Hellraisers Journal: From The Miners’ Magazine: The Smeltermen’s Strike in Colorado City, Led by WFM, Part II

Quote BBH Corporation Soul, Oakland Tb p11, Mar 30, 1909 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 21, 1903
Colorado City, Colorado –Mill and Smeltermen’s Union on Strike, Part II

From The Miners Magazine of April 1903:

THE STRIKE IN COLORADO CITY.

[Part II of V: W. F. of M. Attempts to Negotiate]

Previous to the strike being declared, the following letter was presented to the mill managers by the Mill and Smeltermen’s union of Colorado City:

We respectfully present for your consideration a schedule relating to employment and wages in and about the mills. This schedule has been carefully considered by members of the Colorado City Mill and Smeltermen’s union No. 125, W. F. M., and they deem it a fair and reasonable minimum scale for the services in the various lines of work, and inasmuch as throughout the immediate surrounding places a like or higher scale is in effect, it is evident that both the employer and the employes regard a scale not lower than the one presented as just and equitable. Should there be any part of the schedule, however, which appears to you as not being fair and just, we will be glad to take the matter up with you, and assure you of our willingness to look at things from the company’s standpoint as well as our own, and do that which will promote harmony and justice.

We are greatly aggrieved over the discharge of individuals who have been, so far as we are informed, faithful employes of the company, and the only reason for their dismissal being the fact of their membership in this union.

We do not object to the company discharging men whose services as workmen are unsatisfactory. We are not now, nor do we intend to uphold incompetent men nor insist that they be either employed or retained in the employment of the company, but we must protect the men in their rights to belong to the union, even to the extent of discontinuing to work for any company which so discriminates against them.

Realizing that you will require some time to consider the accompanying scale, the committee will call upon you on the 25th inst. and expect a definite answer.

This letter was signed by the official committee of the union, but the letter received but little courteous consideration from the managers. When all overtures of the union failed to bring about an amicable adjustment of differences, the strike was declared as a last resort for justice. The mill managers exhausted every resource to fill the places of the strikers, but their efforts were unavailing. The governor then came to the rescue by recognizing the order of the sheriff, who wears the collar of the corporations. The Denver Post contains the following in its issue of March 6:

This is the telegram sent to the Colorado City mill managers by the Denver Post:

“Are you willing to submit to arbitration the trouble between your company and the mill workers employed by you, the arbitration board to be appointed by joint arrangement of parties involved? Please answer at our expense.

THE DENVER POST.

This is the reply:

“There is no trouble between our company and mill workers employed by us. Our employes are now and have been perfectly satisfied with wages and treatment. Wages paid by us more and hours of labor less than ore reducing plants with whom we compete. Our employes don’t ask to arbitrate. Our plants are full-handed and all our employes and plants require is protection from the violence of outsiders not employed by us. We would be pleased to have your representative visit our plants and fully investigate.

C. A. MACNEIL.
Vice President and General Manager
United States Reduction and Refining Company.

In the same issue of The Post the following editorial appeared:

C. M. MacNeil, stand up!
Was not this telegram of yours indorsed by the other mine managers?
Is it not true that it is a subterfuge?
Is it not a brazen falsehood from beginning to end?
Is it not a carefully worded telegram, prepared to hoodwink the people of Colorado?
Is it not intended to make the people believe the mill managers are more sinned against than sinning?
Are you not laughing at your own cunning and nattering yourself that you have made a master stroke and have fooled the people?
Your answer to each of these questions, if you are truthful, must be:
“Yes.”
Read your own telegram, Mr. MacNeil.
“There is no trouble between our company and mill workers employed by us.”
Is it not a fact that your employes are on a strike?
You must answer, “Yes.”
“Our employes are now and have been perfectly satisfied with their wages and treatment.”
Is it not a fact that your wages were so low that the men were hungry more than half of the time?
Is it not true that your employes were forced to pay insurance and medical assessments and trade in your stores?’
Is it not true that many employes were forced to live in tents because you would not pay them enough to pay for a house?
To each of these questions you must answer “Yes.”
You say “wages paid by us are more and hours of labor less than ore reducing plants with whom we compete.”
You know that is a barefaced lie, don’t you?
Is it not a fact that the Woods Investment Company pays higher wages for less hours of work than do you?
Answer “Yes.”
You say, “our employes don’t ask us to arbitrate.”
Is it not a fact that they have offered to arbitrate and you refused?
Is it not a fact that you say, “there is nothing to arbitrate” to these men?
Is it not a fact that you are trying to break up the union?
Is it not a fact that you have refused and do refuse to recognize the rights of men to organize?
Do you not know this right is guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States that gives to every man the right of liberty and pursuit of happiness?
Do you know that you are seeking to deprive these men of their liberty and deprive them of their happiness by grinding them down to the level of serfs?
You must answer “Yes” to these questions or tell a deliberate lie.
You say, “our plants are full-handed and all our employes and plants require is protection from the violence of outsiders not employed by us.”
Do you know that lies teem in every word of that sentence?
Craftily as you have couched that sentence, do you not know that it will not fool the people of Colorado?
Is it not a fact that your plants are not full-handed?
Is it not a fact that there has been no violence?
Is it not a fact that you had the troops called out to awe men who were asking only that you pay them money enough for their labor to allow them to live decently?
Is it not a fact that citizens of Colorado Springs and Colorado City to the number of hundreds have signed petitions to Governor Peabody declaring that there was no violence?
Do you know that these troops are costing the state of Colorado $2,000 a day and that there is absolutely no use for them in Colorado City?
Is it not a fact that you have those troops there just to excite violence?
You must answer “Yes.”
Is it not true that your company has $12,000,000 of watered stock and pays dividends on starvation wages?
Answer “Yes”.
Don’t you know that you must answer “Yes” to these questions?
This is what the Western Federation of Miners stands for:
“To secure compensation fully commensurate with the dangers of our employment and the right to use our earnings free from the dictation of any person whomsoever.”
Do you indorse that for yourself, personally?
Answer “Yes.”
Is there any reason why every man should not indorse that?
You must answer “No.”
Here is another point the miners stand for:
“To establish as speedily as possible and so that it may be enduring, our right to receive pay for labor performed, in lawful money and to rid ourselves of the iniquitous and unfair system of spending our earnings where and how our employers or their agents or officers may designate.”
Is that not right?
Will you consent to anybody dictating to you how or where you will spend your salary?
Here is another point the miners stand for:
“To use all honorable means to maintain and promote friendly relations between ourselves and our employers, and endeavor by arbitration and conciliation or other pacific means to settle any difficulties which may arise between us, and thus strive to make contention and strikes unnecessary.”
Does this not show that our employes are ready to arbitrate?
Is that not an honorable and fair stand for a man or men to take?
You must answer “Yes.”
Mr. MacNeil, stand up.
You are the [Divine Rights] Baer of Colorado.

