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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 21, 1914
Photographs from the Colorado Coalfield Strike
From The Daily Missoulian of May 4, 1914
-Pearl Jolly, Heroine of Ludlow:
Month: May 2024
Hellraisers Journal: Women Survivors of Ludlow, Visit Chicago, Tell of Massacre Committed by Blood-Mad Militia
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 20, 1914
Chicago, Illinois – Women of Ludlow Tell of Massacre of Tent Colony Citizens
From the Chicago Day Book, Last Edition, of May 19, 1914:
Note: The Ludlow Massacre was perpetrated by the Colorado state militia against the colonists on April 20th. The correct names of the three miners’ wives are Mary Thomas, Pearl Jolly, and Mary Petrucci.
The article continues:
They left this noon for Washington, where they will tell President Wilson he must intervene to, stop civil war in Colorado.
Lindsey said:
The president of the United States is the only power that can preserve peace now in our state. The governor, the legislature, the federal troops, the proposed mediation bodies have all failed.
The president must force arbitration on the ground of military necessity. This is the positive and unmistakable sentiment of the people of Colorado.
Mrs. [Pearl] Jolly, who was fired upon though wearing a Red Cross uniform while caring for wounded during a truce, said that when she left Ludlow last week, there were rumors that companies of armed guards were being former secretly by the coal companies.
[She said:]
If they come again to shoot women and children, they will find us ready for them. The women will take guns and fight.
I saw the dead body of Louis Tikas, the Greek. I saw where his head was split by some kind of a club. I saw the mark of a heel where somebody tramped on his face after he was dead. And I saw the four bullet holes in his back where they shot him after clubbing him to death.
I would not have believed things could happen as terrible as I saw. The soldiers seemed to go crazy. After they had killed women and children and burned the tent colony, they shot at everything that moved. Chickens, dogs, anything that moved, was a mark for them.
Hellraisers Journal: Helen Schloss, Volunteer Nurse from New York, Writes Story of the Colorado Coalfield Strike
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 19, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Nurse Helen Schloss Writes Story of the Colorado Strike
From The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of May 17, 1914:
Helen Schloss Writes Colorado Strike Story
———-(By Helen Schloss.)
Miss Helen Schloss is a trained nurse who has been active as a suffrage organizer in this borough in behalf of the Woman Suffrage Party. She was sent to Colorado by the Brooklyn Committee for the Relief of Wives and Children of Colorado Strikers to organize a relief station at Trinidad. Mrs. Frank H. Cothren, Mrs. Herbert Warbasse and James P. Warbasse are especially active on this committee. This is the story of conditions as Miss Schloss heard it from the strikers:
———-
THERE has been a strike in the State of Colorado, since last September, and if memory serves rightly, there have been strikes ever since the mines began operating. Mines are unsafe, and hundreds of men are being killed in them every year. Water is scare in this part of the country, and coal dust is very plentiful. When a sufficient amount of coal dust has gathered in the air there is an explosion and many lives are snuffed out. When the operators are asked why they do not sprinkle the mines, they answered that the country lacks sufficient water.
The present strike has been in progress, in a peaceful manner, since September. There was no trouble of any moment till April 20. The militiamen were in the field to protect the mines, and incidentally to break the backbone of the strike.
The militiamen had nothing to do, but to have a good time. So for just a little pastime, they started with Ludlow.
Ludlow had 12,000 [1200] inhabitants, with over 100 tents. The Ludlow people were about twelve nationalities in that small colony. They had parties and feasts, the women had plenty of time to go visiting, and to gossip. The men hung around, laughed and sang. There was nothing to do but wait until the strike was settled. The militiamen had work to do, and that was to break the strike.
Long before April 20, the tents of the strikers were searched. Trunks were ransacked, floors torn up, and there seemed to have been brooding a general feeling of hatred for the militia.
While the militia searched the tents, they usually had a machine gun on top of the hill. Be it known that Ludlow is sitting in a valley. The militia were stationed on the hills. This gave them a good chance to watch the doings of the strikers.
Militia Fires on Camp of Women and Children.
Monday morning, April 30 [April 20], at 10 a. m. the Ludlow people heard an explosion, and rushing out to the tent doors, they saw the machine guns in full blast, firing down upon them.
Under almost every tent was a large cave. The women and children scrambled into them, while the men grabbed their rifles and ammunition, and went up on the hill to fight.
