ASSAULT ON A LABOR LEADER
———-
Mine Union Organizer Wardjon Beaten on Head
in Colorado So Severely That He May Die
———-DENVER, (Col.). April 30.-W. M. Wardjon, national organizer of the United Mine Workers of America was terribly beaten on the head and shoulders with revolvers by three unknown men at Sargent, Col., to-day and lies in a critical condition at the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad Hospital at Salida. Wardjon was traveling eastward from Crested Butte, where he had been organizing the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company’s miners, and was attacked in a car while the train was standing at Sargent.
He is suffering from concussion of the brain, and the hospital physicians say his recovery is doubtful.

In a lengthy brief filed before the Supreme Court to-day by Attorney E. F. Richardson in the habeas corpus case of Charles H. Moyer, president  of the Western Federation of Miners, who is held as a military prisoner at Telluride, Governor James H. Peabody is declared to be a usurper. Governor Peabody is compared by Richardson to a soldier drunk with power, and his acts in trying to suppress the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus compared to the acts of tyranny practiced on the people of England by the olden kings.

Richardson, in his brief, attacks the decision of the Supreme Court of Idaho in a similar case, and says it is the only court in the country that has said that the military was above the judiciary. He says that the decision does not follow precedent or commonsense, and that the Judges of the Supreme Court of Colorado should not consider it when deciding the present case.

The Legislature alone, Richardson says , has the authority to determine when the conditions require the suspension of the privilege of habeas corpus and then to suspend it.

PUEBLO (Col.).-April 30.-Because Charles Demolli, a former organizer of the United Mine Workers, failed to appear to-day as complaining witness against Oreste Pagnini, charged with being the ringleader of a gang which assaulted the Italian labor leader several weeks ago, the case was dismissed by Justice McCallip. Pagnini, however, will be held on a complaint sworn to by William Gearhard, charging him with assaulting Demolli with intent to kill. Demolli is in the coal fields of Kansas and is in communication with friends here.

INDIANAPOLIS (Ind.), April 30.-The Colorado situation was again taken up at to-day’s session of the national executive board of the United Mine Workers of America……

President Mitchell has telegraphed to “Mother” Jones, who is being held in quarantine near Price, Utah, directing her to report to him in person in this city as soon as possible. He says that there is no significance attached to this, and that the order was issued because the work in the district 15 at the present time is scarcely suitable for a women.

[Emphasis added.]

“MOTHER JONES” IS ON A VISIT
———-
The Woman Labor Agitator Comes to Recuperate
in California From Strain of Colorado Excitement
———-

MRS. MARY JONES, better known as “Old Mother Jones” throughout the country, the woman labor agitator, who believes it to be her mission on earth to ameliorated the condition of the toiling masses, arrived in this city last Sunday. For an agitator, who has espoused the cause of the laborer and wage earner with as much vigor as the leading agitators, has suffered privation and has been imprisoned for the part she has taken in the cause she has made her life task, she came rather unostentatiously, and, as she says, quite unexpectedly. She hails from Colorado, but comes now from Utah, where she has been for some weeks lately and took quite an active part in the labor troubles in Carbon county. She says that she was held a prisoner in Price, Utah, for participating in the agitation and encouraging the striking miners, and was incarcerated with the leaders of the union.

Her visit to California, according to her own statement, is merely for the purpose of recuperating, and not, as has been hinted, for the purpose of starting an agitation against the Citizens’ Alliance. She positively denies that she has any such intention, nor will she start any labor agitation here, except that she intends to address some labor organizations while in this city. She intends to remain here about two weeks, or until she shall have fully recuperated from the effects of a severe attack of pneumonia from which she suffered last winter and the further effects of her confinement in prison in Utah.

“I have come to rest,” she said last evening, “because I am not quite strong, and to obtain the needed rest, I had to get away from the seat of war.” Speaking of her most recent experience in Utah, she said: “I was completely worn out from my arduous labors and from the effects of the confinement. I was held a prisoner eighteen days by the authorities on the pretext that I had been exposed to contagion, but I was kept merely to prevent me from attending to what I considered my duties.”

