Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 22, 1914 Houghton, Michigan – Seeberville Gunthugs Found Guilty of Manslaughter
From the Michigan Miners’ Bulletin of February 18, 1914 -Jury Finds Waddell Men Guilty of Seeberville Slaying:
A jury in the strike zone of Michigan has found three Waddell men and a deputy sheriff guilty of manslaughter in the death of Steve Putrich. This report is from the latest edition of the Miners’ Bulletin:
The Milwaukee Leader February 16, 1914
FOUND GUILTY
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Arthur Davis, William Groff and James Cooper, Waddell gunmen and Ed Polkinghorne, a deputy sheriff were found guilty of manslaughter after a trial lasting two weeks in the circuit court. The case was turned over to the jury Saturday at 4 o’clock and after twenty hours deliberation the above verdict was reached. In its verdict Polkinghorne was recommended to the mercy of the court, probably on account of his being a deputy sheriff. Harry James, another deputy sheriff, who stood trial along with the others was not considered in the verdict in compliance with the instructions of Judge Flannigan to the jury. James, it was brought out by the testimony, did not take any part in the shooting but was merely in company with the others, he not firing a shot.
When the verdict was read in court Monday morning, Attorney Galbraith for the defense addressed the court, stating that he had three motions to make as follows,-First, that the court set aside the verdict and dismiss the respondents at the bar; Second, that the court set aside the verdict and order a new trial; Third, that a stay of sentence be granted pending a bill of exceptions. In a lengthy statement and detailed explanation Judge Flannigan denied the motions. Attorney Nichols for the people then moved that sentence be passed on the prisoners and four defendants were requested to stand up.
Before passing sentence Judge Flannigan stated that passing sentence on prisoners was one of the most unpleasant and harder duties the court had to perform during his term on the bench. The court then sentence Cooper, Groff, Davis and Polkinghorne to hard labor at the branch prison at Marquette for not more than 15 years, and not less than 7 and 1/2 years. The prisoners appeared very much downcast when they heard their doom. It is believed they looked for an acquittal or a very light sentence, and were greatly disappointed.
The prisoners were then taken to jail to await transfer to the penitentiary. Thomas Raleigh one of the accused men who was out on bonds of $10,000 left the country about one month ago forfeiting his bonds. If caught he will probably be given the maximum sentence.
The crime for which these men were convicted was the murder of Steve Putrich, a striker, on August 14th last at Seeberville, a small mining camp near Houghton [where] an altercation occurred in which the deputies drew their guns shooting [a boarding] house full of holes, killing Steve Putrich and Louis Tijan, two absolutely innocent men and injuring several others who were in the house.
[Newsclip, paragraph breaks and emphasis added]
The Judge made this statement before imposing his sentence:
I have tried to find mitigation if it existed. I have made an effort to find something, somewhere, in mitigation for your act. I know too that the jury sat through this trial hoping that from the lips of some witness might fall something that would put at least a drop of humanity into that awful transaction.
It is not right for a circuit judge to scold convicted men when passing sentence and I do not want to be looked upon as doing so. I have tried to give you boys a fair trial. It was impossible for it to be fairer. If the jury had found your plea of self defense true in this case it would have been a travesty of justice.
[Emphasis added]
On Tuesday, the convicted murderers were taken to the train station and shipped off to serve their sentences. The Daily Mining Gazette reported on that event:
NOT A DRY EYE AS CONVICTED MEN LEAVE FOR PRISON.
The Gazette further reported that a huge crowd of well-wishers gathered at the station to witness these fine but “luckless young men” being deported from Michigan’s copper country.
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.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday December 27, 1913 Hancock/Houghton, Michigan – Moyer and Tanner Kidnapped and Deported
Last night at about 8:30 p.m. Sheriff Cruse and a “committee” paid a visit to the Scott Hotel in Hancock. They went to the room of Charles Moyer, President of the Western Federation of Miners. The “committee” was determined that the leaders of the W. F. of M. should reconsider their refusal to accept any donations from the Citizens’ Alliance to the families of the victims of the Italian Hall Massacre. Mr. Moyer remained adamant that donations from the Citizens’ Alliance amounted to blood money and that the union would bury it’s own dead.
