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Hellraisers Journal – Friday March 13, 1914
Chicago, Illinois – Former Michigan Gunthug Testifies Before House Committee
From the Chicago Day Book of March 10, 1914:
Tag: Conditions in Copper Mines of Michigan House Committee Investigation 1914
Hellraisers Journal: “Calumet Witnesses Repeat Charges That Man Wearing Alliance Button Started Christmas Eve Death Rush.”
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday March 12, 1914
Calumet, Michigan – House Committee Hears Testimony on Italian Hall Disaster
From The Indianapolis Sunday Star of March 8, 1914:
SWEAR STRANGER STIRRED UP PANIC
———-
Calumet Witnesses Repeat Charges That
Man Wearing Alliance Button Started
Christmas Eve Death Rush.
———-STORIES OF WITNESSES VARY
———-Prosecutor Conducts Inquiry to Determine
Truth of Story That Children Died
as Result of Premeditated Plot.———- 
CALUMET, Mich., March 7.-Persons who testified before the coroner’s inquest last January that a man wearing a “Citizens’ Alliance” button started the Christmas eve panic, here in Italian Hall today, repeated their assertions before Representatives Taylor of Arkansas and Casey of Pennsylvania, congressional investigators.
Description of the man varied as greatly as it did before the coroner’s jury, which body disregarded this line of testimony in reaching an open verdict.
O. N. Hilton was present to represent the Western Federation of Miners, but he was not allowed to question the witnesses as the full committee at Houghton had agreed that Anthony Lucas, prosecutor of Houghton County, and the committee members should do all the questioning.
Wore Button on Coat. Mrs. Josephine Leskela [Leskella] testified that she was near the middle of the hall when a man who stood alongside her yelled “fire, fire” and then started for the door. She said he was a large man with a long overcoat and that he wore the button of the Citizens’ Alliance on his coat.John Burogr, 18 years old [John Burcar, age 13], said the cry of “fire” was given by a short stout man.
“He wore a long overcoat with the fur collar turned up and had a Citizens’ Alliance button on his breast pocket,” said this witness.
Could Not See Lettering. Mrs. Mary Koskolos [Koskela] said a large stout man cried “fire, rush,” and the panic started. She said he wore a button, but she could not distinguish the lettering on it.Mrs. Elisha Lesh [Elin Lesh] heard a male voice cry “fire” twice in English, and then its Slavonic equivalent, “watra.”
Mrs. Anna Lustig, who lost a little boy in the rush, was positive that the man who cried “fire” wore the insignia of the Citizens’ Alliance.
Another 12-year-old boy, Frank Shaltz [Schaltz], said he heard a man, wearing a “white button, with a red inscription,” cry “fire.” He said the man had a dark mustache and he recognized him as one he had seen on the street several weeks before, carrying a club.
This One Saw Two Men. Eric Ericcson [Erick Erickson] testified that he heard some one behind him yell “fire.” He turned to see who had uttered the cry and saw two well-dressed men moving toward the door. Both wore Citizens’ Alliance buttons, he said. He could not swear that either of these men raised the cry.Charles Olsen said he was standing on a chair when he heard a cry of “fire” in English, and no other language. He saw the man, he said, and he described him as being 5 feet 8 inches in height and wearing a dark gray overcoat and gray cap. The witness thought the button the man wore on his coat was the badge of the Citizens’ Alliance, although he was not close enough to say positively.
Paul Jakkola said he was standing in the vestibule when a man wearing the alliance button came up the stairway and shouted “fire” twice. Witness said he was a good-sized man, wearing a coat with a corduroy collar and a fur cap pulled over his forehead. He had a dark mustache.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: Charles Tanner Testifies Regarding Attack on Charles Moyer by Citizens Alliance Mob
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday February 27, 1914
Hancock, Michigan – Charles Tanner Testifies Before House Sub-Committee
From The Milwaukee Leader of February 25, 1914:
Hellraisers Journal: Margaret Fazekas, Age 14, Holds Her Own as Witness Before House Subcommittee at Hancock, Michigan
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday February 25, 1914
Margaret Fazekas Testifies Before House Subcommittee
Tuesday February 24, 1914 – Hancock, Michigan
Although only 14 years old, Margaret Fazekas appeared before the Congressional Investigating Committee this morning and held her own throughout the long interrogation. Margaret is the young girl who was shot in the back of the head last September as she performed her picket duty:
MARGARET FAZEKAS, a witness, sworn, testified on examination as follows:
Mr. HILTON [Attorney for the Miners]. How old are you?
