Judging him by his actions, we should say that Mr. MacNeill must be a twin brother of Mr. Baer, of Pennsylvania. The attributes of the one are characteristic of the other. Mr. MacNeill is a typical American trust magnate, and serves as a good example of what the American people may some day have to face, if men of this stamp are not checked in their mad career. He is naturally a strong-willed man, and probably owes his success to this quality. But success turned his head and petrified his heart, so that in the course of time he has succeeded in imitating to perfection the brutality of a savage African slave-driver.
This brief description of Mr. MacNeill will render intelligible the events leading up to the strike at Colorado City, and the complications resulting therefrom.
Prior to the trouble at Colorado City, the lot of the mill and smelter employee was deplorable. Mercilessly over-worked, underpaid, driven by a harsh taskmaster by day, watched by lynx-eyed Pinkerton operatives by night; ill clad, half starved and roughly denied his constitutional rights, the smelterman of Colorado was
34 The Pinkerton Labor Spy.
indeed an object calculated to inspire even a stone with pity.
But since our American trust managers either have no hearts, or hearts harder than stone, the miserable condition of his employees produced no softening effect on Manager MacNeill. On the contrary, suspecting that his men might endeavor to organize for their mutual protection, he secured the services of No. S from the Agency for the express purpose of preventing any such move. The operative was given work in the Standard Mill as a bona fide smelterman, and succeeded in a short time in gaining the confidence of his fellow-workmen.
Some time during August, 1902, an agent of the Western Federation of Miners visited Colorado City, and secretly organized a local known as