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Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 27, 1914
Denver, Colorado – Thousands Gather to Protest Slaughter of the Innocent at Ludlow
From The Denver Post of April 27, 1914:
[Photos above: Top: Crowd standing in the rain at the state house. Bottom left: Edward Doyle. Bottom right: Jesse Vetter.]
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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:
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.
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 15, 1914
Forbes Tent Colony of Las Animas County, Colorado, Destroyed by Militia
From The Indianapolis Star of March 12, 1914:
ASK FEDERAL INTERVENTION
IN COLORADO MINE STRIKE
WASHINGTON., March 10-Chairman Foster, of the House mines committee, which investigated the Colorado coal mine strike, today received the following telegram from officers of the United Mine Workers’ Union in Colorado:
“Twenty-three militiamen, under orders of Adj. Gen. John Chase, this morning demolished strikers’ tent colony at Forbes, Col. Men, Women and children are homeless in a blinding snowstorm. Inhabitants of the upper tent colony ordered by militiamen to leave their home within forty-eight hours or be deported.”
Chairman Foster said the committee stood ready to report drastic recommendations to Congress as soon as it could assemble its data.
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Declaring that Federal intervention is sorely needed in Colorado, officers of the United Mine Workers of America sent a telegram to President Wilson yesterday demanding the release of Mother Mary Jones. The telegram follows:
“We again protest against the outrageous treatment accorded Mother Jones and demand her release from Colorado military prison, where she has been confined for more than two months.
“Federal intervention is sorely needed in Colorado. We can ill afford to talk about protecting the rights of American citizens in Mexico, as long as a woman, 80 years old, can be confined in prison by military authorities without any charge being placed against her, denied trial and refused bond, her friends prevented from communicating with her, her request for proper medical attendance denied and every right guaranteed by the constitution of the United States set aside.
“Colorado militia yesterday tore down tents of striking miners at Forbes, leaving miners and families without shelter and causing great suffering. Let us hear from you.”
The telegram is signed by John P. White, president of the miners; Frank J. Hayes, vice president , and William Green, secretary-treasurer.
[Photographs and emphasis added.]
[Caption to Photographs: “Views of the tent colony at Forbes, Colo., destroyed by order of General Chase last Tuesday [March 10th] in the Trinidad coal strike district. The lower photograph is a view of a tent and the strikers and their families before the soldiers took charge. The upper is a view of the colony dwellers and their destroyed homes, showing the strikers and their children eating the food found in their wrecked tents.]
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 19, 1913
New Castle, Colorado – 37 Coal Miners Dead in Explosion at Vulcan Mine
From Grand Junction (Colorado) Daily Sentinel of December 17, 1913:
…..Among the mine victims of Tuesday are many of the boys who were made fatherless by the previous disaster [Feb. 18, 1896]. Widowed Mothers forced them into the mine again……
“Thank God I am a farmer,” said A. S. Tibbits at 2 o’clock this morning to a Sentinel reporter, after having spent the day in rescue work at the mine.
“I was one of the helpers in the Vulcan disaster eighteen years ago, but this explosion wrecked the mine a dozen times as bad.”…..
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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.
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday November 26, 1913
City Jail, Trinidad, Colorado – Striking Miner Zancanelli Confesses
From the Trinidad Chronicle News of November 25, 1913:
Wednesday November 26, 1913 – Trinidad City Jail, Colorado
-Louis Zancanelli Confesses to Killing Baldwin-Felts Gunthug George Belcher
Louis Zancanelli, who was arrested at the scene the night that George Belcher was shot and killed, has confessed. Also, according to General Chase, Zancanelli has named several union officers and organizers as part of a conspiracy to assassinate Belcher. Organizers Anthony B. McGarry and Sam Carter were named as having offered payment to Zancanelli, as well as Adolph Germer, who, it is claimed, arranged the assassination.
Arrest warrants have been issued for McGarry and Carter, but the two men cannot be found. Germer, who is in charge of U. M. W. operations in Walsenburg, has not yet been arrested, but scores of other striking miners have been arrested without warrants and are being held, many of them, incommunicado. Ed Doyle, Secretary-Treasurer of District 15, was seized by the militia on Monday, and Bob Uhlich, head of the miners’ office in Trinidad, was arrested on Tuesday. Uhlich was charged with being a “dangerous agitator,” and was ordered held indefinitely.
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday November 24, 1913
Denver, Colorado – Eugene Debs Confers with Governor Ammons
From the Denver United Labor Bulletin of November 22, 1913:
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday November 10, 1913
Mother Jones Speaks at Meeting of Washington, D. C., Central Labor Union
From The Washington Herald of November 6, 1913:
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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 were Louie 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.
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday October 22, 1913
News from the Coal Miners’ Strike in Southern Colorado
From The Rocky Mountain News of October 21, 1913
-Trinidad, Colorado-October 20
Nine Hundred Striking Miners March to Honor Luca Vahernick
From the Trinidad Chronicle News of October 20, 1913:
