Tag: Ludlow Tent Colony

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones: “…the babes of Ludlow, I stand here bringing their tears and wasted hopes to you…”

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Quote Mother Jones Babes of Ludlow, Speech at Trinidad CO UMW District 15 Special Convention, ES1 p154 (176 of 360)—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday September 21, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Mother Jones Speaks at Special Convention of District 15

Mother Jones at Ludlow with Frank Hayes, full, possibly Sept 23, 1913
Mother Jones at Ludlow with Frank Hayes, possibly September 23, 1913

Mother Jones was greeted with wild cheering and applause in Trinidad, Colorado, when she arose to speak this past Tuesday at the special convention of District 15, United Mine Workers of America. Delegates were gathered there to consider President Wilson’s proposal for ending the year long strike.

Mother remembered the children and the mothers who were massacred at Ludlow on April 20th:

I stand facing the far east, sounding the voices of the babes of Ludlow, I stand here bringing their tears, their wasted hopes to you, the heartaches of the mothers, the screams and the agonies of those who gave up their lives there; but they did not die in vain. They stirred the nation from end to end and you never again will see such a condition of slavery in Colorado.

The convention resulted in a vote in favor of acceptance of the plan put forward by President Wilson. 

From the Proceedings of the Miners’ Special Convention, September 15, 1914
-Excerpts from the Speech of Mother Jones:

Now, boys, many things have happened in the last year. One year ago today, I talked to you about industrial freedom. We are living in a great nation. Industrial despotism will have to die and you, my boys, must use your brains, you must study and think. The sword will have to disappear and the pen will have to take its place. We are the bulwark of the nation.

Thank God that we have another great man, another Lincoln, in Washington today in our President. (Applause.) He does not rush into things but weighs everything carefully in the scale.

If there are any representatives of the Colorado Fuel & Iron company here, I want to tell you to keep out. You cannot vote in this Convention, for none but bona fide working men will have a vote here. If you are here, I will find you, I can spot you immediately, for I can smell you four miles away. (Applause.)

* * *

At the time of the strike in West Virginia, I cancelled engagements in San Francisco and went to West Virginia. I went to Charleston and took the Cabin Creek train and went up there. A little boy came to me and he said, “Mother, have you come to stay with us?” “Yes, I have come to stay with you,” and the tears trickled down his cheeks as he told me how they had beaten his mother and his baby brother and driven his father away and he said: “If I live to be a man I will kill twenty of them.”

They were not United States bayonets. They were corporation bayonets, and corporation bayonets are in the hands of sewer rats and the others are in the hands of men. While in West Virginia, I was a guest of the State, I was arrested and placed in the bull pen. But they didn’t keep me quiet there for I was raising hell more than if I had been out. Now these boys didn’t get what they wanted in that settlement in West Virginia. They came to me and asked my advice and I said: “Take what you can get out of the pirates.” The newspaper men asked: “What do you think of the settlement?” and I told them it was alright, it wasn’t what we wanted, but what we could get. The mine owners of West Virginia have begun to realize what that settlement means to them. You were never in the condition here that they were in West Virginia. I was not followed here by the Baldwin-Felts thugs in the dead of night or horseback as I was in West Virginia. In a battle we had there seven of my brothers were murdered in cold blood and twenty-one were wounded.

* * *

The President of the United States, when he found you could not settle your difficulties, sent the federal troops here to defend you, and now if you don’t accept this proposition what more can he do. He has to withdraw  the troops. The constitution gives him so long to keep them here and I don’t know but what he has already overstepped that authority now.

Another thing, you have allowed here in this strike is to let everybody to get a hand in it. Now this fight is ours, we have got the United States with us and we are fighting the greatest moneyed power in the world. John D. Rockefeller controls the whole of New York City and New York with its millions of population has to submit to him. He owns the mines, the industries and the railroads clear through the nation, but one man arises against that power and says to the miners of Colorado, I will be with you if you are fair. He faces the greatest moneyed power in the world and says these miners shall at least have a showing.

* * *

I stand facing the far east, sounding the voices of the babes of Ludlow, I stand here bringing their tears, their wasted hopes to you, the heartaches of the mothers, the screams and the agonies of those who gave up their lives there; but they did not die in vain. They stirred the nation from end to end and you never again will see such a condition of slavery in Colorado.

