Sunday April 19, 1914 – Ludlow Tent Colony, Colorado – Greek Easter, a Day of Celebration
Baseball Game at Ludlow Tent Colony
Sunday was a gala day in the Ludlow Tent Colony for the Greek Easter was celebrated, and the Greeks had declared that they would outdo the Catholics in their celebration of this Holy Day. The colony is made up of residents from many different nationalities, and, on this Holy Day, they came decked out in their various national costumes bringing the colony to life in a riot of color. Snow still covered the prairie here and there, but the sun was shining its warmth upon the strikers and their families on this glorious Easter Day.
Louie Tikas, leader of the colony, was resplendent in his traditional Cretan vraka. He walked through the colony greeting every one with a kiss and the joyful cry of “Christ Is Risen.” Louie’s bright smile was welcomed at every tent, well respected for his calm manner and steadfast courage.
Music filled the air and the children played around the tents. Later on, after church services, there was a feast in the main tent. A lamb had been put on the fire, and there were barrels of beer for the adults.
After the feast the colonist played a game of baseball in the ball park built next to the tents. American style gym bloomers had been provided as an Easter present for the women, and one of the games was played, men against the women, with the women wearing their new bloomers for the first time.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 14, 1914 Ludlow Tent Colony, Colorado – Mrs. Mary Thomas Reports
Mary Thomas, camp greeter of the Ludlow Tent Colony, reports that the social life of the camp has greatly improved with the coming spring. Once again she can enjoy her morning coffee outside with her dear friends and nearest neighbors, Cedi Costa and Margo Gorci. The children are once again at play on the swings and see-saws. Many of the colonist plant flowers and vegetables around the tents bringing a festive quality to the camp.
Meals can once again be eaten outside at the long tables placed between the tents. Mary, Cedi and Margo continue to pool their resources in order to see that everyone gets something. An elderly disabled miner eats with the three families.
Cedi’s husband, Charlie, camp peacemaker and overseer, always keeps everyone smiling. One day he came by to play a practical joke:
Charley brought a bunch of paper “telescopes” and set them up on our long table. Then he gathered us around and began to shout like a barker at a circus, “come one, come all, the show is just about to begin!”
“What are they?” we asked.
“Fighting Ants,” he replied.
“Where did you get them?” Cedi said suspiciously.
“I bought them.” Hearing Charley say this, Cedi became furious.
“What do you mean ‘you bought them?’ You have a lot of nerve spending money for fighting ants when we are nearly starving to death!” Then all three of us excitedly said, “Let’s see them!”
“You’ll have to pay me a penny each,” announced Charley.
“You’ll have to trust us until payday.”
All right,” he teased, “just until payday. Now,” he said,”put these telescopes up to your eyes, or you can’t see them.” He helped us with them. We looked and looked. By now a crowd had gathered around our table, drawn there by Charley’s spiel about fighting ants.
“We can’t see anything,” we muttered, and put the telescopes back on the table. When we looked at each other, we almost went to pieces with hysterical laughter. Charley had put charcoal on the end we looked through, and each of us had a big, round black monicle!
Mary Thomas describes Charlie Costa as always jovial, always doing something funny to lessen the tragic times. The children of the camp love him and follow him around like the Pied Piper.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday February 26, 1914 Trinidad, Colorado – Young Gustav Yeskenski Tells of Soldier’s Brutality
From the Chicago Day Book of February 25, 1914:
Trinidad, Col., Feb.-25. A story told by a little child of the unthinkable, unprintable cruelty of soldiers wearing the uniform of the state of Colorado, brought horror into the faces of the congressmen who are investigating Colorado’s coal strike.
Gustav Yeskenski, 11, stammering in awe of the big men from Washington, gave in broken words the most impressive testimony the committee has heard.
The boy told how a citizen-soldier came on Feb. 10 to his home near Suffield.
Gustav’s father was crippled in a coal mine explosion and is helpless. His mother took in washing until she had saved money to buy a cow. She started a milk route and saved $200, with which she planned to buy a horse and wagon. One day she and her husband came to Trinidad.
While they were away from home the militiamen came.
[Little Gustav told the committee:]
There were two soldiers. One was a captain. He was so drunk that he just lay there in their buggy and never moved.
The other was not so drunk, and he came in our house where me and Mary and Elizabeth and the baby was. He said he was looking for guns, so he took my little twenty-two rifle what my mama gived me.