The Witness. I was 14 in August.
Mr. HILTON. Where do you live?
The Witness. Wolverine.
Mr. HILTON. Do you remember the 1st day of September last and what happened on that day?
The Witness. Yes, sir. _ ,
Mr. HILTON. Tell what happened on the 1st day of September.
The Witness. September 1 I went out on picket duty with the other women. We were marching back and forth on the streets, and there was about 13 deputies, and there was some more deputies on the other side to those that were close to us. There were about 13, and they were telling us—we weren’t doing any harm at all—they told us to go home for breakfast, and we said we had just as much— we can stay there just as well as they can. We weren’t doing any thing at all. Some of the ladies told them to go for breakfast, and then they turned back, and we thought they were going home for breakfast. But when they turned back toward us they had the revolvers in their hands, and they started shooting, and as soon as I saw the revolvers I turned back and started to run, and so I don’t know anything afterwards.
Mr. HILTON. Were you shot?
The Witness. Yes, sir.
Mr. HILTON. Show the committee where you were shot. (The witness removed her hat and indicated to the committee the location of the wound on the side of her head.)
The Witness. My hair is on top so it doesn’t show.
The CHAIRMAN [Congressman Taylor]. Is it in the back of the head, just behind the left ear?
The Witness. Yes, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. Did the bullet enter your brain?
The Witness. I don’t know. Dr. Roach said some of my brain came out, but he put it back in again, and he took a bone out of it—a small bone.
Mr. HILTON. How long were you in the hospital?
The Witness. Four weeks and a half.
Mr. HILTON. Not expected to live? The
Witness. No, sir; nobody expected it.
Hellraisers Journal: Women of Michigan Copper Country Tell of Brutal Treatment from Company Guards; Berger Testifies
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 24, 1914
Hancock, Michigan – Deputized Company Gunthugs Brutalize Women
From the Detroit Evening Times of February 17, 1914:
From the Duluth Labor World of February 21, 1914:
BERGER TESTIFIES AT STRIKE INQUIRY
———-
Says Socialist Party Had Nothing to Do With Strike
Simply Contributed Money
———-Victor Berger appeared before the congressional committee at Hancock [Michigan] Tuesday to tell what he knew about the copper strike. Mr. Berger appeared as a committee witness. He was not called by the Western Federation of Miners. He declared the Socialist party had nothing to do with calling the strike and nothing to do with fomenting it. “When the strikers got hard up” he said, “the Socialists gave them financial aid up to $25,000 in money and a greater quantity of clothing.”
Mr. Berger said the national flag of the Socialists was the Star Spangled Banner, but “the red flag is our international flag-the red flag of brotherhood.”
Women Were Assaulted.
The committee listened to a large number of women witnesses during the week. One woman said she was hit in the back by a rock thrown by a gunman. She was afterwards arrested and was taken to jail in an automobile carrying her 4-months-old baby with her. The baby died from exposure from the cold a few days later. She has not been able to find out why she was arrested…..
The woman whose baby died was Margaret Cibacca. Her testimony, describing how she was taken into custody along with her children and then dumped out into the cold, is disturbing. Mrs. Cibacca the wife of a striking copper miner, was at home with her five children, ages 3 months to six years, when the deputies came pounding at her door. They told her that they wanted her to come to the mining office to visit a sick woman.
She gathered up her five children and went with them in their automobile to the mining office of the Baltic Mine. They forced her to leave the three older children outside in the cold with only the six-year-old to watch them. The two littlest ones, they allowed her to take inside. Once they had her in the office, they locked the door. She was alone in there with three deputies. There was no sick woman.
