Hellraisers Journal: It is not an act of civilized warfare to turn machine guns upon women and children.-Testimony of Judge Benjamin B. Lindsey of Colorado
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 7, 1914
New York City – Judge Lindsey Testifies Before Commission on Industrial Relations
Mrs. Lindsey, Judge Lindsey, Mary Petrucci, Mary Thomas, Pearl Jolly, Mrs. Lee Champion, Olga and Rachael Thomas
On Thursday May 28th, Judge Lindsey of Colorado appeared before the Commission on Industrial Relations. The previous week, Judge Lindsey had escorted miners’ wives, survivors of the Ludlow Massacre, to the White House for an interview with President Wilson.
In his testimony before the Commission, the Judge spoke about the plight of women and children when their husbands and fathers die on the job. He describe how the “industrial government” of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company dictates to every branch of the state and county governments in Colorado, and, that that “industrial government” is dictated to from the federal “industrial government” in New York City.
Of the Ludlow Massacre, Judge Lindsey stated:
It is not an act of civilized warfare, if you please, to turn machine guns and rifles upon a tent colony in which it is known by those who are responsible and those who do the deed that there are defenseless women and children.
Judge Lindsey testified during the afternoon session of May 28th. Present were Chairman Walsh, and Commissioners Ballard, O’Connell, Lennon, Garretson, and Harriman. We present the first part of the testimony below, and will publish the rest of the testimony tomorrow.
TESTIMONY OF JUDGE BEN B. LINDSEY.
Mr. Thompson. Now, just for the purpose of making our record, l will ask you a few preliminary questions. Your name? Judge Lindsey. My name is Ben B. Lindsey.
Mr. Thompson. Your address?
Judge Lindsey. Denver, Colo.
Mr. Thompson. And your profession or-
Judge Lindsey. l am a lawyer, a judge on the bench, and have been for 15 years or thereabouts, in the city of Denver.
Mr. Thompson. Now, you may go on with your story.
Judge Lindsey. l will try, Mr. Chairman, to make my story as connected as possible; but unless l should be misunderstood, I first wish to make a statement as to the statement made by the gentleman who has preceded me [Major Boughton], which l think is a good illustration of much of the misunderstanding which grows out of an unfortunate situation like that which you are asked to hear some evidence about. He read from a newspaper saying that a Mr. Lord, representing the miners, had stated that there were 2.000 men, miners, and if necessary there would be 50,000 more ready to resist the militia. The gentleman did not state what Mr. Lord said, neither did the newspapers that he read from state what Mr. Lord said. Mr. Lord said, for l was present when he said, that if the tactics pursued by certain men in the militia that brought about the murders, as he expressed it and claimed, of women and children were repeated in Colorado that there were in that case 2,000 men who had red blood enough in their veins to resist that sort of encroachment under whatever name it might be called, and that there were 50,000 men in this country who were willing to join.
Now, that is an entirely different statement from that which the gentleman read and the statement which he would have this commission to believe is true. I merely mention it as a good illustration of how Mr. Lawson could have been misquoted and misrepresented by the paper from which he [the witness BoughtonJ read.
l have talked personally with Mr. Lawson within the last fortnight or so, just before I left Denver. I have talked with Mr. Lawson in the presence of men of the most radical type, who proposed or suggested things that I have heard Mr. Lawson fight against and talk against, and the statements made to me by Mr. Lawson are quite contradictory of the statement the gentleman read from the newspaper purporting to be made by Mr. Lawson. Since I left Denver and since I have been in this city I have found myself misquoted on several different occasions and things put into my mouth that l never said, things put into my mouth that I could not have said; and I wish to state to this commission, because of this fact of which I am a witness, having heard Mr. Lord, that it go very slow in accepting statements made in the newspapers.
I have a statement in the Pueblo Chieftain of May 3 that I could offer to this commission, two or three columns, in which it is stated that a certain prominent citizen, of Colorado said that the thing to be done with men like myself was that they should be killed—k-i-l-l-e-d-. I am not going to claim that those men who are making inflammatory statements of that kind are trying to stir up a sentiment among certain individuals that will bring about my own murder, yet that will be found in the Pueblo Chieftain of May 3, which is supposed to be the official organ, in so far as they have any official organ, of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co.Now, so much for that.