No sooner had this “committee” left the room than a mob burst into the room. They began to beat Moyer and also Charles Tanner who was there with him. A gun was used to beat Moyer over the head which discharged during the assault. Moyer was shot in the shoulder. Moyer and Tanner were dragged out of the Hotel and down the street to the train station in Houghton. At the Houghton-Hancock bridge they were threatened with hanging, and shown a noose brought for that purpose.
The kidnappers put Moyer and Tanner on the Chicago train. Deputy Sheriff Hensley and Deputy McKeever were assigned to accompany the deportees. The deputies wore their Citizens’ Alliance buttons right next to their deputy badges for all to see.
The train stopped briefly in Milwaukee, and reporters were able to get the story from Moyer and Tanner. The reporters also witnessed Moyer’s “pillow and bed linen were soiled with blood from wounds in his scalp and back.”
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From the Chicago Day Book of December 27, 1913, Noon Edition
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday December 13, 1913 The Keweenaw, Michigan – Government by Gunthug Starts Bloody War
From the Chicago Day Book of December 11, 1913:
Calumet, Mich., Dec. 11.-(Special.)-Bloody war has broken out in the copper country, and the battle has been waging since early this morning. It was precipitated by the Citizens’ Alliance, which has been making open threat for days that the union leaders would be forcibly driven from Houghton county.
Yesterday President Moyer of the Western Federation of Miners made application to Circuit Judge O’Brien for an injunction restraining members of the Alliance from interfering with officers and members of the Federation. The injunction was granted.
This morning about 2 o’clock gunmen deputies and members of the Citizens’ Alliance attempted to arrest striking miners who had barricaded themselves in their hall at South Range, about eight miles from Calumet. This started the fight.
Thirty-five armed strikers were arrested, and two special trains were sent out from Houghton loaded with reinforcements from the Alliance, one at 5 and the other at 9 o’clock.
In the battle Deputy Tom Driscoll of Houghton was shot and fatally wounded. Many others were wounded, although no list of them has been secured.
The fighting kept up all morning and before noon a total of 500 strikers had been arrested, including Victor Valimakki, Finnish organizer for the Federation, who is alleged to have confessed to the shooting of Driscoll, who was shot through the abdomen and the right arm.
Just before noon a third special train carrying gunmen, deputies and vigilantes was sent to the South Range district, a distance of 27 miles from Houghton.
The fire bells were rung in Calumet and Houghton this morning summoning all members of the Citizens’ Alliance.
Thousands are being held in reserve ready to be sent to any part of the county. The fighting today followed a night of terror throughout the strike district. Two of the gunmen deputies who were shot down yesterday are not expected to live.
Labor leaders predict that wholesale arrests will be made of members of the Alliance for violating Judge O’Brien’s injunction, issued yesterday.
Federation Hall, at South Range, where for more than eight hours today half a hundred striking copper miners battled desperately against a mob of vigilantes and deputy sheriffs, was surrendered by the miners into the hands of the Citizens’ Alliance at noon today. All the defenders of the hall were arrested. Thirty rifles and great quantities of ammunition were confiscated and will be thrown into Portage Lake.
As far as could be learned early this afternoon Deputy Sheriff Driscoll at Houghton was the only person to be fatally injured in the fighting. He was shot through the abdomen and cannot recover, it was stated this afternoon. Henry Koski has confessed to shooting the deputy, the authorities asserted. Koski’s wife is also held for complicity.
[Deputized Company Gunthugs]
The fighting deputy sheriffs are gunmen imported from New York by the Waddell-Mahon strikebreaking agency of 200 Fifth avenue, New York city. They were sworn in by Sheriff Cruse and armed with guns and deputy’s badges.