The women and children who were in the caves tell horrible stories. The firing from the hills kept up all day, until 3 o’clock the next morning. No one knew whether his companions were alive or not. No one knew whether they would ever see his friends again. The rumbling kept up on the hill.
One young woman [Pearl Jolly] who had some training as a nurse, put Red Cross on her breast, and carrying a white flag, went from cave to cave with food, and drink for the women and children. She was fired at from all directions, and it is a great wonder that she lives to tell the tale. The heel was shot off one of her shoes.
One time when she ran into one of the tents, to get some food, so many shots followed her through the canvass that she had to lie still on the floor for hours. A dresser in the tent was shot to pieces.
It is said that the explosive bullets that were used set the tents on fire. The tents began to burn towards evening, and the fires kept up all night. The women and children fled from the caves, to the nearest ranch, and as they were running , shots followed them. The firing became so insistent that the people had to flee from the ranch. The militia looted the house, and left a note on a blank check, saying “this will teach you a lesson not to harbor strikers next time,” signed with the initials of the Baldwin gunmen.
Towards morning at the break of day, that they saw the militia looting and setting fire to tents.
On going through the ruined tent colony, one was struck with the terrible amount f bullets lying everywhere. Everything had been riddled.
The stoves that might have been used after going through the fire were full of holes, where the bullets struck. Barns, sheds and everything in sight was destroyed. It was a ghastly sight to walk through the ruined colony, with the frames of the bedsteads standing out like ghosts amid the ruins.
We stopped near the cave, where eleven children and two women were smothered alive. Big, strong men stood at this cave, in silence, with bowed head. We slid down the gruesome hole, and I gave it a sort of rough measurements and found it 5 feet high, 7 feet wide and 9 feet long. A little high chair and a baby’s gocart were still there.
The Red Cross party that went to Ludlow to recover the dead were arrested and detained for a little while. At first they received permission to pass, but later on General Chase told them he had received word they could not pass. Later this same general became abusive and called the minister choice names.
The Red Cross party recovered the eleven children and two women, but it is said that there are a great many bodies still missing, which are not accounted for.
Hellraisers Journal: High Union Officials, Leaders of Colorado Strikers, Accused by Grand Jury of Murder and Other Crimes
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday May 18, 1914
Leaders of Colorado Coalfield Strike Accused by Grand Jury of Murder
From The New York Times of May 15, 1914:
FIND MURDER INDICTMENTS
———-
High Union Officials Among Those
Accused by Grand Jury.
Colorado Strikers’ Policy Committee, United Mine Workers of America
John McLennan, President District 15;
E. L. Doyle, Secretary-Treasurer District 15;
John R. Lawson, International Board Member from District 15;
Frank J. Hayes, International Vice-PresidentBOULDER, Col., May 14-Indictments charging first degree murder were returned here to-day against William [Hickey], Secretary of the Colorado State Federation of Labor; John O’Connor, President of the Louisville (Col.) local union of the United Mine Workers of America, and Jerry Carter and Joe Potestio, union leaders.
Indictments charging conspiracy to murder were returned against Edward L. Doyle, Treasure of District 15, United Mine Workers of America; John R Lawson, International Board Member of the American Federation of Labor [see note] and forty-eight others, including the four men named in the indictments charging first degree murder.
The action of the Grand Jury followed the return yesterday of fourteen true bills against strikers and sympathizers alleged to have been active in the attack on April 28 on the Hecla mine, near Louisville, in which one man, Peter Steinhoff, was killed and several were injured.
Gus Brack and William Knowles, strikers among those indicted for conspiracy to the murder, were arrested to-day.
[Note: John R. Lawson is International Board Member from District 15 to the United Mine Workers of America, not to the A. F. of L.]
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: Court-Martial Witness: Miners Stored Dynamite in Pits Dug for Families to Seek Shelter in Case of Attack
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 17, 1914
State of Colorado Charges Guardsmen with Arson and Larceny at Ludlow Tent Colony
As the Court-Martial of members of the Colorado militia commences, The New York Times continues to publish the claim, made by Colorado’s militia of gunthugs, that dynamite stored in the safety pits of the strikers exploded during the battle, and that that is what started the fire that burned the Ludlow Tent Colony to the ground, killing two women and eleven children and destroying the homes and all of the earthly possessions of the 1200 residents. This claim was made by the Times two days after the Massacre along with the claim that the battle took place on the property of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.
In fact, the Ludlow Tent Colony was established on land rented by the United Mine Workers of America. The strikers had every right to be there. Their tents were their homes which they were determined to protect, just as anyone anywhere would.
