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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday August 30, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Women’s Union Picket Squad Defies Federal Soldiers
As reported by John Murray in this week’s Appeal, the “Women’s Union Picket Squad,” will now take the place of the men on the picket line in defiance of the federal troops under the command of Colonel James Lockett.
Members of the Women’s Union Picket Squad include the widow of Ludlow Martyr John Bartolotti, who declared:
The soldiers can put me and my seven children in jail if they want to, but I am going on the picket line and keep the scabs from coming in and starving us to death.
Mrs. Petrucci whose three children perished in the Ludlow Massacre will also be found on picket duty:
I shall picket, too, but my children are all gone.
From the Appeal to Reason of August 29, 1914:
New Clash Imminent
BY JOHN MURRAY
Trinidad, Colo.-Federal troops under the command of Colonel James Lockett have driven the striking miners away from all the railroad stations in southern Colorado where non-union disembark for the coal camps. Union men are being arrested daily, but the miners’ wives are defying the military and have taken their husbands’ places on the picket line.
Members of the Women’s Union Labor Alliance, led by their president, Edith Walker, organized the Women’s Union picket squad and have met every train coming into Trinidad, in spite of the attacks made upon them by company spotters and deputy sheriffs.
Tourists heads fill every car window as the overland trains pull into Trinidad, and the eyes of the gaping crowd follow the fearless women as thy march along the platform questioning every suspicious looking stranger who they think may be on his way to the mines.
Thus far the federal soldiers on duty only stare at the women pickets, who, to make sure that there shall be no misunderstanding as to what they are doing, wear large white badges pinned across their breasts upon which are printed the words “Women’s Union Picket Squad.”
Mine Owners Get Busy.
Raging at this open defiance of what the coal operators call “Law and Order,” the daily Advertiser, mouthpiece of Rockefeller interests in Trinidad, shrieks to the United States commanding officer for help in the following front-page display, placed in a box and printed in large type:
Thus far no arrests have been made by the federals, but Captain Rockwell, the officer on duty at the Santa Fe station, has warned the miners’ wives on picket that “although human,” he “must obey orders.”
The women are prepared to go to jail if the federal soldiers force the issue.
Said Mrs. Bartoloti (Virginia Bartolotti) whose husband (Giovanni/John Bartolotti) was killed in the Ludlow massacre, “the soldiers can put me and my seven children in jail if they want to, but I am going on the picket line and keep the scabs from coming in and starving us to death.”
“I shall picket, too, but my children are all gone,” declared Mrs. Petrucci, whose three little ones met their end in the flames of the historic Ludlow “death-hole.”
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