Author: Janet Raye

Hellraisers Journal: “Fifteen Men Plunge to Death Down 1500-Foot Victor Mine Shaft; Engineer Lost Control of His Engine and Cable Broke at Top of Wheel”

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Quote Mother Jones, CFI Owns Colorado, re 1903 Strikes UMW WFM, Ab Chp 13, 1925—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 28, 1904
Victor, Colorado – Disaster at Independence Mine Claims Fifteen Lives

From The Denver Post of January 26, 1904:
Victor CO, Stratton Independence Mine Ds, DP p1, Jan 26, 1904Victor CO, Stratton Independence Mine Ds 2, DP p1, Jan 26, 1904

Wednesday January 27, 1904 – Victor, Colorado
– Horror at Stratton’s Independence Mine

A horrific accident occurred at about 2:30 a. m. Tuesday January 26th at the Independence mine when Engineer Gellese was not able to control the engine he was running. A cage carrying sixteen men hit the sheave wheel hurling the men inside to their deaths.

Mrs. Emma F. Langdon reports from Victor:

The victims were mostly men of family, and a majority of them were new men in the district. Early in the morning hundred of people rushed to the mine to ascertain if their relatives were among the victims…the military were hastened immediately to the scene and took complete control, not even allowing press representatives near enough to gain facts. As near as the writer could learn particulars they are as follows:

Frank T. Gellese, engineer from Cour D’Alene, was on duty during the night and had experienced no difficulty with his engine, he stated, and at 2:30 he started to hoist the machine men from the sixth, seventh and eighth levels. Sixteen men were on the cage and started for the top. At the seventh level the men noticed that the cage was acting peculiar, and it appeared as if the engineer had lost control of it as it advanced in an unsteady manner. They soon reached the top and were hoisted about six feet above the collar of the shaft and suddenly lowered about thirty feet, then up they went to the sheave wheel and the disastrous accident was the result.

It is believed that the men were thrown against the top of the cage, from the force of the sudden stop, that they were knocked unconscious and knew but little, if anything, after that took place; that in the drop of the cage the speed was so rapid that through the force of the air pressure they were thrown out against the walls of the shaft, which caused them to be literally torn to pieces. When the cage struck the sheave wheel it not only threw Bullock (the only one saved) out, but also threw out a man by the name of Jackson and killed him.

No one aside from the engineer saw the accident. A miner stepped into the shaft house just after the the accident and saw a number of hats laying around. He then looked up and saw Jackson in the timbers with the sheave wheel on top of him.

The military and Manager Cornish were immediately notified and hastened to the mine. Engineer Gellese was arrested and held for investigation.

The remainder of the force, numbering about 200 men in the mine, were obliged to be taken out on a small cage that would accommodate but two men at a time, and they did not all succeed in getting out until about 6 a. m.

Most of the men killed fell to the sump below and it was twenty-four hours before all the bodies could be found. There were portions of them found from the top to the 1,400 foot level The bodies were almost all beyond recognition, heads, legs and arms being torn from the trunks. It was a gruesome sight.

[Emphasis added.]

Coroner Doran will convene a coroner’s jury to investigate the cause of the accident. The Mine Owners’ Association and the Citizens’ Alliance are already spreading rumors placing the blame upon the striking miners of the Western Federation of Miners.

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Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “Fifteen Men Plunge to Death Down 1500-Foot Victor Mine Shaft; Engineer Lost Control of His Engine and Cable Broke at Top of Wheel”” →

Hellraisers Journal: Rescuers on the Scene of Disaster at Harwick Mine at Cheswick, Pennsylvania; Families Plead for Help

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Quote Mother Jones, Pray for dead, ed, Ab Chp 6, 1925—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 27, 1904
Cheswick, Pennsylvania – Sorrow and Dread at Scene of Harwick Mine Disaster

From The Pittsburg Press of January 26, 1904:

Harwick Mine Disaster Cheswick PA, Ptt Prss p1, Jan 26, 1904—–
Harwick Mine Disaster Cheswick PA, Ptt Prss p2, Jan 26, 1904

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Rescuers on the Scene of Disaster at Harwick Mine at Cheswick, Pennsylvania; Families Plead for Help” →

Hellraisers Journal: Trinidad, Colorado: Strikers’ Wives March with Protest Banners Held High, “Mother Jones Has Not Done Anything That We Would Not Do”

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Quote Mother Jones, Ladies Women, NYT p3, May 23, 1914—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 26, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – “Mother Jones Has Not Done Anything That We Would Not Do”

From The Rocky Mountain News of January 25, 1914:

Photos Jan 22 Women March for Mother Jones w Banner, RMN p12 Jan 25, 1914

Women March for Mother Jones with Banners:

MOTHER JONES HAS NOT DONE 
ANYTHING THAT WE WOULD NOT DO.

