[...] Before and after work hours, roving bands of workers and thugs attacked each other with razor blades, stones, milk bottles, heavy nuts and bolts, and cans of paint that burst open on target; workers wielded lead pipes, swung their fists, and returned the next morning to hurl eggs and pour pepper on men who dared to cross the picket line. In order to tell friends from enemies, UE members marked their foreheads with black smudges and formed their own 150-member "police" force to defend themselves against the guards hired by the company and to restrain their own members from violent reprisals against workers who crossed the picket lines. As strikers and sympathizers "brought their women folk and children" to the picket lines, the press reported, the police "tore lanes in crowds at each entrance for strikebreakers to pass." Even the audio space around the factory became a war zone as RCA executives blasted recordings over loudspeakers in efforts to drown out the speeches, catcalls, taunts, and Bronx cheers of strikers. The union countered the amplified music with a sound truck that circled the buildings, calling the strikebreakers out into the street. While many peacefully waved signs calling for a "100 percent union town, Americanism, and Unionism," the protest frequently descended into what the press called free-for-all violence, in which the "wildest disorder prevailed, with missiles flying, men shouting and women screaming."