At a little distance from the car-house the strikers again drew
together and stood mostly in gloomy silence, their eyes ever turning
toward the closed doors of the great building before them. The vast
crowd waited, too, in a silence that seemed to throb and pulse with
intense and bitter feeling. The strikers had stopped in the middle of
the street, and around them on every side, except toward the
car-house, the crowd pressed and surged like a vast human sea. There
were not many women in the number gathered there, and the few who were
there were of the lowest sort, but men and boys--largely tramps,
roughs and street boys--were there in countless numbers, mingled with
not a few of the better class.
Slowly the minutes passed, until an hour had gone by, and it began to
be whispered about that the company dared not run any cars. Still the
men waited, and the crowd waited too. But at last some grew weary of
inaction, and when Steel proposed that they spend the time barricading
the tracks, his suggestion met with a quick response.
From a neighbouring street the men brought Belgian blocks and piled
them on the track. They pulled down tree boxes and broke off branches
of trees, and when an ice wagon came along they took possession of the
huge blocks of ice and capped their barricade with these.
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