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.”
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 28, 1914 New York, New York – Mother Jones Speaks at Dinner of Wealthy Society Women
From The New York Times of May 23, 1914:
Speaking before a dinner of wealthy women in New York City on the evening May 22nd, Mother Jones encouraged women to be woman-like rather than lady-like. She encouraged them to take to the streets and make their voices heard. When one of the women of the comfortable class whined that she could not make her voice heard without the vote, Mother Jones replied, “I have no vote, and I have raised hell all over this country.”
While we at Hellraisers disagree with Mother Jones on the issue of woman’s suffrage, we will point out that many of the woman of the Colorado mining camps also have no vote for either they are non-citizens, or if they do have the right to vote, then their vote is stolen by coal companies, as are the votes of their husbands and fathers-for, in the closed company towns, they vote under the supervision of the company guards. The lack of a vote has not stopped these women from raising hell. Perhaps, these wealthy woman have something to learn from their less fortunate sisters of the Colorado strike zone.
500 WOMEN CHEER FOR MOTHER JONES
———- Not a Man Allowed at Dinner Given for Agitator by Six of Her Admirers. ———-
SUFFRAGISTS GET A SHOCK ———- Guest Says Colorado Mine Owner Ascribed Control Over the Workers to the Women’s Votes. ———-
Mother Jones, the agitator, gave women some lights on suffrage at a dinner given for her at the Café Boherne, Second Avenue and Tenth Street, last evening. Not a man was allowed at the gathering.
Mother Jones spoke an hour and a half, and then read a few facts. She told the women they must stand for free speech in the streets, that it was their right, and they must have it.
“But how can we get it, mother? We haven’t the vote,” cried a voice from the audience.
“I have no vote,” answered Mother Jones cheerfully, “and I’ve raised hell all over this country.”
The entire roomful of women shrieked with glee. The dinner was arranged by six women-Katherine Leckle, Marie Jenney Howe, Edna Kenton, Fola La Follette, Rose Young, and Florence Woolston– and the number of guests was limited to 500. There were writers, artists, women of wealth, a a few suffrage leaders, and women interested in labor movements and philanthropy.
Mother Jones was kept quietly in a rear room while the diner was in progress to conserve her strength, but she showed no weight of her 82 years when she went into the big dining room and stood on a chair to speak. The women, standing, gave cheers of welcome. Mother Jones is fond of the frills and accessories of dress. She wore a figured bodice with the dark skirt of her gown. There were ruffles at the neck and wrists, little dingley ornaments at the latter and her white hair was arranged in the style that was known some years ago as a “French twist.” In front it had been cut in something of a bang and fluffed over her forehead. There were two little side combs and a glittering ornament was at the base of the twist.
Behind her gold-rimmed, gold-bowed glasses, Mother Jones’s blue eyes twinkled. She likes to talk, and she does not mind using what she calls classic language. Her talk was more or less of a rambling description of different strikes in which she had taken part, with sometimes thrilling and often amusing descriptions.
“There is going to be no speaking,” said Miss Leckle, who introduced her, “and only one talk by the biggest woman in the world. She loves every man, woman, and child in it, and we love her.”
Mother Jones started in, beginning with Rome, so it was not surprising that it took her nearly two hours to tell the women all about it. The remarks on suffrage were an interlude, and a surprise to many, and she said things about the Colorado women to which some of the guests took exception.
“Some one says I’m an anti-suffragist,” said Mother Jones. “Well, that’s a horrible crime. I’ll tell you something, girls.”
The women smiled at that nice little familiar word.
“I’m not an anti to anything that will bring freedom. But I’m going to be honest with you about those women in Colorado. There is no use in throwing bouquets. They have had the vote for nineteen years, and this is what someone who was present at a meeting of mine owners told me. One of the men proposed disenfranchising the women and another jumped to his feet and shouted.
“‘For God’s sake, what are you talking about. If it hadn’t been for the women, the miners would have beat us long ago.’”
There was a gasp of horror from the women in the room, and one woman asked if Mother Jones would not explain that statement.
