During Mr. Whyte's retirement from the actual western management
the trackmen's strike occurred in the summer of 1892 or 1898. It lasted
for many weeks, and grass and weeds grew on the tracks. The public
sympathy was entirely with the strikers. They had been getting a dollar
and a quarter a day and had the temerity to ask ~ a dollar and a half.
The justice of their claim was emphasized not only by the wage market,
but by the fact that perhaps half of them worked for a dollar and a quarter
through the busy season, and were laid off in the winter. A boarding car
filled with "scabs" who had been hired at a dollar seventy-five cents a
day, came to Carnduff. They walked through past the station up to the
section house only to find that the section foreman had the push cars under
lock and key, and refused to liberate them. The men were really not
anxious to work, and returned. By this time a number of the townspeople
had gathered at the station, and as the scabs passed through they received
some good humoured chaff which they didn't resent. That was literally
all. Two or three days afterwards Colonel Ray Williams, an Inspector of
the Mounted Police, with about ten Mounted Policemen, armed to the
teeth, with carbines, revolvers and bandoliers full of cartridges, got off the
train and looked sternly about, prepared to do or die. Colonel Williams
(he had the rank in the Canadian Militia in the East) told me that when
he found the facts he never felt such a sanguinary fool in his life. He
had been called into conference by the Commissioner who told him that
he didn't want any bloodshed, but he was to enforce law and order at all
costs and prevent any further rioting with a stern hand. The facts ap-
peared to be that the boarding car had gone east, and at Melita I think all
the scabs had jumped the job. The foreman, to put himself right with
Winnipeg had sent in a cock and bull story about a riot at Carnduff.
The C. P. R. wired Commissioner Perry and Commissioner Perry sent
down his little army. The extraordinary thing is that neither the C. P.R.
or the Commissioner took the trouble to telegraph to some responsible
person in Carnduff. Both swallowed the cock and bull story nolus bolus.
The police had to wait till next day's train. They kept close in the hotel,
fearing I suppose that they would get the same dose of chaff from the
Carnduff humorists as had been meted out to the scabs.