Then he begins breaking open my mama’s trunk with an axe, yes ma’am, that’s what he done. And I just cried and said for him please not to do that because my mama would whip me, sure, and he just kept on tearing the clothes out of that trunk.
Then I cried more, and all the little kids cried, yes ma’am, we cried hard. And that soldier got a mads at us and we got a ‘fraids on him.
And he kicked my little baby brother, what’s a year and a half old, and knocked him down on the floor and kicked him again. And he hit my little, sister Mary-7-with his gun, and he cut her face all up. And he kicked me, too, here in the side, and he hit my other sister, Elizabeth. She’s 9, yes ma’am.
And he just went on taking clothes out of my mama’s trunk, and pretty soon he found her coat what had her pocketbook in it and he sees my mama’s $200.
Then he took a bottle of whisky out of his pants’ pocket and stuffed that money down in there and then put the whisky back.
And I got an awful ‘fraid and I said “don’t take my mama’s money or she’ll whip me, sure,” and he called me a bad name and kicked me some more. And he went to the kitchen and found some eggs, and some he ate and the rest he threw down on the floor with the dish. Yes, ma’am, he threw the eggs all over my mama’s floor.
After kicking and beating the innocent children, according to little Gustav’s story, the soldier proceeded to still worse treatment, so awful that it is unprintable.
Complaints were made, after the visit of the soldiers, to Gen. Chase, commander of Colorado’s state troops. Chase made his usual indefinite promise to “investigate.”
But after the committee had been shocked by the fiendish story, Chase was stirred to new activity. There actually was prospect that the man responsible for one of the many outrages which have sickened the people of the strike zone might be arrested and punished.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 21, 1914 Trinidad, Colorado – Sarah Slator, Age 16, Kicked, Foot Smashed, Jailed
Miss Sarah Slator appeared before the Congressional Investigating Committee February 20th. She is the 16-year-old girl who was kicked in the breast and the shoulder by General Chase just before the brave old soldier order his troops to “Ride Down The Women,” thereby causing the so-called “Mother Jones Riot.” Miss Slator gives a vivid description of the events of that day and relates how she held her own against soldiers on horseback armed with swords, rifle butts and bayonets:
Sarah Slator, a witness produced and sworn before the committee, on oath testified as follows:
Examination by Mr. Brewster [Attorney for the Miners]: Q. Your name is Sarah Slator ? — A. Yes. Q. You spell your name S-l-a-y-t-o-r ? — A. S-l-a-t-o-r. Q. S-l-a-t-o-r?— A. S-l-a-t-o-r. Q. Where do you live, Miss Slator? — A. At — on 818 East Main Q. In what city? — A. Trinidad. Q. Colorado? — A. Colorado; yes, sir. Q. How old are you? — A. I am 16. Q. Were you born in Trinidad ? — A. Yes, air. Q. Is your father living? — A. Yes, sir. Q. What do you do ? — A. I attend school. Q. And you have been to school this morning ? — A. Yes, sir. Q. Just got in ? —A. Yes, sir. Q. Now, do you remember the parade A. Yes, sir. Q. The women’s parade? -A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you see a man known as Gen. Chase on that day? — A. Yes, Q. Now, begin and tell in your own way where you were when you first saw Gen. Chase, and what happened to you thereafter ?- A. Well, I was in front of Dr. Espey’s place when I first — – — Q. Dr. Espey’s place is on the corner of what street ? — A. Of Main – and Walnut. Q. Main and Walnut? As related to the post office, where is it? — A. It is a block east of the post office. Q. A block east of the post office. That is, this way from the post office? — A. That way [pointing apparently north]. Q. Oh, Espey’s place is beyond the post office? — A. Yes, sir. Q. I see. Now, tell where you were standing and what happened? — A. I was standing in the middle of the car tracks this side of Espey’s when I first saw Gen. Chase, and he was on horseback: and there was also another officer on horseback, and they were running through the ranks backward and forward, and trying to make the women return toward West Main; and I was standing alone watching the women go ; and then Gen. Chase came up on horseback, and he rushed right by me on his horse, and he said, “Get back there,” and I was somewhat dazed by the horse running up against me, and I stood there, and he kicked me and told me to get back. Q. Now, where did he kick you? — A. He kicked — his foot went right up this way on me [indicating breast]. Q. Well, go on. — A. And then he told me to go back ; and then the other officer came to him to help him to make me go back. Q. Wait a minute. It needed two — was this Gen. Chase that you speak of a small man? — A. No, sir. Q. Is he a pretty large man? — A. Yes, sir. Q. And it needed another officer to help him — to make you get back? — A. Evidently; because the other officer came up to him. Q. Well, what happened then ?