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Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 22, 1913
Denver, Colorado – State Federation of Labor Adopts Policy of Action
From the Denver United Labor Bulletin of December 20, 1913:
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Category: Southern Colorado Coalfield Strike 1913-1914
Hellraisers Journal: Denver Newspapers Describe the Special Convention of the Colorado State Federation of Labor
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday December 21, 1913
Denver, Colorado – The Special Convention of the Colorado Federation of Labor
From The Denver Post of December 17, 1913
-“Mother Jones’ Address Stampedes Meeting of Federation”
From The Rocky Mountain News of December 17, 1913
-“500 Delegates Consider General Strike Today”
Hellraisers Journal: Special Convention of Colorado State Federation of Labor Held in Denver, Takes Up Cause of Striking Miners
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday December 20, 1913
Denver, Colorado – News from Special Convention of State Federation of Labor
Thursday December 18, 1913-Denver, Colorado
– News from Special Convention of the Colorado Federation of Labor
Flag of Ludlow
Louis Tikas was released by the military three days ago from the cold, unheated cell with the broken window through which blew the bitter winter wind and snow. Yesterday, the Trinidad Free Press printed this letter from Louie to the paper’s editor:
Dear Sir,
In regards to calling you up by phone I have changed my mind, so I will write you a few lines of information. I arrived at Ludlow about 3 P.M. The most people of the tent colony were waiting for me, and after visiting the colony tent by tent and shaking hands with most the people, I find out that all was glad to see me back…
I am leaving tonight for Denver to attend the state Federation of Labor convention and believe that I will be called to state before the delegates of the convention anything that I know concerning the militia in the southern field. While I stay a few days at Denver I will return to Ludlow again.
LOUIS TIKAS
Ludlow, Colorado[Emphasis added.]
The special convention of the Colorado Federation of Labor was called by President McLennan and Secretary W. T. Hickey:
The strike of the miners has grown to a real war in which every craft and department of organized labor is threatened with annihilation unless they take a positive and decided stand for their rights. The uniform of the state is being disgraced and turned into an emblem of anarchy as it was in the days of Peabody. In the southern fields, military courts, illegal and tyrannical, are being held for the purpose of tyrannizing the workers. Leaders of labor are being seized and arrested and held without bail. The homes of union miners have been broken into by members of the National Guard and property stolen. In order, that members of organized labor in every part of the state, whether affiliated or not, may become familiar with conditions in this struggle, a convention is hereby called to meet in Denver Tuesday December 16, 1913, at 10 o’clock. The purpose of the convention is the protection of the rights of every worker in this state and the protection of the public from the unbridled greed and outrages of the coal operators.
[Emphasis added]
More than 500 delegates answered the call and assembled at the Eagle’s Hall on Tuesday December 16th. They included national officers from United Mine Workers, President White, Vice-President Hayes and Secretary Green. John Lawson and Louie Tikas arrived from the strike zone in the southern field. There was outrage as the Convention learned of the disaster at the Vulcan mine. This is the same mine which the union had called a death trap just months before. Many delegates made it plain that they are in favor of a statewide general strike should one be called by union leaders. The Convention demands that Governor Ammons remove General Chase from command and immediately transfer all military prisoners to the civil courts.
Mother Jones made her way to the convention in spite of military orders that she stay out of the state. It is said that sympathetic trainmen assisted her in slipping into Denver. She made her opinion of Governor Ammons clear by calling for him to be hanged.
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Hellraisers Journal: Convention of the Colorado Federation of Labor Begins in Denver; Mother Jones Cheered Wildly
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday December 17, 1913
Denver, Colorado – Convention of State Federation of Labor Begins
From The Denver Post of December 16, 1913:
Hellraisers Journal: News from Colorado Coalfield Strike: Robert Uhlich and Louie Tikas Held in Cold Snow Covered Jail
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday December 16, 1913
Trinidad, Colorado – Tikas and Uhlich Held in Cold, Snow-Covered, Jail
News from Southern Colorado Coalfield Strike
Sunday December 7, 1913, Trinidad, Colorado
Tikas and Uhlich covered in snow in jail as a blizzard raged.
December 3, 1913
The jail cell in Trinidad where Louie Tikas, Bob Uhlich, and fifteen other striking miners are being held, is unheated. Also, there is a broken window through which the wind and snow filled the gloomy cell as the blizzard raged across Colorado a few days ago. The men were forced to sleep, as best the could, on bunks covered with 3 inches of snow, and no blankets.
Brothers Tikas and Uhlich were interrogated by Major Boughton, chief legal officer of the militia. The men were grilled for several hours. Uhlich refused to give any testimony whatsoever, stating that only the civil authorities had the right to question him. Brother Uhlich has been designated a “dangerous and undesirable alien.” Tikas was promised his freedom if he would persuade the Greeks at Ludlow to turn themselves into scabs. We may assume that he refused this offer, for he has not yet been released. Brother Adolph Germer was arrested returning from Denver recently. We are unsure at this time where he is being held.