Waddell said himself that many of them were ex-members of the New York police department. Others were imported from Chicago and other cities, but most of them from the East.
The entire county has been under control of the mining companies, through the sheriff’s office and the Waddell thugs, ever since the strike began last July.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday August 27, 1913 Michigan Copper Country – John Walker and John Mitchell Speak to Strikers
From The Calumet News of August 23, 1913:
Note: John Walker reported that the military presence in Michigan’s Copper Country is brutal, and that General Abbey’s troops are acting as:
scab herders, strike-breakers, and black-leg protectors..[who] have shot people in the back, browbeaten men and women, insulted women and girls, and after filling up on beer and whisky sent them by the mine owners, swaggered up and down the streets with their big guns and sabers, a disgrace to the rottenest government on earth, let alone ours……
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday August 9, 1913 Michigan’s Copper Country – “Fiery” Mother Jones and the Cannons on the Scene
From the Escanaba Morning Press of August 8, 1913:
COPPERDOM IN DREAD CRISIS IS IMPENDING ———-
Houghton, Mich., Aug 7.-The general impression in the district affected by the copper mine workers’ strike is that a crisis impending through the presence of Mother Jones and Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Cannon, three fiery orators of the Western Federation of Miners. Persons who have had an opportunity in other strikes to see these people in action say they likely to inflame the strikers and their families to such a pitch of enthusiasm as may result in a reoccurrence of the of the first week of the strike.
The leaders of the strike here, Messrs. Mahoney, Miller and Lowney, have counselled peace in all their recent speeches, have the strikers to preserve law and order and to wait with determination because they are going to win.
But the speeches made by Cannon and his wife [Laura Gregg Cannon] at the Kansankoti hall, Hancock, Tuesday night were certainly not pacific. They aroused more enthusiasm than any speakers previously heard here since the strike opened and gave a good forecast of the result of their later speeches.
The strikers are for the most part phlegmatic Huns, Croatians and Finns, members of races not given to vociferous outbursts. If the Jones and the Cannons of the strike forces can stir these people up something more exciting than has been seen in the past week may be expected.
Mother Jones and Mrs. Cannon have reputations for exciting the women of strike districts to a point of frenzy resulting in rioting. Something of this sort is feared.
An example of the dangerous potentiality in Mother Jones can be seen in the interview given out by her at Calumet Tuesday afternoon [August 5th]. She said:
I’m a socialist, Why shouldn’t I be? That is the party that stands ready to help the working man.
I can’t see the need for the militia. Take a plumber and make him a major and he swells up like a toad and seems to forget that he is a workingman. The struggle is between the employer and employee and the state ought to let them fight it out. The strikers don’t believe in damaging property or the destruction of lives and I always impress on the men that they shouldn’t do damage.
They threw me into the bull pen in West Virginia, but before then, I went with 16 representatives of the miners to see the governor. When they heard I was coming, the governor wired for the fire department and the police and the legislators crawled under their desks and cried, “Is she coming?” The firemen came running up the streets without their socks. I had the devil scared out of the whole bunch of sewer rats. An old woman like me, over 80 years old. They thought I was coming to murder them, I guess.
What do you think the charge was they arrested me on. Stealing a field gun, my dears, and the damn fools were looking for it in the hills for months.
Ah, boys this is a terrible thing to go through. I hope you don’t see the like here. I saw my brave boys, who I know would not commit a crime, taken from their homes to far-away jails while their wives and babies screamed for their husbands. I raised my hand to heaven and prayed for their safe return.
And they talk about the red flag, bless you.Why, don’t they know the red flag was the first flag hoisted at Lexington, that a farmer who didn’t have time to put his shirt on went into the ranks of the bloody Sassenachs [English persons] and waved his red shirt in the air to cheer his comrades. Don’t they know the red bar is the first on the flag, signifying that blood was shed for the union?