* * *

Now, boys, you know I have no interests outside of the welfare of the children yet to come. I have carried your case to Congress, to the President, and I feel that we ought to pay that tribute of respect to the head of the nation in accepting this proposition. It is not all we want but Christ did not get all he wanted. So, boys, take my advice, I beg of you in the name of the women and children of Ludlow to pay that tribute of respect to the President of the nation, saying that we appreciate the move he has made and I believe you will get more.

Now, don’t say Mother Jones is playing politics. I never played politics in my life. I have been a Socialist for twenty-nine years and I would hammer a Socialist if he is a crazy lunatic just the same as any one else. I am not living for nothing I hold no office only that of disturbing. Before I leave the world, I have a contract with God Almighty to stay here eighty-two years more, there will be no bayonets and no guns, we will all be great citizens, and the bayonets of the future will be the pen, which is mightier than the sword. The next thing the public officers will do at Washington will be to take over the mines. We want the mines and we want the oil fields and we are going to have them. I stand here today as one pleading with you, I ask you to accept the President’s proposition. Let the nation know that the United Mine Workers are not what they are represented to be by General Chase and his staff of pirates. I want the people to know that you miners are men and law-abiding citizens.

[Emphasis added]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones: “…the babes of Ludlow, I stand here bringing their tears and wasted hopes to you…”” →

Hellraisers Journal: Ludlow Tent Colony Disenfranchised as JDR Jr’s Company Gunthugs Direct Arrests of Union Men

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Quote John D Rockefeller Jr, Great Principle, WDC Apr 6, 1914, US House Com p2874—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday September 18, 1914
Las Animas County, Colorado – Gunthug Walter Belk Active in Arrests of Union Men

From the Appeal to Reason of September 12, 1914:

HdLn Gunthug Belk Rules Ludlow CO, AtR p2, Sept 12, 1914

Ludlow Is Disfranchised

Ludlow, the strikers’ tent colony of nearly a thousand souls, is to be barred from the ballot box.

Ludlow’s citizens must go to Hastings two miles away to register, and Hastings is surrounded by company land, guarded by the armed thugs of the Baldwin-Felts Detective agency, armed while the union men are gunless.

No union man is permitted on company land and so the ballot box is in the grip of the coal operators.

A committee of citizens went to Colonel Lockett’s office in the city hall of Trinidad, Tuesday morning, to ask for protection at the polls and the colonel refused to see them. In his place stood Captain Rockwell with this message from the colonel:

“If the operators desire they can prohibit voters from going to the polls when the polls are on company land-the military will furnish no protection to any person on election day.”

The voice was that of Captain Rockwell, but the command was that of Colonel Lockett, Lockett of the United States army under whose protecting arm scabs have been flooding to the struck mines and digging coal for Rockefeller.

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: “Two days following the Ludlow massacre I came upon the ruins of the tent colony.”-Clara Ruth Mozzor

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Quote KE Linderfelt re Damn Red Neck Bitches of Ludlow Massacre, Apr 20, 1914, CIR p7378—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 6, 1914
Clara Ruth Mozzor Describes Ruins of Ludlow Two Days After Massacre

From the International Socialist Review of June 1914:

The following article is written with deep feeling by Clara Ruth Mozzor who was present at the death-pit as the bodies of the women and children were recovered from the Black Hole of Ludlow:

Ludlow How About It Rockefellers by R Kirby, ISR p722, June 1914

“LUDLOW”

By Clara Ruth Mozzor

TWO days following the Ludlow massacre I came upon the ruins of the tent colony. Ludlow was still a smoldering, smoking mass of ashes. What was once the homes of these men who had come across the seas to build for their wives and babies was now an aching desolation. I came to get at the bottom of the trouble that caused a colony in which there were women and children to be fired on by machine guns and soldiers’ rifles.

Waste and ruin, death and misery were the harvest of this war that was waged on helpless people. The ruthlessness of the steady fusillade of bullets from the machine guns turned against these people by the terrific force of capital in the human form of the inhuman octopus John D. Rockefeller, wiped out whole families, separated husbands and wives, mothers and babies and sent into the beyond little ones whose day of life was but a short time off.

Only a few weeks ago Ludlow was a colony of life. Eight American flags waved gladly in the air over its tents. Here was going on the making of Americans in this great western melting pot in the southern coal fields of Colorado.

