Officially they only knew that there were over 2,000 men in the district who had thrown down their usual employment, and were loafing around, with no visible means of support.
According to the proclamation of Governor Peabody, Teller County was in a state ot insurrection and rebellion. The military knew that a couple of thousand men were idle and existed without any visible means of support, which was a very suspicious circumstance. In the opinion of the military, it was against the interests of the public safety to permit such a large body of men to remain idle during the continuance of the rebellion, therefore, here is what they proposed to do:
To ignore the fact that there was a strike in progress, to designate the strikers as vagrants or tramps, and arrest them en masse as such.
These vagrants and tramps would then be brought before a justice of the peace, who would impose a
The Pinkerton Labor Spy. 93
heavy