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Saturday December 13, 1913 Cedar Hills, Colorado
Lt. Linderfelt Recruits Hard-Core Veterans and Mine Guards
Lt. Linderfelt has been recruiting new soldiers to fill the ranks of Company B of the Second Battalion. This company is camped at Cedar Hills, near to the Ludlow Tent Colony at the entrance of Berwind Canyon. Word has it that he has turned to the veterans with whom he served in the Philippines and Mexico.
More and more mine guards are also being recruited to fill the ranks of Company B. Linderfelt dislikes the part-timers now serving in Company B. He is only too happy to replace them as they seek to return to their civilian lives. Linderfelt prefers to approach the job of keeping the peace in the strike zone through the use of company gunthugs and battle-hardened soldiers. Company B has frequent run-ins with the colonist at Ludlow. They go heavily armed into the camp, unlike the soldiers of the other companies who often visit the Ludlow camp in small groups and without arms.
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From the Trinidad Chronicle News of December 15, 1913:
Hellraisers Journal: Striking Coal Miners, Held as Military Prisoners in Southern Colorado, Victims of Uniformed Tyranny
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 15, 1913
Southern Colorado Coalfields – Striking Miners Victims of Uniformed Tyranny
From the Denver United Labor Bulletin of December 13, 1913:
“Militia Makes Man [Andrew Colnar] Dig Own Grave”
“Soldiers Are Scabbing on Courts-Mother Jones”
Hellraisers Journal: Colorado Labor Federation Issues Official Call for State Convention; Record Snowfall Isolates Residents of Strikers’ Tent Colonies
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 8, 1913
Colorado Federation of Labor Issues Call for State Convention
From the Denver United Labor Bulletin of December 6, 1913:
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Hellraisers Journal: The Day Book: Mother Jones Says, “More Christianity Practiced by Labor Unions Than All the Churches”
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 5, 1913
Mother Jones Opines on Churches, Labor Unions and Christianity
From the Chicago Day Book of December 1, 1913
-Mother Jones Interviewed by Jane Whitaker:
Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Coal Miners Fight to Win in Colorado by Robert M. Knight, Part II
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday December 4, 1913
Coal Miners of Southern Colorado Are Fighting to Win, Part II
From the International Socialist Review of December 1913:
[Part II of II]
Some one has said, “A fool in revolt is infinitely wiser than a learned philosopher apologizing for his chains.” Believing this, fully 95 per cent of the miners answered the call to strike [September 23, 1913]. Men with families within three days of starvation and without clothes enough to protect their frail bodies from the biting winds of mountain winters came out fully determined to win or die in the attempt. And who will blame them? Work such as the miner does is no longer honorable but has come to mean “drunkenness, vice and superstition.” It makes men and women unscrupulous, hard and restless. It destroys for others the treasure of life-a home. All the noble sentiments of liberty and the joy of labor mean in reality to the miner slavery of the worst type.
With thoughtless hymns of praise of this massacreing of labor, society allows one wholesale slaughter after another without a protest. While I am writing this the news arrived of the Dawson, New Mexico, disaster, in which the lives of 261 miners were lost and the operators refused to allow Secretary Doyle of the miners’ union to give the widows and orphans $1,000 donated by the union because the camp was non-union. And just as certain as that nothing becomes better without the desire to improve it so it is a healthy sign of the times that starvation wages for conscientious drudgery no longer fills the miner with heartfelt gratitude toward the master class.
The mine slaves were so cowed that the operators were sure that not more than 25 per cent would quit and when practically every miner laid down his tools, completely tying up the coal industry of Colorado, the wrath of the masters knew no bounds. They immediately got busy and sent a deputation of their lackeys, consisting of a lawyer, banker and a Catholic priest (Father Malone), to Washington to repeat the lies of the operators that the miners were satisfied with conditions but forced to strike by eastern agitators like Frank Hayes and Mother Jones. Their thugs began to terrorize the country, shoot up the tented camps of the strikers, insult the women and abuse the children and the operators began to call for the militia that the state might pay the cost of breaking the strike and thus save John D. a few paltry dollars with which to build a few more churches and start more Sunday schools where they sing and PREY-“servants obey your masters.”
Failing to get the militia as soon as they called, the operators had to content themselves with filling the jails of Colorado with strikers who dared to exercise their constitutional rights of peacefully asking imported strikebreakers to not work. In the city of Boulder and within the shadow of Colorado’s greatest educational institution, the state university, thirty-six were confined in the county jail until the court permitted the prisoners to bail each other out. Forty-nine others were arrested in Las Animas county and marched seven miles to the Trinidad jail between two rows of armed guards with Belk and Beltcher (out on bond for murder of Lippiatt), following up the rear with a Gatling gun mounted on an armored automobile.
