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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 5 1914
Wars in Colorado and Mexico, Workers’ Blood Shed to Serve Rockefeller’s Interests
From the Appeal to Reason of May 2, 1914:
Appeal Army Called to Immediate
Action in the Class War
Practicality the entire issue of the latest edition of the Appeal to Reason is dedicated to supporting the class war, now ongoing, in Colorado, and opposing the war for “commercial and political domination of Mexico.”
The front-page masthead proclaims:
On the second page the masthead makes known:
The Murderous Colorado Militia Was Recruited
from Professional Gunmen
The following are portions of a few of the articles on the Colorado Coal War from Saturday’s Appeal to Reason.
Blood of Slaughtered Babes Calls
for Immediate Action“God give us men: A time like this demands
Great hearts, strong minds, true faith and willing hands.”
Two wars are now on. Both are wars in the interest of John D. Rockefeller and American capitalism. One is a war for the commercial and political domination of Mexico by the oil king and his colleagues. The other is a war to crush out the rebellious spirit of the wage slaves of the Colorado coal mines, owned and operated by the Rockefeller interest.
As you read this, the newspapers will have given you columns upon columns about the American conquest of Mexico. Every known method of appealing to the gullibility of the American workers will have been used. The flag incident and other excuses will have been put forward to justify the sending of the American military and naval forces to our neighboring country. At the same time distorted reports of the bloodiest slaughter of working men in modern times will have appeared in the capitalist press.
This latest battle at Ludlow, Colo., is probably the most outrageous assault upon the rights, liberties and lives of the working class in American history. This issue of the Appeal to Reason gives you only what cold ink and type can transmit. No amount of writing can give you an adequate description of the murdering and maiming of women and children such as occurred last week in one of the sovereign states of this republic. On the other hand the slightest affront to the alleged dignity of American capitalism will have been played up and elaborated upon by most expert writers, artists and photographers that the filthy lucre of capitalism’s prostituted press can purchase…..
[Photograph, paragraph break and emphasis added.]
Another article at the top of the front page declares that the Socialist Party of America opposes war with Mexico in no uncertain terms. And, at the top left of the front page, we find this story:
Gunmen Army Riddles Tent Colony With Bullets,
then Burn bodies in Coal Oil
———-Scores of Miners, Their Wives and Babies Slain in Cold Blood
by Mine Magnates Private Army of Gunmen
-Truce Bearer Receives 51 Bullets.
———EXPLOSIVE BULLETS USED ON HELPLESS BABES
———-
Bloody Incidents of French Revolution Outdone
by Greedy Exploiters Headed by Rockefeller
-While Wilson Sends Military Forces to “Civilize”Mexico,
Colorado is Soaked with Blood of Disinherited.
Militia Company Mutinies When Called Out
———-By Telegraph to APPEAL TO REASON.
Denver, Colo., April 23-Twenty-eight bodies of striking coal miners have been recovered from the ruins of the Ludlow tent colony, and at least thirty more are believed to have been burned by the gunmen militia in huge funeral pyre of bullet ridden and suffocated bodies. Mrs. Pearl Jolly has made an affidavit to the effect that she saw militiamen pile bodies of women and children in a huge pile, pour coal oil over it and set it on fire. The total number of dead strikers their wives and babes may reach sixty.WALTER H. FINKE [Fink].
The Colorado Massacre
The past week has witnessed the greatest labor battle America ever knew. The long strike of the miners has terminated in bloodshed exceeding the casualties of our war in Mexico.
It all resulted from the destruction of the tent colony of the strikers at Ludlow, by the private army of the Rockefeller interests. The regular state troops were not in the field, General Chase refusing to serve after the resources of the state were exhausted. After the hired soldiers had set fire to the tents, riddling with bullets women and children who attempted to escape, until more than twenty had perished, and some say as high as forty, they piled the bodies together, saturated them with Standard Oil, and burned them, to hide evidence of their guilt.
The slaughter of these innocents enraged the miners. Wherever they appeared they were fired on and many of them were killed. This made them desperate. Then they begged and borrowed arms, and speedily surrounded the guards. Others from outside and even from other states, hearing of the trouble, shouldered arms and marched to Ludlow. For three days desultory firing continued, resulting in many deaths and the wounding of far more on both sides….
Nothing like such a class war has ever been known in America. The days of the barricades in France pale before its bloodiness.
———-
Company C Mutinies
Denver, Colo.-Company C. National Guard. Mutinied today [April 23], shortly before time for the troop train which was to convey them with 500 other men to the strike region, was due to leave Denver. The train was held at the station.
Members of the company declared they refused to go to the strike zone because they opposed the murdering of women and children. The troop train left Denver after 10 o’clock, without the mutinous company. No arrests made.
[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Mother Jones Babes of Ludlow, Speech at Trinidad CO UMW District 15 Special Convention, Steel Speeches p154 (176 of 360)
https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735035254105/viewer#page/176/mode/2up
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-May 2, 1914
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/appeal-to-reason/140502-appealtoreason-w961-ludlow.pdf
-Feb 28, 1914
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/appeal-to-reason/140228-appealtoreason-w952.pdf
Note: Top of page 3 has a cartoon by Ryan Walker, wherein Henry Dubb heads off to Mexico with his gun on his shoulder “while those who declare war stay at home.” Watching Dubb march away are Capital, Editor, Congress, and Wilson. Wilson is saying, “Make ’em salute the flag.”
See also:
Commission on Industrial Relations
Testimony of Mrs. Pearl Jolly, p6347
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112087783293&seq=357&q1=pearl+jolly&start=1
The Ludlow Massacre
-by Walter H. Fink
Director of Publicity, District 15, U. M. W. A., 1914
https://archive.org/details/ludlowmassacrere00finkrich/page/n1/mode/2up
Hellraisers Journal – Friday April 24, 1914
From the Chicago Day Book: “Women Cried to God to Save Babies From Blood-Mad Brutes” Trinidad, Colorado – Mother of Slain Child Tells of Horror of Ludlow Massacre
Tag: Ludlow Massacre
https://weneverforget.org/tag/ludlow-massacre/
Tag: Colorado Coalfield War of 1914
https://weneverforget.org/tag/colorado-coalfield-war-of-1914/
Tag: Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1913-1914
https://weneverforget.org/tag/colorado-coalfield-strike-of-1913-1914/
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The Women and Children of Ludlow · Tom Breiding