Tag: Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1903-1904

Hellraisers Journal: Colorado Militia Dismisses Case Against John M. Glover, Former Congressman from Missouri

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, CFI Owns Colorado, re 1903 Strikes UMW WFM, Ab Chp 13, 1925—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday February 18, 1904
Cripple Creek, Colorado – District Court Dismisses Case Against John M. Glover

From the Moberly Evening Democrat of February 11, 1904
Colorado Militia’s Case Against Rep. John M. Glover Dismissed:

John Glover Arrested by Military, SLTb p1, Jan 16, 1904

SECOND CASE DISMISSED.

The case against John M. Glover, formerly Congressman from Missouri, for having shot at Sergeant Smith, was dismissed at Cripple Creek, Colorado, yesterday in the District Court on the ground that the accused could not be tried twice for the same offense. Glover had already been found guilty of an assault upon Sergeant Dittmore.

Before sentence in the latter case is passed Mr. Glover will appeal to the Supreme Court.

The cases of General Sherman M. Bell and General Chase, charged with unlawfully imprisoning citizens in the bull pen while martial law was in effect, were then taken up.

[Newsclip from Salt Lake Tribune of Jan. 16, 1904, added.]
[Emphasis added.]

—————

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Hellraisers Journal: Union Leaders Dragged from Buggy by Masked Men and Beaten Near Trinidad; Mother Jones Unharmed

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, CFI Owns Colorado, re 1903 Strikes UMW WFM, Ab Chp 13, 1925—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday February 17, 1904
Trinidad, Colorado – Fairly and Mooney Recovering from Violent Attack

From The Rocky Mountain News of February 15, 1904:

UMWs Beaten Near Berwind n Bowen CO, MJ Not Harmed, RMN p1, 6, Feb 15, 1904

From The Arizona Republican of February 15, 1904:

MINE WORKERS ATTACKED
———-
A Violent Strike Episode
Near Trinidad, Colorado.
———-

Trinidad, Colo., Feb. 14.-William Fairley and James Mooney, members of the national board of the United Mine Workers, from Alabama and Mississippi, respectively, were waylaid this afternoon on the road between Majestic and Bowen, dragged from their buggy and beaten by eight men with stones and six shooters and left lying in the road.

They were able later to get in the buggy and drive to Bowen. They were then brought to Trinidad. Mooney is in serious condition and had to be taken to a hospital. Fairly is able to go to his hotel. No arrests have yet been made. This is the first time since the coal strike was inaugurated that any officials of the United Mine Workers have been assaulted. It is reported that the men who attacked the miners officials are coal company guards. We have learned from the United Mine Workers’ Headquarters in Indianapolis that Mother Jones was in a wagon which was following the vehicle carrying Fairley and Mooney, but she was not harmed. Mother was recently released from the hospital in Trinidad, after surviving a serious siege of pneumonia.

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From the American Labor Union Journal: Report from the Colorado Strike Zone by Bertha Howell Mailly-Mother Jones Happily Recovering

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Quote Mother Jones, CFI Owns Colorado, re 1903 Strikes UMW WFM, Ab Chp 13, 1925—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 9, 1904
Trinidad, Colorado – Mrs. Bertha Howell Reports from Colorado Strike Zone

From the American Labor Journal of January 28, 1904:

Colorado Strike News, Mother Jones Better, ALUJ p3, Jan 28, 1904

From the Appeal to Reason of January 30, 1904
-Mrs. Mailly’s Article Was Also Published in the Appeal Along with the Following Drawing by Lockwood and with the Following Introduction:

DRWG Colorado Class Struggle by Lockwood, AtR p2, Jan 30, 1904

Intro to CO First of Series by Bertha Mailly , AtR p2, Jan 30, 1904

THE COAL MINERS’ STRIKE IN SOUTHERN COLORADO
———-

(Not much news of the strike of several thousand coal miners in Southern Colorado has reached the outside world. Mrs. Bertha Howell Mailly, wife of the National Secretary of the Socialist Party, went to that district from Omaha last week to be with Mother Jones, who was dangerously ill in Trinidad, but who is now happily recovering. While in the strike district, Mrs. Mailly will write a special series of articles for the Socialist press, the following being the first.)

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Duluth Labor World: Hastings, Colorado-“Mother Jones Says Rockefeller Oppresses the Coal Miners”

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, CFI Owns Colorado, re 1903 Strikes UMW WFM, Ab Chp 13, 1925—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 7, 1904
Hastings, Colorado – Mother Jones Exposes Rockefeller’s “Sunday School Methods”

From the Duluth Labor World of February 6, 1904:

MOTHER JONES
Says Rockefeller Oppresses the Coal Miners.

Mother Jones Gives 500 Dollars to CO Strikers, LW p4, Feb 6, 1904

Hastings, Colo., Feb. 5.-[Mother Jones, the miners’ friend, who is now going up and down among the striking miners in Colorado, says:]

Rockefeller’s mining company cleared $39,000 [*] last year, and every dollar of it was wrung form the miners.

At some of these mining camps a miner is not even allowed to bring a pound of butter from the outside. He is compelled to buy everything at the company’s store. Every man who comes to the mines to work must be searched, and when he goes to visit a friend outside the camp an armed guard goes with him.

What would a Chicago workingman think if he had to pay 90 cents for a quart of syrup that cost at wholesale $1.25 a gallon? What would he think if his employer taxed him a dollar a month for a doctor whether he needed one or not? What would he think if he was obliged to pay his employer 50 cents a month for a preacher?

“Yet such are Mr. Rockefeller’s Sunday school methods of conducting his mining business in Colorado,” says Mother Jones.

[Emphasis added. Newsclip added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Kate Hilliard, Socialist and Suffragist, Defends Mother Jones after Vicious Attack Made by Polly Pry

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Dorothy Adams re Mother Jones asleep moonlight, Tammany Tx p10, Aug 12, 1901—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 23, 1904
Kate S. Hilliard Defends Mother Jones from Vicious Attack by Polly Pry

From Goodwin’s Weekly (Salt Lake City, Utah) of January 16, 1904:

Kate Hilliard Defends Mother Jones re Polly Pry, Goodwin's Weekly p5, Jan 16, 1904

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Hellraisers Journal: Scandal Monger, Polly Pry, Claims Mother Jones Could be Former Madam Who Once Ran Houses of Ill-Repute

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Dorothy Adams re Mother Jones asleep moonlight, Tammany Tx p10, Aug 12, 1901—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 22, 1904
Denver, Colorado – The Polly Pry Claims Mother Jones Could Be Former Madam

Mother Jones per Polly Pry, Florence CO Dly Tb p1, Jan 5, 1904

Leonel Ross Campbell, Denver journalist now turned scandal monger, writing under the name of Polly Pry, has recently directed her prying gaze upon Mother Jones. In her magazine, The Polly Pry, Campbell claims to have evidence, supplied by the Pinkertons, that “proves” that Mother Jones once ran various houses of ill-repute in Denver, Omaha, Kansas City, Chicago, and San Francisco. The file, it is claimed, dates back to 1889.

According to the report, Mother Jones could be the madam who hired the “best looking girls on the row” for her house on Market Street in Denver where she went broke after her paramour, “Black-leg,” supposedly ran off with one of her girls. She then began drinking and was arrested and jailed several times. The Prying Polly further reported that this woman was:

…an inmate of Jennie Rogers’ house on Market street, Denver, some twelve years ago. She got into trouble with the Rogers woman for bribing all of her girls to leave her and go to a house in Omaha-for which act she was paid a procuress fee of $5 to $10 apiece for the girls.

She was a confidential servant in Rose Lovejoy’s private house on Market street, Denver, and with her several years. …

Lived in Eva Lewis’ house on Market street at the time the Coxey Army passed through here, and took a prominent part in the Denver preparation for their care.

Is known to Harry Loss, a piano player at 1925 Market street, who says he knew her first in Omaha in 1894, when she lived in a house at tenth and Douglass.

She was then selling clothes to the girls. A sewing woman for the sporting class living on Lawrence street…says it was commonly reported that she was a procuress by trade.

[Emphasis added.]

The Pinkerton report goes on to claim that a Mary Harris (using her maiden name) was a “vulgar, heartless, vicious creature, with a fiery temper and a cold-blooded brutality rare even in the slums.”

Now, in the slander sheet which bears her pen name, Miss Polly Pry is careful to maintain a distance from her lurid charges by reporting on a supposed report on Mother Jones. Very clever of her, and also in keeping with her usual style of reporting on labor leaders who are the often made the targets of her attacks. She has previously defamed U. M. W. District 15 President Howells, U. M. W. National Organizer William Wardjon, and U. M. W. National Executive Board Member John Gehr. Anti-union newspapers across the country see fit to pick up these sordid stories from The Polly Pry and reprint them.

For her part, Mother Jones refuses to give dignity to the charges by responding to them in any way. U. M. W. attorneys doubt that a law suit would be successful since the charges made by The Polly Pry are implied rather than made directly.

—————

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Hellraisers Journal: Colorado Federation of Labor Holds Convention to Consider Ways and Means of Supporting Ongoing Strikes of Miners-U. M. W. A. and W. F. M.

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, CFI Owns Colorado, re 1903 Strikes UMW WFM, Ab Chp 13, 1925—————-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 14, 1904
Denver, Colorado – Delegates of Convention of State F. of L. Consider Miners’ Strikes

News from Special Convention of the Colorado
State Federation of Labor

Monday January 11, 1904 Denver, Colorado
-Colorado Federation of Labor Holds Convention To Support Strikes

J. C. Sullivan Prz CO FoL, EFL p194, 104 Edition

More than 350 delegates are assembled today at the Waiters’ Hall in the Club Building in Denver. This is a Convention of the Colorado Federation of Labor called in order to consider ways and means of supporting the ongoing strikes of the Western Federation of Miners and the United Mine Workers of America. These courageous striking miners are now facing unprecedented Military Despotism at the hands of Generals Bell and Chase under the orders of Governor Peabody.

J. C. Sullivan, President of the C. F. of L. opened the Convention with these words:

Friends and Fellow Citizens, I Greet You:

An industrial condition that makes necessary the assembling of labor’s hosts in special convention is certainly significant, and, if the facial expressions of firm determination that are stamped on the countenances of this magnificent audience correctly reflects its feelings, there is still hope that “liberty” and “justice,” though banished from this centennial state of ours, “by order of a political accident,” and citizens forced to leave their homes and firesides at the bayonet point in the hands of “our” modern “Hessians,” for the sole and only reason that they refuse to join forces with our “modern Tories,” and say they will not sell their manhood on mammon’s greedy altar nor bow the knee in cringing sycophancy to the aristocratic anarchist, though he be clothed with brief official authority.

This, my friends, is a gathering that, if each and every delegate here assembled does his full duty to his country, to his fellow man, to himself and to the posterity of mankind, this meeting will go down in the annals of history as the most important gathering that has ever been held in Colorado up to this time. But if, for any reason, you fail to do your duty, you will, by that failure, assist the modern Tories and the mine operators’ hired Hessians to banish the lovers of liberty from their homes and firesides, and establish in their stead willing corporate vassals, to whom manhood is an unknown quality, to whom justice is a myth and liberty an illusion. The time is now, my friends, when not only labor’s voice must be heard, but labor’s hosts must act, if necessary, if justice is to be again enthroned in the fair State of Colorado.

[Emphasis added.]

Tuesday January 12, 1904 Denver, Colorado
-C. F. of L. Convention Receives Greetings from Mother Jones

Mother Jones, who is recovering from a serious illness in Trinidad, nevertheless sent her greetings to the Special Convention of the Colorado Federation of Labor now in progress in Denver. At the afternoon session yesterday, H. B. Waters, secretary of the Convention, read the following:

Trinidad, Colo.,
January 11, 1904

State Federation of Labor, Convention Hall, Denver, Colo.
To the Delegates of the State Federation of Labor:

Greeting-Let your deliberations be tempered with a high sense of justice for all mankind-malice toward none, for you are the bulwark of the nation. The day dawneth when you shall get your own.

Fraternally in the cause of labor,
MOTHER JONES

The chairman and the secretary of the Convention were instructed unanimously to answer Mother Jones:

To Mother Jones, Trinidad:

The greatest labor convention ever held in the state sends you greeting and wishes you health and God-speed.

