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Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 29, 1904
Pennsylvania and Colorado – Hundreds of Newly Made Widows and Orphans
From The Rocky Mountain News of January 27, 1904:
Tag: January 1904
Hellraisers Journal: “Fifteen Men Plunge to Death Down 1500-Foot Victor Mine Shaft; Engineer Lost Control of His Engine and Cable Broke at Top of Wheel”
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 28, 1904
Victor, Colorado – Disaster at Independence Mine Claims Fifteen Lives
From The Denver Post of January 26, 1904:
Wednesday January 27, 1904 – Victor, Colorado
– Horror at Stratton’s Independence Mine
A horrific accident occurred at about 2:30 a. m. Tuesday January 26th at the Independence mine when Engineer Gellese was not able to control the engine he was running. A cage carrying sixteen men hit the sheave wheel hurling the men inside to their deaths.
Mrs. Emma F. Langdon reports from Victor:
The victims were mostly men of family, and a majority of them were new men in the district. Early in the morning hundred of people rushed to the mine to ascertain if their relatives were among the victims…the military were hastened immediately to the scene and took complete control, not even allowing press representatives near enough to gain facts. As near as the writer could learn particulars they are as follows:
Frank T. Gellese, engineer from Cour D’Alene, was on duty during the night and had experienced no difficulty with his engine, he stated, and at 2:30 he started to hoist the machine men from the sixth, seventh and eighth levels. Sixteen men were on the cage and started for the top. At the seventh level the men noticed that the cage was acting peculiar, and it appeared as if the engineer had lost control of it as it advanced in an unsteady manner. They soon reached the top and were hoisted about six feet above the collar of the shaft and suddenly lowered about thirty feet, then up they went to the sheave wheel and the disastrous accident was the result.
It is believed that the men were thrown against the top of the cage, from the force of the sudden stop, that they were knocked unconscious and knew but little, if anything, after that took place; that in the drop of the cage the speed was so rapid that through the force of the air pressure they were thrown out against the walls of the shaft, which caused them to be literally torn to pieces. When the cage struck the sheave wheel it not only threw Bullock (the only one saved) out, but also threw out a man by the name of Jackson and killed him.
No one aside from the engineer saw the accident. A miner stepped into the shaft house just after the the accident and saw a number of hats laying around. He then looked up and saw Jackson in the timbers with the sheave wheel on top of him.
The military and Manager Cornish were immediately notified and hastened to the mine. Engineer Gellese was arrested and held for investigation.
The remainder of the force, numbering about 200 men in the mine, were obliged to be taken out on a small cage that would accommodate but two men at a time, and they did not all succeed in getting out until about 6 a. m.
Most of the men killed fell to the sump below and it was twenty-four hours before all the bodies could be found. There were portions of them found from the top to the 1,400 foot level The bodies were almost all beyond recognition, heads, legs and arms being torn from the trunks. It was a gruesome sight.
[Emphasis added.]
Coroner Doran will convene a coroner’s jury to investigate the cause of the accident. The Mine Owners’ Association and the Citizens’ Alliance are already spreading rumors placing the blame upon the striking miners of the Western Federation of Miners.
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Hellraisers Journal: Rescuers on the Scene of Disaster at Harwick Mine at Cheswick, Pennsylvania; Families Plead for Help
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 27, 1904
Cheswick, Pennsylvania – Sorrow and Dread at Scene of Harwick Mine Disaster
From The Pittsburg Press of January 26, 1904:
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Hellraisers Journal: Kate Hilliard, Socialist and Suffragist, Defends Mother Jones after Vicious Attack Made by Polly Pry
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 23, 1904
Kate S. Hilliard Defends Mother Jones from Vicious Attack by Polly Pry
From Goodwin’s Weekly (Salt Lake City, Utah) of January 16, 1904:
Hellraisers Journal: Scandal Monger, Polly Pry, Claims Mother Jones Could be Former Madam Who Once Ran Houses of Ill-Repute
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 22, 1904
Denver, Colorado – The Polly Pry Claims Mother Jones Could Be Former Madam
Leonel Ross Campbell, Denver journalist now turned scandal monger, writing under the name of Polly Pry, has recently directed her prying gaze upon Mother Jones. In her magazine, The Polly Pry, Campbell claims to have evidence, supplied by the Pinkertons, that “proves” that Mother Jones once ran various houses of ill-repute in Denver, Omaha, Kansas City, Chicago, and San Francisco. The file, it is claimed, dates back to 1889.
According to the report, Mother Jones could be the madam who hired the “best looking girls on the row” for her house on Market Street in Denver where she went broke after her paramour, “Black-leg,” supposedly ran off with one of her girls. She then began drinking and was arrested and jailed several times. The Prying Polly further reported that this woman was:
…an inmate of Jennie Rogers’ house on Market street, Denver, some twelve years ago. She got into trouble with the Rogers woman for bribing all of her girls to leave her and go to a house in Omaha-for which act she was paid a procuress fee of $5 to $10 apiece for the girls.
She was a confidential servant in Rose Lovejoy’s private house on Market street, Denver, and with her several years. …
Lived in Eva Lewis’ house on Market street at the time the Coxey Army passed through here, and took a prominent part in the Denver preparation for their care.
Is known to Harry Loss, a piano player at 1925 Market street, who says he knew her first in Omaha in 1894, when she lived in a house at tenth and Douglass.
She was then selling clothes to the girls. A sewing woman for the sporting class living on Lawrence street…says it was commonly reported that she was a procuress by trade.
[Emphasis added.]
The Pinkerton report goes on to claim that a Mary Harris (using her maiden name) was a “vulgar, heartless, vicious creature, with a fiery temper and a cold-blooded brutality rare even in the slums.”
Now, in the slander sheet which bears her pen name, Miss Polly Pry is careful to maintain a distance from her lurid charges by reporting on a supposed report on Mother Jones. Very clever of her, and also in keeping with her usual style of reporting on labor leaders who are the often made the targets of her attacks. She has previously defamed U. M. W. District 15 President Howells, U. M. W. National Organizer William Wardjon, and U. M. W. National Executive Board Member John Gehr. Anti-union newspapers across the country see fit to pick up these sordid stories from The Polly Pry and reprint them.
For her part, Mother Jones refuses to give dignity to the charges by responding to them in any way. U. M. W. attorneys doubt that a law suit would be successful since the charges made by The Polly Pry are implied rather than made directly.
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Hellraisers Journal: The Denver Post: “Siberian Exiling Scenes Re-Enacted at Telluride” and News from Cripple Creek
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 20, 1904
News from Colorado Strike Zones of Telluride and Cripple Creek
From The Denver Post of January 15, 1904:
SIBERIAN EXILING SCENES.
Telluride, Colo., Jan. 15-Tears, curses, maledictions and prayers were heard at the depot this morning when the train pulled out of the station having on board six union miners, who were being deported by the military. The men were given breakfast early, the meal being served from the Sheridan hotel, after which the wife of one of them was reluctantly permitted to visit her husband in jail. At 8 o’clock a bunch of blue-coats, under the command of Captain Scholz, marched to the court house and the prisoners were taken to the county jail and formed into line, ready for the march to the station.
A woman with a small child attempted to fall in line with her husband, but was brutally prevented by the soldiers, who forced her back on the sidewalk. With a face drawn with bitter agony and grief she endeavored to keep up with the soldiers as they marched down the streets, but the prisoners had reached the train long before she had gone a block.
At the depot the men were immediately put aboard the train and two soldiers stationed at the car windows. The relatives of the men were allowed to talk to them, and for a moment the air was filled with tearful good-byes and well wishes.
Fifteen minutes before the signal was given to start three women came running down the track. One of them , a Mabel Marchinado, a mere girl, hardly 17 years old, weeping bitterly, rushed over the icy platform to the window in which one of the men was sitting, and exclaimed: “oh, papa, what are they going to do with you?”
Her father, Tony Marchinado, endeavored to comfort her, but the girl continued sobbing pitifully. The sympathy of the entire crowd at the depot went out to this girl, and some turned away. Then the soldiers ordered her to move on.
