Hellraisers Journal: “Canaea Riots Not a Revolution But Simply a Strike of Under-Paid Labor”

Sunday July 1, 1906
From the Appeal to Reason: George Shoaf on Cananea Strike, Part I

Part 1 of 3 from the Appeal of June 30th:

THE CZAR OUTDONE
—–

Fusilade of Bullets Meets the Humble
Petition of Mexican Workingmen.
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CAPITALISM’S SHAME IN OLD MEXICO.
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Canaea Riots Not a Revolution
But Simply a Strike of
Under-Paid Labor.
—–
BY GEO. H. SHOAF, Staff Correspondent.

[Said A. J. Ortis, Mexican consul, who has returned to Denver after a trip to the City of Mexico:]

The trouble in Cananea, Sonora, Mexico, was not due to any revolutionary movement, as has been reported, but is directly traceable to the fact that the Mexican miners were paid only half as much as the American miners for doing the same amount of work.

If Colonel Greene had used a little tact the complications would never have arisen, or would have been smoothed out before they became serious. The Mexicans thought that if they did the work they should be paid for it the same as the American miners. They had no feeling against the American miners; in fact they were glad to see them get the large salary, as it showed the work done was worth more than Col. Greene was paying his Mexican laborers.

The Western Federation of Miners had nothing to do with the movement. All these explanations given by the mine owners and others are given with a bias and to keep the real facts of the salary matter from becoming too prominent.

The action of the governor of Sonora in accepting the services of American volunteers has not met with the unqualified approval of the Mexicans. He thought he was acting for the best and accepted the services of the Americans as he would have accepted the services of Mexicans. They were to be strictly under his orders and were to remain in Cananea only as long as he thought their presence necessary. Mexican troops would have been at the scene of trouble earlier only for the fact that the shortest route was over United States territory. They had to take the longer way around, but arrived in time to quiet the trouble.

The foregoing interview with Consul Ortiz appeared in the Denver Post June 20, and is a very fair statement or explanation of the cause for the recent uprisings in Cananea. There was nothing revolutionary about the movement on the part of the Mexican miners when they decided to ask for an increase in their wages, as has been given out by the capitalist press, nor was this movement instigated by Socialists or the Western Federation of Miners. The Mexican workingmen were simply tired of accepting half the wages given American miners for precisely the same character of work, and struck for an increase. Instead of increased wages, they were handed a murderous volley of hot lead. And the man who ordered the shooting, and who gave it encouragement by himself using his six-shooter freely, was Colonel W. C. Greene, president of the Greene Consolidated Copper company.

Mine Owner Accuses Socialists.

In a letter to the United States authorities at Washington, filed with the state department, and dated at Cananea, Sonora, Mexico, June 11, Colonel W. C. Greene, president of the copper company, at whose mines in Cananea the rioting occurred early this month, charges that agitators from the Western Federation of Miners had been through the mines inciting the Mexicans, and tells how he was warned of a plot to dynamite the bank and to inaugurate a revolution against President Diaz. He reviews details already published, and says, among other things:

On the night of May 31 I was informed by a man working in the Cobre Grand that a Mexican working there had told him that trouble was going to start in Cananea on the morning of June 1, at 5 o’clock; that a Socialist club had held three meetings at midnight on May 30, at which a large number of agitators of socialistic tendencies were present; that agitators of the Western Federation had been through the mines inciting the Mexicans, and that they had been furnishing money for the socialistic club at Cananea.

He also gave us a couple of copies of a revolutionary circular that had been widely distributed, together with a number of other details. While it looked ridiculous to me that a thing of that kind could be done, their program including dynamiting the bank, where it was reported we had $1,000,000, breaking open the stores and getting firearms and ammunition, and with them starting a revolution against the Diaz government.

“Colonel Greene is simply following the usual tactics of capital,” said Acting Secretary James Kirwan, of the Western Federation of Miners, in reviewing the statements given out by the copper company’s president.

[Kirwan further stated:]

When Colonel Greene made those statements he knew he was lying. He has his purpose. What it is we can only guess. It is probable that it is for the purpose of jobbing the stock market or attempting to detract public attention from the condition in which human beings are maintained in his mines to add to the wealth of Eastern stockholders.

No Truth in It.

There is absolutely not a word of truth in the charge. As soon as it happened I wired to one of our members at Bisbee to make the most careful investigation of all the facts and be prepared for just such a charge as this. It was to be expected at a time when organized capital in the mines is preparing to crush organizations of labor.

I have here a letter from our brother. This morning there also arrived in Denver two of our members who were at Cananea at the time of the outbreak. From both sources we are assured that not one of our members had anything to do with the matter.

It is true that some of our men were there. All of the good miners belong to our order, and some went there to work. There was no organization, however.

The Mexicans employed were held in conditions amounting to practical slavery. They are human. They wished to rebel. Before they did this they went to our men and asked them not to take their places when they struck. Our men promised to do this, and this is the whole extent of their participation. They promised to refrain from becoming strike-breakers when human beings were attempting to better their condition.

When the Mexicans made their demands the reply was given from rifles. The men were armed only with their candle-sticks. They tried to defend themselves, and died.

From the foregoing quotations and interviews it will be seen that what has been widely advertised as a “race war” and a “revolution” is nothing more nor less than a labor strike by working men for higher wages and better conditions of employment. Colonel Greene, following the precedent established by the mine owners of Colorado and Idaho, repulsed the demands of the strikers with wholesale slaughter, and, to escape the responsibility of this crime, is seeking to lay the cause of it at the door of the Western Federation of Miners. These charges by Colonel Greene are in thorough accord with the policy of the Rocky mountain capitalists, who continually try to make the Federation the scape-goat of every crime committed west of the Mississippi river.

[Declared another member of the Western Federation:]

Colonel is simply trying to square himself with the other officers of his company…The Federation men had absolutely nothing to do with the Cananea riots. All they did was to give the Mexicans a promise that they would not take their places or perform their work.

We will be able to prove that when the Mexicans demanded an increase in wages they were fired upon by Colonel Greene’s hirelings and shot down like dogs. There were some Americans that took part in the shooting, but they were not members of the Western Federation of Miners, but men employed by Colonel Greene to keep the Mexicans in servitude.

So good and plenty has Colonel Greene got his foot into it that he is grasping at every straw to find a way to justify his actions. That is why he is trying to fix the blame on the Western Federation of Miners.

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SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-June 30, 1906
https://www.newspapers.com/image/66994223

IMAGE
James Kirwan WFM, Quoted in AtR of June 30, 1906
http://darrow.law.umn.edu/photo.php?pid=792

See also:
Barbarous Mexico
-by John Kenneth Turner
C. H. Kerr, 1911
https://books.google.com/books?id=-7VmAAAAMAAJ
-on Cananea Strike
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=-7VmAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA213