Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 2, 1904
Telluride, Colorado – W. F. of M. Claims Victory as Strike Is Settled
The long and bravely fought Telluride Strike has been settled, and the Western Federation of Miners is claiming the victory. The strikers have endured military despotism, bullpens, vigilante attacks, deportations, and more during the past year. Nevertheless, they have endured to the end of the strike and that end comes with all of their demands being met in full.
From the Wichita Daily Eagle of December 1, 1904:
STRIKE IS SETTLED
———-Both Sides Are Rejoicing Over the Results
Telluride, Col., Nov. 30-Both mine owners and union miners are rejoicing over the action of the district miners’ association in session at Ouray ending the strike in this district which was called September 1, 1903. President Charles H. Moyer of the Western Federation of Miners, who was imprisoned here for several months last summer during military occupation of the camp, has made the following statement concerning the action of the miners’ association which was taken in accordance with is advice:
We have called the strike off because we take the position that the issues involved have been conceded by the mine owners and operators in the Telluride district, in that they recently posted notices to the effect that after December 1 they would grant an eight hour work day both for their mills and smelters and a minimum wage scale of $3. These demands were made over a year ago. We have had no conference with either the mine owners or mine operators and have no knowledge of what position they are going to take regarding the union. But the fact that they have granted our demands indicates that they will ask no questions and neither will we ask any questions, and I believe that within sixty days every mill at Telluride and Ophir will be running to their full capacity with the best workmen in the west employed.
During the past ten days the Telluride Citizens’ Alliance has deported six or eight of our men, but I do not believe the mine owners of Telluride had anything to do with this deportation. I believe the mine owners are inclined to treat us fairly and to meet us half way and I believe that public sentiment will demand that the Citizens’ Alliance keep out of the question entirely.
“What do you think will be the result of this action on the Cripple Creek situation?” Mr. Moyer was asked.
I believe a change will occur within sixty days that will be for the betterment of the Cripple Creek situation. The strike may not be settled entirely in that time, but I am sure a larger number of men will be at work than at present. During the past few days many union members, including some of the men deported by the military and business men last summer, have returned expecting the strike to be called off. Since the inauguration of the strike the mines and mills of the district have never been operated to their full capacity.
REPORT FROM GUY E MILLER
Guy E. Miller, president of the local Telluride Miners’ Union sends the following report on the new wage scale in effect for each eight-hour shift:
The new scale is given here:
Underground, Eight-Hour Shifts—Miners, $3; machine men, $4; trammers and shovelers, $3; drivers, caring for horses, $3.25: drivers, not caring for horses, $3; timbermen, $3.50; timbermen, helpers and laborers, $3; nippers, $3; hoisters, engineers, $4; station tenders, $3; cage tenders, $3.50.
Outside of Mines, Eight Hours—Engineers, $3.50; engineers if hoisting men, $4; firemen, $3; blacksmiths, $3.75; blacksmith helpers, $3; tool sharpeners, $3.25; laborers, $3.
Tramway, Eight Hours—Gripmen and loaders, $3; brakemen, $3.75; linemen, $4.
Mill, Cyanide Works, Etc., Eight Hours—Crusher men, $3; battery men, $3.50; battery men helpers, $3; Huntington and Chile mill men, $3; concentrator men, $3.50; concentrator men helpers, $3; engineers, $3; firemen, $3; blacksmiths, $3.75; carpenters, $3.75; laborers and shovelers, $3; canvas plant employes, $3; solution men, $3.50.
Boarding Houses—Head cook, if over 100 men, $100 per month and board; night cook and baker, if over 100 men, $90 a month and board. If over 175 men, the head-cook will be furnished with a meat cutter at $80 a month and board. Second cook, $65 a month and board; waitresses and dishwashers, $60 per month and board.
Guy E. Miller further reports:
The San Juan District Union concluded its session in Ouray November 29th, when the strike was declared off. President Moyer, who was at the conference, stated the position of the union very concisely:
We have called the strike off, because we take the position that the issues involved have been conceded by the mine owners and operators in the Telluride district in that they recently posted notices to the effect that after December 1st they would grant an eight-hour workday in the mills and a minimum wage scale of three dollars. These were the demands we made over one year ago.
The Telluride Miners’ Union No. 63 made a statement of conditions which was endorsed by the District Union…that part which refers to the attitude of the union is a temperate, well-considered document, worthy of a place in the minds of men ever ready to denounce the union as a lawless aggregation.
After fourteen months of industrial conflict, for which the Citizens’ Alliance is solely responsible, the mine managers have discovered that the interests of the Citizens’ Alliance are not the interests of the mine operators and that the Citizens’ Alliance is not a promoter of peace, but of strife. The mine managers have accordingly posted notices at their various properties, conceding the eight-hour day and the minimum wage of $3 per day, which was all that was asked before the strike was declared on September 1st, 1903.
We would infer from the action taken by the mine managers in granting the eight-hour day and a satisfactory wage scale that it is their desire that peace and normal conditions shall again prevail in San Miguel County.
