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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday April 23, 1903
Colorado City, Colorado –Mill and Smeltermen’s Union on Strike, Part IV
From The Miners Magazine of April 1903:
THE STRIKE IN COLORADO CITY.
[Part IV of V: Reporter Talks with Wives of Strikers]
The Post in its issue of March 13, said editorially:
WHAT WOULD YOU DO, GOVERNOR,
WERE YOU A MILL HAND?
Governor Peabody, do you wish to learn the difference between the men working in the strikers’ places at Colorado City and the strikers? You did not see the strikers when you visited the military camp there. You talked with the men at work in the mills.
Governor, there is a profound difference between those—and that difference represents the truth.
* * *
You talked with the men at work in the guarded mill, governor, and they told you that they had no complaints to make.
At that moment a woman, sent by The Post, was doing a natural and practical thing. She was at the homes of the strikers talking with their wives.
They were very poor, governor, so poor that the check you pay in a fashionable cafe for one meal would mean the very affluence of food for a striker’s family for one week.
And yet the men had worked very, very hard, governor. They had given every muscle and all the endurance they possessed to the mill— every bit of it—and yet their children would have shouted for joy and their wives wept over the sum of a restaurant check carried by a bowing waiter to the proud cashier of a fashionable cafe.
* * *
And then this woman, who writes for The Post, went to the homes of the “scabs” and saw their wives and children and the men when they returned gloomily home—the men who told you, governor, that they had no complaints to make.
Theirs are the homes, governor, where, after the credit at the store is cut off in the middle of the month, the women live on crusts of bread so that the men may have an egg or a bit of meat to keep up their strength to work for the mill until next pay day, when credit is restored and they can have enough to eat for another half month.
But the men are working—they have no complaint to make.
***
Governor Peabody, imagine that you were shorn of your power, your fortune, your home—imagine that you had nothing wherewith to support your family, save a chance to earn enough to keep them half alive.
And suppose, governor, that you might lose that chance by a complaint. What would you do? Possibly you would cling to it; possibly you would try to smile through the cold sweat in your face and say:
“I have no complaint to make. Let me alone!”
* * *
Or perhaps, Governor Peabody, if you found that there were beside you good and true comrades, brave men, who would stand by you, you might throw down your tools and say to your employers:
“You must pay us living wages—By God, you must!”
* * *
That is the difference, governor, between the men who are striking and those who have no complaint.
Read Dora Desmond’s story in The Post today, the story written in the laborers’ poor homes, written in the pure light of the sacrifice of their wives, written on the very heart of unrequited toil.
“Nothing to arbitrate!”
Why, Governor Peabody, don’t you know that if you and the rest of the men who sit in their artistic homes with one hand fondly caressing sweet, sunny-haired children and the other holding up the newspaper wherein they read the news of the strike, don’t you know what you and they would do were the conditions reversed?
What would the so-called “ruling classes” do if they found themselves giving their lives for one-half of a right to live?
* * *
How long would “the great conservative, intelligent citizenship” stand it? How long would the mill owners toil in weary silence? How long would you endure slavery?
Did it ever occur to you what the men would do who demand that union labor shall be crushed were they the toilers?
Did it ever occur to you, governor that they might say:
“We can’t arbitrate poverty and suffering.”
But union labor offers to arbitrate, governor.
The Rocky Mountain News had the following editorial in its issue of March 14, 1903:
SOME ADVICE BY REQUEST.
Governor Peabody said yesterday that the News had been criticising him so freely that he would like that paper to tell him what it thought he should do to bring about arbitration of the Colorado City strike.
Whether the governor’s expressed wish was an outburst of petulance or was caused by a real desire to receive a suggestion, the News does not know, but it will try to give the best advice it can.
The first thing the governor should do to bring about arbitration is to believe that there ought to be arbitration, and then to act as if he believed it. So far as the press and public have been able to discover from the governor’s words and actions, he has never given any intimation to the mill owners that he thought they should recognize the union and arbitrate the differences. Never has he made any declaration to the public that he thinks there should be arbitration.
