Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 14, 1914 House Sub-Committee Hearings Underway in Colorado and Michigan
From The Day Book of February 14, 1914 Representatives Casey, Howell and Taylor Are on the Job in Michigan:
From The Indianapolis News of February 9, 1914 U. S. Sub-Committees to Investigate Mining Conditions in Michigan and Colorado:
HOWELL SNOWBOUND; STRIKE INQUIRY DELAYED ———-
CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE IN MICHIGAN LACKS QUORUM. ———- REPRESENTATIVES KEPT IN ———-
HANCOCK, Mich., February 9.-The train bearing Representative Joseph Howell, of Utah, the member necessary to make a quorum of the congressional investigating committee, was reported storm-bound somewhere on the lower peninsula today and prospects for a meeting dwindled as the day advanced. Chairman Taylor said that it was unlikely that hearings would begin before tomorrow.
The heaviest snowfall of the winter has kept Mr. Taylor and Representative Casey of Pennsylvania indoors since their arrival on Saturday and they have had no opportunity to see any of the copper country beyond the range of vision from their hotel.
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OPENS HEARING IN DENVER ———- Congressional Subcommittee Seeks Evidence of Law Violations.
DENVER, Colo., February 9.-Hearing of testimony in the federal investigation of the Colorado coal miners’ strike began in the senate chamber of the state capitol today. The subcommittee of the house committee on mines and mining which arrived from Washington yesterday, will hold hearings in Denver and at Trinidad, Pueblo, Boulder and other points, to determine whether federal statutes have been violated and to determine on recommendations for the settlement of the Colorado strike and the prevention of future labor struggles.
When today’s hearing opened E. V. Brake, deputy labor commissioner; Professor Russell D. George, state geologist, and James Dalrymple, chief coal mining inspector, gave testimony as to general coal mining conditions in Colorado.
Two distinct strikes are included in the investigation, to be made by the committee. The miners in the northern Colorado coal fields were called out in April 1910, and that strike never has been settled. Since then, many of the strikebreakers who took the places of the union men have been organized by the United Mine Workers of America, and a considerable part of them walked out with the southern men when the strike of all the coal miners in the state was called on September 23, 1913.
The investigating committee consists of Martin D. Foster (Dem.), Chairman, Illinois; James Francis Byrnes (Dem.), South Carolina; John M. Evans (Dem.), Montana; Richard Wilson Austin (Rep.), Tenn., and Howard Sutherland (Rep.), West Virginia.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday February 13, 1914 Mass Protest Meeting at Wheeling Followed by Arrest of Fannie Sellins
From The Wheeling Majority of February 12, 1914:
By a grand jury of more than 3,000 talesmen, Federal Judge A. G. Dayton, of the United States Circuit Court, Northern District of West Virginia was indicted for misuse of the power of the injunction, and high crimes and misdemeanors against labor and the citizens of the State, at the huge mass meeting in the Market Auditorium, last Sunday afternoon [February 8th]. Public opinion appeared as the prosecutor; and witnesses were examined whose testimony revealed Judge Dayton as a Twentieth Century Judge Jeffrys, and his judicial methods as those of a Star Chamber court.
Judge Dayton entered no defense. He waived examination entirely, holding himself above the power that placed him in office. The verdict of the grand jury was unanimous, and only one ballot was taken. As a result of the action of the mass meeting, his conduct will be brought to the attention of President Wilson, Chief Magistrate of the United States. An official investigation of his unlawful practices in office will be prayed for, together with relief from the intolerable tyranny of his administration through removal from office.
Oppression of Helpless
Tears came involuntarily to the eyes of auditors as witness after witness recounted the oppression of the helpless miners at Colliers and elsewhere, and the misery and suffering engendered through Judges Dayton’s overriding of the laws of the land. Tears and horror were succeeded by anger and a determination to end the reign of injustice in West Virginia by the recountal of the betrayal of citizens of the State by a judge whose sworn duty it is to redress their wrongs, and to see that the violations of the laws of the United States are punished.
[The article continues at length with descriptions of the many speeches made, including that of Fannie Sellins whose speech was described thus:]
Fannie Sellins
Perhaps the most dramatic and stirring moments of the meeting came when Miss Fannie Sellins began a personal recital of the wrongs she had witnessed and encountered in the Colliers district during the strike. Without any attempt at oratory,—her sentences at times disconnected, her voice now hoarse with righteous anger, now tremulous to the verge of tears, she held the entire assembly breathless for nearly three quarters of an hour.
Audience In Tears
Hundreds in the audience were in tears when she told of hardships endured by miners and their families on the barren hillsides; of families huddled together beneath rags to keep themselves warm; of twin babies born without attention of any kind, either medical or otherwise in just such conditions.