I would like to state, or make some general statements, about the situation down there, or about my mission here. I came to Colorado when I was a small boy about 10 or 11 years of age. I have lived there for 30 years. I know the politics of our State. I know something of the industrial conditions of our State. I know the struggles in the legislature in our State, and I want to say this question in Colorado is a bigger question than a mere question of a strike. It has got beyond that. It is a great political and industrial struggle. It is not local; it is national. The symptoms may be local, like a boil which comes from the humor of the blood, working out that poison. It has broken out in Colorado at one time; it has broken out in Michigan at another time; in West Virginia at another time; in Pennsylvania at another time. It is going to keep on breaking out as long as we continue to put salve on the sore and do, nothing to cure the humor in the blood. By that I mean you have got to go deeply into fundamental questions concerning rights of property and the rights of humanity. And I would like to give a few concrete illustrations, if I may with your permission, to explain to you why I am interested as a citizen in these questions and why I think I have a right to come to this commission from the people of Colorado and to the President of the United States and the people of the East
In the first place, I have been judge of the children’s court anyway 15 years. I have helped to establish those courts in this city and in nearly every city in this country. But I know how futile and absurd that sort of work is if it stopped there. For an example, this court deals with dependent children as well as delinquent children. Numbers of dependent children come to those courts every year—increasing numbers—and we are not going to help them by sitting on a bench and trying these cases. For instance, in Colorado the official report issued by the secretary of the board of charities and corrections, taken from the coal-mine inspectors’ reports, showing that in the space of about four years, limited to three or four counties in the State of Colorado where coal is mined, nearly 700 little children were made orphans or fatherless and dependents because of explosions in these coal mines, a large number of which, if indeed not the greater number of which, might have been avoided had the ordinary safety appliances been employed that are employed in other countries, where such accidents are as 1 to 3 as compared with the number in this country.
The testimony seems to be undisputed, as I understand, and there is much evidence to prove it if it is disputed, that about three times as many men are blown up in the coal mines of Colorado as are blown up in the coal mines in other States,and the claim of the men is that it is due largely to incompetence; that it is due largely to carelessness; that it is due largely to unwillingness to use the dividends, or rather to use the money, to purchase and install the safety appliances that ought to be installed and to the control of public officials or the refusal to permit public officials to inspect these mines.
I have talked with labor inspectors in Colorado. I have read their testimony, and I can say to you that they have been refused, and indignantly refused, the right to inspect some of these mines and that accidents have occurred and the fathers of children have been hurled into eternity because of this lawlessness on the part of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co.
And I want to say here publicly, knowing where I speak, and being familiar with the political conditions in Colorado, that there are no more lawless public-service corporations in the history of States than those in the State of Colorado, first fighting to the death every measure designed to aid social and industrial justice by every method within their power, seeking to blind the people to the necessity of these measures, if you please, by such men as E. A. Colburn, president of this miners’ association, who is also president of the children’s aid society, if you please, and president of the State board for child and animal protection, and who had been for many years.
And the State board of child and animal protection, through its agents have fought to the death a child labor law to take little children out of those mines and coke ovens, when at the same time they have arrested men in those mines for beating a mule. It is a mighty spectacular thing to arrest a man for cruelty to a mule, and everybody approves and applauds that, but it is a different thing when Mr. Colburn’s society for the protection of children and animals from cruelty does everything it possibly can through agents, as confessed in their own magazines, to defeat a law to take the little children out of the coke ovens and the mines in Colorado. That I assert and that I am prepared to prove. That is only one of the many, many facts that caused these men to have no respect for the men who prate about religion and philanthropy and charity and who are using that as a blind to cover up their fight against real constructive programs to get rid eventually of the kind of struggle we are having in Colorado. The situation in Colorado is not fully understood throughout the country. I could give you many illustrations from my own court records.
Here is a poor woman who is pounced on by the State bureau of child and animal protection and brought into my court in an effort to take away her children, and I find that her husband is killed in the mills, if you please, and she is supposed to live in a two-room house, and she takes a boarder, and because of these conditions they say it is an immoral condition, for she is not married to the boarder, and they must take the children away. It would be very nice for me to sit on the bench and aid in a plan to take away her children and send them off to a children’s home, where they can be adopted out the next day and she will never know what became of them—no more right to know than a dog, a condition as bad as any in slavery times, when they took the children away from their mothers and sold them into slavery.
