Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 22, 1914 Houghton, Michigan – Seeberville Gunthugs Found Guilty of Manslaughter
From the Michigan Miners’ Bulletin of February 18, 1914 -Jury Finds Waddell Men Guilty of Seeberville Slaying:
A jury in the strike zone of Michigan has found three Waddell men and a deputy sheriff guilty of manslaughter in the death of Steve Putrich. This report is from the latest edition of the Miners’ Bulletin:
The Milwaukee Leader February 16, 1914
FOUND GUILTY
———-
Arthur Davis, William Groff and James Cooper, Waddell gunmen and Ed Polkinghorne, a deputy sheriff were found guilty of manslaughter after a trial lasting two weeks in the circuit court. The case was turned over to the jury Saturday at 4 o’clock and after twenty hours deliberation the above verdict was reached. In its verdict Polkinghorne was recommended to the mercy of the court, probably on account of his being a deputy sheriff. Harry James, another deputy sheriff, who stood trial along with the others was not considered in the verdict in compliance with the instructions of Judge Flannigan to the jury. James, it was brought out by the testimony, did not take any part in the shooting but was merely in company with the others, he not firing a shot.
When the verdict was read in court Monday morning, Attorney Galbraith for the defense addressed the court, stating that he had three motions to make as follows,-First, that the court set aside the verdict and dismiss the respondents at the bar; Second, that the court set aside the verdict and order a new trial; Third, that a stay of sentence be granted pending a bill of exceptions. In a lengthy statement and detailed explanation Judge Flannigan denied the motions. Attorney Nichols for the people then moved that sentence be passed on the prisoners and four defendants were requested to stand up.
Before passing sentence Judge Flannigan stated that passing sentence on prisoners was one of the most unpleasant and harder duties the court had to perform during his term on the bench. The court then sentence Cooper, Groff, Davis and Polkinghorne to hard labor at the branch prison at Marquette for not more than 15 years, and not less than 7 and 1/2 years. The prisoners appeared very much downcast when they heard their doom. It is believed they looked for an acquittal or a very light sentence, and were greatly disappointed.
The prisoners were then taken to jail to await transfer to the penitentiary. Thomas Raleigh one of the accused men who was out on bonds of $10,000 left the country about one month ago forfeiting his bonds. If caught he will probably be given the maximum sentence.
The crime for which these men were convicted was the murder of Steve Putrich, a striker, on August 14th last at Seeberville, a small mining camp near Houghton [where] an altercation occurred in which the deputies drew their guns shooting [a boarding] house full of holes, killing Steve Putrich and Louis Tijan, two absolutely innocent men and injuring several others who were in the house.
[Newsclip, paragraph breaks and emphasis added]
The Judge made this statement before imposing his sentence:
I have tried to find mitigation if it existed. I have made an effort to find something, somewhere, in mitigation for your act. I know too that the jury sat through this trial hoping that from the lips of some witness might fall something that would put at least a drop of humanity into that awful transaction.
It is not right for a circuit judge to scold convicted men when passing sentence and I do not want to be looked upon as doing so. I have tried to give you boys a fair trial. It was impossible for it to be fairer. If the jury had found your plea of self defense true in this case it would have been a travesty of justice.
[Emphasis added]
On Tuesday, the convicted murderers were taken to the train station and shipped off to serve their sentences. The Daily Mining Gazette reported on that event:
NOT A DRY EYE AS CONVICTED MEN LEAVE FOR PRISON.
The Gazette further reported that a huge crowd of well-wishers gathered at the station to witness these fine but “luckless young men” being deported from Michigan’s copper country.
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.
—————
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 – Thursday February 5, 1914 News from Michigan Copper Strike: Striker Shot; May Prove Fatal
From The Calumet News of February 2, 1914:
[Note: Names above are incorrect, see below.]
Monday February 2, 1914, Hancock-Houghton, Michigan –Striker John Laitila Shot by Scabs, Not Expected to Live
John Laitila, striking copper miner, was shot by James Johnson, a scab, yesterday near the Superior mine as he confronted Johnson and three other scabs who were on their way to work. Laitila is not expected to live. Prosecuting Attorney Lucas is looking into the matter. An arrest is expected. We have learned that the Lucas doubts the story of self-defense told by Johnson, and further believes that the gun found on Laitila was planted on him by the killers.
