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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…..
[Photograph, paragraph break and emphasis added.]