as a unit through a chosen representative, the clothing manufacturers have denied to their workers the privilege which they claim and exercise for themselves.

"We have been forced into this fight by the uncompromising attitude of our employers and we are in it to stay until the clothing workers are accorded a voice in fixing their wages and working conditions. We are willing to rest the justice of our position with the public or submit to any fair board of arbitration. The employers refuse to arbitrate so the workers are compelled to fight."

By September 29th the fight was on and 25,000 men and women were on strike. The police continued their anti-union activities. President Hillman announced in the Chicago newspapers that a captain of police was seen in Mr. Isaacs' office on Wednesday afternoon. "I presume he went there to receive his instructions. The clothing manufacturers have refused to meet us or to arbitrate our claims and they evidently expect to crush us through the Police Department. I issued instructions to our people to observe the law and from all the reports I have received they have kept within their rights as law abiding citizens. In spite of that, mounted policemen have run their horses on to the sidewalks among our women and girls, motorcycle policemen have clubbed our girls and have committed acts of brutality that are a disgrace. One of our men was shot by an employer, and from the statements of eye witnesses the attack was entirely unprovoked and uncalled for." Miss Mary McDermott, an investigator for Mrs. Louise Osborne Rowe of the Public Welfare Department, made an investigation of alleged police attacks during the day and reported numbers of cases in which men and women had been roughly handled by the police. The tactics of the police had become so vicious that President Hillman led a delegation including John Fitzpatrick, Edward Nockels, Mary McDowell, Agnes Nestor, Victor Olander, Ellen Gates Starr, St. John Tucker and Luke Grant to present the case of the strikers to Mayor Thompson. The Mayor was "too busy" to see the delegation, but his secretary told Mr. Hillman that the Mayor had sent word to Chief Healy "to stop the unnecessary interference on the part of the police. The Mayor told the Chief to keep the police neutral."

Police brutality did not, however, cease with this promise

of neutrality by the Mayor and at the beginning of October Alderman John C. Kennedy decided to present to the City Council evidence of the police activities and to demand an investigation. An investigating committee was appointed under the chairmanship of Alderman Henry Utpatel. At the hearings of this committee President Hillman, John Fitzpatrick and Edward N. Nockels of the Chicago Federation of Labor, all announced the willingness of the workers to arbitrate their differences with the employers, but the employers were obdurate. Martin J. Isaacs, their attorney, had already refused to confer with Attorney Jacob G. Grossberg of the State Board of Arbitration concerning mediation in the strike. Finally the employers declined to meet the committee of the City Council. A letter from the Presidents of the National Wholesale Tailors' Association and of the Wholesale Clothiers' Association stated "that only a comparatively small number of employees were not working and these on account of fear of intimidation and violence." "The present trouble," the letter stated, due to interference of professional agitators from an outside market. The prices paid to workers and the hours of work in the houses of these associations, according to available statistics, are better than in any competitive market.” “ The employers stand firmly for the open shop principle,” said Mr. William M. Cahn. "In any pleadings they may have with the Aldermen they will not discuss the question of arbitration, mediation or compromise. We intend to maintain the open shop."

was

Finally, on October 16, 1915, the representatives of the clothing manufacturers met the aldermanic committee in the office of Acting-Mayor William R. Morehouse and informed him and the Alderman that they were not interested in proposals for arbitration.

The efforts to obtain a peaceful settlement of the strike were still continued, however, not only by the union but by disinterested and sympathetic citizens of Chicago. Sixteen prominent Chicago women including Grace Abbott, Mary McDowell, Mrs. Medill McCormick, Ellen Gates

Starr, and Sophonisba Breckenridge wrote to the Mayor in an attempt to enlist his support toward arbitrating the strike.

"It has been shown," they wrote, "that in spite of the fact that Chief Healy's orders to the police were to avoid all unnecessary violence, one girl was beaten so severely that her breast bone was fractured; others have been hit on the head and body so that they carried the marks for days. Still other strikers have been seriously injured by private detectives in the employ of the manufacturers in the presence of the police without interference on the part of the latter. The affidavits as to these instances have been presented to the City Council and are a matter of record. The trials are called for next week.

"The strikers repeatedly have stated through their agent, Mr. Hillman, that they will go back to work and submit their demands to arbitration the moment the manufacturers agree to do so. The manufacturers, on the other hand, have not only refused to make any statement of their position to members of this Committee but have even refused to appear before the Committee of Aldermen appointed by the City Council to investigate the strike, merely sending a representative to say that, as they could not be legally compelled to appear, they decline to do so.

"In view of these facts, and in view of the magnificent record made by Chicago through you in the last six months in this matter of a peaceful settlement of industrial disputes, we earnestly urge you to take whatever steps may be possible to settle the present one, and, by signing the Council order to Chief Healy, by offering yourself as an arbitrator, or by any other means that may seem to you advisable, prevent our relapse into the old evil days of labor wars, days which we had hoped after your success in handling the great strikes of the early summer were gone forever."

The Mayor found, however, that he could not accede to this request.

The strike continued. The strikers marched in monster parades. The Council Committee on Police adopted a report, drawn up by Alderman Buck, censuring the Police Department for considering strikers at any time its natural enemies. Acting Chief of Police Schuettler agreed to the immediate removal of special policemen from clothing factories affected by the strike. On October 26th Samuel Kapper, one of the strikers, was shot and killed and a large number of others wounded in a riot at Harrison and Halsted

streets. More than ten thousand striking garment workers paid their tribute at the funeral to this hero of the strike.

Attempts to arbitrate were again made. A committee of business men and social workers, headed by Miss Jane Addams, decided to make a last plea to the Mayor. The committee appeared before Mayor Thompson and asked him to become chairman of an arbitration board to settle the strike. "We thought," said Miss Addams, "that if you could be induced to take a hand in the matter we would be able to bring some sort of order out of chaos." The Mayor, however, still remained obdurate. "The Mayor of the city of Chicago," he said, "will not go into this because there is violence and as the Mayor of the city of Chicago, he will stay out of it because there is violence." In the same way ended all attempts to enlist the support of the Mayor of the city of Chicago.

The strike of 1915 was significant for the many features that characterized it. The most important of these was the attitude of the police toward the strikers and the efforts of the Aldermen Buck, Kennedy and Rodriguez to make public the effects of police mismanagement and to remedy the situation. The Aldermanic hearings on the activities of the police uncovered practices that had never been suspected by the citizens of Chicago. First Deputy Schuettler admitted at the public hearing that the police department employed spies and secret agents. "There are agents of the police department," he said, “who give us information and have done so for years. I defy this committee to compel me to reveal their names. I will resign my position sooner than do it." The assistant corporation counsel advised the police department that it need not give the information to the committee. Alderman Buck, in a splendid fight against this autocratic use of a public police department, said: "I for one want to know whether there are secret agents of the police attending these meetings and why they are doing it. The same argument was made when the question of the police squeal' book being exposed was discussed. In my