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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday November 1, 1903
Indianapolis, Indiana – United Mine Workers Issues Strike Call for District 15
From The Rocky Mountain News of October 30, 1903:
Note error above: District 15 coal miners are members of the United Mine Workers of America, not the Western Federation of Miners (metal miners).
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday October 25, 1913
Trinidad, Colorado – William Gunn Shepherd Reports on Coalfield Strike
From The Day Book of October 23, 1913:
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Hellraisers Journal- Wednesday September 24, 1913
Southern Colorado-Thousands of Striking Miners and Families Exit Company Towns
From the Trinidad Chronicle-News of September 23, 1913:
A meeting was held at Sopris this morning and talks were made by Frank J. Hayes and “Mother” Jones. A meeting will be held at Ludlow this afternoon. These meetings will continue from day to day at differenct camps to “keep the enthusiasm going”, as Vice President Hayes intimated last night.
Mother Jones worked up to a high pitch bordering on frenzey deliverd an impassioned address to more than three hundred coal miners at Sopris this morning. The meeting was held under canvass and the venerable labor leader sought to stir up the fires of revolet in the breast of every miner. While the speaking was going on scores of miners were receiving union cards. International vice president Frank J. Hayes also spoke. There was a good deal of enthusiasm manifested.
[Statement of Vice-President Frank Hayes to C-N reporter:]
We have conducted a quiet, dignified campaign. We feel confident the operators will accede to our demands in the near future. The miners by their action today have proved that they desire to enjoy better working conditions and work as union men and enjoy the same rights and privileges as the miners of Wyoming and neighboring states.
This is an age of co-operation and we demand the same right as the mine owners assert to band ourselves together for the purpose of promoting social and economic welfare. The statutes of Colorado concede us this right and the right to sell our labor collectively. We cannot surrender this legal right.
In view of the prosperity of this particular company [C. F. & I.] which also reflects the prosperity of other big corporations, we see no good reason why the miners should not enjoy more of the comforts and refinements of modern civilization. We have repeatedly sought to secure a joint conference but without success. We are still waiting for a conference to adjust the present controversy. If working conditions are as good as the operators say they are, then the operators ought not to fear to meet the miners in joint conference.
[Emphasis added.]
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday September 23, 1913
Southern Colorado – Exodus of Miners and Families from Company Towns Increasing
From the Trinidad Chronicle News of September 22, 1913:
[…..]
At Segundo yesterday a meeting was held, attended by about two hundred…“Mother” Jones addressed a meeting at Walsenburg and returned to this city on the C. & S. train last evening.
Vice President Hayes and International Board Member John R. Lawson will arrive here tonight and will speak at meetings Sopris and Ludlow tomorrow. [Lawson’s] last official utterance before the strike was made in Denver last night when discussing the situation he said:
There will be a complete tie-up of coal mines all over the state on Tuesday. Statements of conditions made by the operators are ridiculous. The operators are only trying to deceive themselves and the public. This contest of the coal miners of Colorado is one largely for improvement of conditions. The operators have laid stress on the demand for recognition of the union. I see the Denver Chamber of Commerce also says that that is the cause of the strike. They are wrong. Recognition of the union is only a minor question.
The miners are fighting for improved conditions, for rights granted them by the state law, and they are eager for a strike. Why, the organization has been preventing a strike for the last three years.
The United Mine Workers are prepared to fight ten years, if necessary, to make conditions in the Colorado mines as good as they are in those of Wyomng and other states. They are prepared to fight indefinitely. They have the money necessary and they can get more.
The Colorado coal miners are poverty stricken. The union has to take care of them, to feed and clothe them, the minute they go on strike. They would not be willing to strike under such conditions if they did not have rights to fight for.
[…..]
[Emphasis added.]
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday September 19, 1913
Trinidad, Colorado – U. M. W. District 15 Convention Issues Strike Call
-Strike to begin Tuesday September 23rd. Demands put forth.
The demands agreed upon during the Special Convention which voted to strike on Tuesday, September 16th, are seven in number:
1. Union recognition
2. A wage scale for various types of mine work
3. The eight-hour work day
4. Pay for all narrow work and dead work
(The coal companies have historically expected the men to work without pay when brushing, timbering, removing falls, handling impurities, etc.)
5. A checkweighman at every mine, elected by the miners
6. The right of the miners to shop where they please, board where they please, and to choose their own doctors.
7. Enforcement of the Colorado Mining Laws and:
abolition of the the notorious and criminal guard system which has prevailed in the mining camps of Colorado for many years.
