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Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 11, 1904
A. H. Floaten, of the Western Federation of Miners, on Colorado’s Military Despotism
From the Appeal to Reason of January 9, 1904:
[The Grip of the Monster by G. H. Lockwood]
—–
[Colorado Military Despotism by A. H. Floaten]
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 10, 1904
Trinidad, Colorado – Mother Jones Critically Ill, Taken to Hospital
From the Harrisburg Telegraph (Pennsylvania) of January 9, 1904:
From The Denver Post of January 9, 1904:
TAKEN TO HOSPITAL
———-Safety Precaution Taken for
“Mother” Jones.
———-Trinidad, Colo., Jan. 9.-“Mother” Jones, national organizer for the United Mine Workers of America, who has been lying ill at the Coronado hotel in this city for the past three days from typhoid fever, was removed to the hospital at 1:45 this afternoon on advice of her physician, Dr. White. “Mother” Jones is threatened with pneumonia and while the disease has not yet developed, it was deemed best to prepare for the worst. “Mother” Jones is 63 years old and up to her present illness has been in fairly robust health.[Emphasis added.]
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 9, 1914
Chicago, Illinois – President Moyer after Operation with Walker, Terzich and Riley
From Miners Magazine of January 8, 1914:
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 8, 1914
Denver, Colorado – Stormy Petrel of the Strikers States She Will Return
From the San Francisco Bulletin of January 7, 1914:
From the Chicago Day Book of January 5, 1914:
MOTHER JONES DEPORTED
Denver, Col., Jan. 5.-“Mother” Jones, the “angel” of the miners, was forcibly deported from the coal strike district at Trinidad on orders of General Chase, who had her met at the depot “when she arrived from El Paso and kept under surveillance of a detachment of military until the arrival of a train for Denver, when she was put aboard.
Lieut. H. O. Nichols and four soldiers guarded her to Denver. When the train reached Walsenburg, where “Mother” Jones had expected to make a speech to the strikers, she tried to talk to a group gathered around the station, but was prevented.
As the train pulled out of the station, she shouted: “I expect to visit you again, when Colorado is made part of the United States, but now-”
General Chase has ordered that she be sent out of the district never to return so long as the strike lasts. He says she will be deported every time she comes back. Mother Jones says she will return in two weeks.
[Emphasis added.]
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 7, 1904
Telluride, Colorado – Martial Law Declared; Union Men Deported
From the American Labor Union Journal of January 7, 1904:
[News from Telluride by A. H. Floaten]
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 6, 1914
Calumet, Michigan – Mothers, Fathers, Sisters, Brothers Follow Small White Caskets
From the Chicago Day Book of January 6, 1914:
MOVIES SHOW GHASTLINESS OF CALUMET’S
RECENT FIRE CATASTROPHE[by Editor N. D Cochran]
[Note: There was no fire; the stampede to the stairway was caused by a man, wearing a Citizens Alliance button, who intentionally raised a false alarm of fire.]
There were two exhibitions of the moving pictures of the funeral of the victims of the Christmas eve disaster in Calumet yesterday.
In the little hall up three flights of stairs on North Clark street the picture received its baptism.
Its sponsors were two members of the Western Federation of Miners, three motion picture operators-one of whom had taken the picture-a picture producer, two newspapermen and an express wagon driver who had wandered into the darkened, bare hall, and stayed to watch the film unreeled, held by the power of the spectacle presented.
In the comments of the spectators was revealed the appeal of the picture.
Scenes of disaster, of misery and suffering were no strangers to those present. But the pathos of the picture pierced the veneer of cynicism and struck home.
With a flare and sputter the picture flashed on the little screen, revealing the church at which the service for the 57 victims buried was held.
Hundreds milled around the doors struggling to gain an entrance. Children predominated in the crowd, seeking to pay a final tribute to their playmates, whose lives had been so needlessly crushed out because someone had made a fatal blunder or worse.
A fine snow was falling, and the streets were covered with white. But the picture was wonderfully clear.
“Good stuff,” commented one of the picture men. “Notice how those buildings in the background stand out?”
An interurban car wormed, its way through the crowd which choked the street.
“H–l! Don’t them street car people there care nothing for a funeral,” came from the expressman, not conscious that he was speaking aloud.
A quick change in the picture, and the first coffin was brought from the church door. It was white and small. Nearly all of the coffins were white and small.
On the shoulders of four men the little box was borne down the steps of the church and placed in a waiting hearse. Another followed. And then another. They came in such quick succession that they could not be counted.
The supply of hearses ran out. And then came the most moving part of the picture. Two squads of four men each were assigned to a coffin and the coffin was carried aloft on their shoulders. When one squad tired another leaped to take its place.
A second street car sundered the head of the cortege as it started on its long march to the burying ground.
A quick transformation, and the scene changed to the funeral procession nearing the cemetery. Down the narrow ribbon of road it came, across the plain from Calumet. The road was a mass of black against the snowy wastes of the surrounding country.
Hearse after hearse passed. Some of the bodies were conveyed in sleighs. And then came the men marching with the coffins on their shoulders. They were carried two abreast.
Across the sky line was a smudge of smoke from one of the Calumet & Hecla mines. While the strikers were burying their dead the work of the mines went on. In the foreground loomed the shaft of the Red Jacket mine, where, many of the men had toiled before they went on strike.
“That sky line stuff is great,” commented one of the picture, operators “You can see people clear back to the town, and it must be a couple of miles away.”
“Yet they say there are only 3,000 of us on strike,” muttered Yanco Terzich, member of the miners’ union, who has guarded the film since it was brought from Calumet. “Look at those people. There are 15,000 in line. There would have been more, but they didn’t have the railroad fare. They have to eat.”
Following the last coffin came the women, the mothers of the children whose bodies were being borne on ahead. In a solid mass they marched, thousands of them. Many were weeping. Children clung to their hands, sobbing for sisters or brothers who were lying in the little white caskets carried on the shoulders of the men.
And then came the strikers. They were grim, tight-lipped, looking straight ahead toward the burying ground. At their head was a woman carrying an American flag shrouded in black.
Anarchists these men have been called. But they marched behind the flag that the militiamen had tried to take from them. They did not look like anarchists. They seemed to be very ordinary men, bundled in their fur caps and great coats.
On they came. When the head of the procession reached the cemetery the rear was still resting in the city.
A close view of the two trenches in which the bodies were laid was thrown on the screen. Up above the strikers stood Annie Clemenc, girl leader of the miners. She was not the usual militant Annie Clemenc. She was saying a prayer for the children.
The picture machine sputtered and the screen went dark. The reel of film had been run.
“That’s great stuff,” said one of the reporters. “But how are you going to write about it? How can you make people feel that picture by hammering a typewriter. They’ve got to see it. It’s too big for me.”
And it is too big. You do have to see it. It is like nothing ever pictured before.
Later the film was taken to the city hall to be passed on by the board of censors, of which Police Sergt. Jerry O’Connor is chief.
It was run so they might approve, which they did.
“There’s nothing harmful in that picture,” was O’Connor’s verdict. “But I think it is too long.”
It is too long-too pitifully long-though not in the way O’Connor meant.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
I’ll go back; they can’t keep me from my boys.
I am not afraid of all the troops in the State.
-Mother Jones, New York Times
January 5, 1914
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 5, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Mother Jones Deported from Strike Zone by Militia
From The Washington Times of January 5, 1914:
From The New York Times of January 5, 1914:
COLORADO TROOPS OUST MOTHER JONES
———-
Woman Strike Agitator Deported from Trinidad
Under Guard of Soldiers
———–WARNED NEVER TO RETURN
———-
One Thousand Taxpayers Meet and Warn
Other Agitators to Get Out in Twenty-for Hours.
———-Special to The New York Times.
TRINIDAD, Col., Jan. 4-“Mother” Jones was seized by the militia upon her arrival at Trinidad this morning from El Paso, taken from a Santa Fe train, held for two hours and deported from the strike district.
Capt. E. A. Smith, acting under orders from Gen. John Chase, met the train with a detachment of soldiers. The troops prevented a demonstration from the strikers at the station.
Mother Jones was held under surveillance until a Colorado & Southern train arrived from Denver. Then she was place aboard the train under guard of a lieutenant and four soldiers, and ordered never to return to the district. She had planned to spend several days among the coal strikers, and was to make a speech to-day at Walsenburg. The train on which she was being held under guard passed through Walsenburg.
Gen. Chase had been notified that she was on the way to Trinidad and acted so quietly that none of the strikers knew of his plans to deport her. When the soldiers took her in charge, she said:”I never had believed you would go this far.”
Contrary to her usual custom, she did not make any protest. While she was being held here she was not permitted to talk to any of the strikers or union leaders, the soldiers refusing to allow John McLennon, head of the mine workers, to speak to her.
At Walsenburg the train stopped for only a few minutes. Thousands of strikers, having been apprised by telephone of Mother Jones’s deportation, were at the station, but none was allowed to approach near enough to speak to her. However, she tried to make a speech.
The train pulled out just as she was assuring the miners that she would return to Colorado “as soon as it becomes a part of the United States.”
———-
Denver Col., Jan. 4-“The deportation of Mother Jones was the most disgraceful act ever perpetrated by supposed police officers in the Union,” said John McLennon [McLennan], President of the Colorado State Federation of Labor tonight.
“I’ll go back; they can’t keep me from my boys,” said Mother Jones on her arrival here to-night from Trinidad. “I am not afraid of all the troops in the State.”
“Gov. Ammons said: ” I do not care to express an opinion regarding the deportation of Mother Jones, because I am not fully aware of the circumstances, but I would not hesitate to express an opinion if the person concerned were a resident of Trinidad.”
