Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 7, 1914
New York City – Judge Lindsey Testifies Before Commission on Industrial Relations
Mrs. Lindsey, Judge Lindsey, Mary Petrucci, Mary Thomas, Pearl Jolly, Mrs. Lee Champion, Olga and Rachael Thomas
On Thursday May 28th, Judge Lindsey of Colorado appeared before the Commission on Industrial Relations. The previous week, Judge Lindsey had escorted miners’ wives, survivors of the Ludlow Massacre, to the White House for an interview with President Wilson.
In his testimony before the Commission, the Judge spoke about the plight of women and children when their husbands and fathers die on the job. He describe how the “industrial government” of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company dictates to every branch of the state and county governments in Colorado, and, that that “industrial government” is dictated to from the federal “industrial government” in New York City.
Of the Ludlow Massacre, Judge Lindsey stated:
It is not an act of civilized warfare, if you please, to turn machine guns and rifles upon a tent colony in which it is known by those who are responsible and those who do the deed that there are defenseless women and children.
Judge Lindsey testified during the afternoon session of May 28th. Present were Chairman Walsh, and Commissioners Ballard, O’Connell, Lennon, Garretson, and Harriman. We present the first part of the testimony below, and will publish the rest of the testimony tomorrow.
TESTIMONY OF JUDGE BEN B. LINDSEY.
Mr. Thompson. Now, just for the purpose of making our record, l will ask you a few preliminary questions. Your name? Judge Lindsey. My name is Ben B. Lindsey.
Mr. Thompson. Your address?
Judge Lindsey. Denver, Colo.
Mr. Thompson. And your profession or-
Judge Lindsey. l am a lawyer, a judge on the bench, and have been for 15 years or thereabouts, in the city of Denver.
Mr. Thompson. Now, you may go on with your story.
Judge Lindsey. l will try, Mr. Chairman, to make my story as connected as possible; but unless l should be misunderstood, I first wish to make a statement as to the statement made by the gentleman who has preceded me [Major Boughton], which l think is a good illustration of much of the misunderstanding which grows out of an unfortunate situation like that which you are asked to hear some evidence about. He read from a newspaper saying that a Mr. Lord, representing the miners, had stated that there were 2.000 men, miners, and if necessary there would be 50,000 more ready to resist the militia. The gentleman did not state what Mr. Lord said, neither did the newspapers that he read from state what Mr. Lord said. Mr. Lord said, for l was present when he said, that if the tactics pursued by certain men in the militia that brought about the murders, as he expressed it and claimed, of women and children were repeated in Colorado that there were in that case 2,000 men who had red blood enough in their veins to resist that sort of encroachment under whatever name it might be called, and that there were 50,000 men in this country who were willing to join.
Now, that is an entirely different statement from that which the gentleman read and the statement which he would have this commission to believe is true. I merely mention it as a good illustration of how Mr. Lawson could have been misquoted and misrepresented by the paper from which he [the witness BoughtonJ read.
l have talked personally with Mr. Lawson within the last fortnight or so, just before I left Denver. I have talked with Mr. Lawson in the presence of men of the most radical type, who proposed or suggested things that I have heard Mr. Lawson fight against and talk against, and the statements made to me by Mr. Lawson are quite contradictory of the statement the gentleman read from the newspaper purporting to be made by Mr. Lawson. Since I left Denver and since I have been in this city I have found myself misquoted on several different occasions and things put into my mouth that l never said, things put into my mouth that I could not have said; and I wish to state to this commission, because of this fact of which I am a witness, having heard Mr. Lord, that it go very slow in accepting statements made in the newspapers.
I have a statement in the Pueblo Chieftain of May 3 that I could offer to this commission, two or three columns, in which it is stated that a certain prominent citizen, of Colorado said that the thing to be done with men like myself was that they should be killed—k-i-l-l-e-d-. I am not going to claim that those men who are making inflammatory statements of that kind are trying to stir up a sentiment among certain individuals that will bring about my own murder, yet that will be found in the Pueblo Chieftain of May 3, which is supposed to be the official organ, in so far as they have any official organ, of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co.Now, so much for that. Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: It is not an act of civilized warfare to turn machine guns upon women and children.-Testimony of Judge Benjamin B. Lindsey of Colorado”→
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 6, 1914 Clara Ruth Mozzor Describes Ruins of Ludlow Two Days After Massacre
From the International Socialist Review of June 1914:
The following article is written with deep feeling by Clara Ruth Mozzor who was present at the death-pit as the bodies of the women and children were recovered from the Black Hole of Ludlow:
“LUDLOW”
By Clara Ruth Mozzor
TWO days following the Ludlow massacre I came upon the ruins of the tent colony. Ludlow was still a smoldering, smoking mass of ashes. What was once the homes of these men who had come across the seas to build for their wives and babies was now an aching desolation. I came to get at the bottom of the trouble that caused a colony in which there were women and children to be fired on by machine guns and soldiers’ rifles.