J. C. SULLIVAN, President
H. B. WATERS, Secretary

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones, Miners’ Friend, Critically Ill in Trinidad, Colorado-Taken to Hospital as Safety Precaution

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Quote Mother Jones, CFI Owns Colorado, re 1903 Strikes UMW WFM, Ab Chp 13, 1925—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 10, 1904
Trinidad, Colorado – Mother Jones Critically Ill, Taken to Hospital

From the Harrisburg Telegraph (Pennsylvania) of January 9, 1904:

Drawing Mother Jones Ill in Trinidad CO, Harrisburg Tg PA p9, Jan 9, 1904

From The Denver Post of January 9, 1904:

TAKEN TO HOSPITAL
———-

Safety Precaution Taken for
“Mother” Jones.
———-

Trinidad, Colo., Jan. 9.-“Mother” Jones, national organizer for the United Mine Workers of America, who has been lying ill at the Coronado hotel in this city for the past three days from typhoid fever, was removed to the hospital at 1:45 this afternoon on advice of her physician, Dr. White. “Mother” Jones is threatened with pneumonia and while the disease has not yet developed, it was deemed best to prepare for the worst. “Mother” Jones is 63 years old and up to her present illness has been in fairly robust health.
 
[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: General Sherman Bell States He Will Throw Mother Jones in the Bull Pen Should the Opportunity Arise

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Quote Mother Jones, CFI Owns Colorado, re 1903 Strikes UMW WFM, Ab Chp 13, 1925—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 2, 1904
Military Despotism Rules Cripple Creek, Telluride and Southern Colorado

From the Duluth Labor World of January 2, 1904:

Gen Bell Will Throw Mother Jones in Bull Pen, LW p1, Jan 2, 1904

TEXT:

WILL THROW MOTHER JONES IN BULL PEN
Mother Jones Strongly Excoriates the Tyrant and Gov. Peabody.

Denver, Colo., Dec. 24-…General Bell, smarting under the stings of “Mother” Jones’ masterful excoriation of himself and Peabody, declares in stringent tones that if opportunity offers he will slap her in the bull pen. That declaration was unnecessary. Those who are at all acquainted with his record know grey hairs, womanhood nor any other of those things which true men revere and hold sacred are as nothing to him if they stand in the way of groveling service to his masters.

Editorial Suppressed.

The Victor Record, the official organ of the strikers, has had a military patrol and censor placed at the office. George E. Kyner, editor, was notified that no editorials reflecting in any way upon Governor Peabody or the militia would be allowed, nor could the daily official statement prepared by the miners’ executive committee be published. Next day the Record came out with a black-faced heading “Record Reflections”- a two-column blank space with a border, on the editorial page, indicating that the matter, whatever it was, had been suppressed.

The official statement of the Miners’ Union which was suppressed follows:

“The governor of the state of Colorado has today pretended to declare martial law in the Cripple Creek district. There is absolutely no justification for this outrage. The strike has been on for three months and but one serious crime has been committed and that cannot be laid to strike conditions. The alleged attempt to wreck a railroad train is a trick plot of two detectives employed by the mine owners.

“The Vindicator matter was an accident, or a crime committed by someone employed by the mine owners.

“The mine owners have lost the strike and hence their desperation.-District Union NO. 1, W. F. of M.”

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Five Homes Dynamited in New Castle, Colorado; U. M. W. Strike Leaders & Families Targeted

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Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege ed, Ab Chp III—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 18, 1903
New Castle, Colorado – Homes of Union Leaders Bombed

From The Denver Post of December 17, 1903:

New Castle UMW Homes Bombed, John Lawson, DP p1, 3, Dec 17, 1903

Thursday December 17, 1903, New Castle, Colorado
Homes of Five Strike Leaders Bombed While Families Sleep

At 4:47 this morning, while the families of striking coal miners slept, bombs went off in five homes of known strike leaders. Amazingly, no-one was seriously injured. In one of the homes, that of John Lawson, his wife, Olive Lawson, and little three-year-old daughter, Fern, were sleeping in the dining room, which had been turned into a bedroom due to the small size of the actual bedroom. The bomb went off underneath that small bedroom, where the bomber must have thought it would cause the most injury.

The home of W. G. Isaacs was also bombed. Brother Isaacs was away from home at time, which is the only reason that his two children were not killed. Mrs. Isaacs had brought the two little ones into her bed to sleep with her. The house was set on fire by the blast but Mrs. Isaacs was able to escape through a window near her bed, and managed to save both of the children. The family dog was sleeping near the children’s bed, and was found burned to death after the fire was put out.

The homes of three other strike leaders suffered similar damage, including the homes of William Doyle and Evan R. Davis. A building owned by John and James Doyle, occupied by six families was also bombed.

The bombs all went off early in the morning. The local union is planning a meeting today to form a committee to investigate the attacks since the local authorities seem disinclined to do so.

—————

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