She asked why she was there, what she had done, and they laughed at her and beat her, even as she held her little children. She begged them to let her go home and feed her children, and they laughed at her again and began to beat her with a club on her side and on her back as she attempted to ward off the blows and protect her tiny children. The bruises can still be seen on her back.
Finally, they forced her with her children into the automobile for the drive to Houghton to see Justice Little. On the way they told her that she would be locked up for six months. Justice Little questioned her for about a half hour and then told her she was free to go, but go where? There was no ride back to Baltic, eight miles away, the deputies were gone, and she had no money.
At last, her husband was able to come for her. He brought blankets for the children who were cold to the bone, especially the three-month-old baby, from waiting outside for their father. They were too late for the train back to Baltic, and the striking miner was forced to spend his meager strike benefit on a rented automobile to take his tired, hungry, and terrified family home.
The baby came down deathly ill the next day, and died shortly thereafter.
Hellraisers Journal: House Sub-Committee Hearings on Mine Conditions Underway in Denver, Colorado and Hancock, Michigan
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 14, 1914
House Sub-Committee Hearings Underway in Colorado and Michigan
From The Day Book of February 14, 1914
Representatives Casey, Howell and Taylor Are on the Job in Michigan:
From The Indianapolis News of February 9, 1914
U. S. Sub-Committees to Investigate Mining Conditions in Michigan and Colorado:
HOWELL SNOWBOUND;
STRIKE INQUIRY DELAYED
———-CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE IN MICHIGAN LACKS QUORUM.
———-
REPRESENTATIVES KEPT IN
———-HANCOCK, Mich., February 9.-The train bearing Representative Joseph Howell, of Utah, the member necessary to make a quorum of the congressional investigating committee, was reported storm-bound somewhere on the lower peninsula today and prospects for a meeting dwindled as the day advanced. Chairman Taylor said that it was unlikely that hearings would begin before tomorrow.
The heaviest snowfall of the winter has kept Mr. Taylor and Representative Casey of Pennsylvania indoors since their arrival on Saturday and they have had no opportunity to see any of the copper country beyond the range of vision from their hotel.
—————
OPENS HEARING IN DENVER
———-
Congressional Subcommittee Seeks Evidence
of Law Violations.DENVER, Colo., February 9.-Hearing of testimony in the federal investigation of the Colorado coal miners’ strike began in the senate chamber of the state capitol today. The subcommittee of the house committee on mines and mining which arrived from Washington yesterday, will hold hearings in Denver and at Trinidad, Pueblo, Boulder and other points, to determine whether federal statutes have been violated and to determine on recommendations for the settlement of the Colorado strike and the prevention of future labor struggles.
When today’s hearing opened E. V. Brake, deputy labor commissioner; Professor Russell D. George, state geologist, and James Dalrymple, chief coal mining inspector, gave testimony as to general coal mining conditions in Colorado.
Two distinct strikes are included in the investigation, to be made by the committee. The miners in the northern Colorado coal fields were called out in April 1910, and that strike never has been settled. Since then, many of the strikebreakers who took the places of the union men have been organized by the United Mine Workers of America, and a considerable part of them walked out with the southern men when the strike of all the coal miners in the state was called on September 23, 1913.
The investigating committee consists of Martin D. Foster (Dem.), Chairman, Illinois; James Francis Byrnes (Dem.), South Carolina; John M. Evans (Dem.), Montana; Richard Wilson Austin (Rep.), Tenn., and Howard Sutherland (Rep.), West Virginia.
[Emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: News from the Michigan Copper Strike: Striker Shot, Seriously Wounded; Seeberville Murder Trial Begins; Congressmen on the Way
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday February 5, 1914
News from Michigan Copper Strike: Striker Shot; May Prove Fatal
From The Calumet News of February 2, 1914:
[Note: Names above are incorrect, see below.]
