Category: Southern Colorado Coalfield Strike 1913-1914

Hellraisers Journal: “They burn and kill us women, anyway, we’ll fight alongside of our men next time.”-Pearl Jolly, Ludlow Heroine

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Quote Pearl Jolly, Ludlow Next Time, Women Will Fight, Tacoma Tx p3, May 25, 1914—————

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

Judge Lindsey, M Thomas, P Jolly, M Petrucci, Thomas Girls, Tacoma Tx p3, May 25, 1914

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 If the federal troops are withdrawn, that volcano will explode in the most terrific eruption of outrage and butchery that this nation has ever seen.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.”

[Emphasis added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “They burn and kill us women, anyway, we’ll fight alongside of our men next time.”-Pearl Jolly, Ludlow Heroine” →

Hellraisers Journal: John D. Jr. Safe at Last! Miners’ Wives Tell Wilson of Ludlow Horror

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Quote Ludlow Mary Petrucci, Children all dead, ed, Trinidad Las Animas Co CO Affidavit, May 11, 1914—————

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:

Judge Lindsey, Mary Thomas, Pearl Jolly, Mary Petrucci, Thomas Girls. Mrs Lindsey, Frank Hayes, Mrs Lee Champion, WDC p1, 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.

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Women and Babes From Ludlow Visit Chicago, Leave for Washington to Visit with President

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Quote Ludlow Mary Petrucci, Children all dead, ed, Trinidad Las Animas Co CO Affidavit, May 11, 1914—————

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 Lindsey, Mary Thomas, Pearl Jolly, Mary Petrucci, Thomas Girls, Ft Wayne Sent p6, 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.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Women and Babes From Ludlow Visit Chicago, Leave for Washington to Visit with President” →

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks: “Was it fair of Rockefeller to burn up my babes so he could enslave those men?”

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Quote Mother Jones Babes of Ludlow, Speech at Trinidad CO UMW District 15 Special Convention, ES1 p154 (176 of 360)—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 23, 1914
Mother Jones Speaks on Behalf of the Brooklyn Colorado Relief Committee

From The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of May 19, 1914:

MOTHER JONES MOVES
BIG TEMPLE CROWD
———-
Bids Defiance to Rockefeller as She Pleads
for “Her Boys” of the Mines.
———-

DENOUNCES GOV. AMMONS.
———-
Brooklyn Colorado Relief Committee
Protests Against Outrages.
———-

Trinidad CO Mother Jones Surrounded by Bayonets, Sc Lbr Str p1, Feb 13, 1914

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?

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Hellraisers Journal: Brooklyn, Mother Jones Speaks: “I have raised hell all over this country! You don’t need a vote to raise hell!”

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Quote Mother Jones, Dont need vote to raise hell, Ab Chp 22, 1925—————

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, Colorado Military Bastile, March 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.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Brooklyn, Mother Jones Speaks: “I have raised hell all over this country! You don’t need a vote to raise hell!”” →

Hellraisers Journal: Photos from the Colorado Coalfield Strike: Pearl Jolly-Heroine of Ludlow, Miners Prepared to Defend Colonies, Rockefeller’s Gunthugs

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Quote John Lawson 1913, after October 17th Death Special attack on Forbes Tent Colony, Beshoar p74—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 21, 1914
Photographs from the Colorado Coalfield Strike

From The Daily Missoulian of May 4, 1914
-Pearl Jolly, Heroine of Ludlow:

Pearl Jolly Heroine of Ludlow CO, Dly Missoulian p1, May 4, 1914

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Photos from the Colorado Coalfield Strike: Pearl Jolly-Heroine of Ludlow, Miners Prepared to Defend Colonies, Rockefeller’s Gunthugs” →

Hellraisers Journal: Women Survivors of Ludlow, Visit Chicago, Tell of Massacre Committed by Blood-Mad Militia

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Quote Mary Petrucci, Joe's Little Hammer, NY Tb p7, Feb 4, 1915—————

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:

Women Ludlow Survivors Visit Chicago, Day Book Last p1, 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 uniform while 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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Hellraisers Journal: Helen Schloss, Volunteer Nurse from New York, Writes Story of the Colorado Coalfield Strike

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Quote Helen Schloss, Women w Hungry Souls, Black Hills Dly Rg p2, July 15, 1910—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 19, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Nurse Helen Schloss Writes Story of the Colorado Strike

From The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of May 17, 1914:

Helen Schloss Writes Colorado Strike Story
———-

(By Helen Schloss.)

