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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday June 3, 1914
“The Class War in Colorado” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part II
From the International Socialist Review of June 1914:
THE CLASS WAR IN COLORADO
By Leslie H. Marcy
[Part II of II]
The Massacre of the Innocents
[-from Rocky Mountain News]
The horror of the shambles at Ludlow is overwhelming. Not since the days when pitiless red men wreaked vengeance upon intruding frontiersmen and upon their women and children has this western country been stained with so foul a deed.
The details of the massacre are horrible. Mexico offers no barbarity so base as that of the murder of defenseless women and children by the mine guards in soldiers’ clothing. Like whitened sepulchres we boast of American civilization with this infamous thing at our very doors. Huerta murdered Madero, but even Huerta did not shoot an innocent little boy seeking water for his mother who lay ill. Villa is a barbarian, but in his maddest excess Villa has not turned machine guns on imprisoned women and children. Where is the outlaw so far beyond the pale of human kind as to burn the tent over the heads of nursing mothers and helpless little babies?
Out of this infamy one fact stands clear. Machine guns did the murder. The machine guns were in the hands of mine guards, most of whom were also members of the state militia. It was private war, with the wealth of the richest man in the world behind th mine guards.
Once and for all time the right to employ armed guards must be taken away from private individuals and corporations. To the state, and to the state alone, belongs the right to maintain peace. Anything else is anarchy. Private warfare is the only sort of anarchy the world has ever known, and armed forces employed by private interests have introduced the only private wars of modern times. This practice must be stopped. If the state laws are not strong enough, then the federal government must step in. At any cost, private warfare must be destroyed.
Who are these mine guards to whom is entrusted the sovereign right to massacre? Four of the fraternity were electrocuted recently in New York. They are the gunmen of the great cities, the offscourings of humanity, whom a bitter heritage has made the wastrels of the world. Warped by the wrongs of their own upbringing, they know no justice and they care not for mercy. They are hardly human in intelligence, and not as high in the scale of kindness as domestic animals.
Yet they are not the guilty ones. The blood of the innocent women and children rests on the hands of those who for the greed of dollars employed such men and bought such machines of murder. The world has not been hard upon these; theirs has been a gentle upbringing. Yet they reck not of human life when pecuniary interests are involved.
The blood of the women and children, burned and shot like rats, cries aloud from the ground. The great state of Colorado has failed them. It has betrayed them. Her militia, which should have been the impartial protectors of the peace, have acted as murderous gunmen. The machine guns which played in the darkness upon the homes of humble men and women, whose only crime was an effort to earn an honest living, were bought and paid for by agents of the mine owners. Explosive bullets have been used on children. Does the bloodiest page in the French revolution approach this in hideousness?
And knowing these facts the three lackeys on the military investigating committee reported that these men, women and children were -“lawless and savage South European peasants.”
The Murder of Louis Tikas
The account that follows is taken from the New York World, of May 5th.
Godfrey Irwin, a young electrical engineer who returned yesterday from the strike ridden district of Colorado, saw most of the events of the “civil war,” including the massacre at Ludlow. Mr. Irwin is staying at the Young Men’s Christian Association on West Twenty-third street. He held a position in Trinidad with the Electric Transportation Railroad and Gas Company. Mr. Irwin said yesterday to a World reporter:
“On the day of the Ludlow battle a chum and myself left the house of the Rev. J. O. Ferris, the Episcopal minister with whom I boarded in Trinidad, for a long tramp through the hills. We walked fourteen miles, intending to take the Colorado & Southern Railroad back to Trinidad from Ludlow station.
“We were going down a trail on the mountain side above the tent city at Ludlow when my chum pulled my sleeve and at the same instant we heard shooting. The militia were coming out of Hastings Canyon and firing as they came. We lay flat behind a rock and after a few minutes I raised my hat aloft on a stick. Instantly bullets came in our direction. One penetrated my hat. The militiamen must have been watching the hillside through glasses and thought my old hat betrayed the whereabouts of a sharpshooter of the miners.
Saw Tikas Slain.
“Then came the killing of Louis Tikas, the Greek leader of the strikers. We saw the militiamen parley outside the tent city and a few minutes later, Tikas came out to meet them. We watched them talking. Suddenly an officer raised his rifle, gripping the barrel,and felled Tikas with the butt.
“Tikas fell face downward. As he lay there we saw the militiamen fall back. Then they aimed their rifles and deliberately fired them into the unconscious man’s body. It was the first murder I had ever seen, for it was a murder and nothing less. Then the miners ran about in the tent colony and women and children scuttled for safety in the pits which afterward trapped them.
“We watched from our rock shelter while the militia dragged up their machine guns and poured a murderous fire into the arroya from a height by Water Tank Hill above the Ludlow depot. Then came the firing of the tents.
“I am positive that by no possible chance could they have been set ablaze accidentally. The militiamen were thick about the northwest corner of the colony where the fire started and we could see distinctly from our lofty observation place what looked like a blazing torch waved in the midst of militia a few seconds before the general conflagration swept through the place. What followed everybody knows.
Calls Militia Thugs.
“Sickened by what we had seen we took a freight back into Trinidad. The town buzzed with indignation. To explain in large part the sympathies of even the best people in the section with the miners, it must be said that there is good evidence that many of the so-called ‘militiamen’ are only gunmen and thugs wearing the uniform to give them a show of authority. They are the toughest lot I ever saw.
“No one can legally enlist in the Colorado State militia till he has been a year in the state, and many of the ‘militiamen’ admitted to me they had been drafted in by a Denver detective agency. Lieut. Linderfelt boasted that he was ‘Going to lick the miners or wipe them off the earth.’ In Trinidad the miners never gave any trouble. It was not till the militia came into town that the trouble began.”
* * *
The official military report on the murder [of Tikas] is as follows:
In taking the steel bridge two men had been left at a pump house between the colony and arroya. At this point these men took a prisoner who proved to be Tikas (Louis the Greek).
The men brought this prisoner back along the railroad to the crossroads at the corner of the colony, and called out ‘We’ve got Louis the Greek!’ Immediately between fifty and seventy-five men, uniformed soldiers, men of Troop A and mine guards rushed to that point. Lieutenant Linderfelt came up with the others.
Tikas was then turned over to the lieutenant, his captors returning to their post. Some words ensued between the lieutenant and Tikas over the responsibility for the day’s doings. Lieutenant Linderfelt swung his rifle over Louis’ head, breaking the stock of the gun…..
Two bullets passed clear through the body of Tikas, showing that they must have been steel-jacketed bullets such as are used by the soldiers and also by some of the mine guards and Troop A men. The one bullet that was found in his body is a soft-nosed bullet which is an ammunition never used by the soldiers.
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[COLORADO UNIONISTS’ CALL TO ARMS]
A Call to Arms Issued to Unionists of the State of Colorado.
Denver, Colo., April 22, 1914.
Organize the men in your community in companies of volunteers to protect the workers of Colorado against the murder and cremation of men, women and children by armed assassins in the employ of coal corporations, serving under the guise of state militiamen.
Gather together for defensive purposes all arms and ammunition legally available. Send name of leader of your company and actual number of men enlisted at once by wire, phone or mail, to W. T. Hickey, Secretary of State Federation of Labor.
Hold all companies subject to order.
People having arms to spare for these defensive measures are requested to furnish same to local companies, and where no company exists, send them to the State Federation of Labor.
The state is furnishing us no protection and we must protect ourselves,our wives and children, from these murderous assassins. We seek no quarrel with the state and we expect to break no law, we intend to exercise our lawful right as citizens, to defend our homes and our constitutional rights.
JOHN R. LAWSON, U. M. W.
JOHN McLENNAN,
E. L. DOYLE,
JOHN RAMSAY,
W. T. HICKEY, Secy. State Fed. of Lab.
E. R. HOAGE,
T. W. TAYLOR,
CLARENCE MOOREHOUSE
ERNEST MILLS, Secy.-Treas. W. F. of M.———-
From coast to coast the working class responded to the call.
Hundreds of mass meetings were held and thousands of dollars were sent in for arms and ammunition. The miners in one state alone wired $15,000 in two days. Conservative Trade Unions even in Philadelphia, held rousing meetings. The spirit of solidarity swept over all craft barriers in responding to the needs of their brothers.