WE HAVE BUT TO SEEK AND 
SURELY GOD WILL SET US FREE

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Trinidad, Colorado: Strikers’ Wives March with Protest Banners Held High, “Mother Jones Has Not Done Anything That We Would Not Do”” →

Hellraisers Journal: Fellow Worker Joe Hill’s “Crime Record” and Mug Shot Sent from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City

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Quote Joe Hill, General Strike, Workers Awaken, LRSB p6, Oct 1919—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 25, 1914
Salt Lake City, Utah – Joe Hill’s “Crime Record” Received from California

From the Deseret Evening News of January 24, 1914:

Joe Hill Hillstrom LA Mug Shot, DEN p16, Jan 24, 1914Joe Hill Hillstrom re LA Mug Shot, DEN p16, Jan 24, 1914

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Hellraisers Journal: Trinidad-Women March in Support of Mother Jones; Chase Orders, “RIDE DOWN THE WOMEN!”

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Quote Mother Jones, Ladies Women, NYT p3, May 23, 1914—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 24, 1914 
Jan. 22-Trinidad, Colorado – General Chase Orders Cavalrymen:

“Ride Down the Woman!”

Jan 22 Trinidad CO Sabers Slash, Chase v Women, RMN p1, Jan 23, 1914

The women of Las Animas County gathered in Trinidad on Thursday afternoon to protest the military imprisonment of Mother Jones. They came marching with their children across the Picketwire River bridge and headed up Commercial Street passing by the Columbian Hotel. These were the women from the strikers’ tent colonies and they came singing the strikers’ song: “The Battle Cry of Union.”

Their banners proclaimed:

God Bless Mother Jones

We’re For Mother Jones

As they moved past Main Street, they were met by General Chase on his cavalry horse, and behind the General were his cavalrymen. Behind them were the infantry blocking the street. Nevertheless, the women and children continued singing as they marched toward the brave General and his troops. The General began to yell, “Don’t advance another step. You must turn back.”

The General spurred his horse forward and brushed against 16-year-old Sarah Slator. He berated her, raised his foot, and kicked her in the breast. His horse backed into a buggy and the General fell off. The women began to laugh at the site of the pompous General on the ground beneath his horse.

The General regained his feet, red-faced and furious, and shouted to his men:

“RIDE DOWN THE WOMEN!”

The cavalrymen spurred their horses forward, waving their sabers about and rode straight into the women and children. Several women were slashed: Mrs. Maggie Hammons received a gash across the forehead, Mrs. George Gibson nearly lost her ear, Mrs. Thomas Braley’s hands were sliced as she covered her face. Mrs. James Lanigan was knocked to the ground, and 10-year-old Robert Arguello was smashed in the face. A cavalryman chased the flag-bearer, Mrs. R. Verna, down the street, knocked her down with his horse, and tore the American flag away from her.

Young Sarah Slator showed great courage when she challenged a cavalryman who was threatening a mother with his bayonet as she struggled to run with her three-year-old child in tow. Sarah said, “You’re so low you could do anything.” Sarah was among the six women arrested. Twelve men were arrested later in the afternoon.

Colorado newspapers are full of derision for the victorious General and his triumphant cavalrymen. The Denver Express reported:

Great Czar Fell!
And in Fury Told Troops to Trample Women

A craven general tumbled from his nag in a street of Trinidad Thursday like humpty-dumpty from the wall. In fifteen minutes there was turmoil, soldiers with swords were striking at fleeing women and children; all in the name of the sovereign state of Colorado…The French Revolution, its history written upon crimson pages, carries no more cowardly episode than the attack of the gutter gamin soldiery on the crowd of unarmed and unprotected women.

