Month: May 2024

Hellraisers Journal: Don MacGregor for the Chicago Day Book: “Rockefeller Spread Terror to Unborn Babes in Colorado”

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Quote KE Linderfelt re Damn Red Neck Bitches of Ludlow Massacre, Apr 20, 1914, CIR p7378—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday May 11, 1914
MacGregor Describes the Terror Wrought in Colorado by Rockefeller’s Murderers

From The Day Book of May 6, 1914:

Rockefeller Terror Colorado Coalfield War by Don MacGregor, Day Book p1, May 6, 1914

And I saw little children, with wide and reddened eyes, run from my approach because I was a stranger and the Ludlow massacre of the innocents had taught them fear of all strangers.

I stopped my machine to talk to one little girl of seven. She ran from me, stumbled, fell, and lay clinging to the earth, her small body shaking with sobs.

“Are you scared of me?” I asked.

Her sobs became more violent.

“I’m your friend,” I said. “I don’t want to hurt you. Why are you afraid of me?”

She turned a terror-stricken face to me for a moment.

“I don’t know you,” she said. “And you came in an automobile. And-“

She buried her wet face in the earth and fell to sobbing again.

At the Jackson tent colony, twelve miles from where the fighting took place, a woman came to me and fell on her knees. She was soon to be a mother.

“Can’t you get me away from here?” she cried. “I don’t want my baby born here within reach of the machine guns. There was a woman going to have a baby at Ludlow, and-and they burned them both.”

She was silent for a moment; then waved her hand toward her husband, who stood at her tent door, leaning on a rifle, his face as grim as death itself.

“Besides,” she said proudly, “I want my man to be down at the front fighting the gunmen with the rest, and he can’t leave me alone here. Get me away.”

Mothers pleading that their babies might be born out of reach of Rockefeller’s guns! That they might be removed from danger so their men could go to the front-against Rockefeller!

Was it not enough to make men’s hearts red with rage? Was it not enough to rouse the murder lust within them?

I tell you there were times there when I felt like hanging every Rockefeller murderer who fell into our hands, without ceremony and without compunction. I think my hands would have been clean.

And yet those miners, who have been called every murderous name the mine owners or their hired press agents could think of, captured four mines outside Walsenburg and gave every gunman at them safe conduct out of the district when they raised the white flag!

—————

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Don MacGregor for the Chicago Day Book: “Rockefeller Spread Terror to Unborn Babes in Colorado”” →

Hellraisers Journal: “Men don’t scare easy when they fight to keep other men from burning their homes.”-Don MacGregor

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Quote John Lawson 1913, after October 17th Death Special attack on Forbes Tent Colony, Beshoar p74—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 10, 1914
Don MacGregor Describes the Battle of the Hogback, Near Walsenburg

From the Chicago Day Book of May 5, 1914:

Remember Ludlow Battle Cry on Hogback Near Walsenburg CO, Day Book p1, May 4, 1914

They fired carefully, deliberately. They didn’t fire to frighten but to kill.

But they didn’t shoot at those militiamen because the blood lust was in their veins. They shot because the memory of Ludlow was in their minds.

Soon after the battle started, Rockefeller’s murderers at the Walsen mine turned their machine guns on the city of Walsenburg. Two men were killed there, while women and children crouched in terror in the basements of their homes.

Such was the battle of Walsenburg, in which 300 strikers Wednesday [April 29th] defended their position on a hilltop against about 200 so-called militiamen.

They tell me that one militiamen and ten gunmen were killed. It’s too bad but they shouldn’t be militiamen and gunmen. They shouldn’t be working for greedy coal operators against men and women and children who are striking for bread.

It wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t working against the women and children. The men can stand their attacks. But when they kill wives and mothers and babies, kill them for hire it’s different.

I never knew braver or better men than those miners. They’re rough; they’re ignorant, but they’re men. They love their families.

And I know that when they fought the militia at Walsenburg it was simply to protect their families.

It wasn’t for revenge. It was from fear of another massacre.

The strikers under me occupied a position on a hill “the Hogback.” One-half mile back of them was their camp of Toltec, and stretching twelve miles back of that were seven other strikers’ camps in which were fifteen hundred women and children. All that stood between John D. Rockefeller’s murderers and these fifteen hundred women and children was “The Hogback” and the strikers on it.

