These two defeats had been very disastrous to organized labor.

The whole Water Front Federation, along with its allies in the structural trades, had backed up the teamsters, and all had smashed down ingloriously.

It had been a bloody strike.

The police had broken countless heads with their riot clubs; and the death list had been augmented by the turning loose of a machine-gun on the strikers from the barns of the Marsden Special Delivery Company.
In consequence, the men were sullen and vindictive.

They wanted blood, and revenge.