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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday February 5, 1914
News from Michigan Copper Strike: Striker Shot; May Prove Fatal
From The Calumet News of February 2, 1914:
[Note: Names above are incorrect, see below.]
Monday February 2, 1914, Hancock-Houghton, Michigan
–Striker John Laitila Shot by Scabs, Not Expected to Live
John Laitila, striking copper miner, was shot by James Johnson, a scab, yesterday near the Superior mine as he confronted Johnson and three other scabs who were on their way to work. Laitila is not expected to live. Prosecuting Attorney Lucas is looking into the matter. An arrest is expected. We have learned that the Lucas doubts the story of self-defense told by Johnson, and further believes that the gun found on Laitila was planted on him by the killers.
The trial of the Waddell men in the killing of the strikers at the Seeberville boarding house begins today. Six gunthugs are on trial, and the sympathy of the kept press almost brings tears to the eyes. According to The Daily Mining Gazette, the gunthugs are “young men of good character and agreeable social manners,” while the men they murdered were “ugly” and “drunk.” Left unexplained by the Gazette is why men of such good character would come to seize men, without authority of law, and, when the men resisted being unlawfully seized, then shoot up a home, especially one containing a family with young children..
From The Indianapolis Star of February 3, 1914:
House Mine Committees To Inquire into Strikes
Washington, Feb. 1-Subcommittees of the House committee on mines will leave Washington next Wednesday night for the West to investigate the Colorado and Michigan mine strikes.
The Colorado investigators, Representatives Foster, Illinois, chairman; Byrnes, South Carolina; Evans, Montana (Democrats); Austin, Tennessee, and Sutherland, West Virginia (Republicans), will go first to Denver, then to Trinidad and Pueblo and later to Boulder.
Representatives Taylor of Colorado, chairman; Hamlin, Mississippi; Carey, Pennsylvania (Democrats); Howell, Utah, and Switzer, Ohio (Republicans), the subcommittee for the Michigan inquiry, will go direct to Calumet and take in Houghton and other places in the strike-affected area.
None of the committeemen would venture a prediction as to how long their tasks would occupy them.
[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Mother Jones, Stick Together, MI Mnrs Bltn p1, Aug 14, 1913
-Copy in possession of Janet Raye
The Calumet News
(Calumet, Michigan)
-Feb 2, 1914
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86086633/1914-02-02/ed-1/seq-3/
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86086633/1914-02-02/ed-1/seq-2/
-Feb 27, 1914
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86086633/1914-02-27/ed-1/seq-3/
-Apr 8, 1914
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86086633/1914-04-08/ed-1/seq-2/
Rebels on the Range
The Michigan Copper Miners’ Strike of 1913-1914
-by Arthur W. Thurner
John H. Forster Press, 1984
(search: laitola) page 246
https://books.google.com/books?id=I4DhAAAAMAAJ
Death’s Door
The Truth Behind Michigan’s Largest Mass Murder
-by Steve Lehto
Momentum Books, 2006
(search: seeberville murder trial)
https://books.google.com/books?id=-DN6AAAAMAAJ
Conditions in Copper Mines of Michigan
Hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on mines and mining, House of Representatives, Sixty-third Congress, Second session pursuant to H. Res. 387.
(Feb 9-Mar 23, 1914)
Volumes I-VI
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011597245
-re names: Laitila, James Johnson, p1550
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.aa0016263089&seq=232
Cases Decided in the Supreme Court of Michigan…Vol 186
Michigan Supreme Court
Lawyers Co-operative Publishing Company, 1916
(search: laitila)
https://books.google.com/books?id=eQBIAQAAMAAJ
John Laitila, 1882-1914
Kargi Cemetery
Portage Township, Houghton County, Michigan, USA
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/90410224/john-laitila
The Indianapolis Star
(Indianapolis, Indiana)
-Feb 2, 1914
https://www.newspapers.com/image/7335561/
See also:
WE NEVER FORGET Strikers Alois Tijan and Steve Putrich
Shot Down by Gunthugs, August 14, 1913, at Seeberville, Michigan
Hellraisers Journal – Monday August 18, 1913 – Seeberville, Michigan
–Deputies and Waddell Gunthugs Kill Two at Boarding House
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday August 21, 1913
Michigan’s Copper Country – “They never fail who die in a great cause.”
Hellraisers Journal – Friday August 29, 1913
“Notes from the Strike Zone” by Laura G. Cannon, The Seeberville Murders
Tag: Seeberville MI
https://weneverforget.org/tag/seeberville-mi/
Tag: Michigan Copper Country Strike of 1913-1914
https://weneverforget.org/tag/michigan-copper-country-strike-of-1913-1914/
More on the funerals of Steven Putrich and Alois Tijan:
The funeral for Steven Putrich and Alois Tijan, the victims of the shootings at Seeberville, took place [on August 18, 1913] in the Calumet district. The outpouring of sympathy was overwhelming as estimates of 3500-5000 strikers, strike sympathizers, and community members showed up for the funeral procession, with several hundred attending graveside services. The caskets were carried in horse-drawn carriages, with young women dressed in white behind 18-year old Tijan’s carriage, a Croatian custom. As Tijan died an unmarried young man the Daily Mining Gazette reported that the custom signified “that the dead died with his life incomplete, as he had not married and reared a family.”[1] The procession was a blend of somberness and solidarity for the strikers and their sympathizers. At the gravesite in Lakeview Cemetery, which had been adorned with eight American and Croatian flags, strike leaders made passionate speeches and paid their respects to the fallen. One WFM leader blatantly accused Houghton County Sheriff Cruse of the murders because of his support of the Waddell-Mahon men, and went on to note that any mining officials and community members against the strikers had blood on their hands from the Seeberville incident.
[Photographs and emphasis added.]
SOURCE & IMAGE
Copper Country History – History, Heritage, Memory
[1] Daily Mining Gazette, August 19, 1913
https://coppercountry.wordpress.com/tag/seeberville-murders/
MI Seeberville Murder Scene, Survey 128, Nov 1913
https://archive.org/details/thesurvey31survuoft/page/128/mode/1up?view=theater
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