Hellraisers Journal – Saturday April 25, 1914 Denver, Colorado – State Labor Leaders Issue Call to Arms
From the Denver United Labor Bulletin of April 25, 1914 CALL TO ARMS:
Call to Arms, Denver, Colorado, April 22, 1914
Organize the men in your community in companies of volunteers to protect the workers of Colorado against the murder and cremation of men, women and children by armed assassins in the employ of coal corporations, serving under the guise of state militiamen.
Gather together for defensive purposes all arms and ammunition legally available. Send name of leader of your company and actual number of men enlisted at once by wire, phone or mail to W. T. Hickey, Secretary of State Federation of Labor.
Hold all companies subject to order.
People having arms to spare for these defensive measures are requested to furnish same to local companies, and, where no company exists, send them to the State Federation of Labor.
The state is furnishing us no protection and we must protect ourselves, our wives and children, from these murderous assassins. We seek no quarrel with the state and we expect to break no law; we intend to exercise our lawful right as citizens, to defend our homes and our constitutional rights.
John R. LAWSON JOHN McLENNAN E. L. DOYLE JOHN RAMSEY W. T. HICKEY E. R. HOAGE T. W. TAYLOR CLARENCE MOOREHOUSE ERNEST MILLS
[Emphasis added.]
-Lawson, International Organizers from U. M. W. District 15. -McLennan, President of District 15, U. M. W. and also President of Colorado State Federation of Labor. -Doyle, Secretary-Treasurer of District 15 U. M. W. -Ramsey of the U. M. W. of A. -Hickey, Secretary of Colorado State Federation of Labor. -Hoage of the Denver Printing Press Assistants’ Union No 14. -Taylor and Moorehouse of the Denver Trades and Labor Assembly. -Mills, Secretary-Treasurer of Western Federation of Miners.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday April 16, 1914 Walsenburg, Colorado – Mother Jones Held in Cold Cellar Cell
From the Appeal to Reason of April 11, 1914:
Detail:
Note: Kostas (Gus) Marcos was the name of the striking miner who died as a result of being held in the cold cellar cell beneath the Huerfano County Courthouse at Walsenburg, Colorado.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday April 9, 1904 Colorado Miners Continue to Suffer Under Military Despotism
From The San Bernardino County Sun of April 2, 1904 -Military Despotism Continues in Colorado:
COLORADO MINERS STILL SUFFERING ———-
MILITARY’S DRASTIC ACTION ——— -Moyer Will not be Allowed Freedom. Orders are That Habeas Corpus Shall not be Accepted -Conditions in the Trinidad Coal Fields Continue Deplorable -Families Being Evicted. ———
by Associated Press to THE SUN.
The Denver Post April 4, 1904
DENVER. April 1-General Bell commanding the State troops at Telluride, this morning telephoned Chief of Police Armstrong to detail detectives to watch every movement of Secretary and Treasurer Heywood [Haywood] of the Western Federation of Miners, who is under arrest on a warrant issued by a local court, charging him with desecration of the American flag.
Bell insisted that Heywood be returned to Telluride, no matter how many local warrants were issued and when the time came, a sufficient number of soldiers will be sent from the camp to arrest him, or the Denver troops will be called out to take him.
President Moyer of the Federation last night was removed from the bull pen to the new city jail. He was then locked in a cell and denied all privileges. He is being fed only two meals daily. The Governor has ordered Bell to refuse to accept service of habeas corpus for the release of Moyer. He must stay in custody until the case is taken to the Supreme Court.
EVICTING COAL STRIKERS.
TRINIDAD, April 1.-Fully a dozen influential men among the strikers in Las Animas county have been deported in the last three days by order of Major Hill. The wholesale eviction of strikers in Gray Creek has begun. The military is refusing to allow the people evicted to settle in other parts of the country.
Almost penniless men and their families are compelled to walk long distances to reach points where assistance can be obtained. Many evictions are reported in other camps of the county and much suffering has ensued.
[Newsclip and emphasis added.]