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday July 16, 1913 Hancock, Michigan – Organized Copper Miners Request Meeting with Operators
From The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of July 8, 1913:
Letter from Copper District Union (W. F. of M.) to C. & H. Mines, James MacNaughton, Manager:
Copper District Union Western Federation of Miners Box 217, Hancock Mich., July 14, 1913
To the Calumet & Hecla, Tamarack, Ahmeek, Allouez, Centennial, Superior, Laurium, Isle Royale, and all other mining companies connected with and under the management of Calumet & Hecla; James MacNaughton, manager.
GENTLEMEN: Your employees, organized into various unions of the Western Federation of Miners, have decided by referendum vote to ask that you meet their representatives in conference on some day during this month for the purpose of discussing the possibilities of shortening the working day, raising wages, and making some changes in the working conditions.
The men working in your mines are dissatisfied with the wages, hours, and other conditions of employment. Realizing that as individuals they would not have sufficient strength to correct these evils or to lessen the burden placed upon them, they have organized into the local unions of the Western Federation of Miners, and through the local unions they have formed one compact body of the whole copper district, with an understanding and hope that from now on they may be enabled to sell their labor collectively with greater advantages for themselves as well as their employers.
While the men have decided that they must have greater remuneration for their services and that the working day must be shortened, it is not their or our desire that we should have a strike, with all the sufferings that it is bound to bring to them, to the employers, and to the general public. On the other hand, we earnestly hope that the questions that have arisen between us would be settled amicably, with fairness and justice to both sides. Should you have the same feeling, we believe that the friendly relations that have existed between you and your employees in the past will continue in the future.
However, should you follow the example given by some of the most stupid and unfair mine owners in the past, the men have instructed us by the same referendum vote to call as strike in all the mines owned and controlled by your company.
We deem it unnecessary to set forth the facts and reasons for the demand for higher wages, shorter hours, and other things, in this letter, as we intend to do that in the conference – should you be fair enough to meet us.
We hope you realize that labor has just as much right to organize as capital, and that at this age these two forces, labor and capital, while their interests are not identical, must get together and solve the problems that confront them.
We expect to have your answer not later than on the 21st of this month. If you agree to meet us our representatives will be ready for a conference on any day and at any place you may choose; provided you do not set the date any later than the 28th of this month. Your failure to answer this will be taken as proof that you are not willing to meet us and to have the matters settled peacefully.
Hoping to hear from you soon, we remain,
Respectfully, yours.
Dan Sullivan, President Copper District Union of the Western Federation of Miners C.E. Hietala, Secretary Copper District Union of the Western Federation of Miners
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday October 6, 1908
The Red Special on the Northern Route Across the Plains
The Socialist Red Special carried the Debs Campaign across the plains from Spokane, homeward, via the northern route, arriving in Chicago on morning of September 25th, and, without so much as one full day of rest, headed out again to begin the eastern tour that same morning. The Chicago Tribune of September 26th reported that the Socialist Party’s candidate for President made 187 speeches and traveled 9,000 miles during the Campaign’s western tour.
From the Appeal to Reason of October 3, 1908:
BACK BY THE NORTH
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Red Special Re-crosses the Rockies and
Sweeps Across the States Toward
Michigan on Return Trip.
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With the finish of the Red Special’s
western trip at Chicago, Sept. 25, it will
leave immediately through Indiana and Ohio
for a tour of the east.
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Last night at about 8:30 p.m. Sheriff Cruse and a “committee” paid a visit to the Scott Hotel in Hancock. They went to the room of Charles Moyer, President of the Western Federation of Miners. The “committee” was determined that the leaders of the W. F. of M. should reconsider their refusal to accept any donations from the Citizens’ Alliance to the families of the victims of the Italian Hall Massacre. Mr. Moyer remained adamant that donations from the Citizens’ Alliance amounted to blood money and that the union would bury it’s own dead.
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