“You see,” said Mother Jones, “the women got the vote without knowing anything about the civic conditions, but now they are waking up, and when the women in America wake up there will be something done. A woman in a comfortable home who is reading her books and amusing her children says to me:
“‘Why really, we didn’t know anything about these terrible conditions.’
“‘Well,’ I answered, ‘I was 1,800 miles away and I knew all about it.’
“I don’t believe in the rights of women or the rights of men, but human rights. No country can rise higher than its women, and I don’t have to see the mother to know what she is. I can tell when I see the man she has raised. And there are not as many good mothers as there should be.”
In telling the women to go on with their work Mother Jones said:
“Never mind if you are not lady like, you are woman-like. God Almighty made the woman and the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies.”
Speaking of Mexico, she told of her acquaintance with Villa. “I went over to see Villa, and I was wishing to God that we had two or three Villas in this country.”
Mrs. Havelock Ellis was one of the women at the speakers’ table with Mrs. John F. Trow, Dr. Gertrude Kelley, and Miss Livinia Dock. Among others present were Mrs. Frank Cothren, Mess Elizabeth Dutcher, Mrs. Mary Ware Dennett, Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Mrs. Calvin Tomkins, Mrs. Robert Adamson, Maria Thompson Davies, Lou Rogers, Miss Knox, and Maude Malone.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 27, 1914 Washington, D. C. – Judge Lindsey and Women of Ludlow Visit the White House
From the Washington Evening Star of May 21, 1914:
LINDSEY HAS PLAN TO MEDIATE STRIKE ———- Discusses Colorado Situation With President Wilson This Afternoon. ———-
FAVORS KEEPING TROOPS IN THE TROUBLE DISTRICT ———- “Survivors of Ludlow Massacre” To Tell of Sufferings at National Rifles’ Armory Tonight. ———-
Rep. Keating, Judge Ben Lindsey, Rep. Kent, Mrs. Lindsey, Pearl Jolly, Mary Petrucci, Mary Thomas, Mrs. Lee Champion, Rachel and Olga Thomas
With a plan to mediate the Colorado coal fields strike, which he believes will be successful if fathered by the President,Judge Ben B. Lindsey, who came to Washington with a delegation of women and children refugees from Ludlow, called at the White House this afternoon by appointment.
Judge Lindsey stated he is emphatically in favor of keeping the troops in the strike district. He hopes the President will hear the stories of the women “survivors of the Ludlow massacre” who can tell him what they personally suffered during the battle and fire.
Judge Lindsey declares that the people of the country are guaranteed a republican form of government; that no such government exists in Colorado at this time, and that it is fully within the power of the President, backed by public sentiment, to force a settlement of the troubles.
Judge Lindsey urged the President to keep the federal troops in the coal strife region under all circumstances, asserting that if they are not retained there bloodshed will continue and that there will be nothing like law in all that region.
Suggests U. S. Close Mines.
Judge Lindsey declined to go into details as to what his plans are, but in a general way he hinted that public opinion would justify the President, under the guarantee of a republican form of government to all citizens, to close down the mines and practically assume charge of them by federal troops, compelling the mine owners and the striking miners to mediate their differences. He recalled the steps taken by President Roosevelt in the great Pennsylvania coal strike some year ago, and believes it within the power of the President to do almost anything he wants in Colorado.
“The President may not think he has power to settle the strike, but we think he has,” declared Judge Lindsey. “He has gigantic powers under the law and under the reign of public opinion.”
Judge Lindsey bitterly criticized Gov. Ammons, declared him incompetent, and hinted that Ammons and Rockefeller are in agreement as to how the fight should be resolved.
Judge Lindsey has asked an interview with John D. Rockefeller, jr. He didn’t know today whether Mr. Rockefeller would grant this interview, in which he will seek to have the New York millionaire accept some plan of medication, but he intended to try. He was asked if the party with him would also see Mr. Rockefeller.
“I do not know,” he answered, “but Mr. Rockefeller is no bigger than the President of the United States. Mr. Wilson has seen us-all of us-and I think Mr. Rockefeller can afford to do the same thing.”
