The hands had
accepted the terms of the employers and had gone to work again. An
orator tried to break the force of this announcement by depreciating
the pluck of the Clairfield men. "Why, gentlemen!" he screamed, "a
ten-year-old boy in this town has got twice the sand of a Clairfield
man. They just leg the bosses to kick 'em. When they are fired out of
a shop door, they sneak down the chimbley and whine to be took on
again. We ain't made of that kind of stuff."
But this haughty style of eloquence did not avail to inspirit the
crowd, especially as the orator was just then interrupted to allow
another dispatch to be read, which said that the citizens of a town to
the south had risen in mass and taken the station there from the hands
of the strikers. This news produced a feeling of isolation and
discouragement which grew to positive panic, an hour later, on the
report that a brigade of regular troops was on its way to Buffland to
restore order. The report was of course unfounded, as a brigade of
regular troops could not be got together in this country in much less
time than it would take to build a city; but even the name of the
phantom army had its effect, and the crowds began to disperse from that
time.
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