Hellraisers Journal – Thursday June 9, 1904
Summary of Miners’ Strikes in Colorado and Utah for May 1904
From The Salt Lake Herald of May 06, 1904:
Mother Jones with Delegates at Utah State Convention of Western Federation of Miners
From the San Francisco Chronicle of May 1, 1904
Southern Coalfields of Colorado – Union Organizer Beaten, Not Expected to Live
The strike zone of the southern coalfields of Colorado continues to be a dangerous place for union organizers working for the United Mine Workers of America. Brother Wardjon was brutally assaulted there and was not expected to live. The San Francisco Chronicle reported on that assault and other news regarding the labor situation in Colorado:
ASSAULT ON A LABOR LEADER
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Mine Union Organizer Wardjon Beaten on Head
in Colorado So Severely That He May Die
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DENVER, (Col.). April 30.-W. M. Wardjon, national organizer of the United Mine Workers of America wasterribly 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 whichassaulted 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.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 27, 1914 Washington, D. C. – Judge Lindsey and Women of Ludlow Visit the White House
From the Washington Evening Star of May 21, 1914:
LINDSEY HAS PLAN TO MEDIATE STRIKE ———- Discusses Colorado Situation With President Wilson This Afternoon. ———-
FAVORS KEEPING TROOPS IN THE TROUBLE DISTRICT ———- “Survivors of Ludlow Massacre” To Tell of Sufferings at National Rifles’ Armory Tonight. ———-
Rep. Keating, Judge Ben Lindsey, Rep. Kent, Mrs. Lindsey, Pearl Jolly, Mary Petrucci, Mary Thomas, Mrs. Lee Champion, Rachel and Olga Thomas
With a plan to mediate the Colorado coal fields strike, which he believes will be successful if fathered by the President,Judge Ben B. Lindsey, who came to Washington with a delegation of women and children refugees from Ludlow, called at the White House this afternoon by appointment.
Judge Lindsey stated he is emphatically in favor of keeping the troops in the strike district. He hopes the President will hear the stories of the women “survivors of the Ludlow massacre” who can tell him what they personally suffered during the battle and fire.
Judge Lindsey declares that the people of the country are guaranteed a republican form of government; that no such government exists in Colorado at this time, and that it is fully within the power of the President, backed by public sentiment, to force a settlement of the troubles.
Judge Lindsey urged the President to keep the federal troops in the coal strife region under all circumstances, asserting that if they are not retained there bloodshed will continue and that there will be nothing like law in all that region.
Suggests U. S. Close Mines.
Judge Lindsey declined to go into details as to what his plans are, but in a general way he hinted that public opinion would justify the President, under the guarantee of a republican form of government to all citizens, to close down the mines and practically assume charge of them by federal troops, compelling the mine owners and the striking miners to mediate their differences. He recalled the steps taken by President Roosevelt in the great Pennsylvania coal strike some year ago, and believes it within the power of the President to do almost anything he wants in Colorado.
“The President may not think he has power to settle the strike, but we think he has,” declared Judge Lindsey. “He has gigantic powers under the law and under the reign of public opinion.”
Judge Lindsey bitterly criticized Gov. Ammons, declared him incompetent, and hinted that Ammons and Rockefeller are in agreement as to how the fight should be resolved.
Judge Lindsey has asked an interview with John D. Rockefeller, jr. He didn’t know today whether Mr. Rockefeller would grant this interview, in which he will seek to have the New York millionaire accept some plan of medication, but he intended to try. He was asked if the party with him would also see Mr. Rockefeller.
“I do not know,” he answered, “but Mr. Rockefeller is no bigger than the President of the United States. Mr. Wilson has seen us-all of us-and I think Mr. Rockefeller can afford to do the same thing.”
Judge Lindsey persisted in his view that the President should bump the heads of both sides together and bring about a settlement.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 17, 1914 State of Colorado Charges Guardsmen with Arson and Larceny at Ludlow Tent Colony
As the Court-Martial of members of the Colorado militia commences, The New York Times continues to publish the claim, made by Colorado’s militia of gunthugs, that dynamite stored in the safety pits of the strikers exploded during the battle, and that that is what started the fire that burned the Ludlow Tent Colony to the ground, killing two women and eleven children and destroying the homes and all of the earthly possessions of the 1200 residents. This claim was made by the Times two days after the Massacre along with the claim that the battle took place on the property of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.
In fact, the Ludlow Tent Colony was established on land rented by the United Mine Workers of America. The strikers had every right to be there. Their tents were their homes which they were determined to protect, just as anyone anywhere would.
To our knowledge, the Times has never corrected that wildly inaccurate reporting.
The idea that miners-knowing the dangers of dynamite-would dig pits for the safety of their wives and children, fill them with dynamite, and then tell their loved ones to hide amongst the sticks of dynamite in case of attack, is the height of absurdity.
Readers of Hellraisers are aware of the many affidavits sworn out by those men and women who were in the Colony during the attack. To our knowledge the Times has not printed even one of these affidavits, at least we have not found a single one printed within pages of The New York Times.
There is no mystery as to the cause of the fire: The soldiers entered the colony at about 7 p. m. as the strikers ran out of ammunition. They first lit a match to Mrs. Petrucci’s tent, shot at her and the children as she ran to tent #58, and then, not long after she entered that cellar, they lit tent #58 on fire also, even as Cedi Costa begged for mercy. No mercy was shown. The gunthug militiamen then moved through the colony lighting tents on fire using paper and matches or a broom dipped in oil. Wherever the soldiers moved, the fires started.
The lies told by the gunthug militia are printed for the world to see, but the affidavits of the terrorized strikers and their wives are buried in volumes of testimony, printed only in the labor and Socialist newspapers
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 14, 1914 Mother Jones Praises John Kenneth Turner’s Series, “Government by Gunmen”
From the Appeal to Reason of May 9, 1914:
John Kenneth Turner Opens Fire On Government by Gunmen
Here follows the introductory article of the “Government by Gunmen” series. In investigating these facts John Kenneth Turner risked his life, as it required his association with gunmen, detectives and the riff-raff of capitalist society. Several times he was warned by friends to drop his investigations. A reformed gunman has written the Appeal urging us to suppress this series if we valued Turner’s life. But the author of “Barbarous Mexico” and the investigator of West Virginia and other recent labor wars, laughs at this threat. He believes that the publicity given to this series will not only protect him but all who are today in danger of being “eliminated” by the murderous detective agencies. Here then is the beginning of the “Government by Gunmen” series. And every week for nearly half a year we shall bring before the public bar the strongest indictment of Capitalism’s Invisible Army that was ever attempted in this country. The Appeal feels that our first and most important duty is to abolish Government by Gunmen. It must be done-it will be done.
By JOHN KENNETH TURNER Staff Correspondent Appeal to Reason.
In the county jail at Marysville, Cal., a short time ago I talked with two young workingmen who were on trial for murder. A jury of twelve men-not working men-has since declared them guilty and a judge has sentenced them to imprisonment at hard labor for the rest of their natural lives.
Yet these two workingmen had not killed anybody. Nor had they planned or attempted to kill anybody.
One, Richard Ford, is ruined for life-torn from his wife and two little children forever-solely because he became the spokesman for 2,300 hop-pickers who went on strike against intolerable conditions.
The career of the other, Herman Suhr, is blasted-he too, is unfortunate enough to possess a wife and two children-solely because he signed a number of telegrams asking that organizers be sent to the hop-fields to enroll the 2,300 pickers in a labor union.
The arrest, the trial and the conviction of Ford and Suhr was a deliberate frame-up of a ring of capitalists, in which a private detective agency took a necessary and criminal part…..
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 13, 1914 Coroner’s Jury Blames Militia for Ludlow Massacre
From the Appeal to Reason of May 9, 1914:
Coroner’s Jury Puts Blame on Militia
Trinidad, Colo.-The coroners jury investigating the Ludlow horror has officially placed the blame of it on the mine guards. Following is the text of the verdict relative to the fire:
Cecelia Costa, Petra Valdez, Begrata Pendregon, Clovine Pendregon, Lucy Costa, Orafrio Costa, Elvira Valdez, Mary Valdez, Elulia Valdez, Rudolfo Valdez, Frank Petrucci, Lucy Petrucci and Joe Petrucci came to their death by asphyxiation of fire, or both, caused by the burning of the tents of the Ludlow tent colony, and that fire in tents was started by militiamen under Major Hamrock and Lieutenant Linderfelt or mine guards, or both, April 20, 1914.
[Emphasis added.]
Firing of Ludlow Ordered.
R. J. McDonald, stenographer for the military commission, testified that an officer of the Colorado national guard gave the order for burning the colony, but he was not sure whether it was Major Hamrock or Captain Carson.
McDonald said he stood within a few feet of Hamrock and Carson, who were inspecting the colony from the top of a hill. It was well toward night.
“We’ve got just forty minutes to take and burn that colony.” he testified one of the two remarked, “before it gets dark.”
A few moments later the troops and mine guards, he said, swept down the tracks in the charge that meant the colony’s destruction and the death of the women and eleven children, who sought refuge in the colony’s safety pit.
