Today -100: June 15, 1914: Of mobs and rioters (yeah, I said it, what’re you gonna do about it?)

The rebels are advancing on Guadalajara.

The NYT’s Italian correspondent breathlessly tells of the depredations during the short-lived republic declared by the socialists/anarchists, with food requisitioned and distributed for free and so on. It notes the relative lack of loss of life both when the mobs were in control and when the forces of order reasserted themselves, attributing the lack of bloodshed during the latter to “patience, endurance, and self-control, which heretofore has been supposed to be an attribute of the humble followers of St. Francis of Assisi rather than characteristics of military men,” but fails to enumerate the virtues which stopped the mobs killed all the rich people.

The Brotherhood Welfare Association in New York City (i.e., hoboes) turn down a kind offer to transport them all to Kansas via cattle cars (250 hoboes to a 60-foot car) to help bring in the wheat harvest, with no guarantee of proper wages in Kansas (and I didn’t note a mention of return fares either), saying it’s Pullman cars or nothing.

The fight between the miners’ union and the IWW in Butte, Montana, continues. As with any conflict involving miners, dynamite was available, and was used on the house of one union official and the safe in the union’s offices. A crowd rescued two prisoners from the jail and hijacked a fire truck. The mob also visited the three newspaper offices and suggested politely that they refrain from using the words “mob” or “rioters.”

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