The trial of the Waddell men in the killing of the strikers at the Seeberville boarding house begins today. Six gunthugs are on trial, and the sympathy of the kept press almost brings tears to the eyes. According to The Daily Mining Gazette, the gunthugs are “young men of good character and agreeable social manners,” while the men they murdered were “ugly” and “drunk.” Left unexplained by the Gazette is why men of such good character would come to seize men, without authority of law, and, when the men resisted being unlawfully seized, then shoot up a home, especially one containing a family with young children..
From The Indianapolis Star of February 3, 1914:
House Mine Committees To Inquire into Strikes
Washington, Feb. 1-Subcommittees of the House committee on mines will leave Washington next Wednesday night for the West to investigate the Colorado and Michigan mine strikes.
The Colorado investigators, Representatives Foster, Illinois, chairman; Byrnes, South Carolina; Evans, Montana (Democrats); Austin, Tennessee, and Sutherland, West Virginia (Republicans), will go first to Denver, then to Trinidad and Pueblo and later to Boulder.
Representatives Taylor of Colorado, chairman; Hamlin, Mississippi; Carey, Pennsylvania (Democrats); Howell, Utah, and Switzer, Ohio (Republicans), the subcommittee for the Michigan inquiry, will go direct to Calumet and take in Houghton and other places in the strike-affected area.
None of the committeemen would venture a prediction as to how long their tasks would occupy them.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 3, 1914 “Calumet” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part II-Profits, Wages and Working Conditions
From the International Socialist Review of February 1914:
[Part II of II]
We have seen how the copper country is governed by an “invisible government”; from the judge on the bench, to the grand jury in session; from the national guard of the state of Michigan, on “duty,” since July 24, 1913, to the sheriff with his hundreds of imported professional strike breakers whom he swore in as deputies. The Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, Calumet, is the invisible government of Michigan.
This poor-little-rich corporation was “created” in the early fifties. According to a statement given out by Attorney Peterman, and endorsed by General Manager W. F. Denton, and General Manager C. L. Lawton, we find this devout confession: ”The profits of the Calumet and Hecla have been large, but they were due solely to the fact that the Creator put such rich ore in the company’s ground.”
However, Congress in the year of our Lord, 1852, seems to have been in total ignorance of this little gift on the Creator’s part to the copper crowd, for we find that “it gave to the state of Michigan 750,000 acres of public land, to aid it in building a ship canal around the Falls of St. Mary. The state in turn bargained this land to the contractors who built the canal, at a dollar and a quarter an acre. The lands thus disposed of at so beggarly a price were supposed to be swamp, or overflowed lands, but somehow, and strange to say, a part of them are now the rocky matrices from which the Calumet and Hecla has long been extracting shot-copper,-that company having in some way got hold of them. Years later a man named Chandler, who claimed to have bought the same land over again from the State of Michigan, brought a suit to dispossess the copper company,-charging all sorts of fraud in the switching of swamps so as to be quarries of copper-bearing rock. But the Supreme Court ruled against him, on the ground that as he got his deed from the state, he was in no better plight than the state, and that the state could not go back on its first deed to the canal contractors: so the Calumet and Hecla people kept it.”
This “good thing” was capitalized for $2,500,000 in shares of $25 each, instead of $100-note that. Of this $25 a share, only $12 was paid in. A total cash investment of $1,200,000. According to the Mining and Engineering World of December 27th, Calumet and Hecla has declared dividends on issued capitalization to December 1, 1913, amounting to $121,650,000, or $1,216 a share or $101 profits for each dollar invested.
Dividends for 1900 amounted to 320 per cent; for 1906, 280 per cent; for 1907, 260 per cent. In the Boston market, the stock was quoted on the day before New Years, at 427, bid price. Bearing in mind that the par value of the shares is but $25, this figure means that the stock is now worth more than 1,700 per cent, and bearing in mind also that only $12 a share was actually paid in, it means more than 3,400 per cent, market value. The president of the company receives a salary greater than the president of the United States.
