struggle with joy and thanksgiving. Why should they avoid it? What could they lose? Were they not starving? Were they not living in tents instead of houses? Were they not deprived by a hundred schemes of the niggardly wages they did receive? Were they not worked harder than beasts of burden, and treated worse? Had they not been discharged for forming a union that might safeguard their interests, and had not Mr. MacNeill contemptuously spurned all offers of arbitration and conciliation^
By Saturday night, February 14th, 1903, the men were unanimously in favor of a strike, and Mill & Smeltermen's Union No. 125 declared the Standard Mill unfair, and requested all men working in or about the smelter to quit work and join the union. Many employees heeded the call, and in a few days the union counted between 250 and 300 members.
As will be noted in No. S*s report for the i8th of February, Mr. Burr, of Leadville, was appointed to take charge of the strike, and in addition, a strike committee of five men was appointed with No. 5 heading the list^,
Mr. Burr picketed the Standard Mill so effectively that no one could enter or leave the plant without running into some of his pickets, who persuaded many men to join the union. For about a week or ten days the situation in Colorado City remained unchanged. Manager MacNeill still blandly insisted that he had nothing to arbitrate.
No. 5 had been instructed, from the day the strike
The Pinkerton Labor Spy. 37
began, to phone Supt. Hawkins once each day from some point in Colorado Springs, telling him if any steps of importance were in contemplation by the union. In this way Mr. Hawkins would be in a position to thwart the union's plans, whereas, if he waited for the operative's report, two or three days' valuable time would be lost.