I say you have got to go deep, and I went deep into that case, sir, and the testimony taken at that time in my court shows that the railroad company paid that mother a few hundred dollars after her husband was killed in the smelter mill. And I wanted to know why the railroad company paid her these few hundred dollars, and I found out that her husband had worked in the smelter mills and worked there 16 years for 11 or 12 hours a day during the days when they had the eight-hour law. And I said, “How is it that the railroad company can pay you any money?” And up steps a man from the smelter mills and says in my court that is very simple. Under the eight-hour law, when that was passed it applied only to men working in mills and mines. It did not apply to a man working on a railroad. So we changed the pay roll of the men working on the slag piles from the smelter company to the railroad company, where they could work 12 hours, if you please, without violating the law. Do you think, my friends and gentlemen of this commission, that that sort of violence on the part of these companies, that has been going on there for years—and I have mentioned only a few specific instances of concrete details—is not going to arouse feeling?
I stayed in the little home of one of these miners one night, and he turned to me and he said, “When I came to this State 25 years ago there was practically no development in those hills. I worked in those hills. My son worked in those hills. He lost his life in those hills, and l have been maimed in those hills, and all the wealth that comes from those hills, the energy that makes transportation and life and the comforts we have possible come out through my labor, and I bought me a little home, and I have lived here. And now the people of New York, who have the legal title under the Constitution and the laws to these mines, want to reduce my pay or want to refuse to give us certain demands that we think fair or want to control the public officials who want to bring about an inspection law so as to protect our lives that I may not lose another son or my own life in those mines. And they tell us that if we protest we can no longer work there, but have got to go out and work at something else.
“Now,” he says, “under the Constitution and the laws of property that seems to be a right, but,” he says, “is it just and is it fair?” These men will point out to you the solidarity of capital and their rights under the Constitution, and they can come down on them like that, and they have no rights except in opposing solidarity that they call the union, if you please.
Now. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen and Mrs. Harriman of this committee, this thing is deep down, and this sore is the result of long years of lawlessness and oppression on the part of the utility corporations. I know whereof I speak, when I say to you that they have owned judges on the bench as they have owned their office boys; that they have owned judges on the supreme bench as they have owned their office boys; that they have controlled those judges; that they have controlled district attorneys; that they have controlled governors; that they have been in the most perfidious deals to control the agencies and officers of the law time and time and again, so that they not only make the law to suit their own wishes, primarily—though it does not always do it—to protect property and stand against the rights of humanity; but when occasionally, as happens after a long struggle against every step of the way—for there is terrific opposition to get a law through for the protection of human right—they control through the bipartisan machine in Colorado the agencies of the law and prevent the enforcement of those laws.
And now, members of this commission, what is that? It is violence. It is the most terrific violence in the world. It is the kind of action that raises the coal dust all over this country, and that thing is going to be exploded, if we don’t correct it. That is our contention. Now we don’t want it to be, but they are doing the thing, as much as the other people. And l am not saying that there is not fault on both sides, but my contention is this, that violence produces violence every time. That is the law of nature—as hate produces hate; and when through these conditions—not so bad, l am glad to say as they have been in the past, but I would not have you understand that our officers are all controlled by these forces. There are honorable men on the bench; there are honorable district attorneys; there are fearless district attorneys; there have been some fearless governors as there have been fearless judges. But those men have been fearless at terrific sacrifices as a rule, knowing all the time that they were doomed for slaughter, political or otherwise, if they attempted to call their souls their own. This has been the condition of terror which the industrial government of Colorado, backed by the industrial government of this country with its seat in New York City, has ever shown against the political government in Colorado, and, for that matter in this Nation, in a measure.
Now that, in the large, is the situation out there; and because of that condition, sir, they have permitted men to be recruited in this militia who are not the kind of men to be in any militia; they have permitted to be recruited in the militia mine guards, men employed and paid by the mine operators, if you please. They have permitted to be recruited irresponsible types of men, the men who are their own employees. I understand the gentleman who testified for you is an employee of the mine owners’ association. It is the old game out there. It is the scientific method of corrupting, if your honors please, so that they do not dare call their souls their own. And I want to tell you, as much as I sympathize with them, that there is not a one of them can come down here and tell you an impartial, fair, and just story about this situation—I don’t care who they are, unless there is a new kind of human nature working out in them. These men are human. The young lawyer knows he won’t get business unless he stands in with these people. The young business man knows the banks he has to deal with.