“Old Mother Jones” is sixty-five years of age, a matronly figure with white hair and benevolent face, pleasant voice and gentle manner, rather an agreeable surprise in one so noted as a labor agitator as she is. Though a native of old Ireland she speaks without the slightest accent. In fact, she claims California as her home, because she has spent the greater part of her life on the Pacific Coast, and rather prides herself on the fact that she was in San Francisco during the turbulent days of the sand-lot agitation, mingled with the Kearneyites, participated in that memorable campaign ad spoke from the steps of the United States Mint on Fifth street, one of the favorite spots of the old agitators of those days. The cognomen “Old Mother Jones” she acquired while working in the cotton mills of the South, where she sought and obtained employment for the purpose of studying the condition of child labor in those establishments, and waged a vigorous agitation against the employment of children.

On the labor question she is radical and decidedly out spoken, considering that the wage earner is the victim of numerous wrongs which must be righted. On the question of child labor and on the conditions prevailing in Colorado she speaks with considerable warmth and emphasis. Upon the latter subject, which appears to be the main topic with her, she said last evening:

You can quote me as saying that I consider the state of affairs in Colorado as a disgrace to any civilized nation in the world. I witnessed more brutality there than I conceived that any human wretch could exercise over another. You can state for me that they have done things so brutal that I am shamed to acknowledge that those things have taken place beneath the flag. I have seen our men murdered on the public highway; have seen their wives beaten, their families turned out on the roads in the dead of night by the humane companies who built churches, established Sunday-schools and sent millions abroad annually to the heathens to teach them Christianity-turned out of their own homes, not only of the shacks of the companies. It is appalling.

I could not tell you of all the atrocities if I sat up here all night. The United Mine Workers have offered to arbitrate, but capital would not listen to arbitration. If military despotism is allowed to run rampant in Colorado we are facing a grave crisis in this country. I do not endorse violence, and will not work with an organization that countenances it. But I do not mean that the worker shall be a coward and not defend himself when wronged. Human life is sacred. I believe the workers have the strongest weapon in their own hands-the ballot-and I believe that the unions will win ultimately.

[Photograph added.]

Comrade Chairman and Comrades:
In the councils of the Socialist Party the collective will is supreme. Personally, I could have wished to remain in the ranks, to make my record, humble though it might be, fighting unnamed and unhonored side by side with my comrades. I accept your nomination, not because of any honor it confers-because in the  Socialist movement no comrade can be honored except as he honors himself by his fidelity to the movement. I accept your nomination because of the confidence it implies, because of the duty it imposes. I cannot but wish that I may, in a reasonable measure, meet your expectation; that I may prove myself fit and worthy to bear aloft in the coming strife the banner of the working class (Applause); that by my utterances and by my conduct, not in an individual capacity, but as your representative, I may prove myself worthy to bear the standard of the only party that proposes to emancipate my class from the thralldom of the ages.

It is my honor to stand in the presence of a very historic convention, and I would that Karl Marx might be here today; I would that Lassalle and Engels, the men who, long before the movement had its present standing, wrought and sacrificed to make it possible for me to stand in this magnificent presence. I wish it were possible for them to share in the glories of this occasion. We are on the eve of battle today. We are ready for the contest. We are eager for the fray. We depart from here with the endorsement of a convention that shall challenge undisputed the approval of the working class of the world. The platform upon which we stand is the first American utterance upon the subject of International Socialism. Hitherto we have repeated, we have reiterated, we have followed. For the first time in the history of the American movement we have realized the American expression of that movement. There is not a line, not a word in that platform which is not revolutionary, which is not clear, which does not state precisely and properly the position to the American movement. We leave this convention standing on this platform, to throw down the gauntlet to the capitalist enemy (applause), to challenge the capitalist oppressor, to do battle for the perpetuation of a system that keeps in chains those in whose name we meet today.