And every man was thinking of Ludlow. Four men who had lost wives and children in the massacre there were in our ranks. They’d told the story of Ludlow, over and over again. They’d told how the militiamen and the gunmen, brought to Colorado to kill for hire, had trained their machine guns on the camp. They’d heard how the tents were set on fire, how the children screamed and died in cruel flames!

And they were determined to die rather than let those militiamen reach the camp back of Walsenburg.

We didn’t do wrong. We didn’t resist officers of the law. We resisted men who have preyed on us for months, who have shot us down, who have burned our camps and who have killed our women and children. That’s the awful part.

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Hellraisers Journal: Battle of the Hogback, Denver Express Reporter, Don MacGregor, Lays Down His Pen and Picks Up a Gun

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Quote CO Labor Leaders Call to Arms, Apr 22, ULB p1, Apr 25, 1914—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 9, 1914
Colorado Coalfield War – Don MacGregor Lays Down His Pen and Picks Up a Gun

April 27-29, 1914 – Battle of the Hogback Above Walsenburg
Don MacGregor Leads the Redneck Miners’ Army

CO Coalfield War, Apr 21-Apr 30, 1914, Coal Field War Project
Striking Miners at Camp Beshoar, Ready for Battle
The Battle of the Hogback between the strikers and the mine guards raged for three days on the ridge above Walsenburg with losses reported on both sides. The Hogback extends west from the northern edge of downtown Walsenburg. Here the miners were led by Don MacGregor, dressed in “top boots and bandoliers.” From their position on the Hogback striking miners attacked the Walsen Mine and the mines near Toltec and Picton. They established their headquarters at the Toltec Union Hall.Sheriff Farr declined to participate in the battle. He and his guards barricaded themselves within the granite courthouse as the miners took control of parts of Walsenburg, including 7th Street. The miners ran supplies from there out along the Hogback to their embattled comrades.

Don MacGregor, Reporter for the Denver Express
We can only speculate as to what caused MacGregor to lay down his pen to join the fight of the miners. He had been covering the strike from the beginning for the pro-union Denver Express. He was there that first day of blowing rain and snow as the evicted miners and their families came down from the hills and began to set up camp at the Ludlow Tent Colony. He reported:

No one who did not see that exodus can imagine its pathos. The exodus from Egypt was a triumph, the going forth of a people set free. The exodus of the Boers from Cape Colony was the trek of a united people seeking freedom.

But this yesterday, that wound its bowed, weary way between the coal hills on the one side and the far-stretching prairie on the other, through the rain and the mud, was an Exodus of woe, of a people leaving known fears for new terrors, a hopeless people seeking new hope, a people born to suffering going forth to new suffering.

And they struggled along the roads interminably. In an hour’s drive between Trinidad and Ludlow, 57 wagons were passed, and others seemed to be streaming down to the main road from every by-path.

Every wagon was the same, with its high piled furniture, and its bewildered woebegone family perched atop. And the furniture! What a mockery to the state’s boasted riches. Little piles of rickety chairs. Little piles of miserable looking straw bedding. Little piles of kitchen utensils. And all so worn and badly used they would have been the scorn of any second-hand dealer on Larimer Street.

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: “The So-Called ‘Militiamen’ are only gunmen and thugs wearing the uniform.”-Ludlow Massacre

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Quote Helen Ring Robinson, Mine Owners Plug Uglies to Blame for Ludlow, RMN p5, Apr 22, 1914—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 8, 1914
Godfrey Irwin Describes the Ludlow Massacre and the Killing of Louie Tikas

From the New York World of May 5, 1914
Interview with Godfrey Irwin, an Electrical Engineer employed by the Electrical Transportation and Railroad Company of Trinidad:

Gunthug Militia in Front of Ludlow Saloon, CO 1913 1914, Coal Field War Project

On the day of the Ludlow battle a chum and myself left the house of the Rev. J. O. Ferris, the Episcopal minister with whom I boarded in Trinidad, for a long tramp through the hills. We walked fourteen miles, intending to take the Colorado & Southern Railway back to Trinidad from Ludlow station.

We were going down a trail on the mountain side above the tent city at Ludlow when my chum pulled my sleeve and at the same instant we heard shooting. The militia were coming out of Hastings Canyon and firing as they came. We lay flat behind a rock and after a few minutes I raised my hat aloft on a stick. Instantly bullets came in our direction. One penetrated my hat. The militiamen must have been watching the hillside through glasses and thought my old hat betrayed the whereabouts of a sharpshooter of the miners.

