There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Saturday March 16, 1907
Caldwell, Idaho – Editor Crouch-Hazlett on the Scene
The editor of the Montana News is now reporting from the scene of the attempted frame-up of the officials of the Western Federation of Miners, and, to her surprise, she has found an active and effective Local of the Socialist Party in that small western town.
From the Caldwell Socialist of August 18, 1906:
From the Montana News of March 14, 1907:
Socialist Activity in the Idaho Conspiracy.
[By Ida Crouch-Hazlett]
Striking evidence has been furnished in the great western battle between the working class and their masters of the part that the Socialists and the Socialist party, are playing in the critical contest. It has been practically the Socialists that have organized the working forces of the world in a mighty protest against the high-handed crime, conspiracy and obloquy intended to blacken and obliterate the manly independence of organized labor. Socialists have been foremost in gathering the defense fund and have organized the great demonstrations of an outraged working class. And finally to the Socialist press alone is due the wide publicity, the continual agitation that has shaken the heart of violated humanity from center to circumference, and made the bloated violators of courts, constitutions, laws, justice and common decency tremble in their gilt-decked halls at the swelling roar from the under world.
And here in Caldwell-my heart swells to write it-the Socialists have been the force that have in all probability freed the Western Federation officials from being judicially murdered long ago. So far as the writer has ever seen it has never been heralded to the world that there were any Socialists in Caldwell. The impression has gone forth that it was a howling wilderness of unrestricted capitalist oppression, [unreadable] oppression where detectives and bull pen ogres roamed unrestrained, and labor only breathed the air that political officials commended.
The fact is there has been a local here of forty members. Matters connected with the publication of the “Socialist” here have led to considerable discouragement and differences that have had a debilitating effect for the time being. But still the work accomplished by these earnest and persevering sons of the toiling ranks in behalf of their endangered brothers has been a miracle of patience and a prodigy of achievement. A fortunate circumstance assisted the work that was necessary to be done in order that the path of the capitalist “justice” might not be a devil’s slide for the kidnapped and outraged labor leaders. That was the arrival in town on a homeseekers’ excursion seeking a home in the rich soil of southern Idaho, recently brought under the new government irrigation plans, of C. A. Johnson, a Socialist from Seattle, and an old member of the Western Federation from the mines of the Coeur d’ Alene. The detective cursed town of Caldwell had his baggage searched by Pinkertons before he hardly had time to turn around, and the good citizens of the Canyon county seat tried to bar him from hotels and all places of lodging, attempted to persecute Mrs. Jones, his landlady, for harboring him, finally paying her $300 to get her out of the hotel she was running. But Johnson proved to be the big Swede when it came to handling him. In spite of threats on his life, shadowing by detectives and other dark and gruesome accompaniments that have followed the melo-dramatic grand stand play that the lords of misrule have employed in the fateful struggle, he stayed, he saw, he worked, and he has practically conquered so far. The attorneys for the Federation employed him on the case and he has been busy ever since.
Along with Johnson, Comrade Barbour [Barber], secretary of Caldwell local, has been the most earnest, faithful and active coadjutor, together with other members of the Socialist party at this point, which comprises many good and stable citizens of the town of Caldwell. Barbour is a young working man, but recently married, but no task has been too severe, no pains too relentless for him to undertake. He was working on a ranch seven miles from town and he would walk in after his day’s work to round up the local and would lay off in haying to see that no act was neglected that it was the duty of Socialists to perform, when the lives of their brothers and the safety of the working class is in danger.
The first thing he did was to preach the sentiment of justice in the minds of the mass of the people in the county and district where the atrocious crime had been committed. A shock like the blowing to pieces of a prominent man by a bomb would naturally thrill a peaceable community with horror, and any suggestion of the identity of the criminals would naturally arouse a most violent and threatening feeling against them. Carefully over every inch of the contiguous territory have these workers gone. Patiently and painstakingly have they shown the absurdity of imagining the Western Federation of Miners was implicated in the heinous offense, how out of reason it was to suppose that men who had no official connection with that body in the Idaho strike of a dozen years ago, that gave Steunenberg the name of the bull-pen governor, who were not even affected by that great industrial calamity, and who, if grievance as a motive were wanting could have found more potent incentive in blood-famed Colorado, should turn the wheels of history backward and stultify themselves through the idiocy of a purposeless plan.