And on these self-same ruins was enacted the most awful tragedy, the darkest chapter of American history, the Ludlow massacre when sleeping families were made the targets with which to break the backs of the strikers.

The very region of Ludlow is one of nature’s hell holes, full of its dark canyons and deep arroyos, its hills and mountains. And in these mountains, in these Black Hills are scattered the men. Many of them do not know where their families are. Some of the women and children are still in the friendly ranch houses, while most of them are in the shelter of Trinidad homes and refuges thrown open to them.

The entire southern district is in the throes of war. Not civil, but industrial warfare, that has made such a reign of terror as must forever remain a black spot in the history of the state and nation. Ludlow is not the beginning of this war of desolation and sorrow. Seven months ago the union men went on strike. They demanded many things, but they were willing to waive them all should they only be given the recognition of their union.

Today in Ludlow stalks the spirit of the dead, the massacred and the slaughtered. Mothers with babies at their breasts and babies at their skirts and mothers with babies yet unborn were the targets of this modern warfare. Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “Two days following the Ludlow massacre I came upon the ruins of the tent colony.”-Clara Ruth Mozzor” →

Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “The Class War in Colorado” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part II, Call to Arms

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Quote CO Labor Leaders Call to Arms, Apr 22, ULB p1, Apr 25, 1914—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday June 3, 1914
“The Class War in Colorado” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part II

From the International Socialist Review of June 1914:

Black Hole of Ludlow, ISR p719, June 1914

THE CLASS WAR IN COLORADO

By Leslie H. Marcy

[Part II of II]

The Massacre of the Innocents

[-from Rocky Mountain News]

The horror of the shambles at Ludlow is overwhelming. Not since the days when pitiless red men wreaked vengeance upon intruding frontiersmen and upon their women and children has this western country been stained with so foul a deed.

Ludlow Woman Crucified, ISR p716, June 1914

The details of the massacre are horrible. Mexico offers no barbarity so base as that of the murder of defenseless women and children by the mine guards in soldiers’ clothing. Like whitened sepulchres we boast of American civilization with this infamous thing at our very doors. Huerta murdered Madero, but even Huerta did not shoot an innocent little boy seeking water for his mother who lay ill. Villa is a barbarian, but in his maddest excess Villa has not turned machine guns on imprisoned women and children. Where is the outlaw so far beyond the pale of human kind as to burn the tent over the heads of nursing mothers and helpless little babies?

Out of this infamy one fact stands clear. Machine guns did the murder. The machine guns were in the hands of mine guards, most of whom were also members of the state militia. It was private war, with the wealth of the richest man in the world behind th mine guards.

Once and for all time the right to employ armed guards must be taken away from private individuals and corporations. To the state, and to the state alone, belongs the right to maintain peace. Anything else is anarchy. Private warfare is the only sort of anarchy the world has ever known, and armed forces employed by private interests have introduced the only private wars of modern times. This practice must be stopped. If the state laws are not strong enough, then the federal government must step in. At any cost, private warfare must be destroyed.

Who are these mine guards to whom is entrusted the sovereign right to massacre? Four of the fraternity were electrocuted recently in New York. They are the gunmen of the great cities, the offscourings of humanity, whom a bitter heritage has made the wastrels of the world. Warped by the wrongs of their own upbringing, they know no justice and they care not for mercy. They are hardly human in intelligence, and not as high in the scale of kindness as domestic animals.

Yet they are not the guilty ones. The blood of the innocent women and children rests on the hands of those who for the greed of dollars employed such men and bought such machines of murder. The world has not been hard upon these; theirs has been a gentle upbringing. Yet they reck not of human life when pecuniary interests are involved.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “The Class War in Colorado” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part II, Call to Arms” →

Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “The Class War in Colorado” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part I, Battle of Ludlow

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Quote John Lawson 1913, after October 17th Death Special attack on Forbes Tent Colony, Beshoar p74—————

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:

CO Miners Prepared to Defend Colonies, ISR p709, 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!.