Judge Lindsey persisted in his view that the President should bump the heads of both sides together and bring about a settlement.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 26, 1914 Washington, D. C. – Judge Lindsey and Survivors of Ludlow Warn of Seething Volcano
From The Tacoma Times of May 25, 1914:
Colorado a Seething Volcano, Says Judge Lindsey, Ready to Errupt Into Flaming Civil War
WASHINGTON, D. C. May 25-“President Wilson will let loose war in Colorado, and that will mean civil war throughout the nation, if he withdraws the federal troops from the strike district!”
So spoke Judge Ben Lindsey, who has led a pilgrimage of woman and children, survivors of the Ludlow massacre. They went to the nation’s capital, sent by the people of Colorado, to tell the president of the United States the TRUTH about the war in Colorado.
“Colorado today,” exclaimed Judge Lindsey, “is the seething crater of a great volcano. If the federal troops are withdrawn, that volcano will explode in the most terrific eruption of outrage and butchery that this nation has ever seen. And the eruption may set the entire country in the flames of civil war!
With Judge Lindsey on this pilgrimage are three women survivors of the Ludlow fight. They are Mrs Mary Petrucci, who spent nearly twelve hours in the frightful death hole where twelve babies, including her own, and nine [two] women perished; Mrs. Pearl Jolly, who helped hundreds of the frightened women to escape, and Mrs. Mary Thomas, who stood beside one of the strikers throughout the fight, loading his gun and pistol alternately for him, while he fired. With her are her two babies, Rachel and Olga, who survived that day of carnage only through the courage of their mother, who fled with them from the ruined camp as soon as darkness fell.
“We felt that President Wilson did not appreciate how ominous the situation is.
“But there is one man in the nation who can handle it. AND THAT MAN IS PRESIDENT WILSON HIMSELF!
“If the federal troops are with drawn no man can control the ruthless rioting and wholesale murder that will follow. Governor Ammons can’t. He has proved his inability to all the nation.
“There are TWO things that the president can do. One of them HE HAS GOT TO DO! He must keep the federal troops in Colorado.”
The other thing was graphically explained by Mrs. Pearl Jolly, the Ludlow heroine.
“We demand that President Wilson close down the mines! He can do it. He can do it on grounds of military necessity. He can do it to preserve peace and order, under his police powers. HE MUST do it, on the ground that the rights of men are higher than the rights of property, and that the good of humanity comes before the paying of dividends.
“If he doesn’t do it, there’s going to be war. The miners will get guns all right. Never mind how, but we will! Our husbands are re-establishing the Ludlow camp now. And there won’t be only 90 men, with but 40 guns, in it this time! And we won’t be asleep, either, like we were when they attacked us last.
“We know now what to expect from those mine guards. They’re boasting now what they’ll do to us when the troops are gone. Well, we’re going to be ready for them. And since they burn and kill us women, anyway, we’ll fight alongside of our men next time. And there are thousands of sympathizers from all over the country who will come to help us.”
Hellraisers Journal – Monday May 25, 1914 Rockefeller Safe in New York; Ludlow Survivors with President at White House
From The Washington Times of May 21, 1914:
Upper left to right: Judge Lindsey, Mary Thomas, Pearl Jolly, Mary Petrucci, Thomas Daughters. Lower left to right: Mrs. Lindsey, Frank Hayes, Mrs. Lee Champion
In Trinidad, Colorado, 1200 men, women and children, the Ludlow refugees, left homeless and with all of their earthly possessions destroyed, are being cared for by the United Mine Workers of America. While in New York City, we are pleased to report, Mr. John D. Rockefeller Jr. is, at long last, safely back at work, his “tormenters” vanquished.
From The Fort Wayne Sentinel of May 20, 1914:
JOHN D. JR., IS BACK AT HIS JOB ———-
He Emerges from Retirement to Find Tormenters Silenced. ———- THE COLORADO CASE ———-
New York, May 20.-John D. Rockefeller, jr., has returned to work after twenty days spent at the country estates of his father at Pocantico Hills. Since May first when he went into retirement most of his tormenters under the leadership of Upton Sinclair, have been silenced, several by being sent to jail.
