Don’t worry, Fellow Worker,
all we’re going to need
from now on is guts.
-Frank Little
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday May 29, 1918
Chicago, Illinois – Vanderveer for the Defense
Today we feature the cross-examination by George Vanderveer of one of the copper-collared reporters who testified for the prosecution, on the 23rd of May, against members of the I. W. W. now on trial in the Windy City for alleged violation of the U. S. Espionage Act.
May 23, 1918 – A. W. Walliser, reporter for the Butte Evening Post,
-cross-examined by Attorney Vanderveer:
VANDERVEER: What is the attitude of your paper on the labor issue in Butte? Did it support the strikers during the recent strike?
A. Oh no, sir, no.
Q. Who reported the fire in the Speculator Mine?
A. There were three or four of us. I was up there.
Q. Did you report in your paper that there were concrete bulkheads in that mine with no manholes and it trapped the men and were responsible for their deaths, to the number of about two hundred [168]?
A. No, sir.
Q. You did not?
A. No, I did not.
Q. You never colored anything you wrote to fit what you understood to be the policy of the paper?
A. I might have colored things. I might have toned down things, and I did repeatedly.
Q. Did you ever hear that the bodies that were taken from the mine were sold for twelve dollars and a half apiece?
A. No, sir.
Q. Did you, ever publish any such story?
A. No, sir.
Q. Would you, if you had heard it and verified it?
ATTORNEY FOR GOVERNMENT: I object. That is not proper cross-examination.
JUDGE LANDIS: Objection sustained.
Q. Did you attack the bulkheads in the mine?
A. No, sir,
Q. Did your paper?
A. Not that I know of, no, sir.
Q. Did you attempt to place responsibility for the murder of those two hundred men or more-260 men?
A. It was not my business.
Q. It was not your business?
A. No, sir.
Q. Were you ever in the offices of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company on the sixth floor of the Hennesey Building?
A. Yes sir.
Q. And did you ever see guns there?
A. I have seen them in the Miners Union Hall. I have seen them in the Finlander Hall.
Q. Answer my question. Did you see them on the sixth floor of the Hennesey Building?
A. Yes, sir. I saw them all over Butte.
Q. Did you ever see people there that you had never seen before, with guns?
A. Why, I don’t know everybody in Butte.
Q.I take that to mean you did see such people.
A. No. But there were plenty of people carrying guns.
Q. How many (Frank) Little meetings did you attend?
A. I attended one.
Q. Did he speak only once?
A. I think he made only one public address, yes, sir.
Q. In the course of that utterance he referred to “Uncle Sam’s scabs in uniform?”
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now, you have been a newspaper man in Denver?
A. (Witness startled.) Yes, sir.
Q. You were in Denver during the Cripple Creek Strike?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. During Governor Peabody’s regime?
A. I was. Yes, sir.
Q. You knew what Frank Little meant when he talked about “Uncle Sam’s scabs in Uniform,” didn’t you?
A. Why, yes, I knew what he meant.
Q. He had come from the scene of the [illegal] deportation of 1200 miners in Bisbee?
A. Yes.
Q. And they were taken to a stockade in Columbus, New Mexico, and guarded by Federal troops, were they not?
[NOTE: left unsaid-the federal troops were used to keep the illegally deported miners imprisoned in a stockade; the troops were not used to stop the deportation, nor to arrest the deporters, nor to return the deported miners to their homes and families.]
A. Yes, sir.
Q. You knew that?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now, the same thing had occurred at least five times during the Colorado strikes, hadn’t it?
A. Oh, more than that!
Q. You have heard that remark, “Scabs in uniform” thousands of times, haven’t you?
A. Yes, sir, absolutely, yes.
Q. And you know that a miner who uses that during the strike refers to the employment of troops for breaking the strike, don’t you?
A. Yes.
Q. Did Frank Little tell you that he had been kidnapped four or five times?
A. I believe there was some reference to that in that speech.
Q. And that he had had his leg broken?
A. Yes.
Q. That he had lost an eye?
A. I don’t know about losing his eye.
Q. And that he was ruptured by being thrown down and jumped on by the gunmen?
A. He may have told all that.
Q. And you were surprised at the bitterness of his conduct?
A. Yes, sir, I was.
Q. Now, you were in Butte on the First of August?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. The day Frank Little was hanged?
A. Yes, sir.
Q.Do you know who committed the lynching?
A. No, sir.
Q. Did you ever hear about an automobile leaving a certain livery barn up on the hill, or up at the foot of the hill and going up Wyoming street and down through-I don’t remember all those streets-with five people in it?
A. No.
Q. Did you ever hear about that machine being-
A. (Hastily) No.
Q. Did you ever try to find out who the occupants of that car were?
A. No, sir.
Q. If I give you the names will you publish them?
A. No, sir.
Q. You won’t?
A. No, sir.
Q. [Shouting] If I give you the name of the boy that drove that car, will you publish it in your paper?
A. No.[Inset: from The Daily Missoulian of June 10, 1917.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCE
The I.W.W. Trial
-Story of the Greatest Trial in Labor’s History
-by one of the Defendants
-by Harrison George
—-with introduction by A. S. Embree.