Not long ago, when dividends threatened to be unusually enormous, the company purchased an extensive island in Lake Superior, stocked it with the finest game, and it is now used by stockholders of the company as a hunting preserve.
And the capitalists, who have never seen the inside of a mine shaft, who have stolen and defrauded to gain possession of the Calumet mines, have refused to permit their wage slaves, who produce all the wealth brought out of the mines, to organize into a union. They have denied the right of these workers to organize to demand more wages and better working conditions. Their arrogance is summed up in the words “We have nothing to arbitrate.”
These capitalists want MORE labor from the laborers. They are not satisfied with having stolen hundreds of millions from the men who have dug the wealth from the dangerous recesses of the earth. They demand still MORE.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday February 2, 1914 “Calumet” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part I-The Fighting Finns
From the International Socialist Review of February 1914:
[Part I of II]
SEVENTY-TWO copper miners, with their wives and children, met death at these doors on Christmas Eve in Calumet, Michigan.
A brief hour before this little company of silent ones had passed up the stairs into the Italian Hall to join hundreds of other strikers and their families. A Christmas tree had been arranged by the Women’s Auxiliary of the Western Federation of Miners to put a bit of cheer into the hearts of the kiddies and perhaps to encourage the men and women in their struggle against the copper barons for more bread and better working conditions.
But “Peace on earth and good will toward men” is not down on the capitalist program. For months past imported thugs and gun-men, in the pay of the copper companies, as guards, had gone about shooting up strikers, breaking up union headquarters, disrupting meetings and otherwise “establishing law and order.”
It should surprise no one then to learn that upon this occasion a “mysterious” stranger appeared suddenly in the doorway of Italian Hall with a false cry of “fire!”
Comrade Annie Clemanc [Clemenc] had just finished her address of welcome; the toys were still on the tree-when forty-eight pairs of little feet arose at the alarm and ran down the stairway. They were met by “deputies,” who blocked the doors to escape. In the crush and panic that followed seventy-two human beings were killed.
* * * *
A bleak mining region and the rigors of a Lake Superior winter, with the hardship of five months’ strike, made still more poignant the crushing sorrow. Over the two miles of road from Calumet to the bit of ground owned by the Western Federation of Miners marched the procession with hearse, undertakers’ wagons and an automobile truck carrying a few coffins, followed by 480 miners, in squads of four, carrying 67 coffins. They lowered them into two long trenches that yawned in the snows of the copper country. Behind them came fifty Cornish miners chanting hymns, their voices thick with emotion. Thousands of miners with their wives and children formed the procession. All but a dozen of the burials were in common graves dug by members of the union.
Came the Finns to the fair state of Michigan about sixty years ago-to spend their lifetime and labor time in the mines.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 1, 1914 Indianapolis, Indiana – President Moyer Speaks at Mine Workers’ Convention
From The Indianapolis News of January 26, 1914:
Charles Moyer, President of the Western Federation of Miners gave a long speech at the Convention of the United Mine Workers now in progress in Indianapolis. In his speech, President Moyer described the ongoing violations of Constitutional Rights in both the Colorado and the Michigan strikes:
…..What is being done in the state of Colorado in the miners’ strike, is being done in the state of Michigan. I don’t think it is any worse. In the state of Colorado men and women have been mistreated by the military, by the armed thugs of the mine owners’ association; they have been arrested without warrant; they have been sent to jail; they have been deprived of all of those rights that are supposed to belong to an American citizen, or one living under this government, the same as they have in Colorado.
Mother Jones has been deprived of her liberty by the military, and is now confined in the custody of the military of that state, without any warrant, absolutely deprived of her constitutional rights.
In the state of Michigan representatives of organized labor have been assaulted, ordered from the state, deprived of every right that we are supposed to enjoy under this great Constitution of ours, and yet, after months of effort we are at this time uncertain as to whether our national government, our representatives down at Washington, are going to make an investigation: are going to inquire into the facts as whether or not these things that we claim and that we believe we furnished them a preponderance of evidence of, are in violation of our American citizenship. They say, I believe, as an excuse for their hesitancy in acting, that they do not want to interfere with state rights, and in answer to that we say that the Constitution of the United States gives the right to every American citizen to meet in peaceable assembly, to freely express himself in speech…..
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:
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.
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
