By seven o’clock he and his capable manager were busily using the two office telephones.  Before nine o’clock, all the teams of several lumber firms were engaged in hauling fence posts, two by four scantling, and sufficient sixteen foot boards to construct a fence eight feet high about the entire premises of the Harrisville Iron & Steel Co.’s plant.

This early action of the company for a time confused the strike managers, as they could not divine whether Colonel Harris in a fit of despair planned to fence in and close down his mills, or, perhaps, once getting his plant enclosed, purposed to eject all members of labor organizations, and again as in a former strike, attempt to start his plant with non-union labor.

The leader of the strike was a brawny man with full beard, unkempt hair, and a face far from attractive.  “Captain O’Connor,” as the labor lodges knew him, was the recognized leader of the strike.  He was not an employee at the steel mills, but an expert manager of strikes, receiving a good salary, and employed by the officers of the central union.  At 2:30 o’clock a secret meeting of the officers of the several labor lodges and Captain O’Connor was held behind closed doors.  All were silent, when suddenly O’Connor rose and began to denounce capital, charging it with the robbery of honest labor.

“Behold labor,” he said, “stripped to the waist, perspiring at every pore in the blinding heat of molten iron, shooting out hissing sparks.  Pleasures for you laborers are banished; your wives and children are dressed in cheap calicoes; no linen or good food on your tables, and most of you are in debt.”

This and more Captain O’Connor said in excited language.  Finally he shouted, “Slaves, will you tamely submit to all this indignity and not resent it?  The managers of the Harrisville Iron & Steel Co. are tyrants of the worst sort.  They are fencing you out to-day from the only field on which you can gain bread for your starving wives and children.

“Reuben Harris cares more for his gold than for your souls.  Since you refuse him your labor on his own terms, he purposes by aid of the high fence and bayonets to forbid every one of you union men from earning an honest living.”

The strike committee decided to call a public meeting of all the employees of the steel works on the base-ball grounds at 7 o’clock the next morning.  All the saloons that night were crowded, and loud denunciation of capital was indulged in by the strike leaders.  Early the next morning a band of music marched up and down the streets where the employees resided, and by 7 o’clock nearly four thousand men had gathered.