Sinclair is in Colorado and Marie Ganz and the Rev. Bouch [Bouck] White are serving sentences on Blackwell’s Island, the latter for having broken up the services at the Calvary Baptist church ten days ago.
“Mother” Jones alone remains in the lecture field and denounces the Rockefeller interests in the Colorado coal district. Mr. Rockefeller’s secretary said yesterday that he was making no investigation of the conditions in Colorado. He was only a minority stockholder in the Colorado Fuel and Iron company, it was said, and whatever recommendations he could offer might not influence the officials of the company in dealing with the miners.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 24, 1914 Chicago, Illinois – Judge Lindsey and Survivors of Ludlow Speak at Hull House
From The Fort Wayne Sentinel of May 20, 1914:
Judge Ben Lindsey; Women left to right: Mary Thomas, Pearl Jolly, Mary Petrucci; Thomas Daughters.
Five survivors of the Ludlow Massacre stopped off in Chicago, as guests of Miss Jane Addams of Hull House, on their way to Washington D. C. where they met with President Wilson. Mary Petrucci whose children were all killed in the fire, Mary Thomas and her two little daughters who hid from machine gun bullets throughout that terrible day, and Pearl Jolly, the heroine of Ludlow, who spent the day under fire as she assisted the women and children to escape: they are all being escorted to Washington by Judge Lindsey and Mrs. Lee Champion. The Judge’s wife was, unfortunately, hospitalized yesterday soon after their arrival in Chicago, and will not be able to accompanied the party further.
From The Daily Capital Journal (Salem, Oregon) of May 19, 1914:
LUDLOW’S STORY IS
TOO HORRIBLE TO PUT IN PRINT ———-
Details Equaled Only by the Burning and Sacking of Ancient Rome ———- COLORADO SITTING ON VOLCANO’S EDGE ———- Father Saluted with Child’s Corpse When He Went to Militia’s Camp ———-
Chicago, May 19,-“The true story of what transpired at Ludlow is too horrible to print.” said Judge Ben Lindsey here today. The famous Denver jurist is en route to Washington, accompanied by Mrs. Pearl Jolly, Mrs. Mary Petrucci and Mrs. M. Thomas, all Ludlow survivors.
“The details of the Ludlow affair are almost unbelievable,” said Judge Lindsey. “They are equaled only in the stories of the sacking of Rome, the pillaging of Carthage and the inhumanities of the Balkan war.
“We are going to Washington to beg President Wilson to not withdraw the federal troops. My own interests are neutral. I want law and order and the citizens of Denver have asked me to help get order.
“The Ludlow story is a black mark on the nation’s history. I can only suggest it and fill in the outlines with the direct testimony of these women who have suffered. As one instance of what occurred-and I have affidavits to back it up-a father went to a militia camp for his boy who had been missing. He was saluted with the child’s corpse. The boys’ head had been shot off and the body half burned. A soldier threw it over a tent to the father, saying: ‘Here, take the _ thing.’
“Mothers who went to rescue their babies were shot down and mutilated. Children only a few years old were killed. Barbarians in even the most unholy days could not have been more cruel than some of the militiamen at Ludlow.”
The party visited Hull House and related the story to Jane Addams. The latter broke down as the women told of the cruelties practiced on helpless women and children by the militiamen. Mrs. Lindsey, a victim of nervous prostration as a result of Denver’s high altitude, was taken to a Chicago hospital and will await her husband’s return from Washington.
From The Socialist and Labor Star, February 13, 1914
Mother Jones, the angel of the miners, who has given almost every day of her 82 years to the fight for improved industrial conditions for the workers in all forms of trade and in all parts of the country, last night [May 18th] appealed to an audience of several hundred at the Masonic Temple to aid the striking miners in Colorado and based her appeal on a graphic and forcefully told tale of conditions in the mining district as she herself had seen them and taken part in.