Monday February 2, 1914, Hancock-Houghton, Michigan
–Striker John Laitila Shot by Scabs, Not Expected to Live
John Laitila, striking copper miner, was shot by James Johnson, a scab, yesterday near the Superior mine as he confronted Johnson and three other scabs who were on their way to work. Laitila is not expected to live. Prosecuting Attorney Lucas is looking into the matter. An arrest is expected. We have learned that the Lucas doubts the story of self-defense told by Johnson, and further believes that the gun found on Laitila was planted on him by the killers.
The trial of the Waddell men in the killing of the strikers at the Seeberville boarding house begins today. Six gunthugs are on trial, and the sympathy of the kept press almost brings tears to the eyes. According to The Daily Mining Gazette, the gunthugs are “young men of good character and agreeable social manners,” while the men they murdered were “ugly” and “drunk.” Left unexplained by the Gazette is why men of such good character would come to seize men, without authority of law, and, when the men resisted being unlawfully seized, then shoot up a home, especially one containing a family with young children..
From The Indianapolis Star of February 3, 1914:
House Mine Committees To Inquire into Strikes
Washington, Feb. 1-Subcommittees of the House committee on mines will leave Washington next Wednesday night for the West to investigate the Colorado and Michigan mine strikes.
The Colorado investigators, Representatives Foster, Illinois, chairman; Byrnes, South Carolina; Evans, Montana (Democrats); Austin, Tennessee, and Sutherland, West Virginia (Republicans), will go first to Denver, then to Trinidad and Pueblo and later to Boulder.
Representatives Taylor of Colorado, chairman; Hamlin, Mississippi; Carey, Pennsylvania (Democrats); Howell, Utah, and Switzer, Ohio (Republicans), the subcommittee for the Michigan inquiry, will go direct to Calumet and take in Houghton and other places in the strike-affected area.
None of the committeemen would venture a prediction as to how long their tasks would occupy them.
[Emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “Calumet” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part II-Profits, Wages and Working Conditions
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 3, 1914
“Calumet” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part II-Profits, Wages and Working Conditions
From the International Socialist Review of February 1914:
[Part II of II]
We have seen how the copper country is governed by an “invisible government”; from the judge on the bench, to the grand jury in session; from the national guard of the state of Michigan, on “duty,” since July 24, 1913, to the sheriff with his hundreds of imported professional strike breakers whom he swore in as deputies. The Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, Calumet, is the invisible government of Michigan.
This poor-little-rich corporation was “created” in the early fifties. According to a statement given out by Attorney Peterman, and endorsed by General Manager W. F. Denton, and General Manager C. L. Lawton, we find this devout confession: ”The profits of the Calumet and Hecla have been large, but they were due solely to the fact that the Creator put such rich ore in the company’s ground.”
However, Congress in the year of our Lord, 1852, seems to have been in total ignorance of this little gift on the Creator’s part to the copper crowd, for we find that “it gave to the state of Michigan 750,000 acres of public land, to aid it in building a ship canal around the Falls of St. Mary. The state in turn bargained this land to the contractors who built the canal, at a dollar and a quarter an acre. The lands thus disposed of at so beggarly a price were supposed to be swamp, or overflowed lands, but somehow, and strange to say, a part of them are now the rocky matrices from which the Calumet and Hecla has long been extracting shot-copper,-that company having in some way got hold of them. Years later a man named Chandler, who claimed to have bought the same land over again from the State of Michigan, brought a suit to dispossess the copper company,-charging all sorts of fraud in the switching of swamps so as to be quarries of copper-bearing rock. But the Supreme Court ruled against him, on the ground that as he got his deed from the state, he was in no better plight than the state, and that the state could not go back on its first deed to the canal contractors: so the Calumet and Hecla people kept it.”
This “good thing” was capitalized for $2,500,000 in shares of $25 each, instead of $100-note that. Of this $25 a share, only $12 was paid in. A total cash investment of $1,200,000. According to the Mining and Engineering World of December 27th, Calumet and Hecla has declared dividends on issued capitalization to December 1, 1913, amounting to $121,650,000, or $1,216 a share or $101 profits for each dollar invested.