Tikas Beaten to Death.
McDonald was questioned about the capture and death of Louis Tikas, Greek leader of the strikers. He said that while near the scene of the battle he heard a commotion behind some box cars and was told that Tikas was a prisoner and probably would be hanged.
A little later he met Lieutenant F. K. Linderfelt. He asked Linderfelt if Tikas had been hanged.
“No,” he testified Linderfelt replied, “I gave instructions that Tikas was not to be killed, but I spoiled a good rifles.”
The witness swore that Linderfelt was carrying his rifle over his shoulder, stock to the rear, and holding it by the barrel. The physicians’ autopsy showed that Tikas’ skull was fractured.
Open Butchery of Women.
Riley, a Colorado & Southern fireman, said he was on the engine of a freight train which pulled up at the Ludlow station in the hottest of the battle. He said that two tents already were in flames.
“I saw a man in a militia uniform touch a blaze in a third tent,” he said.
He said he saw women and children screaming on the railroad right of way apparently trying to escape from the colony.
When the train drew up at the station, he said, several militiamen put guns to the engineer’s head and ordered him to “pull out and do it damned quick.”
J.S. Harriman, conductor of the same train, testified that as the train pulled out of the station and past the tent colony he heard women and children screaming and apparently trying to escape. He said that during this time, the militia was firing into the colony.
Threat a Day in Advance.
“Have your big Sunday today, old girl,” Mrs. Pearl Jolly, leader of women at Ludlow, testified a militia man told a striker’s wife on the day before the tragedy, “tomorrow we’ll have the roast.”
G. A Hall, a chauffeur, told the jury that he had heard a militia officer give the order to “clean out” the tent colony and burn the tents.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday May 11, 1914 MacGregor Describes the Terror Wrought in Colorado by Rockefeller’s Murderers
From The Day Book of May 6, 1914:
And I saw little children, with wide and reddened eyes, run from my approach because I was a stranger and the Ludlow massacre of the innocents had taught them fear of all strangers.
I stopped my machine to talk to one little girl of seven. She ran from me, stumbled, fell, and lay clinging to the earth, her small body shaking with sobs.
“Are you scared of me?” I asked.
Her sobs became more violent.
“I’m your friend,” I said. “I don’t want to hurt you. Why are you afraid of me?”
She turned a terror-stricken face to me for a moment.
“I don’t know you,” she said. “And you came in an automobile. And-“
She buried her wet face in the earth and fell to sobbing again.
At the Jackson tent colony, twelve miles from where the fighting took place, a woman came to me and fell on her knees. She was soon to be a mother.
“Can’t you get me away from here?” she cried. “I don’t want my baby born here within reach of the machine guns. There was a woman going to have a baby at Ludlow, and-and they burned them both.”
She was silent for a moment; then waved her hand toward her husband, who stood at her tent door, leaning on a rifle, his face as grim as death itself.
“Besides,” she said proudly, “I want my man to be down at the front fighting the gunmen with the rest, and he can’t leave me alone here. Get me away.”
Mothers pleading that their babies might be born out of reach of Rockefeller’s guns! That they might be removed from danger so their men could go to the front-against Rockefeller!
Was it not enough to make men’s hearts red with rage? Was it not enough to rouse the murder lust within them?
I tell you there were times there when I felt like hanging every Rockefeller murderer who fell into our hands, without ceremony and without compunction. I think my hands would have been clean.
And yet those miners, who have been called every murderous name the mine owners or their hired press agents could think of, captured four mines outside Walsenburg and gave every gunman at them safe conduct out of the district when they raised the white flag!
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 5 1914
Wars in Colorado and Mexico, Workers’ Blood Shed to Serve Rockefeller’s Interests
From the Appeal to Reason of May 2, 1914:
Appeal Army Called to Immediate
Action in the Class War
Practicality the entire issue of the latest edition of the Appeal to Reason is dedicated to supporting the class war, now ongoing, in Colorado, and opposing the war for “commercial and political domination of Mexico.”
The front-page masthead proclaims:
On the second page the masthead makes known:
The Murderous Colorado Militia Was Recruited
from Professional Gunmen
The following are portions of a few of the articles on the Colorado Coal War from Saturday’s Appeal to Reason.
Blood of Slaughtered Babes Calls
for Immediate Action
“God give us men: A time like this demands Great hearts, strong minds, true faith and willing hands.”
Two wars are now on. Both are wars in the interest of John D. Rockefeller and American capitalism. One is a war for the commercial and political domination of Mexico by the oil king and his colleagues. The other is a war to crush out the rebellious spirit of the wage slaves of the Colorado coal mines, owned and operated by the Rockefeller interest.