Saw Tikas Murdered.

Then came the killing of Louis Tikas, the Greek leader of the strikers. We saw the militiamen parley outside the tent city, and, a few minutes later, Tikas came out to meet them. We watched them talking. Suddenly an officer raised his rifle, gripping the barrel, and felled Tikas with the butt.

Tikas fell face downward. As he lay there we saw the militiamen fall back. Then they aimed their rifles and deliberately fired them into the unconscious man’s body. It was the first murder I had ever seen, for it was a murder and nothing less. Then the miners ran about in the tent colony and women and children scuttled for safety in the pits which afterward trapped them.

We watched from our rock shelter while the militia dragged up their machine guns and poured a murderous fire into the arroyo from a height by Water Tank Hill above the Ludlow depot. Then came the firing of the tents.

I am positive that by no possible chance could they have been set ablaze accidentally. The militiamen were thick about the northwest corner of the colony where the fire started and we could see distinctly from our lofty observation place what looked like a blazing torch waved in the midst of militia a few seconds before the general conflagration swept through the place. What followed everybody knows.

Sickened by what we had seen, we took a freight back into Trinidad. The town buzzed with indignation. To explain in large part the sympathies of even the best people in the section with the miners, it must be said that there is good evidence that many of the so-called “militiamen” are only gunmen and thugs wearing the uniform to give them a show of authority. They are the toughest lot I ever saw.

No one can legally enlist in the Colorado state militia till he has been a year in the state, and many of the “militiamen’” admitted to me they had been drafted in by a Denver detective agency. Lieutenant Linderfelt boasted that he was “going to lick the miners or wipe them off the earth.” In Trinidad the miners never gave any trouble. It was not till the militia came into town that the trouble began.

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: The little boy raised up his hands and said “Don’t shoot for my mother’s sake.”-Affidavits from Ludlow

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Quote re Louis Tikas by Paul Manning, 2002—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 7, 1914
Las Animas County, Colorado – Affidavits from Survivors of Ludlow, Part II

Children of the Ludlow Tent Colony

Children of Ludlow bf Massacre, CO Coal Field War Project Daily Life, 1914

The little son of Ometomica Covadle pleads for the life of his mother:

AFFIDAVIT.

State of Colorado, Las Animas County, ss:

Ometomica Covadle, being of lawful age, being first duly sworn, on oath deposes and says: That her name is Ometomica Covadle. I was going up to the store in the daytime, and the guards were all around the tents, and they start to shoot at the tents, and I only had time to get hold of my baby son, about 10 years old, and get into the pump; and the soldiers came up and tried to shoot inside where we were, and that came out of the pump when they tried to shoot with the machine guns and went into the arroyo. There were two dead men, and they jumped right on top of them. Couple of soldiers came out of the arroyo and was going to kill both of us, and the little boy raised up his hands and said, “Don’t shoot, for my mother’s sake.” I had a machine, and the soldiers took it out, and a lot of other stuff, and took it to the depot and kept it. They stole a trunk full of my clothes; I saw them take it with my own eyes. I had $5 in money that was stolen. They told me that I should be happy that you all were not killed.

Ometomica (her x mark) Covadle.
Subscribed and sworn to before me this 1st day of May, A. D. 1914.
[SEAL.] Leon V. Griswold, Notary Public.
My commission expires September 10, 1917.

[Emphasis added]

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Hellraisers Journal: “It is a damned pity that all of you damned red-necked bitches were not killed.”-Lt. Karl E. Linderfelt

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Quote KE Linderfelt re Damn Red Neck Bitches of Ludlow Massacre, Apr 20, 1914, CIR p7378—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 6, 1914
Las Animas County, Colorado – Affidavits from Survivors of the Ludlow Massacre

Lt Karl E Linderfelt 1913, 1914, Butcher of Ludlow, CO Coal Field War Project

Over the next few days Hellraisers Journal will present affidavits from those who were in the Ludlow Tent Colony as the militiamen, Rockefeller’s gunthugs, ended their attack upon the colony by burning down the tents, the homes of 1200 men, women and children.

Mrs. Ed Tonner describes how Mrs. Costa begged for her life and the lives of the women and children (including three of her own) as the gunthugs, led by Linderfelt, prepared to set fire to tent #58:

AFFIDAVIT.

