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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 28, 1900
President Boyce on Gen. Merriam: “pusillanimous tool…of the mine operators…”
From the Kansas City Labor Record of January 25, 1900:
THE WARDNER TROUBLE
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General Merriam Censured for his Persecution
of Union Miners. Not a Union Man
Allowed to Work.
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In the initial issue of the Miners Magazine President Boyce pays his respects to General Merriam in the following caustic manner:
The following interview with General Merriam by a reporter of the Rocky Mountain News was published in that paper Dec. 13th:
You can say for me,” said the general yesterday to a News man, “that the more Congress investigates the Coeur d’Alene troubles the better it will please me. I am pleased to know that such a movement is on foot.
“The constitution speaks for itself,” continued General Merriam. “Martial law was proclaimed by Governor Stuenenberg May 3d last. Three days after I was ordered to the scene. Arrests were made by the stale authorities, but I do not care to discuss the question. The records speak for themselves.”
Had this pusillanimous tool in the hands of the mine operators, clothed in the uniform of a general bearing the U. S. brand, been animated with no other desire than to do his duty when he reached the Coeur d’Alenes, there would be no need of a congressional investigation.
Did he not arrest every man in the country at the suggestion of the mine operators without cause or provocation and confine them in a filthy barn unfit for habitation, with instructions to shoot any man who showed his head, and denied them the right to consult with counsel?
Did he not examine and approve over his signature one of the most infamous proclamations that ever emanated from the brain of man, which denied every man the right to seek employment in the mines of Shoshone county unless he denounced organized labor and obtained a permit from Dr. France, the Bunker Hill and Sullivan company doctor, noted for his extreme prejudice against organized labor?
Did he not permit his black brutes, in addition to bayoneting and abusing the prisoners, to insult their families and terrify them at night, while he-although far past that age-held high carnival in “Wardner society” with women whose cheeks had long since lost the blush of shame; his name would not now be synonomous with that of Benedict Arnold.
General Merriam professes to be anxious for an investigation because he knows that a congressional committee, a majority of which would be men suggested by President McKinley, would approve of General Merriam’s policy if he had murdered every man in the Wardner bull pen, to insure the Mark Hanna administration success in its well laid plans to increase the standing army.
Merriam favors an investigation after he seized the property of the Miners’ Union and surrendered the records and seals to the enemies of the union to forge and manufacture fictitious charges against its members.
When he had all the union records in his possession and the safe of Burke Miners’ Union at military headquarters, why did he not produce these records to prove the guilt of the members of the Miners’ Union?
This would not do, for after carefully examining all the records he found that the miners’ unions of the Coeur d’Alenes were the same as other unions of working-men; he learned that these unions were the same as the other 107 unions of the Western Federation of Miners in British Columbia, Washington, California, Nevada, Montana, Colorado, South Dakota, and other western states-not criminal in purpose-he surrendered them to Governor Steunenberg to tamper with for his own protection.
Merriam was not seeking an investigation last May when he broke open the halls of the Miners’ Union and prohibited the miners from holding meetings and banished every union man out of the county or run him into the bull pen, so he could not testify in behalf of the men the Standard Oil Company’s agents intended to railroad to the penitentiary.
When we read the following declaration of this would-be warrior of “bull pen” fame, published in the Spokane Spokesman, the organ of the mine owners, we can more easily judge his servile character than attempt to describe it:
“At the same time, since the trouble largely originates in hostile organizations of men known as labor unions, I should suggest a law making the formation of such unions or kindred societies a crime. Surely history furnishes argument sufficiently in favor of such a course.”
“I am forced to believe that the only way to quell these disturbances is by the aid of martial law-a one-man power, where gun shall be met with gun and dynamite with dynamite.”
At a meeting held in this city (Spokane) Sunday, at the instance of Attorney General Hayes of Idaho and General Merriam, commanding the U. S. troops in the Coeur d’Alenes, the following ultimatum was presented by General Merriam to the mine operators present:
“Mines of Shoshone county, Idaho, that propose to operate during the reign of martial law may do so only on condition that they do not employ members of the Coeur d’Alene Miners’ Union.”
In this wanton persecution of the miners, General Merriam had a personal motive.
We are reliably informed that he is a large owner of real estate in Spokane, a city which owes its existence to the Coeur d’Alene mining country, and a shut-down of the mines might lessen his rental income.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
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SOURCES
Quote Ed Boyce re Manly Blood per Gaboury 1967
“From Statehouse to Bull Pen
Idaho Populism and The Coeur d’Alene Troubles of the 1890’s”
-by William J. Gaboury
(Source: William J. Gaboury, “From Statehouse to Bull Pen: Idaho Populism and the Coeur d’Alene Troubles of the l890’s,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, LVIII (January. 1967, 1422.)
https://digitalatlas.cose.isu.edu/geog/mining/minewars.htm
The Labor Record
“Official Organ of the Trades Assembly of Kansas City, Kansas, and Vicinity”
(Kansas City, Kansas)
-Jan 25, 1900
https://www.newspapers.com/image/488503652/
IMAGE
Wardner Bullpen of 1899, Miners Bunks, Hutton p56, 1900
https://archive.org/details/coeurdalenesorta00hutt/page/56
See also:
Tag: Wardner ID Bullpen of 1899
https://weneverforget.org/tag/wardner-id-bullpen-of-1899/
Statement of Ed Boyce, President of WFM, Oct 15, 1899
http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/documents/Boyce_Crime_Century_Doc_25.pdf
“Militarism Against Industrialism”
From
Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine of Jan 1900
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=ZN0OAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA9
Re Merriam: “hostile organizations of men known as labor unions,”
See (and search source with quote above):
Proceedings Before the Committee on Military Affairs of the House of Representatives in Relation to the Cœur D’Alene Labor Troubles, Volume 3
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=qrdFAQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA1864
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Working Man (The Miners Song) – David Alexander
Lyrics by Rita McNeil