We, as members of the Western Federation of Miners of the San Juan district are in hearty accord with this sentiment. The issues involved in the controversy having been adjusted, we have no desire that any conflict shall be continued, but in the language of our preamble, to use all honorable means to maintain and promote friendly relations between ourselves and our employers and endeavor by arbitration and conciliation, or other peaceful means, to settle any difficulties which may arise between us. It will require a large number of practical mine and mill men to successfully operate the mining properties of Telluride and place them upon a paying basis.
As such men return to Telluride, we will expect the mine owners to co-operate with us to prevent the Citizens’ Alliance from continuing assaults upon the rights of men “to work when, where and for whom they please” and reside in any community which they may select as an abiding place.
We demand that the Citizens’ Alliance shall be prohibited from employing armed forces and murderous thugs, contrary to the laws of the state. We shall expect that the laws shall be made effective and that the restraining order of the district court shall be obeyed.
As members of organized labor, we have endured untold sufferings through unlawful imprisonment, through invasion of our homes, through confiscation of our property and to deportation by Citizens’ Alliance mobs. We can not forget the brutal and barbarous indignities that have been heaped upon us; but we will endeavor to endure these cruel memories now that our demands have been granted and we have the opportunity of resuming our vocation on an eight-hour basis.
Indorsed by the San Juan District No. 3 this 29th day of November, 1904.
FRANK SCHMELZER,
President San Juan District Union No. 3.
SECRETARY CLIFFORD,
San Juan District Union No. 3.
Brother Miller reflects on the Telluride Strike and the courageous fight made by the men of the Western Federation of Miners:
Doubtless the story of the Telluride strike will be read by many who are unacquainted with the metalliferous miner. I know him in his every vice and virtue, know him with the intimate knowledge that comes from membership in his class, toil at his side, struggle in a common cause, know that his vices are not different from other men’s, unless it be that he takes less trouble to conceal them.
Given the conditions under which men work, and any intelligent man could give the characteristics of the class that would result. The needs and wants of a man are not supplied in bunkhouse life; men herded together, none of the refining influences of women’s society; newspapers, plenty of them, but no books, save an occasional cheap novel; in his poor, mean pleasures there is nothing of science, nothing of poetry or song in his desolate life, empty of joy as the dreary arch of the winter sky above the barren sweep of storm-swept peaks.
It was a homeless man who wrote “Home, Sweet Home.” I am sure if the miners’ critics could know the hunger, the unsatisfied longing for life’s beautiful things that these men, whose only shelter is a roll of blankets, feel, they would be kinder, more just in their criticisms. They would realize that when feeling becomes too poignant, too bitter, the natural thing is to take an anesthetic, and that at last the power to feel, to be, is dead. The individual has committed against himself the wrong that society in every age since history began has committed against the working class. Silent through the ages, the ruins of extinct civilizations are the dumb witnesses of labor’s immemorial wrongs. The greatest gift the years have brought him is increased power to suffer that may awaken him at last.
Fortunate indeed it is for the world’s vampires that he has drank of the cup of forgetfulness so long, else they had ceased to prey upon his vitals. An hour of consciousness on his part would end his wrongs forever, for once aroused, he will never sleep again until his chains lie rusting in the museums of the past—till the means of life are common property and no man controls another’s bread.
The Telluride strike has made its contribution to this result— the rule of man uncontrolled by men. The world might well learn a lesson from the grim patience of men who stood with folded arms and waited for the mine managers to operate the mines in compliance with the constitution.
The spirit with which they met oppression, their fidelity to the cause of unionism—seventeen members were false to their obligation—is their contribution to the world-emancipation of the workers.
The Telluride strike has passed into history; between the worker and the goal of his desire stood all the forces that feed upon and are supported by him; he passed on, un-awed by the malignant hate of corporate and business interests supported by the sinister power of the state, refusing to be provoked into violence or driven into crime, submitting to the grossest indignities, the most brutal outrages in the spirit of men who, in other ages, stood while the fagots were piled at their feet, serene, above the flames, above the mob’s brutal cries and appealed to the centuries for history’s verdict.
Fraternally,
GUY E. MILLER.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCES
Quote Emma F Langdon, Miners Are My Brothers, EFL p244, 1904
https://archive.org/details/cripplecreekstri00lang/page/244/mode/1up?view=theater
The Wichita Daily Eagle
(Wichita, Kansas)
-Dec 1, 1904
https://www.newspapers.com/image/63978029/
The Cripple Creek Strike
A History of Industrial Wars in Colorado, 1903-4-5
Being a Complete and Concise History of the Efforts
of Organized Capital to Crush Unionism
-by Emma F. Langdon
Great Western Publishing Company, 1905
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hb0hh2&view=1up&seq=303
IMAGES
WFM Colorado Strike 1903-1904, Telluride deportations
https://librarycollections.law.umn.edu/riesenfeld_images/darrow/photos/Miners_Deported_from_Telluride.jpg
https://librarycollections.law.umn.edu/darrow/index.php
Charles Moyer Prz WFM, EFL p82, 1904
https://archive.org/details/cripplecreekstri00lang/page/82/mode/2up
Guy Miller, EFL p207
https://archive.org/details/cripplecreekstri00lang/page/207/mode/1up
See also:
“The Telluride Strike” (Part 1) by Guy E Miller
https://archive.org/details/cripplecreekstri00lang/page/207/mode/1up
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Solidarity Forever – Seth Staton Watkins
Lyrics by Ralph Chaplin