Militiamen on Way to CO Strike Zone, ISR p708, June 1914

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.”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “The Class War in Colorado” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part I, Battle of Ludlow” →

Hellraisers Journal: Court-Martial Witness: Miners Stored Dynamite in Pits Dug for Families to Seek Shelter in Case of Attack

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Quote KE Linderfelt re Damn Red Neck Bitches of Ludlow Massacre, Apr 20, 1914, CIR p7378—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 17, 1914
State of Colorado Charges Guardsmen with Arson and Larceny at Ludlow Tent Colony

Hamrock and Linderfelt Butchers of Ludlow, 1913, 1914, CO Coal Field War Project

As the Court-Martial of members of the Colorado militia commences, The New York Times continues to publish the claim, made by Colorado’s militia of gunthugs, that dynamite stored in the safety pits of the strikers exploded during the battle, and that that is what started the fire that burned the Ludlow Tent Colony to the ground, killing two women and eleven children and destroying the homes and all of the earthly possessions of the 1200 residents. This claim was made by the Times two days after the Massacre along with the claim that the battle took place on the property of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.

In fact, the Ludlow Tent Colony was established on land rented by the United Mine Workers of America. The strikers had every right to be there. Their tents were their homes which they were determined to protect, just as anyone anywhere would.

To our knowledge, the Times has never corrected that wildly inaccurate reporting.

The idea that miners-knowing the dangers of dynamite-would dig pits for the safety of their wives and children, fill them with dynamite, and then tell their loved ones to hide amongst the sticks of dynamite in case of attack, is the height of absurdity.

Readers of Hellraisers are aware of the many affidavits sworn out by those men and women who were in the Colony during the attack. To our knowledge the Times has not printed even one of these affidavits, at least we have not found a single one printed within pages of The New York Times.

There is no mystery as to the cause of the fire: The soldiers entered the colony at about 7 p. m. as the strikers ran out of ammunition. They first lit a match to Mrs. Petrucci’s tent, shot at her and the children as she ran to tent #58, and then, not long after she entered that cellar, they lit tent #58 on fire also, even as Cedi Costa begged for mercy. No mercy was shown. The gunthug militiamen then moved through the colony lighting tents on fire using paper and matches or a broom dipped in oil. Wherever the soldiers moved, the fires started.

The lies told by the gunthug militia are printed for the world to see, but the affidavits of the terrorized strikers and their wives are buried in volumes of testimony, printed only in the labor and Socialist newspapers

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Will Speak to Women of Colorado Relief Committee at Brooklyn, New York

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Quote Mother Jones Babes of Ludlow, Speech at Trinidad CO UMW District 15 Special Convention, ES1 p154 (176 of 360)—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 16, 1914
Brooklyn, New York – Mother Jones to Seek Aid for the Colorado Strike

From The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of May 14, 1914:
Mother Jones to Speak to Women of Colorado Relief Committee

MOTHER JONES TO SPEAK HERE MONDAY
———-
Committee Meets at Home of Mrs. J. P. Warbasse
to Perfect Arrangements
———-

FOR AROUSING SYMPATHY
———-
She Will Tell of Her Experiences in Colorado Strike,
Where She Was Arrested.
———-

Refugees of Ludlow Tent Colony at Trades Assembly Hall,
Trinidad, Colorado, photograph by Louis Dold

The committee in charge of the Mother Jones meeting, to be held at the Masonic Temple Monday evening met at the home of Mrs. James P. Warbasse [Agnes Dyer Warbasse], 386 Washington avenue yesterday afternoon, and discussed the arrangements. The object of the meeting on Monday is to arouse interest and sympathy for the wives and children of the Colorado mine workers who are suffering for want of food and clothing, and all who attend are requested to bring warm clothing blankets, etc., to be sent to Colorado.

Mother Jones who was in Colorado during the mine trouble, was asked to go to Washington to testify before the Senate in the investigation of the alleged massacre of women and children in the fight between the strikers and the militia. She has never spoken in Brooklyn before, and has come at the request of the women of Brooklyn, who formed the Colorado Relief Committee, to tell of her experiences in Colorado, where she was arrested on her way from Denver to Trinidad, and held by the military court for three weeks incommunicado not being allowed to employ a counselor or see a physician during that period and being released just before the serving of a writ of habeas corpus.

“This was all illegal, according to the laws of Colorado,” declared Mrs. James P. Warbasse to an Eagle reporter, at her home, yesterday afternoon. “A military court should not have been held when the civil courts were in session, and then think of an old woman like Mother Jones being held without the opportunity of consulting a physician. However, she is free now and she is going to tell the public just how things stand out there. She accepts no remuneration for her talks, and says it is payment enough to arouse the interest and sympathy of the public in the oppression and suffering of the Western miners.”

