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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 17, 1914
State of Colorado Charges Guardsmen with Arson and Larceny at Ludlow Tent Colony
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
From The New York Times of May 14, 1914:
TRYING GUARDSMEN ON MURDER CHARGE
———-
Arson and Larceny also Alleged Against 39
in Colorado Strike Court-Martial.
———-MAJOR HAMROCK ARRAIGNED
———-
Militia Witnesses Exonerate Commander
of Blame for Tent Horror
-“White wash” Talk Heard.
———-Special to The New York Times.
DENVER, May 13.-The death pit at the Ludlow tent colony, where the charred bodies of two women and eleven children were found on the morning following the battle of April 20, was described in minute detail to-day by witnesses before the court-martial assembled at the Rifle Range near Golden. While formal charges are pending against only thirty-nine officers and men, 100 members of the State militia are involved.
When the court-martial assembled this morning it was decided to try first Major Patrick J. Hamrock, First Infantry, Colorado National Guard. Hamrock was in charge of Troop A, which, it is alleged, deliberately fired the tent colony. The charges against him, as well as all of the others, are murder, arson, and larceny.
It is charged that the soldiers, at Hamrock’s direction, after riddling the tent colony with bullets fired from machine guns, saturated the tents with kerosene, applied torches to them, and while the flames lighted up the colony looted the burning habitations of the strikers, taking everything of value they could find.
The military court is composed of three members of the State militia. Capt. Edward A. Smith is sitting as Judge Advocate.
Three witnesses were examined to-day. Two were at Ludlow the night of the battle. The third was called merely to explain charts and maps showing the positions of the combatants.
All of the witnesses thus far called have been members of the militia. The strike leaders have been asked to furnish witnesses, who will be heard after the militia men shall have completed their testimony.
Talk of a “whitewash” was heard among the strike sympathizers to-day.
Lieut. Benedict testified as to his examination of the death pit on the day following the battle. His statements were contradictory to previous assertions of Major Hamrock that the timbers found in the pit were “merely smoked.” Benedict testified that the timbers were “charred” and had been burnt to a considerable depth. He testified further that on the night of the battle he saw men running into the tents and women rushing out. The women were crying, “Dynamite! Dynamite! Dynamite!”
“Soon after I heard several severe explosions.” Benedict said. “The fire rapidly spread. During the night I heard several explosions and at one time I saw a tent lifted twenty-five feet into the air, and there it caught fire. One third of the tent colony was burned to the ground before I left that vicinity.”
Benedict said the first shot was fired by the strikers from the railroad cut and struck within fifty feet of the camp of the militia. He said Major Hamrock had given no orders, in his hearing, to burn the tent colony.
In a statement made public at the trial, Major Hamrock said he gave no orders for directing the fire into the tent colony, and further that the machine guns did not pour bullets into the colony. Labor leaders said to-night that the strikers would produce positive evidence that Hamrock ordered the machine guns turned on the colony, and later directed the men to apply torches to the canvass.
Both Lieut. Benedict and Lieut. S. J. Lamme, another officer of the National Guard, testified that Major Hamrock was not in the immediate vicinity of the tent colony when the fire started; that in their estimation the fire was started by the explosion of an overturned lamp and not by the State troops and that in their opinion the two women and eleven children who lost their lives in the colony died of suffocation hours before the fire started.
Lieut. Lamme, who is a physician of Laveta, Col, and who acted as aid to Major Hamrock during the battle, testified that he carried orders from Major Hamrock to Capt. Edwin S. Carson when that officer with forty members of Troop A arrived from Trinidad late in the afternoon.
“The orders were, ” said the witness, “to advance down the tracks in the direction of the tent colony to the pump house, where the strikers were entrenched, and ‘smoke ’em out.’”
“Did you understand that order to mean to set fire to the tents?” asked Col. Lingenfelter, a member of the court.
“Not at all,” replied Lamme. “I construed it to mean that he should advance with a heavy fire and dislodge the strikers.”