As you read this, the newspapers will have given you columns upon columns about the American conquest of Mexico. Every known method of appealing to the gullibility of the American workers will have been used. The flag incident and other excuses will have been put forward to justify the sending of the American military and naval forces to our neighboring country. At the same time distorted reports of the bloodiest slaughter of working men in modern times will have appeared in the capitalist press.
This latest battle at Ludlow, Colo., is probably the most outrageous assault upon the rights, liberties and lives of the working class in American history. This issue of the Appeal to Reason gives you only what cold ink and type can transmit. No amount of writing can give you an adequate description of the murdering and maiming of women and children such as occurred last week in one of the sovereign states of this republic. On the other hand the slightest affront to the alleged dignity of American capitalism will have been played up and elaborated upon by most expert writers, artists and photographers that the filthy lucre of capitalism’s prostituted press can purchase…..
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 2, 1914 Pittsburg, Kansas – Mother Jones Speaks at Convention of U. M. W. A., District 14
From the Pittsburg Workers’s Chronicle of May 1, 1914:
Yes, she swears. Says “dam” and “hell” and other such words. That’s Mother Jones. But did you ever hear people swear when it sounded like a benediction or a prayer? Mother don’t swear like other folks. Some way or other her swear words are more like poetry than vulgarity. Ask ANYONE who ever heard her.
She spoke to the delegates at the convention yesterday morning and not a miner in that hall will ever forget her message. Among other things she said:
I was asked by the congressional committee if I was opposed to sending the federal troops into Colorado, “I certainly am” I said. I am deadly opposed to bayonets being sent into any strike district where an industrial conflict is being waged. The miners in Colorado have had bayonets for months. They are not needed. Justice is what they want, not bayonets.
Out of the past eleven months I have served more than six of them in the bastiles of West Virginia and Colorado. I have seen the suffering of these wretched strikers, their ragged and defenseless wives and their starving babies in these strike districts and human pen or tongue will never be able to adequately portray the awful scenes enacted there.
She told of the Greek, Louis Tikas, whose truce with the gunmen of Mr. Rockefeller, ended in his murder; of the 51 bullet holes in his body and its laying exposed for days after his infamous murder. Told of his coming to her early in the strike and in his broken language and with tears streaming down his bronzed cheeks explaining how his Greek government had tried to draft him into the Balkan war and how he resented it to the extent that he was almost branded as a coward by the minions of that government’s plutocracy. This, however, was a fight of his class and he was willing to die a thousand deaths rather than see his fellow workers submit to the shackles of the mine owner corporations.
In dealing with the Colorado and West Virginia strikes she said that the ones who had died had not given up their lives in vain, but that they had died for a great cause.
When the congressional committee asked her if it would be acceptable if Rockefeller would consent to grant every demand of the miners except the one compelling recognition of the U. M. W. of A. she replied: “NO! We’ll give up every demand before that. It is the meat in the nut and without it we would be just as helpless as before.”
It might be well to state that Mother Jones’ confinement in Colorado was due to a fight for a principle. In 1904 what is known as “The Moyer” decision was passed by the supreme court. That decision gave to the military the right to arrest and confine any person without preferring charges of any kind against them. This was one of the most infamous decisions against labor ever rendered and has been the instrument with which more than one strike has been broken. Her fight was to get out of jail on a writ of habeas corpus and secure the reversal of that infamous Moyer decision. Up to the present time they have managed to evade the testing of the law but Mother Jones is still after them and if it is within human power to secure a reversal she will assuredly secure it.
Mother Jones came direct from Denver to Girard [home of the Appeal to Reason] where she arrived on Wednesday night. She will return to the strike zone immediately after a monster protest meeting in Kansas City next Sunday. She speaks in Frontenac at the May Day celebration today. Don’t fail to hear her.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday April 30, 1904 Mother Jones Held in Utah; Moyer and Haywood Up Against Militia in Colorado
From The Rocky Mountain New of April 27, 1904:
Mother Jones has been in Utah since her deportation from Trinidad, Colorado. There she has been working among the miners of that state, and, for her efforts, was confined under “quarantine” near Helper, Utah. This was too much for the miners of that area and a raid was made upon the pest house which freed from Mother from that place. She has since been recaptured, and, according to the following report, is now held in the Carbon County jail at Price, Utah.
From the American Labor Union Journal of Apr 28, 1904 -Moyer brought to Denver, but returned to bullpen at Telluride; Haywood brutally assaulted by soldiers:
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