Hellraisers Journal – Thursday June 9, 1904
Summary of Miners’ Strikes in Colorado and Utah for May 1904
From The Salt Lake Herald of May 06, 1904:
Mother Jones with Delegates at Utah State Convention of Western Federation of Miners
From the San Francisco Chronicle of May 1, 1904
Southern Coalfields of Colorado – Union Organizer Beaten, Not Expected to Live
The strike zone of the southern coalfields of Colorado continues to be a dangerous place for union organizers working for the United Mine Workers of America. Brother Wardjon was brutally assaulted there and was not expected to live. The San Francisco Chronicle reported on that assault and other news regarding the labor situation in Colorado:
ASSAULT ON A LABOR LEADER
———-
Mine Union Organizer Wardjon Beaten on Head
in Colorado So Severely That He May Die
———-
DENVER, (Col.). April 30.-W. M. Wardjon, national organizer of the United Mine Workers of America wasterribly beaten on the head and shoulders with revolvers by three unknown men at Sargent, Col., to-day and lies in a critical condition at the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad Hospital at Salida. Wardjon was traveling eastward from Crested Butte, where he had been organizing the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company’s miners, and was attacked in a car while the train was standing at Sargent.
He is suffering from concussion of the brain, and the hospital physicians say his recovery is doubtful.
In a lengthy brief filed before the Supreme Court to-day by Attorney E. F. Richardson in the habeas corpus case of Charles H. Moyer, president of the Western Federation of Miners, who is held as a military prisoner at Telluride, Governor James H. Peabody is declared to be a usurper. Governor Peabody is compared by Richardson to a soldier drunk with power, and his acts in trying to suppress the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus compared to the acts of tyranny practiced on the people of England by the olden kings.
Richardson, in his brief, attacks the decision of the Supreme Court of Idaho in a similar case, and says it is the only court in the country that has said that the military was above the judiciary. He says that the decision does not follow precedent or commonsense, and that the Judges of the Supreme Court of Colorado should not consider it when deciding the present case.
The Legislature alone, Richardson says , has the authority to determine when the conditions require the suspension of the privilege of habeas corpus and then to suspend it.
PUEBLO (Col.).-April 30.-Because Charles Demolli, a former organizer of the United Mine Workers, failed to appear to-day as complaining witness against Oreste Pagnini, charged with being the ringleader of a gang whichassaulted the Italian labor leader several weeks ago, the case was dismissed by Justice McCallip. Pagnini, however, will be held on a complaint sworn to by William Gearhard, charging him with assaulting Demolli with intent to kill. Demolli is in the coal fields of Kansas and is in communication with friends here.
INDIANAPOLIS (Ind.), April 30.-The Colorado situation was again taken up at to-day’s session of the national executive board of the United Mine Workers of America……
President Mitchell has telegraphed to “Mother” Jones, who is being held in quarantine near Price, Utah, directing her to report to him in person in this city as soon as possible. He says that there is no significance attached to this, and that the order was issued because the work in the district 15 at the present time is scarcely suitable for a women.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday June 2, 1914
“The Class War in Colorado” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part I
From the International Socialist Review of June 1914:
THE CLASS WAR IN COLORADO
By Leslie H. Marcy
“SOCIETY AS A WHOLE IS MORE AND MORE SPLITTING UP INTO TWO
HOSTILE CAMPS, INTO TWO GREAT CLASSES DIRECTLY FACING EACH
OTHER: THE CAPITALIST CLASS AND THE WORKING CLASS.”
[Part I of II]
FOR thirty years an industrial warfare has been going on in Colorado between the coal miners and the coal owners. In fact, in every state and country where coal is mined we find an irrepressible conflict of interests. Temporary truces are signed from time to time in the way of contracts mostly CON so far as the men are concerned-and again, there is open warfare as witnessed recently in England, West Virginia and South Africa.
Time was when the coal miners of this country worked 16 hours a day, but, by combining their strength into unions they have cut the hours of their slavery to eight and improved their working conditions. No wonder that their battle cry is “The Union Forever”! No wonder that the Coal Barons cry out for the standing army to protect them when all else has failed!.
The Battle of Ludlow was inevitable. For seven months the southern coal fields of Colorado have been divided into two hostile camps: the Owners organized into the Operators Association; the Workers organized in unions of the United Mine Workers of America, with interests diametrically opposed.
The main issue is the right of the miners to organize. The Colorado Statutes are very clear on this subject and the miners have the legal right of way, but, the “law is a dead letter in the section of Colorado 100 miles square,” or wherever the Operators own the land.
On September 23, 1913, the union miners went on strike to enforce their constitutional rights: to organize; to work an 8-hour day, to semi-monthly pay, to have their own Check-weighman, to trade where they pleased,-ALL OF WHICH WERE DEAD LAWS. Each proposition related to a law that was being violated. The whole proposal simmered down to a single statement is this: “If you coal diggers will give up your union, the operators promise to obey the state laws which have been passed for your protection.”
