Hellraisers Journal, Friday June 7, 1918
Ludlow, Colorado – Magnificent Monument Unveiled on Memorial Day
The unveiling described:
Mrs. Mary Pertucci [Petrucci], who lost three of her children in the massacre, unveiled the monument while the great crowd of miners and sympathizers paid their silent respect to the memory of the dead.
On the barren plain where once stood the humble tent colony of the Ludlow strikers, the monument towers, an impressive landmark. Down through the years that are to come it will mark the scene of a dastardly crime. More eloquently than any spoken word it will tell the tragic story of the poor murdered women and the innocent babes of Ludlow who died for democracy.
[Photograph added.]
United Mine Workers Journal of June 6, 1918:
Details:
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“On Ludlow Field” a poem by Frank Hayes:
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WE NEVER FORGET
Memorial Day at Ludlow
A great concourse of people gathered together on the field of Ludlow, Colo., on Memorial Day, and there paid solemn tribute to the memory of the men, women and children who on the 20th day of April, 1914, were murdered because they chose to stand with the miners’ union in its fight against the industrial autocracy that for years had reigned supreme in the Southern Colorado coal fields.
Five thousand people, most of them miners and their families, came to Ludlow to witness the unveiling of the splendid monument that the union miners of America have erected to the memory of their fallen comrades.
The members of the International Executive Board, representing every coal mining section on the North American continent, were present to participate in the dedication ceremonies.
Stirring speeches were made by President Frank J. Hayes, ex-President John P. White and Secretary William Green.
Mrs. Mary Pertucci [Petrucci], who lost three of her children in the massacre, unveiled the monument while the great crowd of miners and sympathizers paid their silent respect to the memory of the dead.
On the barren plain where once stood the humble tent colony of the Ludlow strikers, the monument towers, an impressive landmark. Down through the years that are to come it will mark the scene of a dastardly crime. More eloquently than any spoken word it will tell the tragic story of the poor murdered women and the innocent babes of Ludlow who died for democracy.
Note: Bernard died of illness a few months before the Ludlow Massacre.
To the Colorado miners it will prove an inspiration, instilling them with the courage to persevere in their efforts to remove from the mines and the mining communities of their state the last trace of the old feudal industrialism, under which the miner was deprived of every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution to citizens of the United States.
The monument is erected to the memory of those who died in the fight for industrial liberty; it stands for the great fundamental principle of economic democracy, which to the workers is the bed rock of all democracy, and without which the term is an empty and meaningless phrase.
Collective bargaining between employer and representatives of labor elected by labor in their own organization is the first principle for which the monument stands; for it was to establish this great principle that the stricken toilers of Ludlow fell.
Democracy under the miners’ union and not autocratic paternalism under the direction of the Rockefellers is what it represents. The difference is that which exists between the German theory of government and that of America and her allies. It is self-determination of peoples applied to industry and to the toilers of industry.
Millions of brave men have fallen on the battlefields of Europe for just this principle. Those to whom the Ludlow monument is dedicated fell in the same great cause, and in the language of the great emancipator, “It is for us, the living, to here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.”
Industrial America must have a new birth of freedom and government of the people must extend into the dark places where heretofore thousands of our working people have been held in industrial bondage and have been denied the right to organize and deal collectively with their employers. Acting as individuals, they [have] been completely at the mercy of the great corporations, who on too many occasions have used their economic power with a Prussian ruthlessness, and have succeeded in certain centers in so controlling political and economic power that they have been able to dispossess thousands of working people of every right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The worker having nothing else to exchange for a place of shelter, clothes to wear and bread to eat, must of necessity find a sale for his labor power. Only through collective effort can he hope to negotiate upon an equitable basis with a powerful corporation.
It was for the purpose of substituting this collective method of doing business between the great coal corporations and their employes, in the place of the old industrial system where the individual miner was denied the right to organize, and as a consequence, was completely at the mercy of the coal companies, that the strike was inaugurated in Southern Colorado. It was for this that the men, women and children of Ludlow perished.
In the program for world-wide democracy that must follow the winning of the great war organized labor will insist, as a first principle, that never again in America will there be permitted to exist a form of industrial autocracy similar to that which brought on the Colorado mine strike and resulted in the brutal killing of men, women and children because they dared to fight against industrial oppression and wrong.
[Photograph of Petrucci children added.]
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From the Italian Section of the Miners’ Journal:
VITA DI MINIERA
Il Presidente Hayes, il Vicepresidente Green e l’ispettore dei combustibili John P. White, sono partiti al principio della settimana scorsa per il Colorado. Essi hanno preso parte alla commemorazione di Ludlow che venne celebrata nel “Memorial day,” nel quale giorno il magnificio monumento eretto alla memoria degli uomini, delle donne e dei fanciulli, che vennero assassinati nel 20 aprile del 1914, fu scoperto alla presenza di una larga folla di minatori del Colorado.
From the Slovak Section of the Journal:
VYBEHNUTIE Z BANI
Predseda Hayes, podpredseda Lewis, tajomník Green a diktâtor paliva John P. White odisli na zaciatku tyzdna do Colorado. Oni sa sucastnia pri obradoch vy drziavanych v Ludlove na Pamatny den, kedy skvely pomník zriadeny k pamiatky muzov zien a detí, ktoré, boli zamordované dna 20 apríla, 1914, bude odhaleny za ucasti vefkeho shromazdenia Coloradskych baníckych robotníkov.
LIFE OF MINING – President Hayes, Vice President Green and Fuel Inspector John P. White, left at the beginning of last week for Colorado. They took part in the commemoration of Ludlow which was celebrated in the Memorial Day, in which the magnificent monument to the memory of men, women and children, who were assassinated on April 20, 1914, was discovered in the presence of a large crowd of Colorado miners.
Runaway from Mine Workings – Chairman Hayes, Vice President Lewis, Green Secretary and John P. White dictator of the fuel reversed the Colorado weekend. They are [successful?] at the ceremonies you held in Ludlow on the Day of Remembrance, when a great memorial was set up for memorials of men and women who were slaughtered on April 20, 1914 will be unveiled for part of the great gathering of Colorado Miners.
