Hellraisers Journal: Don MacGregor of the Denver Express Describes the Great Exodus of Striking Miners and Their Families from the Coal Camps of Southern Colorado
Hellraisers Journal- Thursday September 25, 1913 The Great Exodus of Striking Miners from Company Towns
Southern Colorado, September 23, 1913 -Evicted Families Arrive at Ludlow and Trinidad as Rain Turns to Snow.
Chicago DayBook September 24, 1913
As the miners and their families were evicted from the company towns, Don MacGregor, a reporter from the Denver Express, was a witness and filed this report which was published September 24th:
No one who did not see that exodus can imagine its pathos. The exodus from Egypt was a triumph, the going forth of a people set free. The exodus of the Boers from Cape Colony was the trek of a united people seeking freedom.
But this yesterday, that wound its bowed, weary way between the coal hills on the one side and the far-stretching prairie on the other, through the rain and the mud, was an exodus of woe, of a people leaving known fears for new terrors, a hopeless people seeking new hope, a people born to suffering going forth to new suffering.
And they struggled along the roads interminably, in an hour’s drive between Tinidad and Ludlow, 57 wagons were passed, and others seemed to be streaming down to the main road from every by-path.
Every wagon was the same, with its high piled furniture, and its bewildered woebegone family perched atop, and the furniture! What a mockery to the state’s boasted riches. Little piles of miserable looking straw bedding! Little piles of kitchen utensils! And all so worn and badly used they would have been the scorn of any second-hand dealer on Larimer Street.
Prosperity! With never a single article even approaching luxury, save once in a score of wagons a cheap gaily painted gramophone! With never a bookcase! With never a book! With never a single article that even the owners thought worth while trying to protect from the rain!
[Emphasis added]
John Lawson, International Organizer for the United Mine Workers of America, was on hand through-out the day. When a superintendent taunted him by shouting, “A good day for a strike,” Lawson replied:
Any strike-day would look good to the people from your mines.
At Ludlow, Lawson helped to set up the canteen and greeted arriving families with milk and hot coffee as the rain turned into a snow.
One thousand tents being shipped from West Virginia by the U. M. W. have been delayed. At the Ludlow Tent Colony, many miners and their families spent the night in the big central tent. Some were taken to local union halls, and others were given shelter in the homes of nearby union sympathizers. The Greek miners, many of whom are single men, spent the night camped out in the snowstorm.
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From The Rocky Mountain News of September 24, 1913:
Upper Left-Mass Meeting at Sopris with Mother Jones. Upper Middle-Frank Hayes. Upper Right-Miners’ Wive and Children. Lower Left-Mother Jones. Middle Lower-Striker and Wife Move into Tent. Lower Right-Moving from Company House, Edwin V. Brake Watching. Below-John Lawson, UMWA International Board Member, District 15.
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SOURCES & IMAGES
The Exodus from Coal Camps to Ludlow by Don MacGregor, Denver Express of Sept 24, 1913 per Beshoar p62-64
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