Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 9, 1914
Colorado Coalfield War – Don MacGregor Lays Down His Pen and Picks Up a Gun
April 27-29, 1914 – Battle of the Hogback Above Walsenburg
Don MacGregor Leads the Redneck Miners’ Army
Striking Miners at Camp Beshoar, Ready for Battle
The Battle of the Hogback between the strikers and the mine guards raged for three days on the ridge above Walsenburg with losses reported on both sides. The Hogback extends west from the northern edge of downtown Walsenburg. Here the miners were led by Don MacGregor, dressed in “top boots and bandoliers.” From their position on the Hogback striking miners attacked the Walsen Mine and the mines near Toltec and Picton. They established their headquarters at the Toltec Union Hall.Sheriff Farr declined to participate in the battle. He and his guards barricaded themselves within the granite courthouse as the miners took control of parts of Walsenburg, including 7th Street. The miners ran supplies from there out along the Hogback to their embattled comrades.
Don MacGregor, Reporter for the Denver Express
We can only speculate as to what caused MacGregor to lay down his pen to join the fight of the miners. He had been covering the strike from the beginning for the pro-union Denver Express. He was there that first day of blowing rain and snow as the evicted miners and their families came down from the hills and began to set up camp at the Ludlow Tent Colony. He reported:
No one who did not see that exodus can imagine its pathos. The exodus from Egypt was a triumph, the going forth of a people set free. The exodus of the Boers from Cape Colony was the trek of a united people seeking freedom.
But this yesterday, that wound its bowed, weary way between the coal hills on the one side and the far-stretching prairie on the other, through the rain and the mud, was an Exodus of woe, of a people leaving known fears for new terrors, a hopeless people seeking new hope, a people born to suffering going forth to new suffering.
And they struggled along the roads interminably. In an hour’s drive between Trinidad and Ludlow, 57 wagons were passed, and others seemed to be streaming down to the main road from every by-path.
Every wagon was the same, with its high piled furniture, and its bewildered woebegone family perched atop. And the furniture! What a mockery to the state’s boasted riches. Little piles of rickety chairs. Little piles of miserable looking straw bedding. Little piles of kitchen utensils. And all so worn and badly used they would have been the scorn of any second-hand dealer on Larimer Street.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 3, 1914 After Speech by Mother Jones, Kansas Miners Donate Treasury
April 30, 1914, Pittsburg, Kansas -Mother Jones Addresses Convention of District 14, U. M. W. A.
Mother Jones gave a long speech Thursday, April 30th, in Pittsburg, Kansas, at the Convention of District 14, United Mine workers of America. She came seeking donations for the striking miners of Colorado, and, in the end, the miners of Kansas gave her all that she asked for.
MOTHER JONES INTRODUCED TO THE MINERS OF KANSAS
Chairman [John P.] White: Now, this morning I know that I voice the sentiments of this convention when I say that we appreciate the presence here of our great old organizer, Mother Jones. (Applause.)
Yesterday I gave you a pretty strong bump about Colorado, and what you were going to do about the money that you had loaned the national organization, that I plead guilty to being responsible for, so God help you for I put you in the hands of Mother Jones now. (Loud applause.)
A Delegate: I think the brothers ought to put up their pipes, put them in their pockets.
Mother Jones: You should join John D. Rockefeller, you are getting so nice…
The Colorado Coal War
[Mother Jones continued]: You see, my brothers, the trouble with us all is we don’t feel the pains of our fellow beings in the great struggle. I wonder if the nation felt horror of that affair at Ludlow? Why, if that happened in Mexico we would go down to clean up Mexico, and it happened here at home and there is very little said about it, when every man should shoulder his gun and start to Colorado to stop the war there. (Applause.)
