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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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