Mrs. Warbasse, who is actively interested in social work, was present in her automobile when Miss Elizabeth Dutcher was arrested on Tuesday evening, in front of Stern’s store on Forty-second street, Manhattan, where she had gone to speak to the employees on the unionization of clerks in department stores. Mrs. Warbasse furnished the bail.

Miss Dutcher is a member of the committee in charge of the meeting on Monday, as is also Mrs. Frank H. Cothren, who is acting as advisory counsel to Miss Dutcher, and Miss Hildegarde Kneeland, who was also present at the time of arrest.

“I think it a very significant thing that Mother Jones is coming here for the first time, at the request of the women of Brooklyn,” said Mrs. Warbasse, “and we think the time is ripe for bringing before the public some of the wrongs and oppressions suffered by the poor people in this country. I think this quotation will explain our attitude as well as anything. ‘He who would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression.’ We have tried to help the sufferers in Colorado by sending Miss Helen Schloss, a trained nurse, and at her request we are raising funds for clothing and food, for which these people are suffering. A collection will be taken up for their benefit on Monday evening.”…..

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: The little boy raised up his hands and said “Don’t shoot for my mother’s sake.”-Affidavits from Ludlow

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Quote re Louis Tikas by Paul Manning, 2002—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 7, 1914
Las Animas County, Colorado – Affidavits from Survivors of Ludlow, Part II

Children of the Ludlow Tent Colony

Children of Ludlow bf Massacre, CO Coal Field War Project Daily Life, 1914

The little son of Ometomica Covadle pleads for the life of his mother:

AFFIDAVIT.

State of Colorado, Las Animas County, ss:

Ometomica Covadle, being of lawful age, being first duly sworn, on oath deposes and says: That her name is Ometomica Covadle. I was going up to the store in the daytime, and the guards were all around the tents, and they start to shoot at the tents, and I only had time to get hold of my baby son, about 10 years old, and get into the pump; and the soldiers came up and tried to shoot inside where we were, and that came out of the pump when they tried to shoot with the machine guns and went into the arroyo. There were two dead men, and they jumped right on top of them. Couple of soldiers came out of the arroyo and was going to kill both of us, and the little boy raised up his hands and said, “Don’t shoot, for my mother’s sake.” I had a machine, and the soldiers took it out, and a lot of other stuff, and took it to the depot and kept it. They stole a trunk full of my clothes; I saw them take it with my own eyes. I had $5 in money that was stolen. They told me that I should be happy that you all were not killed.

Ometomica (her x mark) Covadle.
Subscribed and sworn to before me this 1st day of May, A. D. 1914.
[SEAL.] Leon V. Griswold, Notary Public.
My commission expires September 10, 1917.

[Emphasis added]

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Hellraisers Journal: “It is a damned pity that all of you damned red-necked bitches were not killed.”-Lt. Karl E. Linderfelt

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Quote KE Linderfelt re Damn Red Neck Bitches of Ludlow Massacre, Apr 20, 1914, CIR p7378—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 6, 1914
Las Animas County, Colorado – Affidavits from Survivors of the Ludlow Massacre

Lt Karl E Linderfelt 1913, 1914, Butcher of Ludlow, CO Coal Field War Project

Over the next few days Hellraisers Journal will present affidavits from those who were in the Ludlow Tent Colony as the militiamen, Rockefeller’s gunthugs, ended their attack upon the colony by burning down the tents, the homes of 1200 men, women and children.

Mrs. Ed Tonner describes how Mrs. Costa begged for her life and the lives of the women and children (including three of her own) as the gunthugs, led by Linderfelt, prepared to set fire to tent #58:

AFFIDAVIT.

State of Colorado.
Las Animas County, ss:

Mrs. Ed Tonner, of lawful age, being first sworn, upon oath deposes and says: That her name is Mrs. Ed Tonner. When Mr. Linderfelt came into camp with his auto load of ammunition, I heard Mrs. Costa crying, and she began praying Santa Maria and begging him not to kill her and her little children, and he replied to her, “There is no use in you crying and carrying on, as we have orders to do this, and we are going to do it; no mercy on any of you.”

