"Our trade in revolvers has slightly increased...."

SELLING RIFLES IN CHICAGO.

   Chicago, July 14.--Wholesale dealers in firearms are inclined to resent the insinuation that they have supplied the strikers and their adherents with arms. It has been reported that it large number of rifles are in the hands of men of this class. Without any exception wholesalers declare they have been most careful in selling firearms during the recent strike troubles.

   "I take no stock in the story that the strikers are in possession of a large number of rifles." said Mr. Bartlett of the firm of Hibbard, Spencer & Bartlett yesterday. "In the first place, no firm in the city would accept an order for fifty rifles from any one who is not personally known to them. Even then they would, I am sure, require to know where every one of those rifles went. In our own case we retail nothing. Our business is entirely with the jobbing trade, and if we received an order for more than four rifles from any one man in the city we should immediately begin an investigation. I was asked to meet Mayor Hopkins and Chief Brennan on this same matter two days ago, and I told them that we were exercising far more caution in the matter of selling guns and ammunition than any one gave us credit for."

   "In the matter of rifles." said the assistant superintendent of Montgomery Ward & Co., "we have been particularly careful. As a matter of fact our sales of rifles have hardly exceeded those of former years. Under no circumstances would we accept an order for any large number of firearms. If a man had $1,000,000 to lay down we would not sell him 500 rifles during the present disturbances. Our trade in revolvers has slightly increased, but the demand for the larger firearms has not been great."

   "We have a big trade in rifles," said Mr. Thorsen of the firm of Thorsen & Cassady, "and I can say at once that we have not sold them in any quantity. At the present time no man could come here and buy a dozen rifles of any kind. We will not sell a weapon unless we are fully assured that it is not going to fall into the wrong hands. Knowing what I do of the precautions taken by the dealers in Chicago I do not think it possible that the strikers and their allies have secured any large number of arms."

[The Wichita Sunday Eagle, Wichita, Kansas, July 15, 1894. Vol. XXI. No. 50. Pg. 3 - "Move Under Guard - Selling Rifles In Chicago"]

   Can guarantee you that the companies that had the strikers against them had no problem getting firearms.