There is a republican party; the dominant capitalist party of this time; the party that has its representatives in the White House; the party that dominates both branches of the congress; the party that controls the supreme court; the party that absolutely controls the press; the party that gives inspiration to the subsidized pulpit; the party that controls every force of government; the party that is absolutely in power in every department of our activity. And as a necessary result we find that corruption is rampant; that the congress of the United States dare not respond to the demands of the people to open the sources of corruption from which the lava streams flow down the mountain sides; that they adjourned long before the hour struck for adjournment in order that they might postpone the inevitable. (Applause.)

There is a democratic party-(A Voice; “Where?”)-a party that has not stock enough left to proclaim its own bankruptcy (laughter and applause); an expiring party that stands upon the crumbling foundations of a dying class; a party that is torn by dissension; a party that cannot unite; a party that is looking backward and hoping for the resurrection of the men who gave it inspiration a century ago; a party that is appealing to the cemeteries of the past (applause); a party that is trying to vitalize itself by its ghosts, by its corpses, by those who cannot be heard in their own defense. Thomas Jefferson would scorn to enter a modern democratic convention. He would have as little business there as Abraham Lincoln would have in a modern republican convention. If they were living today they would be delegates to this convention. (Tremendous applause.)

The Socialist Party meets these two parties face to face. Without a semblance of apology, without an attempt at explanation, scorning to compromise, it throws down the gage of battle and declares that there is but one solution of what is called the labor question, and that is by the complete overthrow of the capitalist system. (Applause.)

You have honored me in the magnitude of the task that you have imposed upon me, far beyond the power of my weak works to express. I can simply say that obedient to your call I respond. Responsive to your command I am here. I shall serve you to the limit of my capacity. My controlling ambition shall be to bear the standard aloft where the battle waxes thickest. I shall not hesitate as the opportunity comes to me to voice the emancipating gospel of the Socialist movement. I shall be heard in the coming campaign as often and as decidedly and as emphatically, as revolutionarily, as uncompromisingly, as my ability, my strength and my fidelity to the movement will allow. I invoke no aid but that which springs from the misery of my class; no power that does not spring spontaneous from the prostrate body of the workers of the world. Above all things I realize that for the first time in the history of all the ages there is a working class movement perfectly free from the sentimentality of those who riot in the misery of the class who are in the movement . On this occasion above all others, my comrades, we are appealing to ourselves, we are bestirring ourselves, we are arousing the working class, the class that through all of the ages has been oppressed, crushed, suffered, for the one reason that through all of the centuries of the past this class has lacked the consciousness of its overmastering power that shall give it the control of the masters of the world. This class is just beginning to awaken from the torture of the centuries and the most hopeful sign of the times is that from the dull, the dim eye of the man who is in this class there goes forth for the first time in history the first gleam of intelligence, the first sign of the promise that he is awakening, and that he is becoming conscious of his power; and when he, through the inspiration of the Socialist movement shall become completely conscious of that power, he will overthrow the capitalist system and bring the emancipation of his class.

To consecrate myself to my small part of this great work is my supreme ambition. I can hope only to do that part which is expected of me so well that my comrades, when the final verdict is rendered, will say, “He was not a candidate for president; he did not aspire to hold office; he did not try to associate his name with the passing glories, but he did prove himself worthy to be a member of the Socialist Party; he proved his right to palace in the “International Socialist movement of the world” (applause). If, when this little work shall have been completed, this can be said of me, my acceptance of your nomination will have been so much more completely made than I could hope to frame it in weak words, that I close not with the decided utterance, but with the wish and the hope and the ambition that when the fight has been fought, when the task you have imposed upon me has been performed so far as it lies in the power of an individual to perform that task, that my acceptance of the honor you have conferred upon me will have been made and that your wisdom and your judgment will have been vindicated by the membership of the party throughout the country.

From the depths of my heart I thank you. I thank you, and each of you, and through you I thank those you represent. I thank you not from my lips merely. I thank you from its depths of a heart that is responsive to your consideration. We shall meet again. We shall meet often, and when we meet finally we shall meet in much larger numbers to ratify the coming of the Socialist Republic. (Great and prolonged applause.)

[Emphasis added.]