Dividends for 1900 amounted to 320 per cent; for 1906, 280 per cent; for 1907, 260 per cent. In the Boston market, the stock was quoted on the day before New Years, at 427, bid price. Bearing in mind that the par value of the shares is but $25, this figure means that the stock is now worth more than 1,700 per cent, and bearing in mind also that only $12 a share was actually paid in, it means more than 3,400 per cent, market value. The president of the company receives a salary greater than the president of the United States.
Not long ago, when dividends threatened to be unusually enormous, the company purchased an extensive island in Lake Superior, stocked it with the finest game, and it is now used by stockholders of the company as a hunting preserve.
And the capitalists, who have never seen the inside of a mine shaft, who have stolen and defrauded to gain possession of the Calumet mines, have refused to permit their wage slaves, who produce all the wealth brought out of the mines, to organize into a union. They have denied the right of these workers to organize to demand more wages and better working conditions. Their arrogance is summed up in the words “We have nothing to arbitrate.”
These capitalists want MORE labor from the laborers. They are not satisfied with having stolen hundreds of millions from the men who have dug the wealth from the dangerous recesses of the earth. They demand still MORE.
* * * * * * *
Hellraisers Journal: Charles Moyer, President of Western Federation of Miners, Speaks at Convention of United Mine Workers; House Committee to Investigate Miners’ Strikes in Michigan and Colorado
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 1, 1914
Indianapolis, Indiana – President Moyer Speaks at Mine Workers’ Convention
From The Indianapolis News of January 26, 1914:
Charles Moyer, President of the Western Federation of Miners gave a long speech at the Convention of the United Mine Workers now in progress in Indianapolis. In his speech, President Moyer described the ongoing violations of Constitutional Rights in both the Colorado and the Michigan strikes:
…..What is being done in the state of Colorado in the miners’ strike, is being done in the state of Michigan. I don’t think it is any worse. In the state of Colorado men and women have been mistreated by the military, by the armed thugs of the mine owners’ association; they have been arrested without warrant; they have been sent to jail; they have been deprived of all of those rights that are supposed to belong to an American citizen, or one living under this government, the same as they have in Colorado.
Mother Jones has been deprived of her liberty by the military, and is now confined in the custody of the military of that state, without any warrant, absolutely deprived of her constitutional rights.
In the state of Michigan representatives of organized labor have been assaulted, ordered from the state, deprived of every right that we are supposed to enjoy under this great Constitution of ours, and yet, after months of effort we are at this time uncertain as to whether our national government, our representatives down at Washington, are going to make an investigation: are going to inquire into the facts as whether or not these things that we claim and that we believe we furnished them a preponderance of evidence of, are in violation of our American citizenship. They say, I believe, as an excuse for their hesitancy in acting, that they do not want to interfere with state rights, and in answer to that we say that the Constitution of the United States gives the right to every American citizen to meet in peaceable assembly, to freely express himself in speech…..
[Photograph added emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: Big Annie Clemenc, Strikers’ Flag Bearer, Seriously Ill at Her Mother’s Home in Calumet, Michigan
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 19, 1914
Calumet, Michigan – Annie Clemenc Seriously Ill at Her Mother’s Home
From the Dayton Daily News of January 18, 1914:
Saturday January 19, 1914 – Calumet, Michigan
–Annie Clemenc, Seriously Ill, Cared for at Her Mother’s Home
Annie Clemenc of Calumet has been very ill and under a doctor’s care since early this month. Charles Edward Russell who is in the strike zone as part of the Socialist Party Investigating Committee went to visit her on January 10th. He reported that “she lay in her mother’s house, unconscious part of the time and part of the time shaken with nervous convulsions.” She is receiving sickness benefits from Slovenska Narodna Podporna Jednota (Slovene National Benefit Society), something she has never needed before.
We are left to wonder how much of a role the Italian Hall Massacre plays in her illness. Annie, as President of the Calumet Women’s Auxiliary (W. F. of M.), was the driving force behind organizing the Christmas Party for the strikers’ children. The evening began with so much joy, but then ended with Annie holding a dead child in her arms, and attempting hopelessly to revive the little one.