To our knowledge, the Times has never corrected that wildly inaccurate reporting.
The idea that miners-knowing the dangers of dynamite-would dig pits for the safety of their wives and children, fill them with dynamite, and then tell their loved ones to hide amongst the sticks of dynamite in case of attack, is the height of absurdity.
Readers of Hellraisers are aware of the many affidavits sworn out by those men and women who were in the Colony during the attack. To our knowledge the Times has not printed even one of these affidavits, at least we have not found a single one printed within pages of The New York Times.
There is no mystery as to the cause of the fire: The soldiers entered the colony at about 7 p. m. as the strikers ran out of ammunition. They first lit a match to Mrs. Petrucci’s tent, shot at her and the children as she ran to tent #58, and then, not long after she entered that cellar, they lit tent #58 on fire also, even as Cedi Costa begged for mercy. No mercy was shown. The gunthug militiamen then moved through the colony lighting tents on fire using paper and matches or a broom dipped in oil. Wherever the soldiers moved, the fires started.
The lies told by the gunthug militia are printed for the world to see, but the affidavits of the terrorized strikers and their wives are buried in volumes of testimony, printed only in the labor and Socialist newspapers
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Will Speak to Women of Colorado Relief Committee at Brooklyn, New York
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 16, 1914
Brooklyn, New York – Mother Jones to Seek Aid for the Colorado Strike
From The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of May 14, 1914:
Mother Jones to Speak to Women of Colorado Relief Committee
MOTHER JONES TO SPEAK HERE MONDAY
———-
Committee Meets at Home of Mrs. J. P. Warbasse
to Perfect Arrangements
———-FOR AROUSING SYMPATHY
———-
She Will Tell of Her Experiences in Colorado Strike,
Where She Was Arrested.
———-
Refugees of Ludlow Tent Colony at Trades Assembly Hall,
Trinidad, Colorado, photograph by Louis DoldThe committee in charge of the Mother Jones meeting, to be held at the Masonic Temple Monday evening met at the home of Mrs. James P. Warbasse [Agnes Dyer Warbasse], 386 Washington avenue yesterday afternoon, and discussed the arrangements. The object of the meeting on Monday is to arouse interest and sympathy for the wives and children of the Colorado mine workers who are suffering for want of food and clothing, and all who attend are requested to bring warm clothing blankets, etc., to be sent to Colorado.
Mother Jones who was in Colorado during the mine trouble, was asked to go to Washington to testify before the Senate in the investigation of the alleged massacre of women and children in the fight between the strikers and the militia. She has never spoken in Brooklyn before, and has come at the request of the women of Brooklyn, who formed the Colorado Relief Committee, to tell of her experiences in Colorado, where she was arrested on her way from Denver to Trinidad, and held by the military court for three weeks incommunicado not being allowed to employ a counselor or see a physician during that period and being released just before the serving of a writ of habeas corpus.
“This was all illegal, according to the laws of Colorado,” declared Mrs. James P. Warbasse to an Eagle reporter, at her home, yesterday afternoon. “A military court should not have been held when the civil courts were in session, and then think of an old woman like Mother Jones being held without the opportunity of consulting a physician. However, she is free now and she is going to tell the public just how things stand out there. She accepts no remuneration for her talks, and says it is payment enough to arouse the interest and sympathy of the public in the oppression and suffering of the Western miners.”
Mrs. Warbasse, who is actively interested in social work, was present in her automobile when Miss Elizabeth Dutcher was arrested on Tuesday evening, in front of Stern’s store on Forty-second street, Manhattan, where she had gone to speak to the employees on the unionization of clerks in department stores. Mrs. Warbasse furnished the bail.
Miss Dutcher is a member of the committee in charge of the meeting on Monday, as is also Mrs. Frank H. Cothren, who is acting as advisory counsel to Miss Dutcher, and Miss Hildegarde Kneeland, who was also present at the time of arrest.
“I think it a very significant thing that Mother Jones is coming here for the first time, at the request of the women of Brooklyn,” said Mrs. Warbasse, “and we think the time is ripe for bringing before the public some of the wrongs and oppressions suffered by the poor people in this country. I think this quotation will explain our attitude as well as anything. ‘He who would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression.’ We have tried to help the sufferers in Colorado by sending Miss Helen Schloss, a trained nurse, and at her request we are raising funds for clothing and food, for which these people are suffering. A collection will be taken up for their benefit on Monday evening.”…..
