A Railroad Strike Turns Violent, 1877
. . . The
most striking fact developed by this movement is the terrible antipathy which
has grown up among the poor and laboring classes against those who possess
great wealth. . . . John Jones and William Smith, laborers, regard William H.
Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, and Tom Scott, capitalists, as their natural enemies,
whose welfare means their loss and whose downfall would redound to their gain.
. . . Today, Tom Scott could not get through Pittsburgh, or Vanderbilt through
Buffalo, alive! . . . You may call it whatsoever name you please - Communism,
Agrarianism, Socialism, or anything else - . . . in the estimation of the vast
majority of the American people the millionaire has come to be looked upon as a
public enemy! . . . We have just now had a foretaste of real Civil War; of that
conflict of classes, which is the most terrible of all species of war. . . .
The inadequacy of the present governmental system to combat servile
insurrections has been forced home upon the capitalistic classes as a fact that
can no longer be evaded. . . . The average citizen may forget the danger as
soon as it is past, but not the man of millions. He has seen the ghost of the
Commune, and it will stalk his dreams every night until he can feel with his
prototype of the old world the security of mercenary bayonets enough to
garrison every considerable town. . . .