IWW, 1919
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100663067
Pages 18-22: May 23, 1918, Vanderveer cross-examines
A. W. Walliser of the Butte Evening Post
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951d01368761a;view=2up;seq=20
Note: First ad I can find for this book:
Butte Daily Bulletin -page 3
-Mar 5, 1919
https://www.newspapers.com/image/176048912/
IMAGE
Headline from:
The Daily Missoulian
(Missoula, Montana)
-June 10, 1917
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83025316/1917-06-10/ed-1/seq-1/
See also:
Frank Little and the IWW:
The Blood That Stained an American Family
-by Jane Little Botkin
University of Oklahoma Press, May 25, 2017
(search separately and use “pages” format:
walliser; crary; stevens; “thirteen days”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=gBskDwAAQBAJ
Note: This is the definitive biography of
Fellow Worker Frank Little, thoroughly sourced.
Buy the actual book, you’ll want to make notes on every page.)
Fire and Brimstone:
The North Butte Mining Disaster of 1917
by Michael Punke
Hachette Books, Feb 5, 2013
Note: a day by day, hour by desperate hour,
account of death and survival following the Speculator Mine Disaster.
(search: concrete bulkheads)
(search: “point of eruption” -for mine disaster as catalyst for the strike)
https://books.google.com/books?id=vZ-ZAAAAQBAJ
Page 173:
…Montana law in 1917 made it illegal to maintain bulkheads without doors…
Page 307, note #14:
An 1897 state law required all mines of greater than 100 feet to maintain escapement shafts. It specifically envisioned the use of neighboring mines as escape routes, providing that “the right to use the outlet through such contiguous mine in all cases when necessary, or in cases of accident must be secured and kept in force.” The law further required that “the exit, escapement shaft, raise, or opening provided for…must be of sufficient size as to afford an easy passage way…” The statute also required signage to mark escape routes. Revised Codes of Montana, 1907, Section 8541.
The Gibraltar:
Socialism and Labor in Butte, Montana, 1895-1920
-by Jerry W. Calvert
Montana Historical Society Press, 1988
https://books.google.com/books?id=fMUEAQAAIAAJ
Pages 109-110:
In July 1923 [Butte Bulletin, July 20, 1923, see page 169], Bill Dunne claimed that Little had been murdered by “agents of the Anaconda Mining Company” and named men who he believed had knowledge of or had participated in the killing: lawyer Roy Alley, John D. Ryan’s private secretary and alleged commander of the Company’s private army of guards; [D’Gay] Stivers; L. O. Evans; John Berkin, sometime deputy sheriff and notorious gunman; J. F. Taylor, described as a “stool pigeon” and “gunman” from Seattle; Oscar Rohn, head of the Pittsmont Mining company; and James Rowe, a prominent Butte businessman. Dunne also theorized that Little had been killed in the hopes that the incident would “get the striking miners to riot so that thy could be shot down and driven back to work…
The Butte Bulletin
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045051/
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday May 28, 1918
Chicago, Illinois – Copper-Collared Reporters Testify for Prosecution
Even in Death, Not Allowed to Rest in Peace: FW Frank Little at Issue in Chicago IWW Trial
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday July 25, 1917
Butte, Montana – “Agitators” Support Striking Miners
Frank Little & “Agitators” of Butte “Against Everything” Proclaims Company Newspaper
Tag: Bisbee Deportations of 1917
https://weneverforget.org/tag/bisbee-deportations-of-1917/
Tag: Butte Metal Miners Strike of 1917
https://weneverforget.org/tag/butte-metal-miners-strike-of-1917/
Tag: Metal Mine Workers Union-Butte Independent
https://weneverforget.org/tag/metal-mine-workers-union-butte-independent/
Tag: Metal Mine Workers Industrial Union No. 800
https://weneverforget.org/tag/metal-mine-workers-industrial-union-no-800/
Note: reporters for the kept press of the day claimed that the Butte Metal Miners Strike of 1917 was inspired by and led by the IWW. In fact, the strike was in direct response to the Speculator Disaster, and outrage over the dead miners found trapped behind the concrete blockheads which lacked escape hatches as required by law. The strike was led by the independent Butte Metal Mine Workers Union, and not by the IWW’s Metal Mine Workers I.U. No. 800 of Butte. The fact that Frank Little, IWW Executive Board member, was invited by the strikers to address their meetings, demonstrates how highly he was regarded by his fellow metal miners, regardless of their union affiliations.
Tag: Granite Mountain-Speculator Mine Fire of 1917
https://weneverforget.org/tag/granite-mountain-speculator-mine-fire-of-1917/
Granite Mountain-Speculator Mine Memorial
http://www.minememorial.org/history/intro.htm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hazel Dickens
“Fire in our hearts, and fire in our soul…”