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: Rockefellers Are Undisturbed by “Agitators” as Colorado Miners and Families Mourn Their Loss
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 15, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Former Residents of Ludlow Mourn as Rockefeller Sr. Plays Golf
While the former residents of the Ludlow Tent Colony, 1200 men, women and children, mourn their dead-including twelve children ages three months to eleven years-and suffer the loss of their homes and all of their earthly possessions, we are pleased to report that the Rockefeller Family had a nice quiet day at Pocantico yesterday, undisturbed by any reminders of the Ludlow Massacre carried out in their interests.
From the Lebanon Daily News of May 12, 1914:
QUIET DAY FOR ROCKEFELLERS
———-
Neither Mother Jones
Nor Other Agitators
Visit Pocantico.Tarrytown, N. Y., May 12-Although the grounds were still heavily guarded no agitators appeared at the Rockefeller estate at Pocantico Hills. Mother Jones was expected to come here to try to make an appeal to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., but she did not appear. It is reported she will come today, but it is doubtful if she will get in the grounds.
John D. Rockefeller, Sr,. played golf yesterday morning, but John D., Jr, was not seen during the day.
[Drawing by Rollin Kirby and emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: Appeal to Reason Correspondent, John Kenneth Turner, Begins Series on “Government by Gunmen”
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 14, 1914
Mother Jones Praises John Kenneth Turner’s Series, “Government by Gunmen”
From the Appeal to Reason of May 9, 1914:
John Kenneth Turner Opens Fire
On Government by Gunmen
Here follows the introductory article of the “Government by Gunmen” series. In investigating these facts John Kenneth Turner risked his life, as it required his association with gunmen, detectives and the riff-raff of capitalist society. Several times he was warned by friends to drop his investigations. A reformed gunman has written the Appeal urging us to suppress this series if we valued Turner’s life. But the author of “Barbarous Mexico” and the investigator of West Virginia and other recent labor wars, laughs at this threat. He believes that the publicity given to this series will not only protect him but all who are today in danger of being “eliminated” by the murderous detective agencies. Here then is the beginning of the “Government by Gunmen” series. And every week for nearly half a year we shall bring before the public bar the strongest indictment of Capitalism’s Invisible Army that was ever attempted in this country. The Appeal feels that our first and most important duty is to abolish Government by Gunmen. It must be done-it will be done.
By JOHN KENNETH TURNER
Staff Correspondent Appeal to Reason.
In the county jail at Marysville, Cal., a short time ago I talked with two young workingmen who were on trial for murder. A jury of twelve men-not working men-has since declared them guilty and a judge has sentenced them to imprisonment at hard labor for the rest of their natural lives.
Yet these two workingmen had not killed anybody. Nor had they planned or attempted to kill anybody.
One, Richard Ford, is ruined for life-torn from his wife and two little children forever-solely because he became the spokesman for 2,300 hop-pickers who went on strike against intolerable conditions.
The career of the other, Herman Suhr, is blasted-he too, is unfortunate enough to possess a wife and two children-solely because he signed a number of telegrams asking that organizers be sent to the hop-fields to enroll the 2,300 pickers in a labor union.
The arrest, the trial and the conviction of Ford and Suhr was a deliberate frame-up of a ring of capitalists, in which a private detective agency took a necessary and criminal part…..
Hellraisers Journal: From the Appeal to Reason: Coroner’s Jury Blames Colorado Militia for the Ludlow Massacre
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 13, 1914
Coroner’s Jury Blames Militia for Ludlow Massacre
From the Appeal to Reason of May 9, 1914:
Coroner’s Jury Puts Blame on Militia
Trinidad, Colo.-The coroners jury investigating the Ludlow horror has officially placed the blame of it on the mine guards. Following is the text of the verdict relative to the fire:
Cecelia Costa, Petra Valdez, Begrata Pendregon, Clovine Pendregon, Lucy Costa, Orafrio Costa, Elvira Valdez, Mary Valdez, Elulia Valdez, Rudolfo Valdez, Frank Petrucci, Lucy Petrucci and Joe Petrucci came to their death by asphyxiation of fire, or both, caused by the burning of the tents of the Ludlow tent colony, and that fire in tents was started by militiamen under Major Hamrock and Lieutenant Linderfelt or mine guards, or both, April 20, 1914.
[Emphasis added.]
Firing of Ludlow Ordered.
