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In 1904 Boston trade unionist Frank K. Foster called the strikebreaker an excresence . . . the Iscariot of the industrial world. That same year novelist Jack London coined his famous definition of the scab. A strikebreaker, wrote London, is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water-logged brain, and a combination backbone made of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts he carries a tumor of rotten principles. So damnatory was London that he thought strikers had the moral right kill those who their jobs and broke their struggle.1 Like most trade unionists and radicals of his time, London assumed that strikebreakers and violence went hand in hand. Labor historians have also shared this view. In a recent survey of industrial H. M. Gitelman contends that the introduction of strikebreakers invariably produced sharp conflict. Most worker-initiated strike violence, wrote Gitelman, took the form of physical assaults upon strikebreakers and upon fellow employees who attempted cross picket lines.2 Similarly, Philip Taft and Philip Ross believed that strikers responded to strikebreakers with anger. Many violent outbreaks followed efforts of strikers restrain the entry of strikebreakers and raw materials into the plant. In their wide-ranging survey of industrial Taft and Ross found strikebreakers physically attacked in the Anthracite Strike of 1902, the Westmoreland County coal strike of 1909-1912 and a host of other labor disputes.3 Additionally,
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