Chairman Walsh (interrupting). You should know that this man did not testify that he was the attorney for that association where the trouble was had, but for the metalliferous miners of Cripple Creek.
Judge Lindsey. However that may be, Mr. Chairman of the commission, if he is the attorney for men like Mr. Coleman, representing the mine owners, that way must be his sympathy. I can not blame him for that. That is the human nature in this case that you can not leave out of consideration, and these men represent, however much they may deny it, the solidarity of capital. Everybody knows that that has lived in that State, and that uses their brains and minds at all in thinking about the thing.
Now, Mr. Chairman, I have talked to many of these witnesses of the Ludlow horror, to come back to that, as one of the moving causes that produces hate.I have read the affidavits, and I have the testimony here before the coroner’s jury. I have affidavits here that I have read and pored over and gone over, and in those affidavits and in that testimony, it is shown here, an indifference, with a brutality, with a cruelty, the like of which l never heard of outside of savage warfare, militiamen, officers or men, gave the orders to destroy and burn up this tent colony. And I am here on the strength of this testimony, assuming it to be true, and assuming also there may be testimony to the contrary, to say that a case to that effect, a prima facie case, has been made out, that certainly demands some very strong testimony to refute.
There is the testimony of the stenographer before the military commission, who says that he heard the order given to burn up this tent colony, and it was given by one or two—one or two of these officers whom he knows, and here is the testimony of an unbiased, unprejudiced man who drove an automobile, who was held up on the road by the soldiers and compelled to deliver over his automobile, in which there was a machine gun that mounted a hill overlooking Ludlow, and that that machine gun, with a brutality and cruelty, the like of which has never been equaled, so far as l know, was turned on these defenseless women and children, their tents, that are their houses and their habitations-residence, if you please—so that it was either an alternative of these women and children going into these pits that had been prepared for them through a foresight for which l think they are to be commended, or else being stricken down by the bullets of these men who could not have been responsible, for it is not an act of civilized warfare, if you please, to turn machine guns and rifles upon a tent colony in which it is known by those who are responsible and those who do the deed that there are defenseless women and children.
I have heard the stories of some of the people who were there. I have read the testimony of men who were on the railroad train, who say that they saw militiamen—I have read the testimony of others who say they saw militiamen put the torch to the homes of these people. That is here, sworn to and taken down, and can be supplied to this committee if you wish it supplied.
Now, my point is this: That they are irresponsible. It is practically confessed and shown by the governor of the State, when he had to call on the President and send for the Federal troops, confessing his impotence to control the situation. It has created a terrific hatred in our State, and it has put it in the minds and hearts of these men and women down there in Ludlow to believe that they need not have any respect for that sort of authority, and if they had not respect for authority, don’t forget this, please, members of this commission, that it is not altogether their fault, however much they may be to blame. We have to have charity, I am frank to say, for both sides in this controversy. I believe the whole thing is due to certain conditions that concern our laws of property that are all wrong but when you attempt to change those laws, as has been the history of Colorado for 20 years, it is met by the defiance through graft, through bribery, through all the means and methods known to power that comes from possessing money and property, and in the end, time after time, defeated, and when you get the laws on the statute books, that the same thing continues so far as it can with the occasional exception of honest men doing their duty, to defeat the law that is passed.
So that my point is, and I wish to make it clear, that that is not a matter merely of the present strife. It is bigger than the question of the present strife. For, however important it is, Mr. Chairman, to settle that strike, and it is important, and I was sent here by a great number of citizens of Colorado to help bring about the settlement—it is only temporary; it is only one of the lulls to the storm that is ahead in this country, unless the men who benefit through these laws of property and who are gradually gaining to themselves the natural resources of this country, are willing to see that they have certain duties and responsibilities that are not altogether impersonal, and are willing to share with these men. But that they have not done. They have recurrently refused to treat with them. They have said there was not anything to arbitrate; but in saying there wasn’t anything to arbitrate, they are falsifying, for there is much to arbitrate, and I think that will be shown by the congressional investigation that has been going on in our State for some time.
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