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Hellraisers Journal – Monday October 12, 1903
Cripple Creek District, Colorado – The Military Bullpen at Camp Goldfield
Report of Emma F. Langdon of Victor, Colorado:
[The Military Bullpen]
Now I will invite the reader to take a trip to the military prison and see how fared the Record prisoners.
These prisoners were marched unceremoniously to the bull pen. Armed thugs forced them into a filthy and squalid little tent, absolutely barren of furniture or bedding, where they were told to stay under penalty of having their heads blown off if they appeared an inch outside of the entrance.
The night was bitterly cold and on that frigid mountain side, under the intimidating guard of a horde of armed assassins, the working force of the Victor Record passed a night of torture equal to anything ever devised by the Spanish inquisitors. The entire force will bear testimony that the treatment accorded them was so inhuman and revolting as to surpass the belief of American citizens.
The “bull” tent had just been vacated by a number of drunken soldier prisoners, who had vomited all over the interior. The stench was sickening, but there they were forced to lay, without even so much as a gunny sack to protect them from the cold. Shortly after sunrise they were told to come to “breakfast.” Emerging from the filthy kennel they were escorted to the mess table a short distance away. A dozen guards kept them covered with guns loaded with riot ammunition while two grimy negro cooks dished out a little slop on tin plates and told them to eat. There were no knives, forks or spoons at hand. “Use your fingers,” said the head negro when remonstrance was made.
Beneath the table were a number of wash boilers and buckets filled with the accumulated garbage of several days and the stench arising therefrom was nauseating enough to insult the gizzard of a buzzard. It is quite needless to state that they had no appetite.
They returned to the tent hungrier and more distressed than ever. The day was raw and cold and they were chilled to the marrow. Faint and sick Mr. Richmond approached the captain of the guard and implored him for God’s sake to obtain some blankets. His appeal was cut short with an oath from that dignitary.
A little later a murderous looking gatling gun was drawn up, trained on the prisoner’s tent, and they were subjected to the nerve rending ordeal of posing as targets. The excitement attending this outrageous intimidation completely unnerved some of them.
Attorney Tully Scott, formerly of Kansas, succeeded in getting them liberated through some legal procedure and after unwinding a few miles of military red tape the commanding general turned them over to Sheriff Robertson of Teller county, when for the first time they learned that they were defendants in a libel case.
It was a deliberate plot to suppress a paper for telling the truth about the uniformed hirelings who were guilty of the outrages above mentioned.
The excuse for the taking of the Record force was that in the issue of the day before, there was an article of about six lines which referred to two tools of the mine owners as ex-convicts. It was learned that in the case of Vannick it was true, but Scanlon, with all his faults, had not, as yet worn the stripes. However, there was a correction coming out the following morning. The whole truth of the matter was that the military was watching every movement of the Record for a chance to raid the office. The real reason of the military raiding the office at that hour, was to suppress the official organ of the Western Federation of Miners. The district had only the one paper that stood up for the cause, and of course the enemy did not have a very warm feeling of friendship for the Record. The reader will at once realize that even had the editor been guilty of criminal libel the operators or the mechanical force could not legally be held responsible. But when the military endeavored to suppress the Record they reckoned without their host. Again the writer will quote: “The best laid plans o’ mice,” etc. The writer would advise the warrior Chase, when he again undertakes to suppress the press, to not only arrest the force at work, but every living printer in the county—and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to carefully guard the cemeteries, for the press is a hard game to beat—even by a warrior of the ability of Chase, as he has doubtless discovered.
Upon Mr. Kyner’s arrival at the office he wrote the following statement which appeared editorially:
A STATEMENT.
Tuesday night, at about 11 o’clock, General Chase, commanding the National guard in person, and with a detachment of cavalry, surrounded the Record office, and without statement of cause, arrested the entire force.
I prevailed upon the command to leave our boy in charge of the office and building.
We were taken to Camp Goldfield and confined in a tent without bedding or fuel to keep us warm, and have been to this hour without sleep in consequence.
My associates and myself were released at about 10 o’clock last night, or rather delivered to the sheriff upon warrants charging us with criminal libel.
The specific offense charged is that this paper, in its issue of Tuesday morning, charged two persons therein named with being ex-convicts. It appears that in this there was an error in that but one of these persons is an ex-convict.
This error was discovered early Tuesday morning, and I made the statement of the mistake to the other person and of my intention to correct it in the morning issue. So far as I know this is the only specific charge placed against the management of this paper.
The Record has espoused the cause of the toilers in the pending struggle. It has been the policy of this paper to be fair but firm in this cause of the miners. This policy will be firmly pursued to the end, and arrests and imprisonment of every sacred right vouchsafed to every American freeman will not alter our course.
The troops returned to the office after taking us to the camp and it was only under lock and key that my business associate, who had been called to the office in the meantime, preserved the legality of the paper by such an issue as he could get out under the circumstances.
It remains for the press and people of Colorado and the nation to determine whether or not human liberty and the liberty of the press longer exist.
G. E. KYNER, Managing Editor.
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October 1 District Union No. 1, executive committee W. F. M., issued the following official statement:
OFFICIAL STATEMENT.
At 10:45 last night [September 30th] the office of the Victor Daily Record was raided by the military authorities and Mr. Geo. Kyner, managing editor and his force, consisting of Mr. W. L. Sweet, local editor; the two Langdon brothers, machine operators and Mr. H. J. Richmond, foreman, were dragged to the “bull pen.”
It is regarded by the committee as only one of the many outrages committed on the community since the advent of the militia in this district.
If, as claimed, a criminal charge is to be preferred against Mr. Kyner, he could have been easily found at any time, it was quite unnecessary to march a squad of soldiers to his newspaper office at dead of night to arrest him. But it was evidently the intention of the military despots to, if possible, stop the issue of the Daily Record, because they returned, after arresting the force and would, no doubt, have also arrested the substitutes that were hastily summoned to get out the paper, but for the fact that the doors were locked. As these men could not be included in the supposed charges against Mr. Kyner, the real object of the militia is obvious.
The whole affair is regarded here, not only by the strikers, but by the public generally, as a dastardly outrage, and an infringement upon the liberty of the press.
No man’s liberty or property is safe in this district as long as the people of the state of Colorado continue to permit the military power of the state to over-ride all law and the constitution not only of this state, but also of the United States.
Mr. Chase says the backbone of the strike is broken, well, that is his version, and the public can take it for what it is worth. The public, however, has learned by experience, to pay very little attention to these military disciples of Ananias. There was very little chance of the strike being broken when even the women are willing to take their husband’s places when they become the victims of these blatant military despots. This happened last night, when Mr. Chas. G. Langdon was unlawfully thrown into the bull pen and Mrs. Langdon nobly took his place as an operator of a linotype machine at the Record office, and she has been working all last night and today to enable this issue of the Record to be gotten out. It is needless to say that the union men are all loud in their praises of this modern Joan of Arc.
Messrs. Thomas Foster and Pat Mullaney were released from the “bull pen” today after thirteen days of unlawful detention, no charges have been filed against these men and they relate having been roughly treated during their incarceration.
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.
DISTRICT UNION NO.1.———-
The act of the military in their attempt to throttle the free speech and liberty of the press brought the condemnation of the entire press of the United States down upon the outrageous act in taking the mechanical force.
The editor’s desk was simply “snowed under” “with communications from far and near denouncing the disgraceful act. I, myself, received hundreds of letters from both rich and poor, people of both high and low positions in life. To me, my work at the linotype seemed the most ordinary and natural thing to do. I had but one thought and that was to please the management of the paper and go to their rescue when I imagined I was needed. At the same time assist the miners by defeating the military in their effort to stifle the voice of the Western Federation of Miners. Mr. Miller is an “all around” good printer, but not a linotype operator, and, as I was able to start the machinery to work, I was proud of the opportunity to do so. But the simple little act was heralded from coast to coast and made much of by the entire press—while I was still at the machine unconscious of anything except that the Record force had been somewhat reduced by “military necessity.”
The action of the press of the country showed how sentiment is growing. The public outside of the Cripple Creek district really did not know to what extremes the military was going up to that time. The newspaper reports were not what they should have been in many cases and the outside public was misled, but the action of the military in raiding the Record aroused these papers to the gravity of the situation.
This act of suppression, if tolerated, gives the governor and his generals absolute dictatorship over the press. It was a vicious stab at free speech. This question was first fought out in England under the reign of James II and William and Mary of Orange, under the championship of John Milton and Charles Blount, in opposition to the censors Robert Lestrange and Edmund Bohun. Freedom of the press has ever since been a recognized principle of right.
Governor Peabody, with his armed force may invade the sanctity of the home, take therefrom husbands and fathers without warrant or specific charges, and consign them to the bull pen. He may surround the court house with cordons of soldiery, denying citizens admission to the temple of justice. He may openly defy the judgment of the civil courts. He may, without process of law, put editors and printers in the bull pen.
He may do these things, for a time, but he cannot throttle the press.
Free speech and a free press are guaranteed to the people by the national and state constitutions.
The Record force had good, congenial company while “guests” of the military at Camp Goldfield, as Messrs. C. G. Kennison, Davis and Foster and a few other good union men were taking a vacation and had decided to be “entertained” by the mine owners and Citizen’s alliance for a short time. This, too, was caused by ‘‘military necessity.”
Typographical Union 275 published a formal protest against the treatment of their members as did many sister Typographical unions.