Clad in a plain black dress, with a touch of color only, down the front, at her waist and around the end of the sleeves, Mother Jones by her earnestness moved the large audience to applause when she bade defiance to John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil owners and the “invisible government” which she held responsible for the sufferings of “her boys” and the cruel sacrifice of “her babes” in the Ludlow tent colony disaster; held them tense and with breath caught, while she pictured the horrible deaths from smoke and fire of the women and children in that catastrophe; and moved them to laughter by her caustic epigrams about the “uniformed rats” and their superiors who she declares “oppress her boys.”
“If I were that fellow’s mother I’d disown him,” she declared of Governor Ammons (Democrat of Colorado) after telling how he and the members of the Senate had only smiled after hearing the tale of a miner who because he had refused to leave the postoffice in the mining camp without his mail, had been taken out by the militia and made to dig his own grave until, weakened by their taunts and cruelty, he fell unconscious into it.
[She declared, while the audience cheered:]
The Revolution was not fought because of taxation without representation. It was fought because of military despotism on the part of King George III. And when King George only sneered at the warning of Benjamin Franklin that unless the despotism stopped there would be a revolution, the answer our forefathers gave was Bunker Hill and Yorktown. Let John D. Rockefeller take care lest we have another Bunker Hill and Yorktown. He says he won’t recognize the union. King George said he would never recognize the union but he had to. And Mr. Rockefeller will have to, too.
Says Pen and Brain, Not War, Must Settle Industrial Troubles.
Colorado, she said, was the key to the present industrial war in this country and she made an earnest appeal for its right and proper solution.
It must not be settled by the sword but by the pen and brain and I stand here today appealing for your assistance in the fight. We want to bury the bayonet. We are appealing to the mothers of the race, for no nation is ever greater than its mothers; and no man is more humane than his mother. If there were not among the women so much talk of temperance and foreign missionaries, if we did missionary work at home and let other nations do theirs, these conditions of which I speak would have been changed long since. The women of Colorado have had the ballot twenty-one years and yet see the horrible happenings that they have permitted in their State. It is because they have busied themselves too much with social settlements and other such things that are given to the industrial class to satisfy them and not with the real things in life about them.
Theodore Roosevelt, she said, refused to see a group of miners’ children she had once brought down to Oyster Bay so he could see for himself their maimed hands and the other effects work in the mines had on them.
Roosevelt, like Ammons, refused to see these children; Roosevelt, whom you think, is next to God Almighty, refused to see them because they were mine workers and not mine owners’ children.
[Speaking of the Ludlow catastrophe, she asked:]
Was it fair, was it fair of Rockefeller to burn up my babes so he could enslave those men?Can’t we find some other way of settling the question? Has this nation reached that stage in its history when babes have to pay the penalty-when on the altar of greed, we place the helpless infant and roast it to death for more coin?
Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 22, 1914 Brooklyn, New York – Mother Jones Speaks at Labor Lyceum
From The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of May 18, 1914:
Mother Jones spoke May 17th at the Brooklyn Labor Lyceum. She spoke out about the rule of the Rockefellers in Colorado, and called for government ownership of the mines. She took a stand against Women’s Suffrage, a stand which Hellraisers does not support. However, we will point out that it was a Democratic Governor in Colorado, lickspittle for the Rockefeller interests, elected with the help of Colorado’s women voters (as well as the Labor Vote), who was ultimately in command of the Colorado National Guard at the time of the Ludlow Massacre. This was the same Governor who allowed for the reign of Military Despotism which kept Mother Jones locked up in the Military Bastille of Colorado, including the cold cellar cell in Walsenburg which had already claimed the life of a striking miner.