Frank Hayes says, “The operators have several machine guns mounted on autos. They also have what is known as the ‘steel battle ship [Death Special].‘ This is an automobile with a high body of solid sheet steel built up so as to almost conceal the guard inside. The steel furnishes resistance to the bullets and is so arranged that the assassins on the inside may shoot their rifles in perfect safety. It is a splendid refuge for a coward. The body of the machine is shaped like a torpedo and was designed and built for mine guards. It carried a rapid fire machine gun with a range of more than two miles. As bad as West Virginia was there was nothing down there to compare with this latest instrument of murder that the operators of Colorado are using.”
As this procession neared town, G. E. Jones, a member of Western Federation of Miners, attempted to get a picture of the armored car. A. C. Felt beat him insensible and destroyed his camera and had him arrested for disturbing the peace.
Gun men patrol the public roads in armored autos, shooting up first one camp and then another. The first resistance the strikers offered was at Forbes, October 17, one striker was killed, two wounded and a deputy shot in the hip. One hundred and forty-seven bullets from a machine gun passed through a tent occupied by an aged Scotchman, who saved his life by lying flat on the floor. After this battle the miners made preparations to defend themselves from further attacks of the guards.
Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Coal Miners Fight to Win in Colorado by Robert M. Knight, Part I
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday December 3, 1913
Coal Miners of Southern Colorado Are Fighting to Win, Part I
From the International Socialist Review of December 1913:
[Part I of II]
”THE fight is on. We would have avoided it; we still stand ready at any time to meet representatives of the other side with hopes of effecting a settlement. We hold out the olive branch continually. But because we wish for peace must not be construed as a sign that we are not able to fight. Our past record should dispel such idle dreams. We will aid our brothers in the Colorado fields with all of our resources; with the advice of men of experience; with the hearty good will and sympathy of the vast army of sturdy workers that make up our membership. And these will give a good account of themselves against all the powers of darkness the operators may bring against us.”-Mine Workers Journal.
For months the leading newspapers (?) of Denver and all the capitalist sheets throughout the state, both daily and weekly have been repeating the same rigmarole in regard to the coal strike. While they insult the union men, they anxiously defend themselves against any suspicious of sympathy with the Standard Oil crowd. Their excuses are: A strike is an industrial war for more wages and not one of principle, it does not in their opinion affect the question of morality; finally, even if right and justice is on the side of the miner it is a vain attempt to subjugate by force of a strike, the peaceful relations of No. 26 Broadway [Rockefeller’s HQ in New York City]. Would not open shop conditions free the miner of all his trouble? Therefore, should not the miners welcome the open shop as a happy event instead of seeking a recognition of the union through a “bloody and ruinous strike”?
Let us look a little into the real cause of this strike that dates, back to April 1, 1910, a time when there were not over three thousand organized miners in the state. Our contract expired then and the operators knew we would never be any weaker and perhaps they never more powerful. Therefore they sought to force an open shop by refusing to recognize the miner’s right to organize and sell his labor-power collectively. A strike resulted, one that history will perhaps record as the hardest fought mile of the miner’s road to industrial freedom.
There were but few of us and after several months the busy world outside forgot all about the strike in northern Colorado. Strikes were fought and won in various parts of the country; all the while the miners stood firm, fighting injunctions, suffering jail sentences and other hardships without complaining, yet knowing all the time our only hope for victory was an organized strike in the southern part of the state, as we were unable to seriously affect the market. National organizers were sent south and at once began the task of secretly organizing the slaves in John D.’s hell-holes of Colorado. This work was slow and dangerous requiring three and one-half years’ time (and “God knows” how much cash).
When the civil war was ended in West Virginia the militant workers of the union, including Frank J. Hayes and “Mother Jones” were sent to Colorado to assist in the organization work and with their arrival things began to move apace. Hayes soon asked the operators for a conference and demanded recognition of the union in the name of 15,000 newly organized slaves. The operators ignored all invitations to arbitrate boasting they had five millions of dollars for defense. They began preparing for a strike by importing gun men and thugs from West Virginia through the Baldwin Feltz detective agency. W. H. Reno, chief detective for C. F. & I., also opened a recruiting station in the Dover Hotel, 1744 Glenarm place, and succeeded in sending out of Denver some of the most notorious characters from the red light district and barrel house bums. Upon the arrival of these criminals in the strike zone Sheriffs Gresham and Farr (appointed by the coal companies), gave them deputy sheriff commissions.
The State Federation of Labor held its annual convention at Trinidad August 18 and when the U. M. W. of A. delegates began to arrive in town late Saturday afternoon G. W. Beltcher and Walter Belk, two Baldwin-Feltz heroes, shot and instantly killed Gerald Lippiatt, a district organizer on the main street of Trinidad. A coroner’s jury, composed of “good” business men, rendered a verdict of “justifiable homicide”; District Attorney Hendricks later preferred a charge of murder against them but the courts of Colorado do not value a coal miner’s life very high and Lippiatt’s murderers were promptly released on bond because such human hyenas are needed by the operators to maintain law and order during a strike.