Louie Tikas with the Flag of Ludlow
…No time in modern history has there been anything so horrible as this trouble in Colorado. I know those men in Colorado pretty well. No state in the Union has truer, better fellows; they have made a great fight against the men in power. There is no question about it. The poor fellow that got killed, this Greek [Louie Tikas], when I went to Ludlow, when the battle first started, the tears came streaming down his face, and he said, “Mother, they jumped at me to go war, and I got away and let the capitalists fight their own battle. I am here now, and this is my battle, the battle of right for the class that I belong to.” That summed up the whole philosophy of the labor movement. In other words, it was a battle for freedom for the class that he belonged to. And he said, “Mother, I need a gun.” I said, “You will have one, Louie, if Mother has to take her hat off and sell it, you will get the gun.” (Applause.)
Now, those brave men were the ones brought over, most of them, after the last strike that we had in Colorado; Rockefeller sent his agents to Europe and brought those fellows over. He has been able to crush them, rob them, persecute them until he has made his millions out of their precious blood, and then he goes into church on Sunday and is hallowed by the people of this great nation.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday December 4, 1913
Coal Miners of Southern Colorado Are Fighting to Win, Part II
From the International Socialist Review of December 1913:
[Part II of II]
Some one has said, “A fool in revolt is infinitely wiser than a learned philosopher apologizing for his chains.” Believing this,fully 95 per cent of the miners answered the call to strike [September 23, 1913]. Men with families within three days of starvation and without clothes enough to protect their frail bodies from the biting winds of mountain winters came out fully determined to win or die in the attempt. And who will blame them? Work such as the miner does is no longer honorable but has come to mean “drunkenness, vice and superstition.” It makes men and women unscrupulous, hard and restless. It destroys for others the treasure of life-a home. All the noble sentiments of liberty and the joy of labor mean in reality to the miner slavery of the worst type.
With thoughtless hymns of praise of this massacreing of labor, society allows one wholesale slaughter after another without a protest. While I am writing this the news arrived of the Dawson, New Mexico, disaster, in which the lives of 261 miners were lost and the operators refused to allow Secretary Doyle of the miners’ union to give the widows and orphans $1,000 donated by the union because the camp was non-union. And just as certain as that nothing becomes better without the desire to improve it so it is a healthy sign of the times that starvation wages for conscientious drudgery no longer fills the miner with heartfelt gratitude toward the master class.
The mine slaves were so cowed that the operators were sure that not more than 25 per cent would quit and when practically every miner laid down his tools, completely tying up the coal industry of Colorado, the wrath of the masters knew no bounds. They immediately got busy and sent a deputation of their lackeys, consisting of a lawyer, banker and a Catholic priest (Father Malone), to Washington to repeat the lies of the operators that the miners were satisfied with conditions but forced to strike by eastern agitators like Frank Hayes and Mother Jones. Their thugs began to terrorize the country, shoot up the tented camps of the strikers, insult the women and abuse the children and the operators began to call for the militia that the state might pay the cost of breaking the strike and thus save John D. a few paltry dollars with which to build a few more churches and start more Sunday schools where they sing and PREY-“servants obey your masters.”
Failing to get the militia as soon as they called, the operators had to content themselves with filling the jails of Colorado with strikers who dared to exercise their constitutional rights of peacefully asking imported strikebreakers to not work. In the city of Boulder and within the shadow of Colorado’s greatest educational institution, the state university, thirty-six were confined in the county jail until the court permitted the prisoners to bail each other out. Forty-nine others were arrested in Las Animas county and marched seven miles to the Trinidad jail between two rows of armed guards with Belk and Beltcher (out on bond for murder of Lippiatt), following up the rear with a Gatling gun mounted on an armored automobile.
Frank Hayes says, “The operators have several machine guns mounted on autos. They also have what is known as the ‘steel battle ship [Death Special].‘ This is an automobile with a high body of solid sheet steel built up so as to almost conceal the guard inside. The steel furnishes resistance to the bullets and is so arranged that the assassins on the inside may shoot their rifles in perfect safety. It is a splendid refuge for a coward. The body of the machine is shaped like a torpedo and was designed and built for mine guards. It carried a rapid fire machine gun with a range of more than two miles. As bad as West Virginia was there was nothing down there to compare with this latest instrument of murder that the operators of Colorado are using.”
As this procession neared town, G. E. Jones, a member of Western Federation of Miners, attempted to get a picture of the armored car. A. C. Felt beat him insensible and destroyed his camera and had him arrested for disturbing the peace.
Gun men patrol the public roads in armored autos, shooting up first one camp and then another. The first resistance the strikers offered was at Forbes, October 17, one striker was killed, two wounded and a deputy shot in the hip. One hundred and forty-seven bullets from a machine gun passed through a tent occupied by an aged Scotchman, who saved his life by lying flat on the floor. After this battle the miners made preparations to defend themselves from further attacks of the guards.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday October 24, 1913 October 22, Dawson, New Mexico –Near Three Hundred Miners Trapped in Flaming Mine
From the Trinidad Chronicle News of October 23, 1913:
From Albuquerque Evening Herald of October 23, 1913:
Thursday October 23, 1913 – Dawson, New Mexico -Mine Disaster Leaves Nearly 300 Miners Entombed, Hope Fading
These are the latest bulletins from The Anaconda Standard:
Dawson, N. M., Oct.23-Fourteen bodies have been recovered and seven men have been found alive by rescuers early this morning working in shaft No. 2 of the Stag Canyon coal mine, where an explosion occurred yesterday afternoon, entombing the day shift, variously given as numbering 230 to 280 men.
Trinidad, Col., Oct. 22-A special rescue train carrying scores of experienced miners equipped with rescue apparatus left here at 6 o’clock tonight for Dawson, 125 miles from here.
Raton, N. M., Oct. 22-About 100 feet of progress has been made by the rescuers at mine No. 2 of the Stag Canyon Fuel company at Dawson, N. M., in their fight against the debris which has choked the mine entrance. A few mangled bodies have been recovered, and it is believed that the blockades exist for hundreds of feet further into the mine.
Little hope is entertained here for the rescue of the entombed men…
Appeals for aid started scores of experienced miners from Trinidad and the surrounding coal camps, shortly after 6 o’clock, and they were expected to reach Dawson before midnight.
Dawson, N. M., Oct 22-…The rescuers believe they will be able to reach the interior by tomorrow night at the latest. They think no exits exist at present from the mine. So far all rescuing parties have had to enter the mine equipped with oxygen tanks
Women Gather In the relief camps situated near the entrance to mine No. 2, are gathering the women and children of the entombed miners. Women of the town are in the camp comforting and cheering the wives and children of the miners, whose fate still is a matter of conjecture.
[Emphasis added.]
Among those on the train which left Trinidad last night to join the rescue effort in Dawson wereLouie Tikas, leader of the Ludlow Tent Colony; Ed Doyle, Secretary of District 15, and Ed Wallace, editor of the United Mine Workers Journal. They arrived with a thousand dollars in relief for the women and children. The young photographer, Lou Dold, was also reported to have arrived on the train from Trinidad.
Women, it’s up to you to change the evils.
Men will not change them, and the ballot will not do it.
I don’t care what party is in power
if you give me a well organized economic army.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday August 23, 1916
El Paso, Texas-Mother Jones “Eats Fire” as Crowd Cheers
From El Paso Herald of August 21, 1916:
‘MOTHER’ JONES EATS MORE FIRE CALLS
SPADE A SPADE AND SWEARS
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Aged Labor Agitator Says She Asked Colorado Governor
“What the Hell He Was Going To Do About It”
When She Returned; Crowd Cheers Her On To
Make Hot Statements in Cleveland Square.
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“Roasted babies” and Children’s blood” were articles on the oratorical menu that was served by “Mother” Jones to an audience of 1500 in Cleveland Square Saturday night. The fiery speaker called a spade a spade and the crowd was with “Mother” from start to finish. Cries of “Give it to ’em, ‘Mother,'” “Tell it to ’em were heard after many of the speakers most telling points; but Mother needed no invitation.
Roasts George Baer.
“When George Baer told me that God Almighty had appointed him to take care of us working people, I answered him that God Almighty must have had a jag on when he did the appointing,” shouted the aged speaker, while her listeners broke out into a pandemonium of applause and laughter…
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