He declared he heard Major Hamrock issue orders to the machine gun operators to direct their fire at the pump house and rifle pits at the rear of the tent colony. No orders, he said, were given to fire on the tents.
Members of the Progressive Party and their allies brought matters to a climax in the legislature to-day. The Senate adopted the House resolution demanding that the Governor extend his call for the special session so as to pave the way for a thorough investigation of the entire strike situation. It was the general talk at the Capitol that Gov. Ammons would ignore the resolution.
Senator W. C. Robinson of Colorado Springs served notice that to-morrow he would introduce a resolution demanding that Gov. Ammons resign. He declared that it was evident that the Governor was not capable of handling the affairs of the State. Robinson is a Progressive.
[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES
Quote KE Linderfelt re Damn Red Neck Bitches of Ludlow Massacre,
Apr 20, 1914, CIR p7378
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112087783327&seq=398&q1=red+bitches&start=1
Apr 22, 1914, New York Times
-45 Dead, 20 Hurt, in Colorado Strike War, Women and Children Roasted
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-new-york-times-apr-22-1914-new-yor/147561756/
Industrial relations: final report and testimony submitted to Congress
by the Commission on Industrial Relations.
Washington, D.C., Gov. Print. Office, 1916.
Volume 8: 6999-8014
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112087783327&seq=7
AFFIDAVITS from Survivors of Ludlow Massacre:
7376-Mary Petrucci, May 11, 1914, three children killed in Ludlow Massacre
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112087783327&seq=396
7377-William Snyder, May 1, 1914, son Frankie killed in Ludlow Massacre
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112087783327&seq=397&q1=william+snyder&start=1
7379-Mrs. Maggie Dominiske, May 11, 1914
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112087783327&seq=399
7381-George R. Churchill, May 11, 1914
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112087783327&seq=401
7383-Clorinda Padilla, May 1, 1914
7383-Mrs. Ed Tonner, Apr 30, 1914, re Mrs. Costa crying, praying, begging militiaman not to kill her or her children. Reply was: “…we have orders to do this, and we are going to do it; no mercy on any of you.”
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112087783327&seq=403
7384-Ometomica Covadle, May 1, 1914
7384-Mrs. James Fyler, Apr 30, 1914, wife of Ludlow Martyr,
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112087783327&seq=404
7385-Mrs. Ed Tonner, Apr 30, 1914
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112087783327&seq=405
7386-Maria Chaves, May 1, 1914
7386-Mrs. Alcarita Pedregon (Pedregone on Ludlow Monument), May 1, 1914,
two children killed in Ludlow Massacre
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112087783327&seq=406
Note: Approximately 90 percent of the workforce struck, about 10-12,000 miners and their families. Those who lived in the camps were evicted, and, on September 23rd, the striker families hauled their possessions through rain and snow out of the canyons to about a dozen sites rented in advance by the UMWA to house them.
CO Coal Field War Project
https://www.du.edu/ludlow/cfphoto.html
Coverage of Ludlow Massacre by Labor and Socialist newspapers,
for example, see issues after April 20, 1914:
United Labor Bulletin of Denver, Colorado
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn91052295/issues/1914/
Appeal to Reason of Girard, Kansas
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/appeal-to-reason/
The New York Times
(New York, New York)
-May 14, 1914
https://www.newspapers.com/image/20421806/
IMAGE
Hamrock and Linderfelt Butchers of Ludlow, 1913, 1914,
CO Coal Field War Project
https://www.du.edu/ludlow/gall2a.html
See also:
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 13, 1914
From the Appeal to Reason: Coroner’s Jury Blames Colorado Militia for the Ludlow Massacre
Tag: Linderfelt Butcher of Ludlow
https://weneverforget.org/tag/linderfelt-butcher-of-ludlow/
Tag: Ludlow Massacre
https://weneverforget.org/tag/ludlow-massacre/
Tag: Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1913-1914
https://weneverforget.org/tag/colorado-coalfield-strike-of-1913-1914/
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