After the deportation, Gen. Chase gave out this statement:
“Mrs. Jones was met at the train this morning by the military escort acting under instructions not to permit her to remain in this district. The detail took charge of Mrs. Jones and her baggage and she was accompanied out of the district under guard after she had been given breakfast. The step was taken in accordance with my instructions to preserve peace in the district. The presence of Mother Jones here at this time cannot be tolerated. She had planned to go to the Ludlow tent colony of strikers to stop the desertion of union members.
“If she returns she will be placed in jail and held incommunicado.”
Company G. First Infantry, Colorado National Guard, to-night was ordered to leave here tomorrow morning for Oak Creek to take charge of the strike situation in that district. In issuing the order Gen. Chase said that seventy-five men would leave on a special train.
[Emphasis added]
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 4, 1914
El Paso, Texas – Mother Speaks, Praises Pancho Villa and the Rebels
From El Paso Herald of January 3, 1914:
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 3, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – State Federation of Labor Committee Begins Investigation
From the Denver United Labor Bulletin of December 27, 1913:
—————
Wednesday December 24, 1913
Trinidad, Colorado – C. F. of L. Investigating Committee Begins Hearings
The Committee established by the recent Convention of the Colorado Federation of Labor to investigate alleged abuse by the military met in Trinidad yesterday to begin hearings on the matter. Now, Professor Brewster was asked to sit on the committee despite his views on the United Mine Workers which are less than favorable. Yet, the Professor is trusted as an honorable and fair man, willing to listen objectively to the evidence.
General Chase has refused to meet with the committee in spite of the letter from Governor Ammons requiring him to do so. He indicates that, perhaps, he will find the time at a later date to meet with the C. F. of L. Investigating Committee.
The committee heard testimony from Mrs. Maggie Dominske of Ludlow. She described how she was on her way to the Ludlow post office with a group of women when they were stopped by militiamen:
They put up their guns and said, “God damn you, don’t you go another step. If you do,we’ll shoot you. We’re getting tired of these sons-of-bitches coming up here and we’re going to put a stop to it.”
The Professor asked if the women had been on a public road, and Mrs. Dominske replied that, yes indeed, they had been using a public road. The Professor declared:
I am surprised. Surprised. I wouldn’t have believed it if I had not heard it straight from these women. It is plain they are telling the truth.
We imagine that the good Professor will encounter many more such surprises before the investigation is completed.
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Wednesday December 31, 1913
Ludlow, Colorado – Lt Linderfelt declares himself “Jesus Christ”
Yesterday evening, a cavalryman was injured when his horse tripped on a piece of barbed wire. The injured man was brought to the Ludlow depot. A few minutes later Lieutenant Linderfelt appeared and went into a rage. Louie Tikas happened to be at the depot waiting for a train, also at the station was a boy of about fifteen years. Linderfelt focused on that boy, accusing him of setting the wire, and, when the boy denied the charge, began to beat him. Linderfelt next began to berate Louie:
There you are, you round-face son-of-a-bitch. You’re responsible for that wire.
Louie remained calm, but Linderfelt continued to rage. He gave an order to his men:
You Tollerburg fellows beat it over to the colony and cut every God damned wire around the place. The first man that interferes with you-shoot his head off.
Linderfelt then punched Louie in the face as he yelled:
I am Jesus Christ, and my men on horses are Jesus Christs, and we must be obeyed.
Witnesses report that Louie Tikas maintained his usual calm as Linderfelt struck him several more times. The lieutenant than ordered his men to take Louie to the military camp.
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 2, 1904
Military Despotism Rules Cripple Creek, Telluride and Southern Colorado
From the Duluth Labor World of January 2, 1904:
TEXT:
WILL THROW MOTHER JONES IN BULL PEN
Mother Jones Strongly Excoriates the Tyrant and Gov. Peabody.Denver, Colo., Dec. 24-…General Bell, smarting under the stings of “Mother” Jones’ masterful excoriation of himself and Peabody, declares in stringent tones that if opportunity offers he will slap her in the bull pen. That declaration was unnecessary. Those who are at all acquainted with his record know grey hairs, womanhood nor any other of those things which true men revere and hold sacred are as nothing to him if they stand in the way of groveling service to his masters.
Editorial Suppressed.
The Victor Record, the official organ of the strikers, has had a military patrol and censor placed at the office. George E. Kyner, editor, was notified that no editorials reflecting in any way upon Governor Peabody or the militia would be allowed, nor could the daily official statement prepared by the miners’ executive committee be published. Next day the Record came out with a black-faced heading “Record Reflections”- a two-column blank space with a border, on the editorial page, indicating that the matter, whatever it was, had been suppressed.
The official statement of the Miners’ Union which was suppressed follows:
“The governor of the state of Colorado has today pretended to declare martial law in the Cripple Creek district. There is absolutely no justification for this outrage. The strike has been on for three months and but one serious crime has been committed and that cannot be laid to strike conditions. The alleged attempt to wreck a railroad train is a trick plot of two detectives employed by the mine owners.
“The Vindicator matter was an accident, or a crime committed by someone employed by the mine owners.
“The mine owners have lost the strike and hence their desperation.-District Union NO. 1, W. F. of M.”
[Emphasis added.]