Newsclip inset from above: The Rocky Mountain News of January 23, 1914

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Photographs from Trinidad Protest of January 22, 1914:

Jan 22, 1914 Trinidad CO Chase v Women Parade for Mother Jones 2, du edu, —–Jan 22, 1914 Trinidad CO Chase v Women Parade for Mother Jones, du edu, —–Jan 22, 1914 Trinidad CO Chase v Women Parade for Mother Jones 3, du edu, —–Jan 22, 1914 Trinidad CO Chase v Women Parade for Mother Jones 3, du edu,

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Trinidad-Women March in Support of Mother Jones; Chase Orders, “RIDE DOWN THE WOMEN!”” →

Hellraisers Journal: Kate Hilliard, Socialist and Suffragist, Defends Mother Jones after Vicious Attack Made by Polly Pry

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Quote Dorothy Adams re Mother Jones asleep moonlight, Tammany Tx p10, Aug 12, 1901—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 23, 1904
Kate S. Hilliard Defends Mother Jones from Vicious Attack by Polly Pry

From Goodwin’s Weekly (Salt Lake City, Utah) of January 16, 1904:

Kate Hilliard Defends Mother Jones re Polly Pry, Goodwin's Weekly p5, Jan 16, 1904

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Kate Hilliard, Socialist and Suffragist, Defends Mother Jones after Vicious Attack Made by Polly Pry” →

Hellraisers Journal: Scandal Monger, Polly Pry, Claims Mother Jones Could be Former Madam Who Once Ran Houses of Ill-Repute

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Quote Dorothy Adams re Mother Jones asleep moonlight, Tammany Tx p10, Aug 12, 1901—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 22, 1904
Denver, Colorado – The Polly Pry Claims Mother Jones Could Be Former Madam

Mother Jones per Polly Pry, Florence CO Dly Tb p1, Jan 5, 1904

Leonel Ross Campbell, Denver journalist now turned scandal monger, writing under the name of Polly Pry, has recently directed her prying gaze upon Mother Jones. In her magazine, The Polly Pry, Campbell claims to have evidence, supplied by the Pinkertons, that “proves” that Mother Jones once ran various houses of ill-repute in Denver, Omaha, Kansas City, Chicago, and San Francisco. The file, it is claimed, dates back to 1889.

According to the report, Mother Jones could be the madam who hired the “best looking girls on the row” for her house on Market Street in Denver where she went broke after her paramour, “Black-leg,” supposedly ran off with one of her girls. She then began drinking and was arrested and jailed several times. The Prying Polly further reported that this woman was:

…an inmate of Jennie Rogers’ house on Market street, Denver, some twelve years ago. She got into trouble with the Rogers woman for bribing all of her girls to leave her and go to a house in Omaha-for which act she was paid a procuress fee of $5 to $10 apiece for the girls.

She was a confidential servant in Rose Lovejoy’s private house on Market street, Denver, and with her several years. …

Lived in Eva Lewis’ house on Market street at the time the Coxey Army passed through here, and took a prominent part in the Denver preparation for their care.

Is known to Harry Loss, a piano player at 1925 Market street, who says he knew her first in Omaha in 1894, when she lived in a house at tenth and Douglass.

She was then selling clothes to the girls. A sewing woman for the sporting class living on Lawrence street…says it was commonly reported that she was a procuress by trade.

[Emphasis added.]

The Pinkerton report goes on to claim that a Mary Harris (using her maiden name) was a “vulgar, heartless, vicious creature, with a fiery temper and a cold-blooded brutality rare even in the slums.”

Now, in the slander sheet which bears her pen name, Miss Polly Pry is careful to maintain a distance from her lurid charges by reporting on a supposed report on Mother Jones. Very clever of her, and also in keeping with her usual style of reporting on labor leaders who are the often made the targets of her attacks. She has previously defamed U. M. W. District 15 President Howells, U. M. W. National Organizer William Wardjon, and U. M. W. National Executive Board Member John Gehr. Anti-union newspapers across the country see fit to pick up these sordid stories from The Polly Pry and reprint them.

For her part, Mother Jones refuses to give dignity to the charges by responding to them in any way. U. M. W. attorneys doubt that a law suit would be successful since the charges made by The Polly Pry are implied rather than made directly.

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Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Scandal Monger, Polly Pry, Claims Mother Jones Could be Former Madam Who Once Ran Houses of Ill-Repute” →

Hellraisers Journal: Gertrude A. Lee, Suffragist and Chairman of Democratic State Committee of Colorado, Could Help Free Mother Jones from Military Bastile

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Quote Mother Jones, Chase No Own State, RMN p3, Jan 12, 1914—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 21, 1914
Mrs. Gertrude Lee of Colorado’s Democratic Party Could Help Free Mother Jones

From The Cincinnati Post of January 20, 1914
-Write or Wire Mrs. Lee, of Colorado’s Democratic Party, to Help Free Mother Jones:

Gertrude Lee, Suffragist n Chair of CO Democratic Committee, Cnc Pst p1, Jan 20, 1914

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Hellraisers Journal: The Denver Post: “Siberian Exiling Scenes Re-Enacted at Telluride” and News from Cripple Creek

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Quote Mother Jones, CFI Owns Colorado, re 1903 Strikes UMW WFM, Ab Chp 13, 1925—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 20, 1904
News from Colorado Strike Zones of Telluride and Cripple Creek

From The Denver Post of January 15, 1904:

CO Siberian Exiling Scenes Deportations Telluride, DP p13, Jan 15, 1904

SIBERIAN EXILING SCENES.