IS COLORADO IN AMERICA?
Mrs Emma F. Langdon Reports from Colorado:
Moyer was arrested on the 26th day of March, 1904, at Ouray, and taken to Telluride, charged with desecration of the flag. He was released under $500 bond only to be immediately re-arrested by the military authorities. A warrant was also sworn out charging Secretary-Treasurer Haywoodwith the same offense, but before it was served a similar one had been sworn out in Denver and Haywood remained in custody of the Denver officers. Governor Peabody, when interviewed concerning the re-arrest of Moyer, disclaimed any knowledge of the facts, but stated that it was the intention to rearrest Moyer every time he secured his release on bonds.
Mrs Langdon repeats the question raised by the “Desecrated” Flag Poster:
Is Colorado in America? If you consult the map you will find it there. If you read the facts in this recent industrial struggle in the light of American history and traditions, you will find nothing to recall memories of our country’s youth or the hopes that led strange people across the sea to stretch wider the boundaries of a land where none were so strong as to be above the laws and none so weak as to be beneath their protection. There is nothing in recent history, save by the way of contrast, to recall the fact that ours is the Centennial state marking more than one hundred years of progress under the idea that ”all men are created free and equal with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
It is an unpleasant awakening from thoughts like these to a realization of such facts as were inscribed upon a symbol of the flag and burned into the hearts of thousands of Colorado’s citizens.
Desecration of the flag? Was it not the deeds done under it and not the truths inscribed upon it that constituted the desecration?
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday March 10, 1914 “Why, Governor Ammons?” by Mrs. Lizabeth A. Williams
From the Denver United Labor Bulletin of March 7, 1914:
WHY, GOVERNOR AMMONS? -by Mrs. Lizabeth A. Williams
Oh, what has become of your once fair name, That is doomed to die in disgrace and shame, Governor Ammons? Why cease the whir of our industry’s wheel, Why end the output of iron and steel, Why call for arms, so that labor should kneel, Governor Ammons?
[…..]
Your victims are tortured, hungry and cold, Truth has been crushed, our rights have been sold, Governor Ammons. A white-haired mother, in her eighty-one, Long a victim of your bayonet and gun, What would your soul do if you were her son, Governor Ammons?
Your reign of injustice will soon be o’er, Your cossacks will ride on their raids no more, Governor Ammons. Our martyred ballots took our rights away, Your blood-stained power we have felt each day, Before the Judge of All what will you say, Governor Ammons?
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 20, 1904 News from Colorado Strike Zones of Telluride and Cripple Creek
From The Denver Post of January 15, 1904:
SIBERIAN EXILING SCENES.
Telluride, Colo., Jan. 15-Tears, curses, maledictions and prayers were heard at the depot this morning when the train pulled out of the station having on board six union miners, who were being deported by the military. The men were given breakfast early, the meal being served from the Sheridan hotel, after which the wife of one of them was reluctantly permitted to visit her husband in jail. At 8 o’clock a bunch of blue-coats, under the command of Captain Scholz, marched to the court house and the prisoners were taken to the county jail and formed into line, ready for the march to the station.
A woman with a small child attempted to fall in line with her husband, but was brutally prevented by the soldiers, who forced her back on the sidewalk. With a face drawn with bitter agony and grief she endeavored to keep up with the soldiers as they marched down the streets, but the prisoners had reached the train long before she had gone a block.
At the depot the men were immediately put aboard the train and two soldiers stationed at the car windows. The relatives of the men were allowed to talk to them, and for a moment the air was filled with tearful good-byes and well wishes.
Fifteen minutes before the signal was given to start three women came running down the track. One of them , a Mabel Marchinado, a mere girl, hardly 17 years old, weeping bitterly, rushed over the icy platform to the window in which one of the men was sitting, and exclaimed: “oh, papa, what are they going to do with you?”
Her father, Tony Marchinado, endeavored to comfort her, but the girl continued sobbing pitifully. The sympathy of the entire crowd at the depot went out to this girl, and some turned away. Then the soldiers ordered her to move on.