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday April 30, 1904 Mother Jones Held in Utah; Moyer and Haywood Up Against Militia in Colorado
From The Rocky Mountain New of April 27, 1904:
Mother Jones has been in Utah since her deportation from Trinidad, Colorado. There she has been working among the miners of that state, and, for her efforts, was confined under “quarantine” near Helper, Utah. This was too much for the miners of that area and a raid was made upon the pest house which freed from Mother from that place. She has since been recaptured, and, according to the following report, is now held in the Carbon County jail at Price, Utah.
From the American Labor Union Journal of Apr 28, 1904 -Moyer brought to Denver, but returned to bullpen at Telluride; Haywood brutally assaulted by soldiers:
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 9, 1904 Trinidad, Colorado – Mrs. Bertha Howell Reports from Colorado Strike Zone
From the American Labor Journal of January 28, 1904:
From the Appeal to Reason of January 30, 1904 -Mrs. Mailly’s Article Was Also Published in the Appeal Along with the Following Drawing by Lockwood and with the Following Introduction:
THE COAL MINERS’ STRIKE IN SOUTHERN COLORADO ———-
(Not much news of the strike of several thousand coal miners in Southern Colorado has reached the outside world. Mrs. Bertha Howell Mailly, wife of the National Secretary of the Socialist Party, went to that district from Omaha last week to be with Mother Jones, who was dangerously ill in Trinidad, but who is now happily recovering. While in the strike district, Mrs. Mailly will write a special series of articles for the Socialist press, the following being the first.)
Hellraisers Journal – Monday November 23, 1903
Louisville, Colorado – Mother Jones Speaks Against Separate Settlement
Sunday November 22, 1903 – Louisville, Colorado
-Mother Jones Urges Northern Miners to Stand with Their Southern Brothers
A meeting was held in Louisville yesterday, called by District 15 of the United Mine Workers, to consider an offer made by the operators of the northern coal fields to make a separate agreement with the miners of the northern Colorado, thereby calling on these miners to desert their brothers of the southern coalfields.President Mitchell is in favor of the separate settlement, while Mother Jones is adamantly opposed. Mother arrived at the meeting with William Howells, District 15 President, who also opposes the separate settlement. Howells spoke at the meeting and advised the northern miners not to make a separate agreement. The meeting then erupted with loud calls for Mother Jones. Mother Jones arose to speak, determined to stand up for the Italian miners of the southern Colorado whom Governor Peabody has lately been speaking of with great disdain and threats to deport. The speech made by Mother Jones, in defiance of her employer, John Mitchell, was a speech in favor of Solidarity:
Brothers, you English speaking miners of the northern fields promised your southern brothers, seventy percent of whom do not speak English, that you would support them to the end. Now you are asked to betray them, to make a separate settlement.You have a common enemy and it is your duty fight to a finish.
The enemy seeks to conquer by dividing your ranks, by making distinctions between North and South, between American and foreign. You are all miners, fighting a common cause, a common master. The iron heel feels the same to all flesh. Hunger and suffering and the cause of your children bind more closely than a common tongue.
I am accused of helping the Western Federation of Miners, as if that were a crime, by one of the National board members. I plead guilty. I know of no East or West, North nor South when it comes to my class fighting the battle for justice. If it is my fortune to live to see the industrial chain broken from every workingman’s child in America, and if then there is one black child in Africa in bondage, there I shall go.
[Emphasis added.]
Mother Jones received a standing ovation, and the miners voted 228 to 165 to stay out on strike with their Italian brothers of the southern coalfield.
Photograph added from Denver Post.
—————
From The Denver Post of November 22, 1903:
[…..]
“Mother” Jones the Factor.
…..There were loud calls for [Mother Jones], and she was not slow in coming to the front…
[Mother acknowledged the telegram that had been sent by President Mitchell to this meeting endorsing a settlement, but stated nevertheless:] John Mitchell is in Boston, we are here in the field…A general cannot give orders unless he is in the field; unless he is at the battleground. Could a general in Washington give order to an army in Colorado?…
Are you brave men? Can you fight as well as you can work? I had rather fall fighting than working.If you go back to work here and your brothers fall in the south, you will be responsible for their defeat….
I don’t know what you will do, but I know very well what I would do if I were in one of your places. I would stand or fall with this question of eight hours for every worker in every mine in Colorado. I would say we will all go to glory together or we will die and go down together. We must stand together; if we don’t there will be no victory for any of us…
I want the world to know, and all the papers to print, that I am going to Cripple Creek to speak there tomorrow for the Western Federation of Miners. I am not afraid to be classed as a friend of this organization and all criticism of me on that account falls flat upon my ears….
As “Mother” Jones walked off of the stage to many affectionate good-byes, she said:
I will see you again, boys after I have licked the C. F. & I.
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
—————