She rehearsed incidents that happened to families of miners who had been brought to the district through misrepresentation,—who were told that there was no trouble, and of cruelties practised on them because they refused to work under those conditions.
She told of assaults without redress, of eviction from homes under unspeakable brutalities; of shots fired by assassins on men peacefully asleep in tents at night.
She recounted the stories of many assaults on pickets by Baldwin thugs,—called by the operators, mine guards. She told of insults offered to women and children; of an attempt to bribe a Polish boy to murder a union man.
She told of nights of horror when unheralded out of the darkness shots would sweep the camps in which were sleeping women and children from the hillsides where the guards were.
Appeals Are Vain
She told of frequent and vain appeals to the courts for justice, and of its refusal by Judge Dayton.
She told of her seizure on entering the district from Pittsburgh, and of threats of personal violence made to her by “Bob” Virgin, superintendent of the Pittsburgh Coal company, and miners.
Wave after wave of feeling swept over the hearers as with unstudied eloquence Miss Sellins told incident after incident, piled tales of hardship upon hardship, and of the vain endeavor to get justice from the courts.
The audience rose en masse and cheered her at the conclusion of her effort.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday February 10, 1904 Coal Creek, Tennessee – Company Gunthugs Murder Four Men
From the Coffeyville Daily Journal of February 9, 1904:
A STRIKE TRAGEDY. ———- Four Men Killed and Three Wounded in Tennessee.
The New York Times February 8, 1904
Knoxville, Tenn., Feb. 9.-A bloody tragedy was enacted [Sunday, Feb. 7th] in the little mining town of Coal Creek, Tenn., forty miles northwest of Knoxville, as the result of which four lives were snuffed out and three persons wounded, one perhaps fatally. The clash was the culmination of the trouble between union and non-union labor. Three of the dead men were killed by guards employed by the Coal Creek Coal company, while the fourth victim, a deputy sheriff, was killed by a guard he had gone to arrest. The dead:
MONROE BLACK, miner, aged 24 years; married; leaves wife. W. W. TAYLOR, miner, aged 31; leaves wife and four children. JACOB SHARP, section hand; a bystander, aged 35; leaves wife and six children. DEPUTY SHERIFF ROBERT S. HARMON, killed by Cal Burton, a guard at the Briceville mine.
The wounded are:
A. R. Watts, merchant of Coal Creek, an innocent by stander, shot through both cheeks. Mote Cox, miner, shot through the left arm. Jeff Hoskins, engineer on the Southern railway; slightly wounded.
When the wage scale was signed in district 19, United Mine Workers of America, the Coal Creek company refused to comply with the demands of the men. They refused to resume work in the Fraterville and Thistle mines, and for several months these two mines were shut down. Efforts were made to resume with non-union men, but these were either induced to join the union or were chased away, presumably by union men. The aid of the courts was invoked to oust families of union miners from the houses owned by the company. Scores of arrests were made for trespassing, and ill feeling was thus engendered. Recently a dozen guards, in charge of Jud Reeder, who served as lieutenant of police in this city for many years, were employed to guard the mines and protect the men who had been induced to go to work.
Non-union men were being brought to the mines every few days and Reeder and his guards would go to the railroad station and meet them. Today the crowd of idlers around the station was increased. Reeder and twelve guards came from the mines to meet a few non-union men who were to arrive on the morning train. When the non-union men got off the train, they were seen by a number of small boys, who began yelling, “Scab.” The killing grew out of this taunt. It is hard to tell what the provocation was, but the miners must have crowded up and attempted to take away the non-union men bodily or offered some direct insult to the guards.
Reeder and another guard drew their pistols and began shooting, Reeder doing the most of it. Miners and bystanders were taken by surprise and before they could realize what had happened the guards had climbed into their wagons and driven back to the mines.
About 12 o’clock a dispute arose between Deputy Sheriff Bob Harmon and Guard Cal Burton [whom Harmon was attempting to arrest]. Burton shot Harmon twice, killing him instantly.
[Newsclip and emphasis added.]
It is interesting that the reporter’s account supplies the company guards with an excuse for opening up gunfire on unarmed protesters. Seems the reporter could not believe that company gunthugs would murder striking miners and bystanders for no other reason than that some small boys hollered “Scab.”
Note: Willful neglect of safety standards by the Coal Creek Coal Company led to deaths of 184 men and boys in the Fraterville Mine Explosion on May 19, 1902.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 9, 1904 Trinidad, Colorado – Mrs. Bertha Howell Reports from Colorado Strike Zone
From the American Labor Journal of January 28, 1904:
From the Appeal to Reason of January 30, 1904 -Mrs. Mailly’s Article Was Also Published in the Appeal Along with the Following Drawing by Lockwood and with the Following Introduction:
THE COAL MINERS’ STRIKE IN SOUTHERN COLORADO ———-
(Not much news of the strike of several thousand coal miners in Southern Colorado has reached the outside world. Mrs. Bertha Howell Mailly, wife of the National Secretary of the Socialist Party, went to that district from Omaha last week to be with Mother Jones, who was dangerously ill in Trinidad, but who is now happily recovering. While in the strike district, Mrs. Mailly will write a special series of articles for the Socialist press, the following being the first.)