R. J. McDonald, stenographer for the military commission, testified that an officer of the Colorado national guard gave the order for burning the colony, but he was not sure whether it was Major Hamrock or Captain Carson.
McDonald said he stood within a few feet of Hamrock and Carson, who were inspecting the colony from the top of a hill. It was well toward night.
“We’ve got just forty minutes to take and burn that colony.” he testified one of the two remarked, “before it gets dark.”
A few moments later the troops and mine guards, he said, swept down the tracks in the charge that meant the colony’s destruction and the death of the women and eleven children, who sought refuge in the colony’s safety pit.
Tikas Beaten to Death.
McDonald was questioned about the capture and death of Louis Tikas, Greek leader of the strikers. He said that while near the scene of the battle he heard a commotion behind some box cars and was told that Tikas was a prisoner and probably would be hanged.
A little later he met Lieutenant F. K. Linderfelt. He asked Linderfelt if Tikas had been hanged.
“No,” he testified Linderfelt replied, “I gave instructions that Tikas was not to be killed, but I spoiled a good rifles.”
The witness swore that Linderfelt was carrying his rifle over his shoulder, stock to the rear, and holding it by the barrel. The physicians’ autopsy showed that Tikas’ skull was fractured.
Open Butchery of Women.
Riley, a Colorado & Southern fireman, said he was on the engine of a freight train which pulled up at the Ludlow station in the hottest of the battle. He said that two tents already were in flames.
“I saw a man in a militia uniform touch a blaze in a third tent,” he said.
He said he saw women and children screaming on the railroad right of way apparently trying to escape from the colony.
When the train drew up at the station, he said, several militiamen put guns to the engineer’s head and ordered him to “pull out and do it damned quick.”
J.S. Harriman, conductor of the same train, testified that as the train pulled out of the station and past the tent colony he heard women and children screaming and apparently trying to escape. He said that during this time, the militia was firing into the colony.
Threat a Day in Advance.
“Have your big Sunday today, old girl,” Mrs. Pearl Jolly, leader of women at Ludlow, testified a militia man told a striker’s wife on the day before the tragedy, “tomorrow we’ll have the roast.”
G. A Hall, a chauffeur, told the jury that he had heard a militia officer give the order to “clean out” the tent colony and burn the tents.
[Emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: Mary Petrucci of Ludlow: “She touched and called to her three children, and they were all dead.”
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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday May 12, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – The Affidavits of Mary Petrucci and Maggie Dominiske
———-
AFFIDAVIT.
State of Colorado, Las Animas County, ss:
Mary Petrucci, of lawful age, being first duly sworn, on oath testified as follows: That her name is Mary Petrucci; that affiant had started to wash, and a little later heard two bombs go off, and noticed the soldiers running toward the steel bridge, and they started to shoot down at the colony; affiant states that it was about 9 o’clock [April 20th]; and then affiant went into her cellar hole; that when affiant went into her cellar hole she took her three children, ages 4 years, 2 years, and 6 months, respectively; that affiant remained in the cellar until 6 o’clock in the evening, when her tent was set on fire; affiant states that her tent was the first one fired, as her tent was No. 1; affiant states that her tent was the tent nearest the railroad track; affiant states that when the shooting commenced with the machine guns the bullets were so thick in he tent that she shut her cellar door; that about 6 o’clock in the evening affiant saw some fire on her cellar door, and on looking out saw that her tent was on fire, whereupon she took her three children and went to the cellar hole occupied by Mrs. Costa and other women and children to affiant unknown; that shortly after affiant reached the above last-mentioned cellar hole the tent took fire, and the women and children commenced to cough, and they were all choked with the smoke; affiant further states that she lost consciousness until the next morning, when she touched and called to her three children, and they were all dead; affiant states that she went to the Ludlow station and came to Trinidad; affiant states that she does not remember anything of the trip from Ludlow to Trinidad; that affiant was taken sick with pneumonia caused by exposure and grief; affiant states that on account of being ill she never saw her three children after leaving them in the cellar hole; affiant states that when she came out of her cellar hole the guards were shooting after her, and she started to the cellar hole where Mrs. Costa was because it was dug in under like a mine, and affiant thought it would be safer, and the guards yelled, ” Get away from there”; affiant states that she had the three children, and she had nowhere else to go, so I went in there.
Further affiant saith not.
MARY PETRUCCI.
Subscribed and sworn to before me this 11th day of May, 1914,
[SEAL.]Leon V. Griswold, Notary Public.
My commission expires September 10. 1917.
[Emphasis added.]