All this was in June; and before long the question was submitted to a referendum in the unions, and the decision was for a strike. It was the same in all the packinghouse cities; and suddenly the newspapers and public woke up to face the gruesome spectacle of a meat famine. All sorts of pleas for a reconsideration were made, but the packers were obdurate; and all the while they were reducing wages, and heading off shipments of cattle, and rushing in wagon-loads of mattresses and cots. So the men boiled over, and one night telegrams went out from the union headquarters to all the big packing centres⁠—to St. Paul, South Omaha, Sioux City, St. Joseph, Kansas City, East St. Louis, and New York⁠—and the next day at noon between fifty and sixty thousand men drew off their working clothes and marched out of the factories, and the great “Beef Strike” was on.