State of Colorado.
Las Animas County, ss:

Mrs. Ed Tonner, of lawful age, being first sworn, upon oath deposes and says: That her name is Mrs. Ed Tonner. When Mr. Linderfelt came into camp with his auto load of ammunition, I heard Mrs. Costa crying, and she began praying Santa Maria and begging him not to kill her and her little children, and he replied to her, “There is no use in you crying and carrying on, as we have orders to do this, and we are going to do it; no mercy on any of you.”

Mrs. Ed Tonner.
Subscribed and sworn to before me this 30th day of April, A. D. 1914.
[SEAL.] Leon Griswold, Notary Public.
My commission expires September 10, 1917.

[Emphasis added.]

Mrs. Pedregone describes how she watched the “guards and militia” set fire to her tent:

AFFIDAVIT.

State of Colorado,
Las Animas County, ss:

Mrs. Alcarita Pedregon, being first duly sworn, on oath deposes and says: That her name is Mrs. Alcarita Pedregon. I got up late in the morning, and I seen the guards and militia on horseback, and they got off the horses and fell down on the ground to get away from the fire, and then I went into the hole with the children. There were 11 children and 4 women in the hole, and we stayed in that cellar from 9 in the morning until 6 the next morning. I seen a militiamen come over there and look inside the tent and strike a match and set fire to the tent. I stayed in the tent until it was all burned up. There were 11 children and 2 women suffocated with the smoke where I was. I lost 2 children in this cave when the tent was burned. I don’t know where my husband was at this time. I looked up out of the hole and saw the soldier set fire to the tent with a match. I lost everything I had in his fire.

Mrs. Alcarita (her x mark) Pedregon.
Subscribed and sworn to before me this 1st day of May, A. D. 1914.
[SEAL]   Leon V. Griswold, Notary Public.
My commission expires September 10. 1917.

[Emphasis added.]

Mr. William Snyder describes how that gunthug-infested militia unit set fire to his tent while his family was still inside, how they mocked him and threatened him as he held his dead son in his arms, how Linderfelt raged at his wife as she begged for the life of her husband: “Please don’t shoot him; they have killed one of my children already,” when Linderfelt says, “It is a damned pity that all of you damned red-necked bitches were not killed.”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “It is a damned pity that all of you damned red-necked bitches were not killed.”-Lt. Karl E. Linderfelt” →

Hellraisers Journal: From Appeal to Reason: “The Murderous Colorado Militia Was Recruited from Professional Gunmen”

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Quote Mother Jones Babes of Ludlow, Speech at Trinidad CO UMW District 15 Special Convention, ES1 p154 (176 of 360)—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 5 1914
Wars in Colorado and Mexico, Workers’ Blood Shed to Serve Rockefeller’s Interests

From the Appeal to Reason of May 2, 1914:

Appeal Army Called to Immediate
Action in the Class War

Practicality the entire issue of the latest edition of the Appeal to Reason is dedicated to supporting the class war, now ongoing, in Colorado, and opposing the war for “commercial and political domination of Mexico.”

The front-page masthead proclaims:

Masthead JDR Jrs Gunthugs Murder Women and Children at Ludlow, AtR p1, May 2, 1914

On the second page the masthead makes known:

The Murderous Colorado Militia Was Recruited
from Professional Gunmen

The following are portions of a few of the articles on the Colorado Coal War from Saturday’s Appeal to Reason.

Blood of Slaughtered Babes Calls
for Immediate Action

“God give us men: A time like this demands         
Great hearts, strong minds, true faith and willing hands.”

Military Rule in CO, Woman Bayoneted fr Stt Str, AtR p2, Feb 28, 1914

Two wars are now on. Both are wars in the interest of John D. Rockefeller and American capitalism. One is a war for the commercial and political domination of Mexico by the oil king and his colleagues. The other is  a war to crush out the rebellious spirit of the wage slaves of the Colorado coal mines, owned and operated by the Rockefeller interest.

As you read this, the newspapers will have given you columns upon columns about the American conquest of Mexico. Every known method of appealing to the gullibility of the American workers will have been used. The flag incident and other excuses will have been put forward to justify the sending of the American military and naval forces to our neighboring country. At the same time distorted reports of the bloodiest slaughter of working men in modern times will have appeared in the capitalist press.

