Hellraisers Journal: Mary Thomas, of Ludlow Tent Colony, Reports on Social Life with Friends Cedi Costa and Margo Gorci

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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 14, 1914
Ludlow Tent Colony, Colorado – Mrs. Mary Thomas Reports

Mary Thomas, camp greeter of the Ludlow Tent Colony, reports that the social life of the camp has greatly improved with the coming spring. Once again she can enjoy her morning coffee outside with her dear friends and nearest neighbors, Cedi Costa and Margo Gorci. The children are once again at play on the swings and see-saws. Many of the colonist plant flowers and vegetables around the tents bringing a festive quality to the camp.

Meals can once again be eaten outside at the long tables placed between the tents. Mary, Cedi and Margo continue to pool their resources in order to see that everyone gets something. An elderly disabled miner eats with the three families.

Cedi’s husband, Charlie, camp peacemaker and overseer, always keeps everyone smiling. One day he came by to play a practical joke:

Charley brought a bunch of paper “telescopes” and set them up on our long table. Then he gathered us around and began to shout like a barker at a circus, “come one, come all, the show is just about to begin!”

“What are they?” we asked.

“Fighting Ants,” he replied.

“Where did you get them?” Cedi said suspiciously.

“I bought them.” Hearing Charley say this, Cedi became furious.

“What do you mean ‘you bought them?’ You have a lot of nerve spending money for fighting ants when we are nearly starving to death!” Then all three of us excitedly said, “Let’s see them!”

“You’ll have to pay me a penny each,” announced Charley.

“You’ll have to trust us until payday.”

All right,” he teased, “just until payday. Now,” he said,”put these telescopes up to your eyes, or you can’t see them.” He helped us with them. We looked and looked. By now a crowd had gathered around our table, drawn there by Charley’s spiel about fighting ants.

“We can’t see anything,” we muttered, and put the telescopes back on the table. When we looked at each other, we almost went to pieces with hysterical laughter. Charley had put charcoal on the end we looked through, and each of us had a big, round black monicle!

Mary Thomas describes Charlie Costa as always jovial, always doing something funny to lessen the tragic times. The children of the camp love him and follow him around like the Pied Piper.

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SOURCES

Quote Mother Jones, Ladies Women, NYT p3, May 23, 1914
https://www.newspapers.com/image/20380177/

Those Damn Foreigners
-by Mary Thomas O’Neal
Minerva Book, 1971
https://books.google.com/books?id=5UN9AAAAMAAJ

IMAGES

Mary Thomas n Rep Evans w Children at Ludlow CO,
Day Book p2, Feb 25, 1914
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1914-02-25/ed-1/seq-2/

Children of Ludlow
https://www.du.edu/ludlow/gall1a.html

See also:

Conditions in the Coal Mines of Colorado.
Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Mines and Mining
House of Representatives, Sixty-Third Congress, Second Session
Pursuant to H. Res. 387, a Resolution Authorizing and Directing
the Committee on Mines and Mining to Make an Investigation of
Conditions in the Coal Mines of Colorado.
Washington, DC, Government Printing Office, 1914
-Hearings of Feb. 9-April 23, 1914, Martin D. Foster, Chairman.
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011159608
Part I
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hj1e84&seq=7
(search: mrs thomas)
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt/search?id=hvd.hj1e84&q1=mrs+thomas&sz=25&start=1&sort=seq&hl=true
(search: mary thomas)
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hj1e84&seq=808&q1=mary+thomas&start=1

The Military Occupation of the Coal Strike Zone of Colorado,
By the Colorado National Guard, 1913-1914
-by Colorado. Adjutant-General’s Office, General
https://archive.org/details/militaryoccupati00colorich/mode/2up?ref=ol
(search: thomas)
https://archive.org/details/militaryoccupati00colorich/page/58/mode/2up?ref=ol&q=thomas

Industrial relations: final report and testimony submitted to Congress
by the Commission on Industrial Relations.
Washington : D.C. Gov. Print. Office, 1916.
Volumes I-XI
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011451867
Volume VII
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112087783293&seq=7
(search: thomas)
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112087783293&seq=366&q1=thomas&start=1

Welsh Americans
A History of Assimilation in the Coalfields
-by Ronald L. Lewis
Univ of North Carolina Press, Jun 1, 2009
(search: “mary thomas”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=Ayhc5XU7smAC

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