Helen Schloss Red Nurse, Brk Dly Egl p2, Apr 23, 1914

Miss Helen Schloss is a trained nurse who has been active as a suffrage organizer in this borough in behalf of the Woman Suffrage Party. She was sent to Colorado by the Brooklyn Committee for the Relief of Wives and Children of Colorado Strikers to organize a relief station at Trinidad. Mrs. Frank H. Cothren, Mrs. Herbert Warbasse and James P. Warbasse are especially active on this committee. This is the story of conditions as Miss Schloss heard it from the strikers:

———-

THERE has been a strike in the State of Colorado, since last September, and if memory serves rightly, there have been strikes ever since the mines began operating. Mines are unsafe, and hundreds of men are being killed in them every year. Water is scare in this part of the country, and coal dust is very plentiful. When a sufficient amount of coal dust has gathered in the air there is an explosion and many lives are snuffed out. When the operators are asked why they do not sprinkle the mines, they answered that the country lacks sufficient water.

The present strike has been in progress, in a peaceful manner, since September. There was no trouble of any moment till April 20. The militiamen were in the field to protect the mines, and incidentally to break the backbone of the strike.

The militiamen had nothing to do, but to have a good time. So for just a little pastime, they started with Ludlow.

Ludlow had 12,000 [1200] inhabitants, with over 100 tents. The Ludlow people were about twelve nationalities in that small colony. They had parties and feasts, the women had plenty of time to go visiting, and to gossip. The men hung around, laughed and sang. There was nothing to do but wait until the strike was settled. The militiamen had work to do, and that was to break the strike.

Long before April 20, the tents of the strikers were searched. Trunks were ransacked, floors torn up, and there seemed to have been brooding a general feeling of hatred for the militia.

While the militia searched the tents, they usually had a machine gun on top of the hill. Be it known that Ludlow is sitting in a valley. The militia were stationed on the hills. This gave them a good chance to watch the doings of the strikers.

Militia Fires on Camp of Women and Children.

Monday morning, April 30 [April 20], at 10 a. m. the Ludlow people heard an explosion, and rushing out to the tent doors, they saw the machine guns in full blast, firing down upon them.

Under almost every tent was a large cave. The women and children scrambled into them, while the men grabbed their rifles and ammunition, and went up on the hill to fight.

The women and children who were in the caves tell horrible stories. The firing from the hills kept up all day, until 3 o’clock the next morning. No one knew whether his companions were alive or not. No one knew whether they would ever see his friends again. The rumbling kept up on the hill.

One young woman [Pearl Jolly] who had some training as a nurse, put Red Cross on her breast, and carrying a white flag, went from cave to cave with food, and drink for the women and children. She was fired at from all directions, and it is a great wonder that she lives to tell the tale. The heel was shot off one of her shoes.

One time when she ran into one of the tents, to get some food, so many shots followed her through the canvass that she had to lie still on the floor for hours. A dresser in the tent was shot to pieces.

It is said that the explosive bullets that were used set the tents on fire. The tents began to burn towards evening, and the fires kept up all night. The women and children fled from the caves, to the nearest ranch, and as they were running , shots followed them. The firing became so insistent that the people had to flee from the ranch. The militia looted the house, and left a note on a blank check, saying “this will teach you a lesson not to harbor strikers next time,” signed with the initials of the Baldwin gunmen.

Towards morning at the break of day, that they saw the militia looting and setting fire to tents.

On going through the ruined tent colony, one was struck with the terrible amount f bullets lying everywhere. Everything had been riddled.

The stoves that might have been used after going through the fire were full of holes, where the bullets struck. Barns, sheds and everything in sight was destroyed. It was a ghastly sight to walk through the ruined colony, with the frames of the bedsteads standing out like ghosts amid the ruins.

We stopped near the cave, where eleven children and two women were smothered alive. Big, strong men stood at this cave, in silence, with bowed head. We slid down the gruesome hole, and I gave it a sort of rough measurements and found it 5 feet high, 7 feet wide and 9 feet long. A little high chair and a baby’s gocart were still there.

The Red Cross party that went to Ludlow to recover the dead were arrested and detained for a little while. At first they received permission to pass, but later on General Chase told them he had received word they could not pass. Later this same general became abusive and called the minister choice names.

