OCR Text |
Show E LOO DS H E D AT WARDNER. i striker Wreck the lluukrr Hilt aud Sul-j Sul-j lUau Witli Dynamite. j Wardner. April :;). Wardner has I been tiie scene of the worst riots since ; tiie deadly labor war of 1 S'j j. One man is dead, another is thought to be mortally wounded, and property valued at S'.'.VJ.Uoo ha been destroyed bv giant powder. The damage was done by union : men and .-.ympaUilers from Canyon Creek, about twenty miles from Wardner. Ward-ner. This morning a mob of from sOO to l.O'iO men all armed and many of them masked, sci.ed a train at Burke-the Burke-the head of Cauyou Creek. There were nine box ears and a passenger coach, and they were black with the mob. The visitors brought with them '',,)) rounds of giant powder. After a parley of two hours, HO masked men, armed with Winchesters, started with yells for the Bunker Hill and Sullivan mills and other buildings a third of a mile from the depot. They sent pickets ahead and one of these pickets tired a shot as a signal that the mill was abandoned. This was misunderstood by the main body of the mob, who imagined that the nonunion non-union minors in the mills had tired on them, and they began tiring on their own pickets. About l.UUO shots were thus exchanged ex-changed between the rioters and their pickets, and Jack Smith, one of the pickets, formerly of British Columbia and a noted figure in drill contests, was shot dead. The fatal error was discovered after a few seconds' firing, and Smith's body was brought down from the hillside. By this time the strikers had taken possession of the Bunker Hill and Sullivan Sul-livan mill, which they found deserted, the manager having directed his employees em-ployees not to risk their lives by battling bat-tling with the mob. Powder was called for, and sixty fifty-pound boxes were carried from the depot to the mill. The heaviest charge was placed among the machinery of the mill. Another charge was placed under the brick office building. Other charges were placed around the mill. Then the boarding-hbuse, a frame structure, was fired. Fuses leading to the charges were lighted, and the strikers, strik-ers, carrying the dead body of the picket, retired to a safe distance. At 2:3(3 p. m. the first blast went off. It shook the ground for miles, and buildings in Wardner, two miles away, trembled. At intervals of about thirty seconds four other charges went off, the fifth being the largest, and completely com-pletely demolished the mill. The loss to the Bunker Hill & Sullivan Sulli-van company is estimated from S'iso,-000 S'iso,-000 to $300,000. In a few minutes the strikers went back to the station, the whistle was blown for stragglers, the mob soon climbed aboard, and at 3 o'clock, just three hours after its arrival, the train pulled out for Canyon Creek. During the fusilade from the guns of the mob, Jim Chayne, a Bunker Hill & Sullivan millman, was severely shot through the hips. It is reported that he was carried oft by the strikers, and his wound is .probably fatal. J. J. Rogers, a stenographer in the employ of the company, was shot through the lip. but his wound is trivial. The non-union men had warning of the coming of the mob, aud escaped to the hills. |