Telluride, Colo., Jan. 15-Tears, curses, maledictions and prayers were heard at the depot this morning when the train pulled out of the station having on board six union miners, who were being deported by the military. The men were given breakfast early, the meal being served from the Sheridan hotel, after which the wife of one of them was reluctantly permitted to visit her husband in jail. At 8 o’clock a bunch of blue-coats, under the command of Captain Scholz, marched to the court house and the prisoners were taken to the county jail and formed into line, ready for the march to the station.

A woman with a small child attempted to fall in line with her husband, but was brutally prevented by the soldiers, who forced her back on the sidewalk. With a face drawn with bitter agony and grief she endeavored to keep up with the soldiers as they marched down the streets, but the prisoners had reached the train long before she had gone a block.

At the depot the men were immediately put aboard the train and two soldiers stationed at the car windows. The relatives of the men were allowed to talk to them, and for a moment the air was filled with tearful good-byes and well wishes.

Fifteen minutes before the signal was given to start three women came running down the track. One of them , a Mabel Marchinado, a mere girl, hardly 17 years old, weeping bitterly, rushed over the icy platform to the window in which one of the men was sitting, and exclaimed: “oh, papa, what are they going to do with you?”

Her father, Tony Marchinado, endeavored to comfort her, but the girl continued sobbing pitifully. The sympathy of the entire crowd at the depot went out to this girl, and some turned away. Then the soldiers ordered her to move on.

The girl suddenly ceased weeping and, turning to those standing, and in a voice loud enough for the military to hear, said: “I think it’s living shame for men living in this country to be treated in such a manner.” She was not arrested.

The woman with the small child in the meantime reached the depot almost exhausted. She purchased a ticket and boarded the train on which her husband was about to be sent into exile. She cried bitterly and her baby was blue with cold. “I am too sick to work and look after our baby alone, and I am going with my husband, if it means the jail.” she moaned. If ever volumes of mute sympathy went out from a crowd, it went out greater as she bent down her head and fondly kissed the lips of her offspring, in vain endeavor to hush its cries from the biting cold. It was by far the saddest incident yet recorded in the military occupation of Telluride and the subsequent deportation of striking miners…

[Emphasis added.]

The names of the six deported men are: Tony Marchinado, Tony Sartoris, Louis Sartoris, F. W. Wells, Matt Lingol and Battiste Monchiando.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: The Denver Post: “Siberian Exiling Scenes Re-Enacted at Telluride” and News from Cripple Creek” →

Hellraisers Journal: Big Annie Clemenc, Strikers’ Flag Bearer, Seriously Ill at Her Mother’s Home in Calumet, Michigan

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Quote Poem Ellis B Harris re Annie Clemenc n Women of Calumet, Mnrs Mag p14, Nov 27, 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 19, 1914
Calumet, Michigan – Annie Clemenc Seriously Ill at Her Mother’s Home

From the Dayton Daily News of January 18, 1914:

Annie Clemenc Ill in Calumet, Dayton OH Dly Ns p21, Jan 18, 1914

Saturday January 19, 1914 – Calumet, Michigan
–Annie Clemenc, Seriously Ill, Cared for at Her Mother’s Home

Annie Clemenc of Calumet has been very ill and under a doctor’s care since early this month.  Charles Edward Russell who is in the strike zone as part of the Socialist Party Investigating Committee went to visit her on January 10th. He reported that “she lay in her mother’s house, unconscious part of the time and part of the time shaken with nervous convulsions.” She is receiving sickness benefits from Slovenska Narodna Podporna Jednota (Slovene National Benefit Society), something she has never needed before.

We are left to wonder how much of a role the Italian Hall Massacre plays in her  illness. Annie, as President of the Calumet Women’s Auxiliary (W. F. of M.), was the driving force behind organizing the Christmas Party for the strikers’ children. The evening began with so much joy, but then ended with Annie holding a dead child in her arms, and attempting hopelessly to revive the little one.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Big Annie Clemenc, Strikers’ Flag Bearer, Seriously Ill at Her Mother’s Home in Calumet, Michigan” →