Prosperity always brought calamity.

This, of course, was due to the excess of unconsumed profits that was piled up.
Also, the great machinist strike had been broken.

Two hundred thousand machinists, along with their five hundred thousand allies in the metalworking trades, had been defeated in as bloody a strike as had ever marred the United States.

Pitched battles had been fought with the small armies of armed strike-breakers* put in the field by the employers' associations; the Black Hundreds, appearing in scores of wide-scattered places, had destroyed property; and, in consequence, a hundred thousand regular soldiers of the United States has been called out to put a frightful end to the whole affair.

A number of the labor leaders had been executed; many others had been sentenced to prison, while thousands of the rank and file of the strikers had been herded into bull-pens** and abominably treated by the soldiers.
* Strike-breakers--these were, in purpose and practice and everything except name, the private soldiers of the capitalists.