The girl suddenly ceased weeping and, turning to those standing, and in a voice loud enough for the military to hear, said: “I think it’s living shame for men living in this country to be treated in such a manner.” She was not arrested.
The woman with the small child in the meantime reached the depot almost exhausted. She purchased a ticket and boarded the train on which her husband was about to be sent into exile. She cried bitterly and her baby was blue with cold. “I am too sick to work and look after our baby alone, and I am going with my husband, if it means the jail.” she moaned. If ever volumes of mute sympathy went out from a crowd, it went out greater as she bent down her head and fondly kissed the lips of her offspring, in vain endeavor to hush its cries from the biting cold. It was by far the saddest incident yet recorded in the military occupation of Telluride and the subsequent deportation of striking miners…
[Emphasis added.]
The names of the six deported men are: Tony Marchinado, Tony Sartoris, Louis Sartoris, F. W. Wells, Matt Lingol and Battiste Monchiando.
Hellraisers Journal: Colorado Federation of Labor Holds Convention to Consider Ways and Means of Supporting Ongoing Strikes of Miners-U. M. W. A. and W. F. M.
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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
Hellraisers Journal: From the Appeal to Reason: “Propagating Socialism in the Dakotas” by John W. Gardner
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 12, 1904
“Comrade John W. Bennett is braving the cold blast of North Dakota’s winter…”
From the Appeal to Reason of January 9, 1904:
In view of the above, a short account of Comrade Bennett’s trip thru Nelson County, N.D. may be interesting….
The afternoon of [December] 8th, Comrade Bennett and I started with a horse and buggy for McVille, where Bennett was billed to speak that night.
When we left my home, a storm, at times approaching a blizzard stage, was raging and grew in severity until, after we had traveled about twelve miles, it became so blinding we were compelled to seek shelter at a convenient farm house. After an interval of about forty minutes, the storm having abated somewhat, we thanked our involuntary host for the shelter and the offer of more so freely extended, and once more plunged forward, arriving at the home of Comrade R. H. Carr about one hour later where a hearty welcome awaited us. After supper, seated by a cheerful hard coal fire with the storm raging outside, what a temptation to say: “There will be no one at the meeting place tonight, let us remain at home.” But the thought that a few might have braved the elements in order to hear the truth compelled us, Comrades Mr. and Mrs. Carr, Bennett and myself, to drive two and one-half miles to the place of meeting and we were amply rewarded by the close and even eager attention with which the fifteen persons there assembled listened to the speaker. While no local was organized that night, I confidently predict that one will be formed there in the near future. …
In closing this short detailed account of a very small portion of the work of our loyal and earnest Comrade Bennett, I desire to say: if the reading of the above inspires one comrade to renewed effort in behalf of the cause we all love, I will feel amply repaid for writing it.
Yours faithfully,
JOHN W. GARDNER[Emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: Colorado Militia Inflicts Military Despotism Upon Striking Miners at Telluride and Cripple Creek
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 11, 1904
A. H. Floaten, of the Western Federation of Miners, on Colorado’s Military Despotism
From the Appeal to Reason of January 9, 1904:
[The Grip of the Monster by G. H. Lockwood]
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[Colorado Military Despotism by A. H. Floaten]
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones, Miners’ Friend, Critically Ill in Trinidad, Colorado-Taken to Hospital as Safety Precaution
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 10, 1904
Trinidad, Colorado – Mother Jones Critically Ill, Taken to Hospital
From the Harrisburg Telegraph (Pennsylvania) of January 9, 1904:
From The Denver Post of January 9, 1904:
TAKEN TO HOSPITAL
———-Safety Precaution Taken for
“Mother” Jones.
———-Trinidad, Colo., Jan. 9.-“Mother” Jones, national organizer for the United Mine Workers of America, who has been lying ill at the Coronado hotel in this city for the past three days from typhoid fever, was removed to the hospital at 1:45 this afternoon on advice of her physician, Dr. White. “Mother” Jones is threatened with pneumonia and while the disease has not yet developed, it was deemed best to prepare for the worst. “Mother” Jones is 63 years old and up to her present illness has been in fairly robust health.[Emphasis added.]