powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Friday March 15, 1907
From the Montana News: Ida Crouch-Hazlett Reports From Caldwell
GOV. STEUNENBERG’S WIDOW
—–
Interview by Ida Crouch-Hazlett
Since the kidnapping case has been put off till the close of Steve Adams’ trial, which is simply the preliminary skirmish of the same conflict, I took the time on March 5 to walk out to the Steunenberg residence, and have a talk with the widow of the bull-pen governor. The house stands at the extreme edge of the little country town of Caldwell, it is modest modern cottage with no signs of great wealth about it, but an air of comfort and indications of sufficient means to cover ample middle class wants. Mrs. Steunenberg is a pleasant-faced, portly woman, short in stature of those general characteristics that are ordinarily called “motherly.” She was not averse to giving any information asked for and indeed seemed to think it her duty to satisfy the public curiosity. She is an ardent adherent of the Adventist faith, and seems to reconcile everything with the idea that it is “God’s will.” She says she knows nothing of papers and politics.
A neighbor who sometimes did little chores about the house was at first arrested for the terrible crime. She always strenuously opposed any suspicion being laid upon this man. She showed me the fragments of clothing that were gathered up about the fatal spot. The largest one was not over six inches long. She said she had formed no opinion as to the perpetrators of the deed, that there were those whose business such matters were and she left everything to them.
The depth of the class struggle between the economic forces of society is nowhere more evident than in this calm, placid woman, who has no idea that her husband’s actions in the brutal Idaho war were anything but necessary and fully justified by the circumstances. The father is looked upon as a martyr to public service, and the young children of which there are four, have each full sets of his pictures. The entire forms of bourgeois thought must be shaken from their adamantine strongholds before even a suspicion of justice can find lodgment in the social consciousness.
The very fact that such a heinous, insensate, cowardly crime should have been laid at the doors of men banded together to better and uplift the conditions of the workers, who have nothing to gain by crimes, but everything to lose, that these men should have been followed so relentlessly by the iron hand of all the machinery that the employing class can use shows the desperate straits to which this robber class will go to maintain the prerogatives and retain the slave.
Men who work, awaken. There is no peace or security for you, except as you arise and give battle for the common rights of all human beings.
IDA CROUCH-HAZLETT.
———-
[Photograph added.]
Ida Crouch-Hazlett
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCE
Montana News
“Owned and Published by the
Socialist Party of Montana”
(Helena, Montana)
-“Thursday Mar 15, 1907”
Note: the above date is an error
and should read: Thursday Mar 14, 1907.
https://www.newspapers.com/image/77950154
IMAGES
Ida Crouch-Hazlett, Socialist, Montana News, Aug 3, 1904
https://www.newspapers.com/image/77948562/
Ida Crouch-Hazlett, wiki, Montana News, Aug 3, 1904
-image much improved by Tim Davenport, THANK YOU!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Crouch-Hazlett
Montana News, ed by Ida Crouch-Hazlett, Mar 14, 1907
https://www.newspapers.com/image/77950145
See also:
Steve Adams
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Adams_(Western_Federation_of_Miners)
For more on the trial of Steve Adams:
http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/trials.php?tid=3
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho labor confrontation of 1899
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeur_d%27Alene,_Idaho_labor_confrontation_of_1899
The Story of the Bull Pen At Wardner, Idaho
-by Thomas A Hickey
SLP, 1900
http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/documents/Bull_Pen_remember_the_bullpen_opt_cropped.pdf
Tells the story of the Miners’ struggles in Idaho in 1892 and 1899, of the bull pen of 1899 where men were kept under conditions so harsh that three of them died. Tells of the death of Union Miner Mike Devine in Governor Steunenberg’s bullpen.
Most historians rightfully condemned the murder of Gov. Steunenberg, even tho he was, himself, a murderer. Sadly, the murders of these union men, murdered through the deplorable conditions of the bullpen, go unrecognized, and unremembered.
Do workers’ lives matter?
Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town
Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America
-by J. Anthony Lukas
Simon and Schuster, Jul 17, 2012
https://books.google.com/books?id=d07IME-ezzQC
On page 142, Lucas describes the bull pen erected in May of 1899 as “primitive” and states: “Three inmates died there.” That’s it, no names, no description of how they died, nothing on their lives or the lives of the wives and children left behind to fend for themselves. On the other hand, he did devote pages and pages to an actress and a baseball player who were in Idaho during 1907.
United States Congressional serial set, Issue 3901
-Annual Reports of the War Department for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1899
-Report of the Major-General Commanding the Army in Three Parts, Part 1.
WDC, 1899
(search with: bull pen)
https://books.google.com/books?id=S4Y3AQAAIAAJ
9. Special Report of Brig. Gen. Henry C. Merriam, U. S. A., on miners’ riots in the State of Idaho
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=S4Y3AQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA28
Coal Miner’s Grave – Idaho Silver Hammer Band
Lyrics by Hazel Dickens
-written to honor Francesco Estep, dedicated here to
the Martyrs of Governor Steunenberg’s Idaho Bull Pen of 1899
http://www.hangoutstorage.com/flatpickerhangout.com/storage/attachments/archived/files/its-only-a-coal-mine-593411622012.pdf