[Clipping from the Port Hume Clarion of Tuesday, 25 July 1922. Page one, below a two-column photograph of the funerals at St. Casimir's.]

THE GATES AT BLACKWELL

What the Inquiry Has Not Yet Asked

A Report by THOMAS McCAUSLAND.

Five days have passed since the gunfire at the main gate of the Blackwell Iron Works left three strikers dead and five wounded. The Beacon, in its edition of Thursday, offered the public the considered explanation that the responsible parties were "outside agitators" of a character that has not since been named, demonstrated, or produced.

The Clarion takes no pleasure in offering a different account. It does so because it believes the account given is not an account at all.

Three points will bear the reader's attention.

FIRST. The gunfire is reported, by those on the line who survived, to have been substantially directed from the warehouse doorway on the opposite side of Ironside Lane, across from the Blackwell gate, into the picket. Men who stood in the picket and did not fall heard the shots come from behind them and from across the street, not from among them. We are informed that the first patrolman on the scene noted, in his initial report, that the spent shells he recovered were found in a pattern consistent with this eyewitness account, and inconsistent with a burst of gunfire originating within the picket.

SECOND. The warehouse in question belongs to Cadenza & Sons, the machine-tool and munitions-parts firm of Ironside. The warehouse was, we are informed, unattended at the time of the shooting except for one night-watchman — who was absent from his post for reasons he has since not been able to explain convincingly to his employer. The warehouse's side door was found unlocked at five o'clock the following morning.

THIRD. A well-dressed man, not a Blackwell employee, is reported to have been seen entering the Cadenza & Sons office on Tuesday the 18th at eleven in the morning, some two hours before the shooting. His description — medium height, brown hair, clean-shaven, a gray summer suit, a slight limp in the left leg — does not match any Blackwell or Cadenza employee known to this reporter. He has not been seen since Tuesday evening.

Detective Henry Ostermann of the City Police, charged with the investigation, told this reporter last Friday that he was "gathering information and following the obvious lines." As of last evening, we are informed that the case file has been ordered closed by Chief Royland. Detective Ostermann has declined to comment on the closure.

We do not accuse. We observe. We submit to the public the three points above, with the record of our own inquiry available to any reader who applies at this office.

The funerals of Vasko, Rekas, and Zieliński were held on Saturday at St. Casimir's. Father Jarzembek preached in the Polish tongue. The strike collapsed upon reports of a second hiring drive among Blackwell's Canadian contacts on Monday. Mr. Julian C. Thorpe announced the reopening of the main furnace this morning.

The Blackwell Widows' and Orphans' Fund is a private fund, the disbursal of which is at the discretion of the president of Blackwell Iron Works. The widow of Janusz Vasko has not yet been contacted concerning her claim upon it.

— T. McC.