Waste and ruin, death and misery were the harvest of this war that was waged on helpless people. The ruthlessness of the steady fusillade of bullets from the machine guns turned against these people by the terrific force of capital in the human form of the inhuman octopus John D. Rockefeller, wiped out whole families, separated husbands and wives, mothers and babies and sent into the beyond little ones whose day of life was but a short time off.
Only a few weeks ago Ludlow was a colony of life. Eight American flags waved gladly in the air over its tents. Here was going on the making of Americans in this great western melting pot in the southern coal fields of Colorado.
And on these self-same ruins was enacted the most awful tragedy, the darkest chapter of American history, the Ludlow massacre when sleeping families were made the targets with which to break the backs of the strikers.
The very region of Ludlow is one of nature’s hell holes, full of its dark canyons and deep arroyos, its hills and mountains. And in these mountains, in these Black Hills are scattered the men. Many of them do not know where their families are. Some of the women and children are still in the friendly ranch houses, while most of them are in the shelter of Trinidad homes and refuges thrown open to them.
The entire southern district is in the throes of war. Not civil, but industrial warfare, that has made such a reign of terror as must forever remain a black spot in the history of the state and nation. Ludlow is not the beginning of this war of desolation and sorrow. Seven months ago the union men went on strike. They demanded many things, but they were willing to waive them all should they only be given the recognition of their union.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday June 5, 1914 Excerpts from “Class War in Colorado” by Max Eastman
From The Masses of June 1914:
CLASS WAR IN COLORADO
Max Eastman
[Illustrated by M. H. Pancoast, John Sloan, and Art Young]
“FOR EIGHT DAYS it was a reign of terror. Armed miners swarmed into the city like soldiers of a revolution. They tramped the streets with rifles, and the red handkerchiefs around their necks, singing their war-songs. The Mayor and the sheriff fled, and we simply cowered in our houses waiting No one was injured here-they policed the streets day and night. But destruction swept like a flame over the mines.” These are the words of a Catholic priest of Trinidad.
“But, father” I said, “where is it all going to end?”
He sat forward with a radiant smile.”War!” he answered. “Civil war between labor and capital!” His gesture was beatific.
“And the church-will the church do nothing to save us from this?”
“Yes, this is Colorado,” he said. “Colorado is ‘disgraced in the eyes of the nation’-but soon it will be the Nation!“
I have thought often of that opinion. And I have felt that soon it will, indeed, unless men of strength and understanding, seeing this fight is to be fought, determine it shall be fought by the principals with economic and political arms, and not by professional gunmen and detectives.
Many reproaches will fall on the heads of the Rockefeller interests for acts of tyranny, exploitation, and contempt of the labor laws of Colorado-acts which are only human at human’s worst. They have gone out to drive back their cattle with a lash. For them that is natural. But I think the cool collecting for this purpose of hundreds of degenerate adventurers in blood from all the slums and vice camps of the earth, arming them with high power rifles, explosive and soft-nosed bullets, and putting them beyond the law in uniforms of the national army, is not natural. It is not human. It is lower, because colder, than the blood-lust of the gunmen themselves.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday June 3, 1914 “The Class War in Colorado” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part II
From the International Socialist Review of June 1914:
THE CLASS WAR IN COLORADO
By Leslie H. Marcy
[Part II of II]
The Massacre of the Innocents
[-from Rocky Mountain News]
The horror of the shambles at Ludlow is overwhelming. Not since the days when pitiless red men wreaked vengeance upon intruding frontiersmen and upon their women and children has this western country been stained with so foul a deed.
The details of the massacre are horrible. Mexico offers no barbarity so base as that of the murder of defenseless women and children by the mine guards in soldiers’ clothing. Like whitened sepulchres we boast of American civilization with this infamous thing at our very doors. Huerta murdered Madero, but even Huerta did not shoot an innocent little boy seeking water for his mother who lay ill. Villa is a barbarian, but in his maddest excess Villa has not turned machine guns on imprisoned women and children. Where is the outlaw so far beyond the pale of human kind as to burn the tent over the heads of nursing mothers and helpless little babies?
