The tension between labor and capital seemed to be escalating out of everyone’s control, just twenty years after what had already been the bloodiest conflict that America had ever seen. The corporate press did its part to add fuel to the fire. As the New York Times opined on April 25, 1886: The strike question is, of course, the dominant one and is disagreeable in a variety of ways. A short and easy way to settle it is urged in some quarters, which, is to indict for conspiracy every man who strikes, and summarily lock him up. This method would undoubtedly strike a wholesome terror into the
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