As Saxon's strength came back to her (and when Doctor Hentley had
privily assured Billy that she was sound as a dollar), she
herself took up the matter of the industrial tragedy that had
taken place before her door. The militia had been called out
immediately, Billy informed her, and was encamped then at the
foot of Pine street on the waste ground next to the railroad
yards. As for the strikers, fifteen of them were in jail. A house
to house search had been made in the neighborhood by the police,
and in this way nearly the whole fifteen, all wounded, had been
captured. It would go hard with them, Billy foreboded gloomily.
The newspapers were demanding blood for blood, and all the
ministers in Oakland had preached fierce sermons against the
strikers. The railroad had filled every place, and it was well
known that the striking shopmen not only would never get their
old jobs back but were blacklisted in every railroad in the
United States. Already they were beginning to scatter. A number
had gone to Panama, and four were talking of going to Ecuador to
work in the shops of the railroad that ran over the Andes to
Quito.
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