Hellraisers Journal: “The So-Called ‘Militiamen’ are only gunmen and thugs wearing the uniform.”-Ludlow Massacre

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Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 8, 1914
Godfrey Irwin Describes the Ludlow Massacre and the Killing of Louie Tikas

From the New York World of May 5, 1914
Interview with Godfrey Irwin, an Electrical Engineer employed by the Electrical Transportation and Railroad Company of Trinidad:

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 Railway 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 Murdered.

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 arroyo 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.

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. Lieutenant 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.

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

Three days after the massacre, John Oleko filed this affidavit:

AFFIDAVIT

State of Colorado, County of Las Animas ss

John Oleko, of lawful age, being first duly sworn, upon oath doth depose and say: That his name is John Oleko; that he is a resident of the Ludlow tent colony; that he is of Slavish nationality; that he went to the store at Ludlow which is about 200 yards from the tent colony, on Monday morning, April 20 A. D. 1914, to buy some things from the store; that about 9 o’clock he came back to his tent, which is No. 120, and in a moment or two he heard a big shot over near the soldiers’ camp; he came out of his tent and heard another big shot; pretty soon shooting from soldiers’ camp and from all over that way started by men shooting toward the tent colony; affiant got scared and tried to get some Slavish women and children to leave the tents and hide in the arroyo or run away; that affiant had no gun and there were very few guns in the tents; that he did succeed in getting three women and several children down in the creek, but was all the time shot at by rifles and machine guns; that the soldiers and guards shoot thousands and thousands of shots trough the tents; that men who try to go get women out of tents get killed; that they holler for women to come down in the creek, but they were afraid, and affiant thinks that they would all have been killed had they tried to cross the open space from the tents to the arroyo; if the tents had not been burned, the women and children who had hid in the holes under the tents might have been all right, unless the explosive bullets hit near them; affiant could not do anything, so he ran away to a ranch and came to Trinidad, where he has been since.

(Signed) JOHN OLEKO.
Subscribed in my presence and swore to before me this 23rd day of April, A. D. 1914.
My commission expires on the 18th day of July, A. D. 1915.
(Seal) ANGUS E McGLASHAN, Notary Public.

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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SOURCE

Quote Helen Ring Robinson, Mine Owners’ Plug Uglies to Blame for Ludlow
RMN p5, Apr 22, 1914
https://www.genealogybank.com/doc/newspapers/image/v2:12C601A5C4B97518@GB3NEWS-1479669C03E2FAD8@2420245-1477B8E75B6F73E8@4-1477B8E75B6F73E8

The Ludlow Massacre
-by Walter H. Fink
UMW District 15, 1914
Page 21: Godfrey Irwin’s Interview with NY World
https://archive.org/details/ludlowmassacrere00finkrich/page/21/mode/1up?view=theater
Page 39: Affidavit of John Oleko
https://archive.org/details/ludlowmassacrere00finkrich/page/39/mode/1up?view=theater&q=oleko

IMAGES
Gunthug Militia in Front of Ludlow Saloon, 1913 1914
Militiamen, machine gun, gunthugs, 1914
CO Coal Field War Project
https://www.du.edu/ludlow/gall2b.html

See also:

May 5, 1914, New London CT, The Day
-Godfrey Irwin Describes Ludlow Massacre,
was on hike with Rev. J. O. Ferris
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-day-may-5-1914-new-london-ct-the/146873515/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-day-may-5-1914-new-london-ct-the/146873713/

April 23, 1914, Spokane Chronicle:
https://www.newspapers.com/image/562399311/
“The Rev. J. O. Ferris and the Rev. Randolph Cook, who were members of the party which yesterday recovered the bodies of the Ludlow victims, have sent a long message to President Wilson, urging that he give conditions in southern Colorado his immediate personal attention.”

April 28, 1914, Chicago Day Book
“Colorado Gunmen Soldiers Loot Strikers’ Tent Colony
-Gen. Chase curses Rev. J. O. Ferris and Rev. Cook.
-Photo of Mrs. Pedregone. 
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1914-04-28/ed-1/seq-1/
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1914-04-28/ed-1/seq-2/

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 5 1914
“The Murderous Colorado Militia Was Recruited from Professional Gunmen”

Tag: Louie Tikas
https://weneverforget.org/tag/louie-tikas/

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The Ludlow Massacre – Christy Moore