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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday February 26, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Young Gustav Yeskenski Tells of Soldier’s Brutality
From the Chicago Day Book of February 25, 1914:
Trinidad, Col., Feb.-25. A story told by a little child of the unthinkable, unprintable cruelty of soldiers wearing the uniform of the state of Colorado, brought horror into the faces of the congressmen who are investigating Colorado’s coal strike.
Gustav Yeskenski, 11, stammering in awe of the big men from Washington, gave in broken words the most impressive testimony the committee has heard.
The boy told how a citizen-soldier came on Feb. 10 to his home near Suffield.
Gustav’s father was crippled in a coal mine explosion and is helpless. His mother took in washing until she had saved money to buy a cow. She started a milk route and saved $200, with which she planned to buy a horse and wagon. One day she and her husband came to Trinidad.
While they were away from home the militiamen came.
[Little Gustav told the committee:]
There were two soldiers. One was a captain. He was so drunk that he just lay there in their buggy and never moved.
The other was not so drunk, and he came in our house where me and Mary and Elizabeth and the baby was. He said he was looking for guns, so he took my little twenty-two rifle what my mama gived me.
Then he begins breaking open my mama’s trunk with an axe, yes ma’am, that’s what he done. And I just cried and said for him please not to do that because my mama would whip me, sure, and he just kept on tearing the clothes out of that trunk.
Then I cried more, and all the little kids cried, yes ma’am, we cried hard. And that soldier got a mads at us and we got a ‘fraids on him.
And he kicked my little baby brother, what’s a year and a half old, and knocked him down on the floor and kicked him again. And he hit my little, sister Mary-7-with his gun, and he cut her face all up. And he kicked me, too, here in the side, and he hit my other sister, Elizabeth. She’s 9, yes ma’am.
And he just went on taking clothes out of my mama’s trunk, and pretty soon he found her coat what had her pocketbook in it and he sees my mama’s $200.
Then he took a bottle of whisky out of his pants’ pocket and stuffed that money down in there and then put the whisky back.
And I got an awful ‘fraid and I said “don’t take my mama’s money or she’ll whip me, sure,” and he called me a bad name and kicked me some more. And he went to the kitchen and found some eggs, and some he ate and the rest he threw down on the floor with the dish. Yes, ma’am, he threw the eggs all over my mama’s floor.
After kicking and beating the innocent children, according to little Gustav’s story, the soldier proceeded to still worse treatment, so awful that it is unprintable.
Complaints were made, after the visit of the soldiers, to Gen. Chase, commander of Colorado’s state troops. Chase made his usual indefinite promise to “investigate.”
But after the committee had been shocked by the fiendish story, Chase was stirred to new activity. There actually was prospect that the man responsible for one of the many outrages which have sickened the people of the strike zone might be arrested and punished.
[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege ed, Ab Chp III
https://www.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/3
The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Feb 25, 1914
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1914-02-25/ed-1/seq-1/
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1914-02-25/ed-1/seq-2/
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1914-02-25/ed-1/seq-3/
See also:
Feb 20, 1914, Deseret News
-re Testimony of Gustav Yeskenski bf House Sub-Com re CO Strike
https://www.newspapers.com/article/deseret-news-feb-20-1914-deseret-news/142212511/
Suffield Mine Camp CO
https://mapcarta.com/23226884/Map
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 III: Feb 17-20 at Trinidad CO
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hj1e84&seq=787
List of Witnesses
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hj1e84&seq=789
Feb 19-Trinidad CO – Testimony of Victoria Yeskenski, p946
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hj1e84&seq=960
Feb 19-Trinidad CO – Testimony of Gustav Yeskenski, p948
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hj1e84&seq=962
Feb 21, 1914 – Denver United Labor Bulletin
-Probers Make Tour of Coal Camps, Including Ludlow
-Congressman Evans Told to Move on by Sergeant
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn91052295/1914-02-21/ed-1/seq-1/
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 21, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Sarah Slator, Age 16, Kicked, Foot Smashed, Jailed
Tag: Conditions in the Coal Mines of Colorado US House Investigation of 1914
https://weneverforget.org/tag/conditions-in-the-coal-mines-of-colorado-us-house-investigation-of-1914/
Tag: Mary Thomas
https://weneverforget.org/tag/mary-thomas/
Tag: Military Despotism Colorado 1914
https://weneverforget.org/tag/military-despotism-colorado-1914/
Tag: Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1913-1914
https://weneverforget.org/tag/colorado-coalfield-strike-of-1913-1914/
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The Women and Children of Ludlow – Tom Breiding
Lyrics by Frank Hayes