Labor is fast waking up to the reality of the class struggle and the necessity of SOLIDARITY. It is dawning upon the workers that “Those men who own the earth make the laws to protect what they have. They fix up a sort of fence or pen around what they have, and they fix the law so the fellow on the outside can not get in. The laws are really organized for the protection of the men who rule the world. They were never organized or enforced to do justice. We have no system for doing justice, not the slightest in the world.”[-Clarence Darrow]
Congressional Committees are appointed to investigate, they report and pass away, but Mr. Rockefeller’s hold-up game goes peacefully on. Messages telling the story of the futile efforts at Washington to bring about a settlement of the Colorado coal mine strike, including a telegram from John D. Rockefeller, Jr., saying the mining company officials in Colorado were “the only ones competent to deal with the question,” have been made public.
Twenty so-called independent coal companies in a long telegram to the president, said, “Our position with respect to the United Mine Workers of America is absolutely independent of that which has been or hereafter may be taken either by the Colorado Fuel and Iron company, or by its officers or directors or by Mr. Rockefeller or John D. Rockefeller, Jr., although we heartily indorse the position they are now taking.”
* * *
[COLORADO COALFIELD WAR]
Meanwhile battles were fought at Aguilar, Green Canon and Forbes, where the tent colony was destroyed and eleven persons killed. During this battle a machine gun, operated by a gunman by the name of Lane, was put out of business and the thugs had to retreat. Several mine tipples went up in smoke, and dynamite destroyed private property to the amount of several hundred thousand dollars.
[ROCKEFELLER JR’S GREAT PRINCIPLE]
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., had previously testified before the Congressional Investigating Committee that the strike had cost the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company alone, more than a million dollars during the fiscal year.
“We stand ready to lose every cent we have invested in that company rather than that the workingmen of this country should lose their right to work for whom they please,” replied Rockefeller.
“You’ll do that, even if you lose all your money and have all your employes killed?” said Foster.
“It’s a great principle. It’s a national issue. And we propose to support the officers in their course which is in support of the workmen themselves and their right to work for whom they please and how they please,” returned the witness.
Thus speaks the young ruler of the owning class, which toils not, neither does it mine; yet claims to OWN the earth and the fullness thereof.
The “great principle” involved is merely the great privilege of legally robbing the workers who have the “right to work.”
It is not a “national issue” with the workers, but a class issue, because the working class owns no country.
But there is another voice being heard in the land. It comes from the West, and is the call of the coal miner to his Class, the working class. The voice has swelled into a million-throated challenge to the few, the owning class.
To John D. Rockefeller, Jr., it says: “You may be a model citizen, perhaps a member of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and surrounded by the odor of sanctity to boot; but the thing that you represent, which is face to face with us, has no heart in its breast nor halo over its head-the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company. You can not hide behind your ‘high-minded officials,’ nor your Calvary Church, nor your bodyguards of armed thugs.
“In spite of your prostituted press, your fawning preachers and college professors, your subsidized judges and their laws, the war is on and will continue until the despised miner shall be master of the mine.”
[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote CO Labor Leaders Call to Arms, Apr 22, ULB p1, Apr 25, 1914
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn91052295/1914-04-25/ed-1/seq-1/
International Socialist Review
(Chicago, Illinois)
-June 1914, begins on page 708
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v14n12-jun-1914-ISR-gog-ocr.pdf
See also:
From May 2, 1914, The Survey, p108
“Tent Colony of Strikers Swept by Machine Guns”
https://books.google.com/books?id=37pIAAAAYAAJ
-See above: Tikas at the Ludlow well
“Colorado Tent Colony shot up by the Militia”
“Group of the Coal Miners at Ludlow”
“Crime and Criminals: Address to the Prisoners in the Chicago Jail”
-by Clarence Darrow (1902)
“…own the earth…”
https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/darrowcrimeandcriminals.html
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday April 22, 1914
Ludlow Tent Colony, Colorado – Mothers and Babies Slain; Battle Continues
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday April 25, 1914
Denver, Colorado – State Labor Leaders Issue Call to Arms
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 28, 1914
Thousands of Striking Miners Join in Funeral Procession in Honor of Louie Tikas
Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 8, 1914
Godfrey Irwin Describes the Ludlow Massacre and the Killing of Louie Tikas
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday June 2, 1914
“The Class War in Colorado” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part I
Tag: Ludlow Massacre
https://weneverforget.org/tag/ludlow-massacre/
Tag: Colorado Coalfield War of 1914
https://weneverforget.org/tag/colorado-coalfield-war-of-1914/
Tag: Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1913-1914
https://weneverforget.org/tag/colorado-coalfield-strike-of-1913-1914/
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«Colorado Strike Song» (Το τραγούδι της Απεργίας του Κολοράντο)