DENVER TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION CONDEMNS.
At a session of the Denver Typographical Union No. 49, Sunday, Oct. 4, the following resolutions were adopted:
Whereas, The occupation of the various towns and cities in the Cripple Creek mining district by the Colorado state militia has resulted in the unlawful and illegal application of martial law, with all its attendant disregard for the rights, privileges and duties of American citizens, vouchsafed by the constitution of the United States. Arrests have followed freedom of speech; arrests have awaited the legal assemblage of citizens in union meetings; arrest has followed any communication by union men with strike breakers; the pomp of officers and the rattle of musketry have invaded the sacred precincts of the court (the only safe refuge of the innocent citizen); and, worst of all, arrest without warrant of law has followed newspaper expression, thus destroying the palladium of liberty, the freedom of the press, and
Whereas, The apprehension of the editor of the Victor Daily Record was followed by the arrest of members of Victor Typographical union at work on that paper, who are innocent of any wrong, or attempted wrong; therefore
Resolved, By Denver Typographical union No. 49, the pioneer labor organization in Colorado in, that we reaffirm our loyalty and fealty to the law of the land, knowing, as we do, that personal safety vouchsafed to the people through the application of legal processes is the net result of centuries of human struggle against the despotic rule of might. We deplore and denounce the subversion of laws by the military arm of the state government, and declare it to be wholy in the interest and at the behest of the few rich and strong, and we declare the use of such force to be against the best interests of the masses of the people of the state.
Resolved, Further, That we urge upon the officers of the International Typographical union to take active and immediate steps looking toward securing proper redress for the unlawful arrest and incarceration of the members of our sister Typographical union at Victor, and to that end the secretary of this union is hereby instructed to forward a copy of these resolutions to International headquarters at Indianapolis.
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BULL PEN PRISONERS RELEASED.
Paddy Mullaney and Thomas Foster, two of the “guests” at the military bull pen at Camp Goldfield, were released from custody Sept. 30, by orders from headquarters. With the release of Mullaney and Foster followed by the giving of the Record force into the custody of Sheriff Robertson, but two civilian prisoners were left to enjoy the hospitality of the state troops. These were Chas. Kennison and W. F. Davis.
Mr. Kennison, president of Miners’ Union No. 40 and chairman of the strike committee, has many arrests and releases to his credit. On Sept. 18 he was arrested for the second time. He had gone to the Independence mine to get clothing he had left there, and, after leaving the mine, was talking to some friends, when the military arrested him for carrying concealed weapons, and he was taken to the bull pen. His wife made many efforts to see him but was repeatedly denied by the military. His last arrest caused this detention until October 2, when he and W. F. Davis were turned over to the civil authorities.
Asked how he had been treated at Camp Goldfield, Mr. Kennison said:
There are three officers at Camp Goldfield who are Americans and gentlemen; the others are very overbearing. One colonel and two captains are all right, but the others are beyond endurance. The report as to how a private on guard threw down his gun and got the best of me in a fair fight is a pure fake. Parker and I were virtually in solitary confinement. We each had a tent to ourselves, while Foster, Mullaney and the other boys were allowed to tent together. General Chase threatened to buck and gag me, but did not succeed in frightening me any.
Nobody gets enough to eat at Camp Goldfield, and we fared no worse than the men on guard there. There was not enough food and the little there was was improperly cooked and very dirty. Flies, flies in everything. It was not so much the cook’s fault as that there are not more than half enough cooks and helpers to do the work satisfactorily.
As for bunks, we had plenty of hay and blankets, for which we were properly thankful. The greatest hardship of all was in not being allowed to see our families. In the whole fifteen days I have not been allowed to have a minute’s conversation with my wife.
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[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Emma F Langdon, Miners Are My Brothers, EFL p244, 1904
https://archive.org/details/cripplecreekstri00lang/page/244/mode/1up?view=theater
The Cripple Creek Strike, 1903-1904
-by Emma F. LangdonVictor, CO, 1904
-p148-160 (p152)
https://archive.org/details/cripplecreekstri00lang/mode/1up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/cripplecreekstri00lang/page/152/mode/1up?view=theater
See also:
The History of England
From the Accession of James the Second, Volume 2
-by Thomas Babington Macaulay Longmans,
Green, Reader & Dyer, 1871
https://books.google.com/books?id=jldhAAAAcAAJ
Tag: Emma F Langdon
https://weneverforget.org/tag/emma-f-langdon/
Tag: Victor Daily Record
https://weneverforget.org/tag/victor-daily-record/
Tag: Cripple Creek Strike of 1903-1904
https://weneverforget.org/tag/cripple-creek-strike-of-1903-1904/
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I Am A Union Woman – Rosalie Sorrels
Lyrics by Aunt Molly Jackson
https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/unionwomanmollyjackson.html