The girl suddenly ceased weeping and, turning to those standing, and in a voice loud enough for the military to hear, said: “I think it’s living shame for men living in this country to be treated in such a manner.” She was not arrested.
The woman with the small child in the meantime reached the depot almost exhausted. She purchased a ticket and boarded the train on which her husband was about to be sent into exile. She cried bitterly and her baby was blue with cold. “I am too sick to work and look after our baby alone, and I am going with my husband, if it means the jail.” she moaned. If ever volumes of mute sympathy went out from a crowd, it went out greater as she bent down her head and fondly kissed the lips of her offspring, in vain endeavor to hush its cries from the biting cold. It was by far the saddest incident yet recorded in the military occupation of Telluride and the subsequent deportation of striking miners…
[Emphasis added.]
The names of the six deported men are: Tony Marchinado, Tony Sartoris, Louis Sartoris, F. W. Wells, Matt Lingol and Battiste Monchiando.
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
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.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 8, 1914 Denver, Colorado – Stormy Petrel of the Strikers States She Will Return
From the San Francisco Bulletin of January 7, 1914:
From the Chicago Day Book of January 5, 1914:
MOTHER JONES DEPORTED
Denver, Col., Jan. 5.-“Mother” Jones, the “angel” of the miners, was forcibly deported from the coal strike district at Trinidad on orders of General Chase, who had her met at the depot “when she arrived from El Paso and kept under surveillance of a detachment of military until the arrival of a train for Denver, when she was put aboard.
Lieut. H. O. Nichols and four soldiers guarded her to Denver. When the train reached Walsenburg, where “Mother” Jones had expected to make a speech to the strikers, she tried to talk to a group gathered around the station, but was prevented.
As the train pulled out of the station, she shouted: “I expect to visit you again, when Colorado is made part of the United States, but now-”
General Chase has ordered that she be sent out of the district never to return so long as the strike lasts. He says she will be deported every time she comes back. Mother Jones says she will return in two weeks.
I’ll go back; they can’t keep me from my boys. I am not afraid of all the troops in the State. -Mother Jones, New York Times January 5, 1914 —————
Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 5, 1914 Trinidad, Colorado – Mother Jones Deported from Strike Zone by Militia
From The Washington Times of January 5, 1914:
From The New York Times of January 5, 1914:
COLORADO TROOPS OUST MOTHER JONES ———- Woman Strike Agitator Deported from Trinidad Under Guard of Soldiers ———–
WARNED NEVER TO RETURN ———- One Thousand Taxpayers Meet and Warn Other Agitators to Get Out in Twenty-for Hours. ———-
Special to The New York Times.
TRINIDAD, Col., Jan. 4-“Mother” Jones was seized by the militia upon her arrival at Trinidad this morning from El Paso, taken from a Santa Fe train, held for two hours and deported from the strike district.
Capt. E. A. Smith, acting under orders from Gen. John Chase, met the train with a detachment of soldiers. The troops prevented a demonstration from the strikers at the station.
Mother Jones was held under surveillance until a Colorado & Southern train arrived from Denver. Then she was place aboard the train under guard of a lieutenant and four soldiers, and ordered never to return to the district. She had planned to spend several days among the coal strikers, and was to make a speech to-day at Walsenburg. The train on which she was being held under guard passed through Walsenburg.
Gen. Chase had been notified that she was on the way to Trinidad and acted so quietly that none of the strikers knew of his plans to deport her. When the soldiers took her in charge, she said:”I never had believed you would go this far.”
Contrary to her usual custom, she did not make any protest. While she was being held here she was not permitted to talk to any of the strikers or union leaders, the soldiers refusing to allow John McLennon, head of the mine workers, to speak to her.
At Walsenburg the train stopped for only a few minutes. Thousands of strikers, having been apprised by telephone of Mother Jones’s deportation, were at the station, but none was allowed to approach near enough to speak to her. However, she tried to make a speech.
The train pulled out just as she was assuring the miners that she would return to Colorado “as soon as it becomes a part of the United States.”
