Hellraisers Journal: Telluride, San Miguel County, Colorado – Affidavit of A. A. Pratt Arrested by Militia for Refusing to Scab

March 3, 1904, Telluride, Colorado-Affidavit of A. A. Pratt

AFFIDAVIT.

State of Colorado, County of San Miguel, ss.
I, the undersigned A. A. Pratt, make the following statement under oath: On or about February 26, 1904, I was in Denver looking for work. A man by the name of Johnson told me I could get work as a miner in Telluride; that the strike was off and there was no martial law; that the soldiers were all withdrawn, and that transportation was furnished free. I concluded to go, and a Mr. Snodgrass gave me a ticket to Telluride.

When I arrived at Telluride, on the evening of the 27th, I was met at the depot and taken to the Victoria hotel to stay all night. The next morning a horse was brought to the hotel for me to ride to the Smuggler-Union mine, about four miles away. On the way to the mine we passed soldiers standing guard. When I got to the mine I made inquires and found out that the strike was on, that the district was under military rule. As the conditions had been misrepresented to me, and I did not want to work under these conditions, I told the boss that I had forgotten something in town and thus obtained a pass to present to the soldiers between the mine and the town.

In Telluride I was arrested on a warrant sworn to by Bulkely Wells, manager of the Smuggler-Union mine and commander of the militia, charging me with obtaining money under false pretenses. He appeared as a witness against me, although there had been no agreement made with him, nor with any one else, that I was to pay anything for fare, hotel or horse hire. These were furnished me without me asking for them, and he admitted that he had no agreement with me. There was no one but myself that knew anything about the matter, so the justice found me not guilty, but it shows to what measures they are willing to resort.

I do solemnly swear that the above statement is true to the best of my knowledge.

A. A. PRATT.

Sworn and subscribed to before me on the 3rd day of March, 1904
ALBERT HOLMES,
Justice of the Peace.

[Paragraphs and emphasis added.]

COLORADO CITIZENS’ ALLIANCE VINDICTIVE
———-
Representatives Are Making Strong
Charges at Washington.
———-
Makes Wholesale Accusations Against Colorado Unionists.
Nevertheless Not One Trade Unionist Has Been Convicted of Crime.
Committee Presses Questions and Assailant Hedges.
———-Washington, D. C., March 3.-Ten years of alleged lawlessness, with the trade unions of Colorado scheming to take the lives of nonunion workmen and to blow up the mines in which free labor was employed, with such diabolical cunning as to prove the complicity of more than one master murderer, was described to the House judiciary committee today by J. C. Craig, president of the Denver Citizens’ alliance.

Mr. Craig appeared in opposition to the anti-injunction bill, and declared the wholesale murder he described was only checked when the power of the courts had been invoked. He more than hinted a free laborer’s life would not be worth a minute’s purchase were the bill passed.

After he had described the ten year’s orgy of plot and death he was asked how many trade union members had been convicted of complicity in the crimes.

“None,” he answered, “not a single one has been convicted; but I attribute this to the sympathy of the police, who are recruited from the ranks of labor, and have to return to them when a change of administration throws them out of an official position.”

Union men, he declared, however, had been guilty of rolling kegs of dynamite into shaft-houses and then connecting the elevators by cords to cocked revolvers so that when the elevator moved the pistol would be fired and the dynamite exploded. Horrors of this sort were of daily occurrence till the Citizens’ alliance was formed and injunctions obtained. At the same time he was careful to explain that his alliance did not oppose trade unionism as such, but merely the lawlessness of which, he said, organized labor was guilty.

Charles F. Waltz, representing the Cincinnati Employers’ association and the National Citizens’ Industrial association, in describing the alleged anarchic utterances of labor leaders, said Mr. O’Connell, president of the International Association of Machinists, had said in Chicago: “We will work for a nine-hour day with ten hours’ pay, and when we get that we will work for an eight-hour day with the same pay.”