As the convention ended, Vice President Hayes told the cheering delegates that most of the demands were simply a demand for compliance by the coal companies with mining laws which were on the law books of the state of Colorado, and had been for many years.
Hayes continued:
I was never more hopeful for success than I am in this strike. I do not think it will last long. The operators cannot fight an organization of 450,000 men for long. I think we shall realize in Colorado the greatest victory in the history of our organization. I know we cannot lose because our demands are just, and, having made every honorable effort to adjust the differences, the responsibility rest not on us, but on the operators. I hope that when next Tuesday comes every miner will lay down his tools and never take them up again until they take them up as United Mine Workers, recognized by the operators.
[Emphasis added.]
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday August 31, 1913
Trinidad, Colorado – Correspondent G. Poe Montfort Under Surveillance
From the Appeal to Reason of August 30, 1913:
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 1, 1913
Charleston, West Virginia – Socialists Committee Investigates Industrial Conditions
From the Huntington Socialist and Labor Star of May 30, 1913:
From The Coming Nation of May 24, 1913:
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 27, 1903
West Virginia Miners Face Gatling Guns, Company Guards & Peonage
From the Duluth Labor World of May 23, 1903:
GATLING GUN FOR THE MINERS
———-RIDDLES GREAT TREES IN FOREST
IT IS TRAINED UPON.
———-WORKMEN HELP PRISONERS
———-
Will Resort to More Bloodshed If It Becomes
Necessary to Coerce the Miners.
———-
Labor conditions in West Virginia mines are not enviable. Besides reports of Gatling guns mounted on fortifications to command approaches to the mines, comes the further news that the mining camps are surrounded by armed guards ready to shoot down any of the workers who try to reach the outside world. So, between the guns and the guards, the wage workers of one of the naturally rich states of the Union cannot be said to pass very happy lives.
Though so rich in natural resources-for there are coal and iron mines and virgin forests that have never yet been touched-West Virginia is cursed by monopoly. As a result, the wage workers are not free to employ themselves, but must accept the conditions of those who control the source from which all must draw their subsistence-the land.
For no other reason do the inhabitants of that state submit. Those who are enticed into its boundaries under false pretences, as evidenced by the affidavits of the miners published in the organ of the Mine Workers’ Union; have hard work to get away. They are subdued by their poverty and fear of the armed guards.
The necessity for organizing West Virginia is so apparent that it is a wonder the American Federation of Labor does not flood the state with “agitators” for human freedom and human rights. What the wage workers there need is the knowledge that their own efforts to improve their own condition will be supplemented by the good will and financial assistance of organized labor everywhere. It is a hard proposition, to be sure, to go into territory dominated by such powerful social and political interests, but greater tasks have been accomplished, and it only needs the united power of an aroused commonwealth to bring about great and good industrial changes in that section of the country.
[Newsclip and emphasis added.]
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 20, 1913
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Speaks at Lyceum Theater
From The Pittsburg Press of May 19, 1913:
“MOTHER” JONES MAKES ROUSING
ADDRESS HERE
———-
Says West Virginia Officials Form
“Pack of Anarchists.”
Takes Vigorous Rap at Pennsylvanians
———-AGED LABOR LEADER CRITICISES CONGRESS
———-
Arraigning Pennsylvanians as moral cowards for permitting the present state of affairs to exist in the West Virginia mining country; scoring the West Virginia authorities bitterly, and never dropping her high note of enthusiasm for a single instant, “Mother” Jones, the noted woman leader yesterday, in the Lyceum theater talked to a crowded house which applauded almost every sentence. She was presented with a huge bunch of flowers by the Slavonic Associated Press.
The world-renowned labor organizer, who confessed yesterday to being aged 81, made an imposing figure as, white-haired, erect, nervous and virile, she completely possessed the stage during her speech, and, incidentally her audience as well. Among other things, she said:
[The speaker declared:]
If one were to go to the West Virginia strike region and see the indescribable conditions I have seen there, he would say that America is darker than even Russia was; darker than even barbarous Mexico was. The harrowing stories I could tell as I have seen them there would paralyze the heart of the Nation-if it had a heart. But we’re so hypnotized by our ruling class.
THREATS BROUGHT DEFIANCE.
When I went to Cabin Creek last May they told me that if I went up there at an organizer I would come back on a stretcher, but I defied them.
[She almost screamed:]
You people in Pennsylvania are moral cowards. The nation never gave you so great an opportunity to show yourselves as when it gave you the story of the drum-head court by military despots such as we were brought before. And you sat idly by and did nothing! If you can get a bigger pack of anarchists than the public officials of West Virginia I want to find them!