MOTHER JONES TALKS MUCH
———-
Audience at Alhambra Listens to Invective
and Blasphemy Against Law and Order.
———-

At a socialistic meeting last night at the Alhambra Theater, with Frank R. Whitney in the chair and the red badge much in evidence, Mother Jones made a two hours’ address on the evils of the “the cannibalistic commercial age in which the toiler unbosoms his breast to the lash of the men who crucify babes.” The chairman announced that this was the first gun in the campaign of Eugene V. Debs for President of the United States and Benjamin F. Hanford for Vice-President.

Mother Jones’ speech was largely of a nature unfit for print and her most unseemly and blasphemous execrations and jibes were hailed with delight by the audience. She directed part of her tirade at the members of the press who were reporting the meeting and addressed them with personal insult. In this she was aided by some sympathizers in the crowd, who took occasion to violate the laws of good breeding and grammar at the same time.

Mother Jones took up an hour in reciting the incidents of the Colorado trouble. She inquired loudly “What specha [species?] of woman gave birth to United States deputies,” and hailed President Roosevelt as the man “who armed robbers against workingmen.” She referred several times to “ministers, priests and the whole pack of parasites,” and finally descended to such unutterable blasphemy that even her adherents held their breath and gasped.

The cry which aroused the most enthusiasm was to “take your bullet and your bayonet and clean the troops and officers off the face of the earth.” She afterward added that she stood for law and order and the ballot box.

From the Salt Lake Tribune of  May 24, 1904:

Mother Jones came to San Francisco from the strike zone of Carbon County, Utah, where she was prevented from assisting the strikers by being placed in “quarantine.” Conditions there are described in this report from the strike zone:

CONDITIONS AT HELPER
FROM THE OTHER SIDE
———-

Special to The Tribune.

WEST JORDAN, Utah, May 23. The Salt Lake Tribune of Sunday morning, May 22, contains an article on the “Bull Pen for the Strikers During the Trouble at Helper.” Let me contrast the conditions as pictured in that article and as they exist. “A question without two sides is no question at all.”

Things have been pictured in such colors in regard to so many Italians working and on strike there. Perhaps the public is not aware of the actual conditions.

During the convention recently held in Salt Lake by the different trades unions of this State, the coal miners had as their representatives, two Americans, Jones and Phillips, and one Italian, not a Dago, but an Italian, understand. Delegates are elected by the membership of local unions. Jones has lived and worked in the strike district for twenty-five years; he is an American citizen. Phillips has lived and worked there for a good many years, and he is an American citizen. Bergera, the Italian, speaks the English language and can distinguish between right and wrong.

The Utah Fuel company has endeavored to win its point by working upon the race prejudice of the people and stooped to use every tool, and others willing to sacrifice their fellow-man upon the altar of wage slavery. Americans are entirely lost sight of in the company’s endeavor to produce race prejudice and win its point.

In regard to “Demolli, the Agitator,” and wages,-it is asserted that from $75 to $175 per month was made at the time the strike was called. If this is true, why haven’t the young men who were strong and husky, having more strength than sense, been able to make expenses? Why is it they have left the camp discouraged because they could not make both ends meet?

Is it altogether because they are inexperienced? No. It Is because the Utah Fuel company is looking out for number one even at the price of honor and does not care what means are employed to hoodwink a community that is forced to pay the price of  the company’s loss. Any system that can be raked up to produce a prejudice is used.

Now as to the flag. It was not trailed in the dust, although a mistake was made and the boys placed it on the standard inverted for which they are and have been sorry. They apologized for it through their leaders. The “Red Rag” is the Socialist party’s banner, and the only “rag” that at the present stands for “equal rights to all and special privileges to none.” The American flag at present stands not for liberty, but for military rule and the advancement of every end of the corporations, regardless of the cost to and the misery of the working man. The once-glorious flag of freedom is used to drive every spark of patriotism from the breasts of the American workmen.

Why do the corporations fear “Mother” Jones? Because they know she is immune from the influence of their money. Because she speaks the truth; and the truth hurts. Because she has seen the inside workings of their schemes and she is not afraid to tell the world the truth. Why did the officers not prosecute her for breaking quarantine? Because they were afraid to force things for fear the truth would be too well known.