The Red Cross party recovered the eleven children and two women, but it is said that there are a great many bodies still missing, which are not accounted for.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Helen Schloss, Volunteer Nurse from New York, Writes Story of the Colorado Coalfield Strike” →

Hellraisers Journal: High Union Officials, Leaders of Colorado Strikers, Accused by Grand Jury of Murder and Other Crimes

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Quote John Lawson 1913, after October 17th Death Special attack on Forbes Tent Colony, Beshoar p74—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday May 18, 1914
Leaders of Colorado Coalfield Strike Accused by Grand Jury of Murder 

From The New York Times of May 15, 1914:

FIND MURDER INDICTMENTS
———-
High Union Officials Among Those
Accused by Grand Jury.

CO Strike 1913-14, UMWA Policy Com, ed, Ludlow Massacre Fink 1914Colorado Strikers’ Policy Committee, United Mine Workers of America
John McLennan, President District 15;
E. L. Doyle, Secretary-Treasurer District 15;
John R. Lawson, International Board Member from District 15;
Frank J. Hayes, International Vice-President

BOULDER, Col., May 14-Indictments charging first degree murder were returned here to-day against William [Hickey], Secretary of the Colorado State Federation of Labor; John O’Connor, President of the Louisville (Col.) local union of the United Mine Workers of America, and Jerry Carter and Joe Potestio, union leaders.

Indictments charging conspiracy to murder were returned against Edward L. Doyle, Treasure of District 15, United Mine Workers of America; John R Lawson, International Board Member of the American Federation of Labor [see note] and forty-eight others, including the four men named in the indictments charging first degree murder.

The action of the Grand Jury followed the return yesterday of fourteen true bills against strikers and sympathizers alleged to have been active in the attack on April 28 on the Hecla mine, near Louisville, in which one man, Peter Steinhoff, was killed and several were injured.

Gus Brack and William Knowles, strikers among those indicted for conspiracy to the murder, were arrested to-day.

[Note: John R. Lawson is International Board Member from District 15 to the United Mine Workers of America, not to the A. F. of L.]

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Court-Martial Witness: Miners Stored Dynamite in Pits Dug for Families to Seek Shelter in Case of Attack

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Quote KE Linderfelt re Damn Red Neck Bitches of Ludlow Massacre, Apr 20, 1914, CIR p7378—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 17, 1914
State of Colorado Charges Guardsmen with Arson and Larceny at Ludlow Tent Colony

Hamrock and Linderfelt Butchers of Ludlow, 1913, 1914, CO Coal Field War Project

As the Court-Martial of members of the Colorado militia commences, The New York Times continues to publish the claim, made by Colorado’s militia of gunthugs, that dynamite stored in the safety pits of the strikers exploded during the battle, and that that is what started the fire that burned the Ludlow Tent Colony to the ground, killing two women and eleven children and destroying the homes and all of the earthly possessions of the 1200 residents. This claim was made by the Times two days after the Massacre along with the claim that the battle took place on the property of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.

In fact, the Ludlow Tent Colony was established on land rented by the United Mine Workers of America. The strikers had every right to be there. Their tents were their homes which they were determined to protect, just as anyone anywhere would.

To our knowledge, the Times has never corrected that wildly inaccurate reporting.

The idea that miners-knowing the dangers of dynamite-would dig pits for the safety of their wives and children, fill them with dynamite, and then tell their loved ones to hide amongst the sticks of dynamite in case of attack, is the height of absurdity.

Readers of Hellraisers are aware of the many affidavits sworn out by those men and women who were in the Colony during the attack. To our knowledge the Times has not printed even one of these affidavits, at least we have not found a single one printed within pages of The New York Times.

There is no mystery as to the cause of the fire: The soldiers entered the colony at about 7 p. m. as the strikers ran out of ammunition. They first lit a match to Mrs. Petrucci’s tent, shot at her and the children as she ran to tent #58, and then, not long after she entered that cellar, they lit tent #58 on fire also, even as Cedi Costa begged for mercy. No mercy was shown. The gunthug militiamen then moved through the colony lighting tents on fire using paper and matches or a broom dipped in oil. Wherever the soldiers moved, the fires started.

The lies told by the gunthug militia are printed for the world to see, but the affidavits of the terrorized strikers and their wives are buried in volumes of testimony, printed only in the labor and Socialist newspapers

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