As a first step toward facilitating arbitration, let him make the public statement that he thinks the mill owners should accept the proposal of the Western Federation of Miners and that they will deserve to be condemned if they fail to accept it.
The governor should understand that the people of this state, almost without exception, look on him as a partisan of the mill owners and think that the mill owners would have agreed to arbitration long ago were it not that they expect to have his full support whether they be right or wrong. This belief in the minds of the people may do the governor an injustice, but if it does he is responsible for it, and he only can remove it.
The conviction that the governor stands with the mill owners took deep root when he called out the National guard and rushed it to Colorado Springs. Manager MacNeil of the mill trust came to Denver, carrying in his pocket the request of Sheriff Gilbert for troops. Nobody had any idea that troops were to be asked for. There had been no disorder to warrant their entry on the scene. The sheriff of El Paso county had made no effort to employ the peace force of the county, the municipal authorities of Colorado City were prepared, alone, to keep order.
But the governor and Manager MacNeil went into private conference and when they came out the order to the troops came with them. The governor did not go to Colorado City himself, he did not send anybody to investigate, he took the ex parte statements of the manager of the mill trust and the request of an incompetent sheriff as his warrant for sending a small army to Colorado City at an expense of over $1,500 a day to the state.
Then the governor pushed aside the recognized officers of the National guard and gave some kind of a personal commission to Sherman Bell and James H. Brown, both of whom have conducted themselves in exactly the right way to provoke trouble. The appointment of Sherman Bell to be adjutant general of the state troops, beginning in April, is in itself an indication of the most extraordinary ignorance or recklessness on the part of the governor. A hair-brained adventurer like Bell is about the last man in the state who should be placed in a position so responsible as that of adjutant general.
The public conviction as to the governor’s mental attitude was fixed by his recent trip to the scene of the strike. He talked with the men working in the mills, but refused to go to a meeting of the strikers to which he was invited. Instead of spending the evening talking with the strikers and learning their opinions he chose to hold a social function in the Antlers hotel. At another time a public reception in the Antlers would have been in good taste. Under the circumstances which took the governor to Colorado Springs it was in the worst possible taste, and no man with an ounce of good judgment in public affairs ever could have been led into such an indiscretion.
If the governor has any wish to invite public confidence in himself and his administration, he will recall Bell and Brown from Colorado City, revoke Bell’s appointment as adjutant general and require Brown to confine himself strictly to the duties of his proper rank in the guard.
The proposition of the union is that the mill owners shall select one arbitrator, the Western Federation of Miners the second and those two the third, the finding of the board to be binding on both sides.
If the governor believes that proposition to be fair, let him say so.
Then let the governor notify the mill owners that if they will not accept that proposition at the meeting this afternoon he will withdraw the National guard from Colorado City and will issue a statement to the public saying that the mill owners are not disposed to be fair.
If the governor will take that attitude an agreement to arbitrate will be reached before today’s sun goes down. If he says there must be arbitration there will be arbitration.
The governor could no longer maintain his position that “there was nothing to arbitrate.” Public sentiment became so strong that he was forced to use his office in bringing together both parties to the controversy. The governor requested the mill managers and the representatives of the Federation to meet at his office on the afternoon of March 14, for the purpose of obtaining further personal information. The Federation was represented by President Moyer and Secretary-Treasurer Haywood, who secured the temporary services of an attorney. The mill owners were represented by their managers and attorneys. The conference lasted from 2 o’clock Saturday afternoon until 3 o’clock Sunday morning, with the following result:
Terms of the Portland mill:
First—that eight hours shall constitute a day’s work, in and around the mills, with the exception of the sampling department, which may extend to ten hours per day.
Second—That in the employment of men by this company there shall be no discrimination between union and non-union labor, and that no person shall be discharged for reason of membership in any labor organization.
Third—That all men now on strike shall be reinstated within twenty days from Monday, the 16th day of March, A. D. 1903, who shall have made application for work within five days from said date.
