The Lord Chief Justice over all is not to be tricked. If
the labor men will only remember that, and devote, let us say, as
much time to their duties as to fighting for their rights, they
will get them sooner. Which is not saying that there is not a time
to strike. Witness my experience with the planing-mill man.
I struck not only against him, but against the whole city of
Buffalo. I shook the dust of it from my feet and went out to work
with a gang on a new railroad then being built through Cattaraugus
County--the Buffalo and Washington, I think. Near a village called
Coonville our job was cut out for us. We were twenty in the gang,
and we were to build the line across an old dry river-bed at that
point. In the middle of the river there had once been a forest-clad
island. This we attacked with pickaxe and spade and carried it away
piecemeal in our wheelbarrows. It fell in with the hottest weather
of the year. Down in the hollow where no wind blew it was utterly
unbearable. I had never done such work before, and was not built
for it. I did my best to keep up with the gang, but my chest heaved
and my heart beat as though it would burst.
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