DEMAND GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP OF MINES ———- Labor Men Stirred to High Pitch of Enthusiasm by Mother Jones. ———-
DENOUNCES ROCKEFELLERS. ———- Blames Colorado Conditions Upon Mine Owners -Resolutions to Be Sent To President Wilson. ———-
Declaring that if Christ came to New York he would be kicked out church by John D. Rockefeller, ordered arrested by Mayor Mitchell and thrown into jail; decrying the present system of Government and murders by the militia of Colorado and emphatically denouncing Women’s Suffrage. “Mother” Jones held an audience that filled the Brooklyn Labor Lyceum yesterday afternoon, while she related the hardships miners and their families have been forced to undergo in Colorado and elsewhere. The white haired speaker of four score and two years told how the militiamen set fired to a tent colony inhabited by miners and their families, and stood ready to shoot down those who tried to escape from the flames and smoke that wiped out a score or more of lives.
Throughout her address, “Mother” Jones was wildly cheered. Following her speech resolutions were adopted denouncing the Rockefellers, father and son, of Colorado for ordering the militia to the miners camps, and demanding that President Wilson confiscate the coal mines there and operate them in the interests of the people, until Congress enacts Legislation providing for a government ownership of the natural resources of the country. A copy of the resolutions will be forwarded to the President and to congress by the Central Labor Union of Brooklyn, under whose auspices yesterday’s meeting was held.
It was shortly before 4 o’clock when President Maurice De Young introduced “Mother” Jones. Clad in purple silk waist and a black skirt, with a little bonnet covering her snowy hair, she was in striking contrast to the fashionably dressed women who surrounded her. Pathos and humor mingled throughout her address of two hours and forty minutes. She showed remarkable vitality for a woman of her years. Almost immediately she set about to denounce the present system of government, John D. Rockefeller and John D. jr. She blamed these two men for the conditions in the coal mine regions. She mocked the Rockefeller interests in foreign missions, saying that they spent money to educate the Chinese, while their employees were not even paid sufficiently to support a church.
[She said, while the crowd laughed:]
They send Jesus to China because they are afraid to face Him in this country.
If Jesus Christ came to New York today and went to the church of Mr. Rockefeller and told him of the manner in which his men are killing innocent men, women and children in the West, Mr. Rockefeller would grab him by the back of the neck and throw him into the street; then Mayor Mitchel would have a squad of police arrest him and throw him in jail.
The women of many states are crying out for the ballot. What are they going to do with it when they get it? I want to tell you men to do all in your power to discourage such a thing. The states where the franchise has been granted, despotism, grafting, murdering and crookedness reign. In Colorado, where women have had the ballot for twenty-one years, conditions are worse than any other state in the union. While the gunmen, whom you people call soldiers, shot down the people of that state the women there asked that more murderers be sent to mow down more mothers and babies.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 20, 1914 Chicago, Illinois – Women of Ludlow Tell of Massacre of Tent Colony Citizens
From the Chicago Day Book, Last Edition, of May 19, 1914:
Note: The Ludlow Massacre was perpetrated by the Colorado state militia against the colonists on April 20th. The correct names of the three miners’ wives are Mary Thomas, Pearl Jolly, and Mary Petrucci.
The article continues:
They left this noon for Washington, where they will tell President Wilson he must intervene to, stop civil war in Colorado.
Lindsey said:
The president of the United States is the only power that can preserve peace now in our state. The governor, the legislature, the federal troops, the proposed mediation bodies have all failed.
The president must force arbitration on the ground of military necessity. This is the positive and unmistakable sentiment of the people of Colorado.
Mrs. [Pearl] Jolly, who was fired upon though wearing a Red Cross uniformwhile caring for wounded during a truce, said that when she left Ludlow last week, there were rumors that companies of armed guards were being former secretly by the coal companies.
[She said:]
If they come again to shoot women and children, they will find us ready for them. The women will take guns and fight.
I saw the dead body of Louis Tikas, the Greek. I saw where his head was split by some kind of a club. I saw the mark of a heel where somebody tramped on his face after he was dead. And I saw the four bullet holes in his back where they shot him after clubbing him to death.
I would not have believed things could happen as terrible as I saw. The soldiers seemed to go crazy. After they had killed women and children and burned the tent colony, they shot at everything that moved. Chickens, dogs, anything that moved, was a mark for them.
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