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 7, 1904 Hastings, Colorado – Mother Jones Exposes Rockefeller’s “Sunday School Methods”
From the Duluth Labor World of February 6, 1904:
MOTHER JONES Says Rockefeller Oppresses the Coal Miners.
Hastings, Colo., Feb. 5.-[Mother Jones, the miners’ friend, who is now going up and down among the striking miners in Colorado, says:]
Rockefeller’s mining company cleared $39,000 [*] last year, and every dollar of it was wrung form the miners.
At some of these mining camps a miner is not even allowed to bring a pound of butter from the outside. He is compelled to buy everything at the company’s store. Every man who comes to the mines to work must be searched, and when he goes to visit a friend outside the camp an armed guard goes with him.
What would a Chicago workingman think if he had to pay 90 cents for a quart of syrup that cost at wholesale $1.25 a gallon? What would he think if his employer taxed him a dollar a month for a doctor whether he needed one or not? What would he think if he was obliged to pay his employer 50 cents a month for a preacher?
“Yetsuch are Mr. Rockefeller’s Sunday school methods of conducting his mining business in Colorado,” says Mother Jones.
Hellraisers Journal – February 6, 1914 Trinidad, Colorado – Mary Thomas Held in Filthy Cell
SINGING IN JAIL THROUGH BROKEN WINDOW
Mary Thomas, noted singer and resident of the Ludlow Tent Colony, was one of the women arrested on January 22nd, the day that General Chase tumbled from his horse and ordered his troops to “Ride Down the Women!” Soon her two little daughters, three and four, were brought to her, and the three of them were held in the filthy cold cell for eleven days.
Her crime was talking back to an officer who had ordered her to move off the sidewalk from where she had been watching the parade. She told him:
You go on and go wash your dirty clothes you have on before you order me off of the sidewalk.
The militiaman began to pull her and she fought back using her fingernails on him. She was taken to jail where she placed a call to Louie Tikas at the Ludlow Tent Colony to let him know of her arrest.
At night she stood at the broken window and sang beautiful arias to her supporters gathered outside in the ally. She gives this account:
Then the hundreds of men prisoners in the basement jail…joined in. It almost drove the police and military out of their minds. It caught on through town, and soon all you could hear was “Union Forever” throughout Trinidad. I continued this procedure daily. The crowds came, and grew bigger and bigger. Finally it got so that the police had to disperse them. This made them angry and they would break the jail windows. It was no use to replace the panes, for they would just be broken again the next day.
Apparently, the little girls also caused some trouble in the jail cell. Mrs. Thomas tells the story of her release:
In the middle of the night two officers came rattling the door. “What are you trying to do?” they yelled. I didn’t know what they were talking about having been wakened out of a sound sleep. Then I noticed that the place was swimming in water. My children must not have turned off the tap. A mopping crew came immediately, supervised by a guard.A few hours later the jailer and another man unlocked our door and said angrily, “Get out!” “What? Without notice?” I said jokingly. “Get out, and take that wrecking crew with you!” I lost no time in obeying that welcome command, and we headed for the union headquarters.
Note: Newsclip from The Rocky Mountain News of January 23, 1914.
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MARY THOMAS DESCRIBES COMPANY TOWN
Mary Thomas, the greet-singer at the Ludlow Tent Colony, came from Wales with her two little daughters last July. Her husband, Tom, picked her up at the Trinidad train depot, and on the way back to the Delagua mining camp, he warned her in a whisper, “Don’t talk about anything important within hearing of that stool pigeon driver for the company.” As they approached the camp he cautioned her, “Don’t be nervous if the mine guards question you. I’ll answer their questions.”
It was dark when they arrived at that camp, and two big guards shined their lights into the automobile, inspecting Mary and the two little girls. Tom was thoroughly interrogated and had to explain to the satisfaction of the mine guards that he was bringing his wife and children into the camp. Finally, they were permitted to enter.
Mary states that she was completely demoralized when she saw the tumbled down shack that was to be her home. The door opened directly onto the dirt street in front of the house. There was no front yard and no porch, only a block of wood for a step. The cupboard was broken, the chairs were rickety, and the walls were lined with thin cardboard, torn and sagging in several places. Should a fire ever get started, she thought, the shack would go up in flames like a tinderbox.
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