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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 14, 1904
Denver, Colorado – Delegates of Convention of State F. of L. Consider Miners’ Strikes
News from Special Convention of the Colorado
State Federation of Labor
Monday January 11, 1904 Denver, Colorado
-Colorado Federation of Labor Holds Convention To Support Strikes
More than 350 delegates are assembled today at the Waiters’ Hall in the Club Building in Denver. This is a Convention of the Colorado Federation of Labor called in order to consider ways and means of supporting the ongoing strikes of the Western Federation of Miners and the United Mine Workers of America. These courageous striking miners are now facing unprecedented Military Despotism at the hands of Generals Bell and Chase under the orders of Governor Peabody.
J. C. Sullivan, President of the C. F. of L. opened the Convention with these words:
Friends and Fellow Citizens, I Greet You:
An industrial condition that makes necessary the assembling of labor’s hosts in special convention is certainly significant, and, if the facial expressions of firm determination that are stamped on the countenances of this magnificent audience correctly reflects its feelings, there is still hope that “liberty” and “justice,” though banished from this centennial state of ours, “by order of a political accident,” and citizens forced to leave their homes and firesides at the bayonet point in the hands of “our” modern “Hessians,” for the sole and only reason that they refuse to join forces with our “modern Tories,” and say they will not sell their manhood on mammon’s greedy altar nor bow the knee in cringing sycophancy to the aristocratic anarchist, though he be clothed with brief official authority.
This, my friends, is a gathering that, if each and every delegate here assembled does his full duty to his country, to his fellow man, to himself and to the posterity of mankind, this meeting will go down in the annals of history as the most important gathering that has ever been held in Colorado up to this time. But if, for any reason, you fail to do your duty, you will, by that failure, assist the modern Tories and the mine operators’ hired Hessians to banish the lovers of liberty from their homes and firesides, and establish in their stead willing corporate vassals, to whom manhood is an unknown quality, to whom justice is a myth and liberty an illusion. The time is now, my friends, when not only labor’s voice must be heard, but labor’s hosts must act, if necessary, if justice is to be again enthroned in the fair State of Colorado.
[Emphasis added.]
Tuesday January 12, 1904 Denver, Colorado
-C. F. of L. Convention Receives Greetings from Mother Jones
Mother Jones, who is recovering from a serious illness in Trinidad, nevertheless sent her greetings to the Special Convention of the Colorado Federation of Labor now in progress in Denver. At the afternoon session yesterday, H. B. Waters, secretary of the Convention, read the following:
Trinidad, Colo.,
January 11, 1904State Federation of Labor, Convention Hall, Denver, Colo.
To the Delegates of the State Federation of Labor:Greeting-Let your deliberations be tempered with a high sense of justice for all mankind-malice toward none, for you are the bulwark of the nation. The day dawneth when you shall get your own.
Fraternally in the cause of labor,
MOTHER JONES
The chairman and the secretary of the Convention were instructed unanimously to answer Mother Jones:
To Mother Jones, Trinidad:
The greatest labor convention ever held in the state sends you greeting and wishes you health and God-speed.
J. C. SULLIVAN, President
H. B. WATERS, Secretary