Had the people risen en masse and put down the rioters on the first day, or had the military acted with promptness and decision, and on the first attempt at violence by the mob shot down half a dozen, dispersed the rest, and set the trains rolling on their way, the great railroad strike of 1887 would never have disgrace the country and it would have been spared the suffering and loss that have followed.
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I chose this passage from the great railroad riots of 1887 as the most important passage of the reading. The passage clearly exposes the author's opposition to the riots, and it gives the reader his solution for preventing these outbursts. I believe that this solution of shooting down the rioters before they grow out of control is the message that the author wishes to get across in writing this story.
The author raises a valid point in this passage. He says that if the civilians or the military forces would have shot down the insurgents on the first day of the riots, all of the violence and destruction thar followed would have reached an early end. There is no contradicting the truth of this statement due to the fact that the author and the readers know that the riots of 1877 spread to different states and caused a great deal of violence, death, amd destruction.
However, if we take the author's words to be an argument that states that all insurgents must be shot down on the first day of a riot in order to avoid violence and destruction at all costs, the passage becomes controversial. Rioters should not be shot down by civilians or military forces on the first day of a riot because there is no predicting how large and out of control the riots will become. Therefore, nobody knows if killing the insurgents is the best thing to do.
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