Moreover a far greater task lay upon these proletarian torch-bearers and that was the showing to an ignorant and uninformed public the true purpose of the organization of the forces of labor, how labor has everything to lose and nothing to gain in the objects to be accomplished by organization, through deeds of stupid, wicked crime; how to protect themselves from the dreadful effects of terrible, brutal exploitation, such as child labor, overwork, under-pay, exhausting hours, unsanitary conditions, dangerous mines, machinery and fixtures, sordid and degrading surroundings, the workers must cooperate in rational and intelligent union, to impress their needs and rights upon mankind. And a large part of even this gigantic task has been accomplished. Literature was distributed with a lavish hand-Socialist and union papers, pamphlets, everything that might furnish the requisite information. The Appeal to Reason has been especially active in this line, but the attorneys for the defense took exception to some of its methods and it has not been distributed to any great extent for the most of the past year.
The result of such work is immeasurable when it is taken into consideration that jurymen were to be summoned from the surrounding country.
The next move was to get a change of venue away from the pulsating scene of the crime. Again the silent brigade has been at work and over 800 signatures have been obtained asking that the trial take place in more unprejudiced surroundings. If this is granted, Weiser, the county seat of the adjoining county will probably be chosen. In that case the trial will in all probability go over to the May term of court. And then as to the jury. But this tale must wait. Judge Bryan is disqualified from sitting in the Orchard case because he one time acted as Orchard’s attorney. As is stated elsewhere Judge Woods, who was the judge to try the Adams case, will preside.
On March 5, the day of the opening of the court, Attorney John Nugent appeared for the defense, and gave nine reasons why the case should be thrown out of the court. Now that the Adams’ trial is over and the Federation attorneys will soon be here, it is expected that the arguing of this motion and the change of venue will consume considerable time. The issue of the Adams trial means a tremendous factor in the case. The disagreement of the jury makes Adams a competent witness. A convicted man’s testimony carries no weight with a jury. The outcome of that tragic case with the visible stamp of diabolical conspiracy upon it is a matter for the utmost congratulation to those interested in justice and fair play. Adams was arrested with no charge even of crime against him, solely to use as a witness to help convict the Federation officials and the bogus confession, extorted from him by threats, when his persecutors saw he wouldn’t stand hitched, they trumped up the Tyler murder charge to get him out of the way as a witness for the Federation against the horrible tactics of McPartland and his thug accomplices. But this didn’t work and the fake confession will be a noted feature of the world-famed labor case.
There is no question among those who know the measures that capital has taken to break up combinations of its employes that Orchard is simply a paid tool, detective and spy of the mine owners. At the last he will in all probability admit this and say that he made the “confession” implicating the union officers as merely a part of his tactics, and get off scot free after having had innocent men imprisoned for over a year, causing them untold suffering and endangering their lives. As to the actual perpetrators of the barbarian Steunenberg murder, the theory is that Orchard did not do the deed at all, as all such detectives are wretched cowards, but probably laid the plan and helped manufacture the bomb and got some poor tool to do the work.
Well the Western Federation of Miners isn’t busted up yet in spite of lies, plots and fake confessions and counter-confessions, Greek fire and hell fire galore.
IDA CROUCH-HAZLETT.
———-
[Emphasis and newsclip from Appeal to Reason added.]
SOURCES
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/77950163/
Note: “C. A. Johnson” was, in fact a Pinkerton Spy.
“Seattle Socialist: The Workingman’s Paper”
-by Gordon Black
Note: The editor, Hermon Titus, moved the paper to Caldwell, Idaho, in June 1906, where it remained until November of 1908.
http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/laborpress/Seattle_Socialist.htm
IMAGES
HMP, Waiting by Ryan Walker, Caldwell Socialist of Aug 18, 1906
http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/laborpress/Seattle_Socialist.htm
HMP, Adams’ Trial Hung Jury, AtR, Mar 16, 1907
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67586830
See also:
For more on “C. A. Johnson” see
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
Chapter 9: “Operative 21” -page 407
-this chapter also describes Local Caldwell in detail.
https://books.google.com/books?id=d07IME-ezzQC