If Capt. John F. Cory and his colleagues can find any glory by dropping into the camps of unsuspecting and unarmed men and women at daybreak, and with threats, to drive them from their beds as if they were cattle, on a cold, bitter April morning, they are welcome to it.

The truth will out and labor must and shall be respected.-A. W. CHARTER.

[Photograph added from Salt Lake Tribune of May 22, 1904]

From the Appeal to Reason of  May 28, 1904
Striking Italian Coal Miners Driven 20 Miles “Like Cattle”

Military Bandits Control Colorado
———-

Military Prisoners Driven from Berwind to Trinidad,
like a Bunch of Steers
———-

Pueblo, Colo, May 20, 1904.

Special Telegram to Appeal to Reason.

The latest military outrage in Colorado is the command that all idle men [strikers] belonging to the United Mine Workers and Western Federation of Miners must submit to being photographed and registered under the Bertillion [Bertillon] system, the same as used to register criminals. The oft asked question, if Colorado is in America, can now be safely answered in the negative. The following account of the latest atrocity of Jim Peabody and his military brutes is here given in full, taken from the leading newspaper of Colorado, the Rocky Mountain News. The Dr. Grass mentioned is one of the most prominent citizens of Trinidad, and a republican, but he cannot sanction the barbarities of Governor Peabody and the coward, Sherman Bell.

[MINERS DRIVEN LIKE CATTLE
Measured and Photographed Like Criminals]

TRINIDAD, Colo, May 19.-Eighty striking miners were marched on foot from Berwind to Trinidad this afternoon by a troop of cavalry. The men had all refused to register at Berwind and have their descriptions written for future reference according to the order issued a few days ago by Major Hill.

The men were brought to military headquarters here and photographed in groups and registered according to Bertillion [Bertillon] system, after which they were turned loose. They had been marched a distance of twenty miles over the mountains in a scorching hot sun, and several fell by the road side from exhaustion. They were given water by the military authorities when they arrived here, but no food. The strikers were orderly and made no outward sign of the suffering they must have endured.

All men arrested are Italians and have created no disturbance whatever. They were either living at home or in strikers’ camp. One man, through an interpreter, told the following story of their trip:

A troop of cavalry, eleven in all, on horseback, herded us like cattle and started from Berwind about 10 o’clock this morning. The troops drove us as I see men drive cattle, and they repeatedly struck us and several times when men would lag behind they would run their horses against them and compel them to run or stagger out of the way to keep from being killed. The troops cursed us all the time. It was like pictures I see in American newspapers of Russian cossacks running over people in Siberia. One Italian about sixty years old became so weak he could not walk and two of the soldiers kept hitting him on the head until he fell by the road side where he was left in the broiling hot sun, and I do not know but what he is dead. He had been sick and was not fit to walk, and only got a few miles when he fell. Several men became weak, but they bore up, rather than take the blows of the soldiers. We were not given any thing to eat all day, but were driven to a trough at Bowen, five miles from Trinidad, and allowed to drink. After arriving at Trinidad, all registered except three, and they were thrown in jail, and the rest of us turned loose. None of the men had any money or place to go to, and we were fed by friends at the strikers’ camp at Trinidad, and homes of our friends. Some of the men will not be able to walk back to their homes for several days.

Union leaders here will not discuss the action of the military today as they fear the result of an interview.

Most of the men driven in here are old miners, and have property in the county. They have not created any trouble since the strike started, on November 9, last, and were not begging, as they were plentifully supplied with provisions by the commissaries of the union. Much indignation was expressed by the people here when they saw the men driven in, and a large crowd gathered at the military camp, but Major Hill gave orders to disperse the crowd, after which no one was allowed to stop, for even a second, in the vicinity of the camp.