Fourth—That the management of the Portland Gold Mining Company will receive and confer with any committee of the Colorado City Mill and Smeltermen’s Union No. 125 at any time within said twenty days upon the subject of a scale of wages.
Dated at Denver, Colorado, this 14th day of March, A. D. 1903.
FRANK C. PECK,
For the Portland Gold Mining Company.
CHARLES MOYER,
For Mill and Smeltermen’s Union.Terms of the Telluride mill:
First—That eight hours a day shall constitute a day’s work in and around the mills, with the exception of the sampling department, which may be extended to ten hours per day.
Second—That in the employment of men by this company there shall be no discrimination between union and non-union labor, and that no person shall be discharged for reason of membership in any labor organization.
Third—That all men formerly employed by the Telluride Reduction Company shall be reinstated in the same positions which they occupied in the mill at the time it closed down, it being understood that in the new mill now under construction by the Telluride Company that there will be certain positions in the new mill which did not exist in the mill as formerly operated, and that the agreement of the Telluride Company to the reinstatement of men shall apply to the positions in the new mill which were in existence in the old mill.
Fourth—That the management of the Telluride Reduction Company will receive and confer with any committee of the Colorado City Mill and Smeltermen’s Union No. 125, within any time after thirty days from the date upon which the mill is placed in operation to consider a wage scale.
Fifth—The Telluride Reduction Company further agrees that during the period of construction of this mill that it will employ as many of its old employes as it finds practicable so to do.
Manager MacNeil, of the Standard mill, who has at all times maintained a stubborn attitude, practically forced himself out of the conference with the Portland and Telluride mill managers. President Moyer and Secretary-Treasurer Haywood, at the request of the governor, accepted an invitation to meet the manager of the Standard mill on Sunday, March 15, at 11 o’clock. The meeting took place at the governor’s office, but all efforts on the part of the Federation representatives to bridge the gulf were unavailing. Manager MacNeil refused to reinstate the strikers, made no mention of the wages he would concede to his employes, nor would he consent to a recognition of the union.
The governor agreed that he would withdraw the state militia, providing the Western Federation of Miners would withdraw the suits that were entered against officers of the Colorado National Guard. If the representatives of the Federation had refused to accede to the demands made by the governor, the people of Colorado would have the inestimable privilege of continuing to donate $1,500 per day as an expense account for soldiers on dress parade. The people of the state have sized up the present executive, and have concluded that he is smaller mentally than he is physically. In the words of a prominent mining man, “He is a Reuben from the country who shies at an electric light.” He has lived so long in the rural districts of Colorado that bunches of alfalfa have grown on the gray matter in his think dome, and the war horses of the G. O. P. are endeavoring to disclaim responsibility for the political accident that nominated and elected the present apology as governor of the state.
After it became known that the Telluride and Portland mill managers and the representatives of the Federation had arrived at a satisfactory settlement, there was a general rejoicing, but amidst the jubilation there could be heard strong words of condemnation for Manager MacNeil of the Standard, who repudiated with haughty arrogance the reasonable demands of the Federation representatives.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
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SOURCE
Quote BBH Corporation Soul, Oakland Tb p11, Mar 30, 1909
https://www.newspapers.com/image/72436098/
The Cripple Creek Strike
A History of Industrial Wars in Colorado, 1903-4-5;
Being a Complete and Concise History of the Efforts
of Organized Capital to Crush Unionism
-by Emma F. Langdon
Great Western Publishing Company, 1905
-pages 57-63
https://archive.org/details/cripplecreekstri00lang/page/50/mode/2up?view=theater
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hb0hh2&view=2up&seq=61
http://www.rebelgraphics.org/wfmhall/langdon04.html
IMAGE
WFM Button
https://www.nps.gov/kewe/learn/historyculture/museum-guide-5.htm
See also:
Tag: Colorado City Smeltermen’s Strike of 1903
https://weneverforget.org/tag/colorado-city-smeltermens-strike-of-1903/
Tag: Cripple Creek Strike of 1903-1904
https://weneverforget.org/tag/cripple-creek-strike-of-1903-1904/
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