———-
Denver Col., Jan. 4-“The deportation of Mother Jones was the most disgraceful act ever perpetrated by supposed police officers in the Union,” said John McLennon [McLennan], President of the Colorado State Federation of Labor tonight.
“I’ll go back; they can’t keep me from my boys,” said Mother Jones on her arrival here to-night from Trinidad. “I am not afraid of all the troops in the State.”
“Gov. Ammons said: ” I do not care to express an opinion regarding the deportation of Mother Jones, because I am not fully aware of the circumstances, but I would not hesitate to express an opinion if the person concerned were a resident of Trinidad.”
After the deportation, Gen. Chase gave out this statement:
“Mrs. Jones was met at the train this morning by the military escort acting under instructions not to permit her to remain in this district. The detail took charge of Mrs. Jones and her baggage and she was accompanied out of the district under guard after she had been given breakfast. The step was taken in accordance with my instructions to preserve peace in the district. The presence of Mother Jones here at this time cannot be tolerated.She had planned to go to the Ludlow tent colony of strikers to stop the desertion of union members.
“If she returns she will be placed in jail and held incommunicado.”
Company G. First Infantry, Colorado National Guard, to-night was ordered to leave here tomorrow morning for Oak Creek to take charge of the strike situation in that district. In issuing the order Gen. Chase said that seventy-five men would leave on a special train.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 3, 1914 Trinidad, Colorado – State Federation of Labor Committee Begins Investigation
From the Denver United Labor Bulletin of December 27, 1913:
—————
Wednesday December 24, 1913
Trinidad, Colorado – C. F. of L. Investigating Committee Begins Hearings
The Committee established by the recent Convention of the Colorado Federation of Labor to investigate alleged abuse by the military met in Trinidad yesterday to begin hearings on the matter. Now, Professor Brewster was asked to sit on the committee despite his views on the United Mine Workers which are less than favorable. Yet, the Professor is trusted as an honorable and fair man, willing to listen objectively to the evidence.
General Chase has refused to meet with the committee in spite of the letter from Governor Ammons requiring him to do so. He indicates that, perhaps, he will find the time at a later date to meet with the C. F. of L. Investigating Committee.
The committee heard testimony from Mrs. Maggie Dominske of Ludlow. She described how she was on her way to the Ludlow post office with a group of women when they were stopped by militiamen:
They put up their guns and said, “God damn you, don’t you go another step. If you do,we’ll shoot you. We’re getting tired of these sons-of-bitches coming up here and we’re going to put a stop to it.”
The Professor asked if the women had been on a public road, and Mrs. Dominske replied that, yes indeed, they had been using a public road. The Professor declared:
I am surprised. Surprised. I wouldn’t have believed it if I had not heard it straight from these women. It is plain they are telling the truth.
We imagine that the good Professor will encounter many more such surprises before the investigation is completed.
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Wednesday December 31, 1913
Ludlow, Colorado – Lt Linderfelt declares himself “Jesus Christ”
Yesterday evening, a cavalryman was injured when his horse tripped on a piece of barbed wire. The injured man was brought to the Ludlow depot. A few minutes later Lieutenant Linderfelt appeared and went into a rage. Louie Tikas happened to be at the depot waiting for a train, also at the station was a boy of about fifteen years. Linderfelt focused on that boy, accusing him of setting the wire, and, when the boy denied the charge, began to beat him. Linderfelt next began to berate Louie:
There you are, you round-face son-of-a-bitch. You’re responsible for that wire.
Louie remained calm, but Linderfelt continued to rage. He gave an order to his men:
You Tollerburg fellows beat it over to the colony and cut every God damned wire around the place. The first man that interferes with you-shoot his head off.
Linderfelt then punched Louie in the face as he yelled:
I am Jesus Christ, and my men on horses are Jesus Christs, and we must be obeyed.
Witnesses report that Louie Tikas maintained his usual calm as Linderfelt struck him several more times. The lieutenant than ordered his men to take Louie to the military camp.
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