Dr. John Grass, who was republican candidate for governor at the time Peabody was nominated, and who is still a staunch republican, openly denounce the action of the military authorities, and of Governor Peabody, on the streets here tonight. Dr. Grass is very bitter against prevailing conditions and went to the military camp this afternoon to see how the miners were being treated by the soldiers. He said nothing there, but came down town and openly denounce Peabody’s administration in language, not over polite, as he was much worked up, when he saw the condition of the eighty miners after being driven over rocks for twenty miles on the hottest day of the year in southern Colorado.

———-

PUEBLO, Colo., May 21. Special Telegram to Appeal to Reason.-Another outrage of diabolical fiendish comes from Trinidad this morning. An inoffensive striker named Joseph Raiz was ambushed by four militiamen, tied to a tree and mutilated in an unspeakable manner. The soldiers were masked. This victim of Gov. Peabody’s uniformed hirelings is an old man and is dying as the result of his injuries. The republican and democratic newspapers will not print the truth, it therefore, remains for the Socialist papers to spread the story of Colorado’s shame and infamy.

——————–

MORE MINERS DEPORTED.
—–

Carbondale, Colo., May 10-Yesterday. The Law and Order Element.(?) arrested 16 strikers at Spring Gulch, a coal mine near here and brought them down to Carbondale to take the evening train for Glenwood Springs (the jail town) where these wage slaves are to be incarcerated on the trumped up charge of intimidating men who were seeking work at the mines. Two miserable scab herders, disguised as miners, led the men into a trap and thus secured a pretext to put them under arrest.

Carbondale has only a few scab sympathizers, chief among whom is a democrat who misrepresented our county in the last legislature, and who, altho pledged to vote for an eight-hour law and other labor measures, opposed every bill in favor of labor and the workingman. This corrupt faker is trying to secure the nomination for state senate. The Socialists are hoping he will get on the ticket.

Carbondale is not a scab town. When the deputies marched their prisoners to the depot, the band met them and serenaded the prisoners with several lively airs. The crowd gathered and shouted themselves hoarse, hurrahing for the strikers and the union men and down with the scabs and scab herders.

The people’s patience is well nigh exhausted and this arbitrary rule of Rockefeller and his military despotism is rousing all classes of citizens to a realization of the true situation in our distracted state. These gold mad fools are marching hard to their fall. Socialism is gaining ground on all sides and peace on earth will soon take the place of this cruel war of classes.

Wagery will die the death of the villain. King Profit will be dethroned and the Co-operative Commonwealth will be ushered in.

Fraternally yours,
W. F. FARRAR
[Socialist of Colorado]

From Eugene V. Debs: A Biography by Ray Ginger:

The second national convention of the Socialist Party met at Brand’s Hall in Chicago, May 1, 1904. From thirty-six states and territories had come 183 delegates, seven of them women. The average age was thirty-nine years. Two-thirds of those present had been born in the United States. Although the main occupational groups were twenty editors, sixteen printers, and fifteen lawyers, seventy-eight delegates were members of trade unions….

The platform was a perfect reflection of the view of Eugene Debs, who was present as a delegate from Indiana. The battle between wageworkers and their employers would continue, declared the convention, until a socialist society had been established in the United States. Every applicant for membership in the Party would be required to sign a statement in which he accepted the class struggle as the basic fact of capitalist society.

Eugene Debs was again the unanimous choice as Presidential nominee…The Vice-Presidential candidate [was] Ben Hanford…Although Hanford had given his life to the socialist movement, his reputation rested on a single act-he created the mythical Jimmie Higgins, the “unnamed and unhonored” rank and file worker, the man who swept out the meeting halls, passed out leaflets, was blacklisted from his job and beaten over the head by nightsticks on a thousand picket lines. When two hundred fifty thousand people read J. A. Wayland’s epigrams in the Appeal to Reason, Jimmie Higgins sold the subscriptions. When ten thousand people came to a lecture by Eugene Debs, Jimmie Higgins sold the tickets. Debs, in spite of his great prestige, was merely a fraction of a devoted, energetic army. The fortunes of the Socialist Party rested, not on a few famous leaders, but on Jimmie Higgins.

SOURCE
Eugene V. Debs: A Biography
-by Ray Ginger
NY, 1949
-p230
https://books.google.com/books?id=J8JEAAAAIAAJ