March 24, 1886.  Gordon, Texas.  John Fortner was 28 years old.  Blue eyed, light complexioned, with a red moustache and an otherwise good appearance.  He was said to have a good name in the town, with no history of criminal mischief or other malfeasance.  But at 7 pm on March 24^th, having encountered a small boy returning from a hunt and carrying about a quarter pound of powder, John Fortner, baggage-master and warehouseman at the Texas and Pacific Railroad’s Gordon depot, undertook to dispose of the powder by burning down the Gordon depot, an act which produced a lot of smoke, but very little damage.  Still, Fortner was caught, placed under arrest, and conveyed by US Marshals to the Parker County jail for incarceration pending trial.  What occasioned this act so out of character for Fortner?  Well, turns out, it was just one of many acts of vandalism and property damage resulting from the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886.  Idling regional rail traffic with a 200,000 worker strike, the action was one of the earliest labor versus management disputes, and it drew the attention of four regional governors and even the president and federal authorities.  And in the end, it would go down as a colossal failure and even lead to the collapse of one of the first national labor unions, the Knights of Labor.

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