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Whether or not the "settlement" was simply a trick of the packers
to gain time, or whether they really expected to break the strike
and cripple the unions by the plan, cannot be said; but that
night there went out from the office of Durham and Company a
telegram to all the big packing centers, "Employ no union
leaders." And in the morning, when the twenty thousand men
thronged into the yards, with their dinner pails and working
clothes, Jurgis stood near the door of the hog-trimming room,
where he had worked before the strike, and saw a throng of eager
men, with a score or two of policemen watching them; and he saw a
superintendent come out and walk down the line, and pick out man
after man that pleased him; and one after another came, and there
were some men up near the head of the line who were never
picked--they being the union stewards and delegates, and the men
Jurgis had heard making speeches at the meetings. Each time, of
course, there were louder murmurings and angrier looks. Over
where the cattle butchers were waiting, Jurgis heard shouts and
saw a crowd, and he hurried there. One big butcher, who was
president of the Packing Trades Council, had been passed over
five times, and the men were wild with rage; they had appointed a
committee of three to go in and see the superintendent, and the
committee had made three attempts, and each time the police had
clubbed them back from the door. Then there were yells and
hoots, continuing until at last the superintendent came to the
door. "We all go back or none of us do!" cried a hundred voices.
And the other shook his fist at them, and shouted, "You went out
of here like cattle, and like cattle you'll come back!"
Then suddenly the big butcher president leaped upon a pile of
stones and yelled: "It's off, boys. We'll all of us quit again!"
And so the cattle butchers declared a new strike on the spot;
and gathering their members from the other plants, where the same
trick had been played, they marched down Packers' Avenue, which
was thronged with a dense mass of workers, cheering wildly. Men
who had already got to work on the killing beds dropped their
tools and joined them; some galloped here and there on horseback,
shouting the tidings, and within half an hour the whole of
Packingtown was on strike again, and beside itself with fury.
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