The Rocky Mountain News in its issue of March 7 had the following editorial on the “Duty of the Governor:”

Governor Peabody’s position in regard to the labor troubles at Colorado City is (1) that he will take no steps toward recalling the troops, or in any other direction until next Monday develops the situation in Cripple Creek in regard to the shipment of ore to the mills where the men are out, and (2) that he has done all that his duty requires him to do, and will make no move of his own volition, toward trying to get an agreement between the men and the mill owners, or a conference between them or submission of the dispute to arbitration.

Such a view of the duty of the governor to the public is exceedingly narrow. His office charges him with the duty of doing everything in his power to insure the peace and prosperity of the state. At the present time there is no single matter in which he can render more real service to the state and its people than by using his personal and official influence to bring about a settlement of the strike in the mills at Colorado City. Failing to move in that direction he fails in his highest duty as governor.

Should Mr. Peabody persist in that determination no other conclusion will be possible than that he favors the mill owners and wishes them to win, whether they be right or wrong.

His call for the National guard was made after a consultation with only a sheriff, who had utterly failed to use the power of his office, and with Manager MacNeil, of the mill trust. The governor took their report for everything.

***

The legislature is in session and it is the business of that body to take official notice of the situation. A petition was presented in the house yesterday, signed by a large number of citizens of El Paso county, protesting against the presence of the military. A majority of the House, voting almost strictly on party lines, refused the petitioners the courtesy of havng their paper read. The legislature or the senate, if the house will not act jointly, ought to appoint a committee to visit the scene of the trouble immediately and report.

Matters will come to a focus in the Cripple Creek district on Monday and a strike on a number of mines in that district may result if the mill difficulty is allowed to drift without action by the governor or the legislature. It will be no less than a crime against the people if both the executive and legislative branches of the state government do nothing toward securing an adjustment.

The editorials of the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News will give the members of the Western Federations of Miners throughout the whole jurisdiction of the organization an intelligent idea as to the situation in the state of Colorado.

Secretary-Treasurer William D. Haywood, on March 10, expressed himself as follows:

The rights of personal freedom and the liberty of speech are being violated. The strikers’ pickets are being arrested on the public domain, when not attempting to encroach on the company’s property. They are not permitted to speak to the men who work in the mills, although their purpose is the peaceable one of persuading the men to quit work. So many of the non-union men have left the mills that the company is getting desperate.

Now, the situation is this: The miners of this state do not propose to submit to such oppression. They are advocates of law and order, and they will not long permit it to be violated even by the state’s chief executive. There is grave danger in pushing oppression too far, and it is certain that the miners are now in a mood to strike back. They will preserve their liberties and retain their rights, if it is necessary to pass through the red sea of revolution in order to do, so. Colonists had less occasion to rebel against the authority of King George than have the miners of Colorado to resist the oppression of Governor Peabody.

Our attitude toward civil authority and toward society is shown by section 2 of our [W. F. M.] constitution, which reads:

“The objects of this organization shall be to unite the various persons working in and around the mines, mills and smelters into one central body, to practice those virtues that adorn society and remind man of his duty to his fellow man, the elevation of his position and the maintenance of the rights of the workers.”

[Photograph and emphasis added]