This latest battle at Ludlow, Colo., is probably the most outrageous assault upon the rights, liberties and lives of the working class in American history. This issue of the Appeal to Reason gives you only what cold ink and type can transmit. No amount of writing can give you an adequate description of the murdering and maiming of women and children such as occurred last week in one of the sovereign states of this republic. On the other hand the slightest affront to the alleged dignity of American capitalism will have been played up and elaborated upon by most expert writers, artists and photographers that the filthy lucre of capitalism’s prostituted press can purchase…..

[Photograph, paragraph break and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: New York May Day Parade Banner: Rockefeller “Uses Bibles in New York and Bullets in Colorado”

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He uses Bibles in New York
and bullets in Colorado.
———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday May 4, 1914
New York, New York – Police Attack May Day Rally at Union Square

From The New York Times of May 2, 1914:

The Times blames anarchists for the police attack upon the peaceful rally:

5,000 STAMPEDED BY POLICE CLUBS
———-
Women and Children Felled in Flight
at Union Square May Day Rally.
———-

Socialist Women March at NYC May Day Parade 1914, LoC
 
With Chief Inspector “Schmittberger close behind issuing vain orders to halt and return to their stations, 200 uniformed policemen charged through the May Day gathering of Socialists and labor unionists who celebrated the International Labor Day in Union square yesterday.

The police charge caused a stampede of 5,000 of the 15,000 persons in the Square. Clubs flew right and left, the police jumping over the bodies of prostrate women, men, and boys and even two babies, to reach people beyond them….

Schmittberger’s powerful voice was heard above the dim of the stampede and the screams of women and children who had been bowled over.

“Back to your stations, you men! Down with your clubs! Stop this! Stop it at once!” the big Inspector called out and his message seemed to bring the excited policemen to their senses.

As they turned to retreat over a big open space they had cleared they found two little babies rolling in the dirt, with their mother, Rebecca Shulman, trying to crawl to them from a point ten feet away where she had landed on her head. One man, Bola Bologna, of 355 East 184th Street, was bleeding profusely from a wound across his head…

Crowd’s Mood Changes.

While the charge was being made Socialist speakers, several of whom were women, were standing on the cottage porch, from which a woman was addressing the multitude. The police advance occurred so quickly that the meeting itself was not disturbed. Speakers continued with their appeals to keep May 1 as a general labor holiday, in harmony with a world-wide movement, for several minutes after the stampede.

But the mood of the crowd was changed. The marches, from 30,000 to 60,000 strong, had been sweeping into the Square for four hours. All had arrived in a cheerful mood, and there had been much singing, while little children by the hundreds mingled with the men and women marchers.

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones: “Every man should shoulder his gun and start to Colorado”-Speech to Kansas Miners

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Quote Mother Jones re Miners Org Real Power of Labor Mv, Speech UMW D14 Conv, Apr 30, 1914, Ptt KS, Steel Speeches p134—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 3, 1914
After Speech by Mother Jones, Kansas Miners Donate Treasury

April 30, 1914, Pittsburg, Kansas
-Mother Jones Addresses Convention of District 14, U. M. W. A.

Mother Jones gave a long speech Thursday, April 30th, in Pittsburg, Kansas, at the Convention of District 14, United Mine workers of America. She came seeking donations for the striking miners of Colorado, and, in the end, the miners of Kansas gave her all that she asked for.

MOTHER JONES INTRODUCED TO THE MINERS OF KANSAS

Chairman [John P.] White: Now, this morning I know that I voice the sentiments of this convention when I say that we appreciate the presence here of our great old organizer, Mother Jones. (Applause.)

Yesterday I gave you a pretty strong bump about Colorado, and what you were going to do about the money that you had loaned the national organization, that I plead guilty to being responsible for, so God help you for I put you in the hands of Mother Jones now. (Loud applause.)

A Delegate: I think the brothers ought to put up their pipes, put them in their pockets.

Mother Jones: You should join John D. Rockefeller, you are getting so nice…

The Colorado Coal War

[Mother Jones continued]: You see, my brothers, the trouble with us all is we don’t feel the pains of our fellow beings in the great struggle. I wonder if the nation felt horror of that affair at Ludlow? Why, if that happened in Mexico we would go down to clean up Mexico, and it happened here at home and there is very little said about it, when every man should shoulder his gun and start to Colorado to stop the war there. (Applause.)