“Mother” Jones spent her eighty-first birthday in jail. She had the locals of the miners’ union elect delegates to lay their grievances before the governor, W. E. Glasscock, of West Virginia and went with these delegates to Charleston. It was then, she says, that the governor became alarmed, fearing from her reputation as an agitator that she meant trouble. A warrant was issued for her arrest and she spent some time under guard, some of the delegates being imprisoned also.
Harold W. Houston, secretary of the Socialist party of West Virginia, closed the meeting by referring to conditions in the strike zone of his state. He urged co-operation on the part of the party here to aid in righting the wrongs which he claims have been done organized labor in the “Mountain State.”
Mother Jones made a great appeal for the protection of the home and didn’t neglect to inject a smart rap at congress occupying “a whole session talking about the navy and how much money to spend on it, but not a dollar to protect the childhood of the nation.”
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
Excerpt from The New York Times of May 19, 1913:
We’re going to organize the state of West Virginia if every one of us dies in the battle…I’m going back to West Virginia. If I can’t go on a train, I’ll walk in…[Before going into the trouble zone] one of the boys told me: “If you go up there, Mother, you’ll come back on a stretcher, no organizer can speak there!” I spoke there. I didn’t come out on a stretcher. I raised hell.
…I organized the women because the women can lick a non-union man better than you fellows here can…
Labor must stand together. You trades unions must stop wrangling with the I.W.W., and the I.W.W. must stop wrangling with the trades unions I know industrial unionism is coming, and you can’t stop it.
[Emphasis added.]
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday May 19, 1913
“The Last Day of the Paint Creek Court Martial” by Cora Older, Part II
From The Independent of May 15, 1913:
[Part II of II]
During the recess I had a few minutes’ conversation with Mother Jones. Her eighty years were as nothing—she became a rollicking, irrepressible girl. She liked everyone, even the military court. She told me she was not against the judges, but their jobs. As for the young officer appointed against her wishes her counsel, like an affectionate mother she said, “He’s a nice fellow, only, you know, he’s not my attorney.” She turned to one of the judges who was passing: “Don’t dare find against me. If you do, I’ll——” she shook her fist with a touch revealing coquetry.
When I returned for the evening session, already a crowd had gathered in the street before the court room. Prisoners’ wives with shawls over their heads, leading children, had walked a mile or more. They knew there was no chance to enter the court room, but they stood in the streets, hoping to catch echoes of speeches thru the open windows. One woman flung at a soldier: “Scabs at a dollar and a half a day.” In West Virginia, women fight side by side with men.
Eight or ten sympathizers of the prisoners had already filled the benches in the gas-lit hall. “Everybody’s Dearest Friend” had preceded me. Again he gave me water and a newspaper. The prisoners filed into the room.
“A bad-looking lot of fellows,” he offered.
“Badly dressed,” I answered.
“No, bad men. You ought to know what these miners are. If you had seen and heard what I have.”
A sympathizer with the strikers seated on a bench behind me touched my arm. “Do you know you are talking with Smith, a Burns detective?”
Mr. Smith conferred with the provost marshal, also Associated Press correspondent. Word was sent to the judges’ table. The judge advocate rose and advised all women except me to leave the court room. The women obeyed. A smile played round the lips of Mr. Smith, flirted in the provost marshal’s eyes, and lighted up the table where the judges sat.
The smile died when M. F. Matheny, an attorney for the defendants, rose and said: “These women are friends of the prisoners. They are as much interested in the trial as the men themselves. This man Smith has no right in the court room. He should be excluded if the women are. The court has ruled that no witness after testifying shall remain.”
The court blithely overruled itself and then went on dealing out justice to “criminals.” I was proud to know Mr. Smith. He had invented a new misdemeanor; to mention his name was lèse–Smith. This great court he dominated. William J. Burns was his visible employer. I speculated much about his invisible employer.
I was not to speculate long. An attorney’s speech disclosed that Smith, the gentle overlord of the room, was in the employ of the mine operators. The attorney also revealed that Smith was an excellent detective. He had gone to the strikers, pretended to be in need, had eaten their bread when they had only strike rations. On one occasion his life had been saved by one of the prisoners. The detective had recorded the many violent words uttered and had become chief witness for the state.
While the first speeches were being made, Mr. Smith, the mine operators’ representative, unrebuked by the court, noisily used the telephone. Apparently the judges and Mr. Smith agreed that it was a noble duty to interrupt a dull speech. The prisoners watched Smith with more perturbation than they followed the judges. As the hour grew late, they moistened their lips; their eyes were glassy; even Mother Jones seemed about to faint. Back of Smith was the specter, the guard system, peonage, gatling guns.