Out of this infamy one fact stands clear. Machine guns did the murder. The machine guns were in the hands of mine guards, most of whom were also members of the state militia. It was private war, with the wealth of the richest man in the world behind th mine guards.
Once and for all time the right to employ armed guards must be taken away from private individuals and corporations. To the state, and to the state alone, belongs the right to maintain peace. Anything else is anarchy. Private warfare is the only sort of anarchy the world has ever known, and armed forces employed by private interests have introduced the only private wars of modern times. This practice must be stopped. If the state laws are not strong enough, then the federal government must step in. At any cost, private warfare must be destroyed.
Who are these mine guards to whom is entrusted the sovereign right to massacre?Four of the fraternity were electrocuted recently in New York. They are the gunmen of the great cities, the offscourings of humanity, whom a bitter heritage has made the wastrels of the world. Warped by the wrongs of their own upbringing, they know no justice and they care not for mercy. They are hardly human in intelligence, and not as high in the scale of kindness as domestic animals.
Yet they are not the guilty ones. The blood of the innocent women and children rests on the hands of those who for the greed of dollars employed such men and bought such machines of murder. The world has not been hard upon these; theirs has been a gentle upbringing. Yet they reck not of human life when pecuniary interests are involved.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday June 2, 1914
“The Class War in Colorado” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part I
From the International Socialist Review of June 1914:
THE CLASS WAR IN COLORADO
By Leslie H. Marcy
“SOCIETY AS A WHOLE IS MORE AND MORE SPLITTING UP INTO TWO
HOSTILE CAMPS, INTO TWO GREAT CLASSES DIRECTLY FACING EACH
OTHER: THE CAPITALIST CLASS AND THE WORKING CLASS.”
[Part I of II]
FOR thirty years an industrial warfare has been going on in Colorado between the coal miners and the coal owners. In fact, in every state and country where coal is mined we find an irrepressible conflict of interests. Temporary truces are signed from time to time in the way of contracts mostly CON so far as the men are concerned-and again, there is open warfare as witnessed recently in England, West Virginia and South Africa.
Time was when the coal miners of this country worked 16 hours a day, but, by combining their strength into unions they have cut the hours of their slavery to eight and improved their working conditions. No wonder that their battle cry is “The Union Forever”! No wonder that the Coal Barons cry out for the standing army to protect them when all else has failed!.
The Battle of Ludlow was inevitable. For seven months the southern coal fields of Colorado have been divided into two hostile camps: the Owners organized into the Operators Association; the Workers organized in unions of the United Mine Workers of America, with interests diametrically opposed.
The main issue is the right of the miners to organize. The Colorado Statutes are very clear on this subject and the miners have the legal right of way, but, the “law is a dead letter in the section of Colorado 100 miles square,” or wherever the Operators own the land.
On September 23, 1913, the union miners went on strike to enforce their constitutional rights: to organize; to work an 8-hour day, to semi-monthly pay, to have their own Check-weighman, to trade where they pleased,-ALL OF WHICH WERE DEAD LAWS. Each proposition related to a law that was being violated. The whole proposal simmered down to a single statement is this: “If you coal diggers will give up your union, the operators promise to obey the state laws which have been passed for your protection.”
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 31, 1914 Seattle, Washington – Labor’s Memorial Day Honors Martyrs; Mother Jones Speaks
A grand parade, sponsored by the Central Labor Council and the local Socialist Party, was held yesterday in Seattle to honor those who have died as martyrs in the cause of Labor. Mother Jones was the honored guest and the featured speaker at the mass meeting held at the corner of Third and Blanchard Street where the parade ended. She rode at the head of the parade in an automobile which was followed by a thousand coal miners who had been invited to Seattle for that purpose. Following the miners, came marching members of all the various trade unions of Seattle. Some estimates are that six to eight thousand unionists marched in the parade.
LABOR’S MEMORIAL DAY PARADE
From The Seattle Post-Intelligencer of May 31, 1914:
Their banners and emblems draped in mourning, and each wearing a tag bearing a picture of Mother Jones, noted labor leader, who was the guest of honor and speaker of the day, in their coat lapels, thousands of members of organized and unorganized labor turned out yesterday in a monster parade and mass meeting to memorialize their fellow workers who have died in fighting industrial battles. It was the first observance of its kind ever held in the United States, and the huge success which it met prompted those in charge of the project to stamp it an annual affair…
The appearance of Mother Jones, familiarly called “the most devout friend of labor,” was the feature of the program. The aged labor leader addressed two large open air meetings at Third Avenue and Blanchard…
[Emphasis added.]