Detail Tikas w Ludlow Flag, Mother Jones Leads CO FoL Dlg to State House at Dnv, Toronto Star Wkly p8, Jan 3, 1913
Louie Tikas with
the Flag of Ludlow

…No time in modern history has there been anything so horrible as this trouble in Colorado. I know those men in Colorado pretty well. No state in the Union has truer, better fellows; they have made a great fight against the men in power. There is no question about it. The poor fellow that got killed, this Greek [Louie Tikas], when I went to Ludlow, when the battle first started, the tears came streaming down his face, and he said, “Mother, they jumped at me to go war, and I got away and let the capitalists fight their own battle. I am here now, and this is my battle, the battle of right for the class that I belong to.” That summed up the whole philosophy of the labor movement. In other words, it was a battle for freedom for the class that he belonged to. And he said, “Mother, I need a gun.” I said, “You will have one, Louie, if Mother has to take her hat off and sell it, you will get the gun.” (Applause.)

Now, those brave men were the ones brought over, most of them, after the last strike that we had in Colorado; Rockefeller sent his agents to Europe and brought those fellows over. He has been able to crush them, rob them, persecute them until he has made his millions out of their precious blood, and then he goes into church on Sunday and is hallowed by the people of this great nation.

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks at Pittsburg, Kansas-Addresses Convention of District 14, United Mine Workers of America

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JP White re Mother Jones, Pittsburg KS, Apr 30, 1914, Speeches Steel p130—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 2, 1914
Pittsburg, Kansas – Mother Jones Speaks at Convention of U. M. W. A., District 14

From the Pittsburg Workers’s Chronicle of May 1, 1914:

Mother Jones Addresses Conv, UMW D14, Pittsburg Ks, Apr 30, Workers Chc p1, May 1, 1914

Yes, she swears. Says “dam” and “hell” and other such words. That’s Mother Jones. But did you ever hear people swear when it sounded like a benediction or a prayer? Mother don’t swear like other folks. Some way or other her swear words are more like poetry than vulgarity. Ask ANYONE who ever heard her.

She spoke to the delegates at the convention yesterday morning and not a miner in that hall will ever forget her message. Among other things she said:

I was asked by the congressional committee if I was opposed to sending the federal troops into Colorado, “I certainly am” I said. I am deadly opposed to bayonets being sent into any strike district where an industrial conflict is being waged. The miners in Colorado have had bayonets for months. They are not needed. Justice is what they want, not bayonets.

Out of the past eleven months I have served more than six of them in the bastiles of West Virginia and Colorado. I have seen the suffering of these wretched strikers, their ragged and defenseless wives and their starving babies in these strike districts and human pen or tongue will never be able to adequately portray the awful scenes enacted there.

She told of the Greek, Louis Tikas, whose truce with the gunmen of Mr. Rockefeller, ended in his murder; of the 51 bullet holes in his body and its laying exposed for days after his infamous murder. Told of his coming to her early in the strike and in his broken language and with tears streaming down his bronzed cheeks explaining how his Greek government had tried to draft him into the Balkan war and how he resented it to the extent that he was almost branded as a coward by the minions of that government’s plutocracy. This, however, was a fight of his class and he was willing to die a thousand deaths rather than see his fellow workers submit to the shackles of the mine owner corporations.

In dealing with the Colorado and West Virginia strikes she said that the ones who had died had not given up their lives in vain, but that they had died for a great cause.

When the congressional committee asked her if it would be acceptable if Rockefeller would consent to grant every demand of the miners except the one compelling recognition of the U. M. W. of A. she replied: “NO! We’ll give up every demand before that. It is the meat in the nut and without it we would be just as helpless as before.”

It might be well to state that Mother Jones’ confinement in Colorado was due to a fight for a principle. In 1904 what is known as “The Moyer” decision was passed by the supreme court. That decision gave to the military the right to arrest and confine any person without preferring charges of any kind against them. This was one of the most infamous decisions against labor ever rendered and has been the instrument with which more than one strike has been broken. Her fight was to get out of jail on a writ of habeas corpus and secure the reversal of that infamous Moyer decision. Up to the present time they have managed to evade the testing of the law but Mother Jones is still after them and if it is within human power to secure a reversal she will assuredly secure it.

Mother Jones came direct from Denver to Girard [home of the Appeal to Reason] where she arrived on Wednesday night. She will return to the strike zone immediately after a monster protest meeting in Kansas City next Sunday. She speaks in Frontenac at the May Day celebration today. Don’t fail to hear her.

[Emphasis added.]

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