Mrs. Ed Tonner.
Subscribed and sworn to before me this 30th day of April, A. D. 1914.
[SEAL.] Leon Griswold, Notary Public.
My commission expires September 10, 1917.

[Emphasis added.]

Mrs. Pedregone describes how she watched the “guards and militia” set fire to her tent:

AFFIDAVIT.

State of Colorado,
Las Animas County, ss:

Mrs. Alcarita Pedregon, being first duly sworn, on oath deposes and says: That her name is Mrs. Alcarita Pedregon. I got up late in the morning, and I seen the guards and militia on horseback, and they got off the horses and fell down on the ground to get away from the fire, and then I went into the hole with the children. There were 11 children and 4 women in the hole, and we stayed in that cellar from 9 in the morning until 6 the next morning. I seen a militiamen come over there and look inside the tent and strike a match and set fire to the tent. I stayed in the tent until it was all burned up. There were 11 children and 2 women suffocated with the smoke where I was. I lost 2 children in this cave when the tent was burned. I don’t know where my husband was at this time. I looked up out of the hole and saw the soldier set fire to the tent with a match. I lost everything I had in his fire.

Mrs. Alcarita (her x mark) Pedregon.
Subscribed and sworn to before me this 1st day of May, A. D. 1914.
[SEAL]   Leon V. Griswold, Notary Public.
My commission expires September 10. 1917.

[Emphasis added.]

Mr. William Snyder describes how that gunthug-infested militia unit set fire to his tent while his family was still inside, how they mocked him and threatened him as he held his dead son in his arms, how Linderfelt raged at his wife as she begged for the life of her husband: “Please don’t shoot him; they have killed one of my children already,” when Linderfelt says, “It is a damned pity that all of you damned red-necked bitches were not killed.”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “It is a damned pity that all of you damned red-necked bitches were not killed.”-Lt. Karl E. Linderfelt” →

Hellraisers Journal: Louis Tikas, Hero of Ludlow, Honored by Thousands of Striking Miners Marching at Trinidad, Colorado

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Quote re Louis Tikas by Paul Manning, 2002—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 28, 1914
Thousands of Striking Miners Join in Funeral Procession in Honor of Louie Tikas

April 27, 1914, Trinidad, Colorado:

Funeral Louie Tikas Hearse by Dold, Trinidad CO, Apr 27, 1914Funeral Louie Tikas by Dold, Trinidad CO, Apr 27, 1914Funeral Louie Tikas, Trinidad CO, Apr 27, 1914

From The Denver Post of April 27, 1914:

Funeral of Louie Tikas, DP p3, Apr 27, 1914

The body of Tikas lay before an alter on which were branched candles, holding high, burning tapers. The priest, assisted by [Pietro Catsulis], now the leader of the Greek colony, intoned the mass, the response being made by Catsulis.

Three times the priest kissed the cheeks of the dead leader. Three times he anointed the brow with wine. Three times he sprinkled dust on the face of the dead, while a Greek in overalls and corduroy coat swung the silver censer and wailed dolefully.

“Jesus give a place in Heaven to Louis, chanted the priest in the Greek tongue.

“Jesus give a place in heaven to Louis. Bring life from the grave,” solemnly repeated the dark-faced fighting men who crowded the undertaker’s chapel.

“Jesus, if Louis has any enemies, may they forget their hostility,” chanted Catsulis.

The tapers burned low. The place was dim with incense. But the priest chanted on, his iron-gray hair and flowing beard in somber contrast with his gold and silver woven robes.

This was the funeral of the man beliked by all he led and served. But a handful of women were present, and no arms were carried to remind those who watched that war was on.

Orderly, reverent, deeply religious, was the service. When the body was carried from the chapel, 488 Greeks followed the line before the hearse. The American colors, draped in crepe, were lifted, and in utter silence the cortege moved down Main Street to Commercial, past the headquarters of the United Mine Workers and on over the hill to the Knights of Pythias cemetery.

Before the funeral four Greeks carrying their muskets entered the chapel. They lifted their hats, muttered an oath to “avenge Louis’ death” pounded for times on the floor with their muskets, turned and left the room.

[Emphasis added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Louis Tikas, Hero of Ludlow, Honored by Thousands of Striking Miners Marching at Trinidad, Colorado” →