From The Seattle Daily Times of May 31, 1914:
The central figure of the parade was “Mother” Mary Jones, the noted coal strike leader who was the orator of the day. She rode in an auto with six children and A. Hutcheson, secretary of the joint [trade union and Socialist] committee.. and was cheered early and often along the line.
[Emphasis added.]
Three floats, covered in flowers, lead the three sections of the parade. One was dedicated to the memory of the “The Children of Calumet,” another honored “The Women and Children of Ludlow,” and a third remembered “The Heroes of Labor Who Have Lost Their Lives in Industrial Battles.”
THE SPEECH OF MOTHER JONES
Mother delivered the main address of the day; her speech, in part:
During the Civil War the emancipation of the slaves in the South was brought in as one of the leading measures. Today there is another war-a great war with a bunch of high-class burglars and looters, and the measure of this conflict is the emancipation of the mine workers and the nationalization of the mines. Why should we permit a bunch of burglars to own the mines? Nature did not put that mineral in the bottom of the earth for them. It was put there for the use of the people.
She spoke of that terrible day at Ludlow, of the machine-gun fire which tore through the tents, of the women and children whose bodies were taken from the death pit:
This happened right here in America, not in Russia or in Mexico, but right here under the American flag.
The peculiar thing about it all is that the public in general has not been aroused to a very noticeable extent. It seems that the public has to be struck by a cyclone before it will come to the realization of the actual state of affairs.
While I was down in Washington not very long ago, a Congressman asked me if I told the mine workers to buy guns. I replied that I certainly had told my boys to arm themselves and to do it in a hurry. And I am still appealing to mine workers and other workers all over the United States to arm themselves and be prepared to protect their families and their property. I would not be a fit woman to live in America if I did not tell my boys to be men and not cowards.
Get together, is my message to labor. The worker who has a label on him is not true to the working class. I was a member of the old Knights of Labor, and went into the American Federation of Labor when the Knights disbanded, and I will live and die in the Federation for it represents 2,500,000 workers.
I have been a Socialist for more than twenty-nine years, but I am not one of those who believe that individual freedom is going to drop down from the clouds-while we sleep. The fight can be won, and will be won, but the struggle will be long and education, agitation and class solidarity all must play a part in it. I have no patience with those idealists and visionaries who preach fine spun theories and cry down everybody but themselves. Let us keep our feet on the ground.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 30, 1914 Spokane, Washington – Mother Jones Talks with Reporter While Waiting for Train
From The Seattle Star of May 29, 1914 -Mother Jones Speaks on Christians and Savages:
A MODERN HEROD, “MOTHER” JONES CALLS ROCKEFELLER ———- Aged Angel of Organized Labor, En Route to Seattle, Talks to Star Correspondent of Colorado War
By Staff Correspondent.
SPOKANE, May 29-Mother Jones talked with a reporter during a short stop here today, while she waited for her train to speed on toward Seattle, where she will take part in the Memorial Day labor parade and exercises.
With the horror of the Ludlow massacre of women and children by the hired gunmen of the mine owners still noticeable in its effect on her, she is hurrying coastward to tell the story of the modern butchery.
She wants the Northwest to know the awful details of that terrible day at Ludlow.
[Said Mother Jones:]
I wish I could stop in every city and hamlet on the Coast and throughout the West and tell the story of Ludlow as I know it. The world outside of Colorado still fails to realize the full extent of Colorado’s red history.
This charming old lady of 80 comes to the Northwest fresh from her imprisonment in Colorado for participation in the miners’ strike there.
She has written to John D. Rockefeller, jr., asking him to see her when she returns East, and let her tell him the grievances of his former employes.
She has dreamed a dream of acting as an unofficial mediator between Rockefeller and the strikers in Colorado.
[She said sadly:]
I’ll never hear at all from the young man. He hasn’t even a polite excuse for an old woman. I might have known, though, that the man who would permit his gunmen to shoot down women and boil babies in oil wouldn’t want to hear the miners’ side.
Likens Him to Herod.
But you see I’ve just come from Colorado-from the strike zone.
I have a photograph of the little boy [Frankie Snyder] whose head was shot off while he was getting a drink of water for his dying mother. I haven’t been able to get my mind off the horror of Ludlow.
I thought just for a minute that perhaps Rockefeller was not as bad as he has been painted. But I’ll never hear from him. I know it now. Why, a mother might just as well have written to Herod to ask him why he ordered the slaughter of the innocents! THAT’S ALL ROCKEFELLER IS-ANOTHER BUT CRUELER HEROD!
[Mother Jones continued, in the deep, booming voice that shows the astonishing triumph of an ageless spirit over age:
They’re all alike, those capitalists.
They’re All Savages.
They’re all Christians in China and savages in their own country.
The reason they all give so much money to foreign missions is because they wast to keep Christianity where it can’t do any harm-where it can’t interfered with BUSINESS. BUSINESS IS THEIR GOD! They all worship it.
I tell John D Rockefeller and all others like him that the men Christ scourged from the temple, the money-changers, were men LIKE HIM and MORGAN and CARNEGIE.
And I warn them that another scourging of the money-changers is close at hand!
Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 29, 1914 New York City- Testimony of Ludlow Survivors Describe Actions of “Neutral” Militia
Judge Lindsey with (left to right) Mary Thomas, Pearl Jolly, Mary Petrucci, and daughters of Mrs. Thomas
Dear Reader: We will leave it to you decide just how neutral has been the attitude of Governor Ammons during the ongoing conflict in Colorado between the Coal Operators, led by Rockefeller’s Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, and the strikers, lead by the United Mine Workers of America. Read the following article in which Major Boughton, in his position as Judge Advocate of the Colorado National Guard, indicates the testimony that he will present today before the U. S. Commission on Industrial Relations. Then read the testimony of Pearl Jolly and Mary Thomas, both of them miners’ wives who withstood the machine-gun fire from that “neutral” militia all throughout that terrible day of the Ludlow Massacre.
We only ask that our readers remember that it is ultimately Governor Ammons, Democrat of Colorado, who is in command of the Colorado National Guard. And, we might add, we know of no instance when those machine guns were ever aimed at the homes of Rockefeller or of his managers in Colorado, and, to our knowledge, none of them have ever been arrested and held incommunicado in spite of having, year after year, ignored the labor and safety laws of the state of Colorado:
From the New York Sun of May 28, 1914:
WILL TELL OTHER SIDE OF COLORADO RIOTING ———- Major Boughton of National Guard to Appear before Industrial Commission ———
“AMMONS WAS NEUTRAL” ———- Judge Lindsey Leaves Without Getting to See J. D. Rockefeller, Jr. ———-
Major Edward J. Boughton, who commanded a battalion of the Colorado National Guard during the fights with the striking miners at Trinidad, arrived yesterday to give testimony before the United States Commission on Industrial Relationsnow sitting here in the matter of the coal strike. His presentation of the incidents of the strike will supplement the testimony given yesterday before the commission by Mrs. Pearl Jolly arid Mrs. Mary Hannah Thomas, wives of striking miners.
While Mrs. Jolly and Mrs. Thomas denounced the militia, Major Boughton will present the situation in a new light. He would not go into details when seen at the Waldorf-Astoria, but he admitted he had come here in answer to a subpoena that he might “tell the people of New York of the real conditions In Colorado.”“I want to correct,” he said, “the erroneous impression that prevails here regarding the part taken by the State troops.”
Major Boughton was an important factor during the strike trouble. On October 28, when the troops were called out, he served as Field Major. On November 20 he was made Judge Advocate for the military district. While he was Judge Advocate there were 172 cases presented lo the military commission.
“In this controversy between capital and labor,” said the Major, “Gov. Ammons has maintained a neutral attitude toward both parties. He did all he could to avert the bloodshed. He did not leave a stone upturned in his effort to have the matter settled amicably by arbitration. He is still doing all he can in this direction.”
Mrs. Jolly and Mrs. Thomas asked to be heard by the Commission and there was some objection, Whereupon Mrs. J. Borden Harriman of the commission, said: “I believe that if there has been gross wrongs committed against these women, they ought to be heard and I represent the women and children of the country on this commission.”
There was no further demur. Mrs. Jolly told practically the same story which she gave on Sunday in the Manhattan Lyceum, as did Mrs. Thomas…
Judge Ben B. Lindsey, who has been trying to see John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in an effort to get him to use his influence toward having the Colorado difficulty submitted to a Federal arbitration board, will leave this afternoon for Colorado without having seen Mr. Rockefeller.
“Although I did not see Mr. Rockefeller personally,” said Judge Lindsey, “we have communicated. From what I have learned I have reason to hope that Mr. Rockefeller’s attitude has changed in regard to the situation and that he will help toward having the matter arbitrated.”
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
Note: Mrs. Mary Petrucci, who lost her children in the Ludlow Massacre, has returned to Colorado. According to Mrs. Thomas, Mrs. Petrucci has been “grieving herself to death.”
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