— A. Well, then a good number of women had passed, and they gave a sort, of a triumphant yell as they passed ; so both the officers turned to attend to the other women, and got past; and then Gen. Chase’s horse became frightened at some thing — I don’t know what it was — and it ran into a horse and buggy that was there, and he fell off the horse. Q. That is, Gen. Chase fell off the horse ? — A. Yes, sir. Q. Go ahead. — A. And he had been treating us so mean that everybody screamed and laughed at him, and that made him angry; and he gave the order that they were to “ride down the women.” Q. What, precisely, were his words? — A. Well, I didn’t hear all of his order, but I heard that — “Ride down the women,” and “Make them get back.” So then the cavalry that were stationed in front of Maoluff’s place — that is a little bit beyond Walnut Street — they commenced to try to get the women to return to Main Street, or to Commercial Street. Q. By the way, how did you know this was Gen. Chase ? — A. Well, I didn’t Q. Describe him? — A. I didn’t know him then, but I met him afterwards. Mr Brewster: Describe him also.
Chairman Foster [U. S. Representative, Chairman of Committee]: She needn’t do that.
Q. You met him afterwards ? — A. Yes, sir. So they then came up, and then when they started in I went — stepped on the sidewalk then — I had been in the middle of the street — and then I saw the soldiers take the flag from a woman — I don’t know who the woman was — and that made the women angry, and those that had banners, they tried to hit the militia that had the swords, and I saw several of the hats that the women had that were thrown in the mud in front of Maoluff’s place; and then I stepped up on that little platform in front of the printer’s place there, and of course the horses could not come up on the platform, and we stood there for a few minutes; and then they sent the infantry to make us get off the platform. And after that I attempted to try to go up Walnut Street to return home, and then they ordered me back to Main Street; one of the militia was on horseback — he tried to hit me with his sword. Q. Now, what happened when he tried to hit you with his sword ? — A. He was just trying to order me back to Main Street, and I was standing there watching him, and he came up and he attempted to hit me with his sword, and I stepped behind a telephone post, and he hit the telephone post instead of me. Q. Was it a light tap [tapping] ? — A. No ; he hit it pretty hard — if it had hit me. Then I said to him, “Break your sword ; I don’t care,” and he again attempted to hit me, and he hit the telephone post twice after that. And then I went across the street — that is, to the north — southwest corner of Walnut, and I was there met by a militiaman on horseback, who was talking to a woman, and he told them — she asked them what right they had to chase women away like cattle, and he said, “When the women sink beneath our respect, they need to be treated like cattle,” and I asked him how we had “sunk beneath his respect,” and he didn’t answer me. Then I went up Main Street, and I was left alone, practically, until I got to Kuver’s, and when I was in front of Kuver’s there, there was three militiamen came up to me and told me to move on. I had been going at a pretty slow rate; so I went on, and I got in front of the — in front of Zimmerman’s, I saw two militia — I mean four militia, with two women, taking them to prison; and I shamed them for having to take four militia to take two women.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday February 20, 1914 Trinidad, Colorado – Mary Thomas Testifies Before Congressional Committee
Tuesday February 17, 1914 – Trinidad, Colorado Mrs. Mary Thomas, a resident of the Ludlow Tent Colony, was called before the Investigating Committee, and gave this testimony regarding her 11 days of confinement by the military:
Mary Thomas, called as a witness and duly sworn, testified as follows:
Examination by Mr. Clark [Attorney for the Miners]: Q. State your name. — A. My name is Mary Hannah Thomas. Q. Where do you live? —A. What is that? Q. Where do you five ? — A. Ludlow. Q. In the tent colony ? — A. In the tent colony. Q. Do you remember the date of the woman’s parade here in Trinidad ?— A. I do. Q. That was about — were you in town the day of that parade ? — A. I was, sir. Q. What time did you get to town? — A. About 15 minutes to 3, is the nearest I could think it was. Q. Were you in the parade at all? — A. I was not, sir. Q. State what happened to you that day. — A. I came down town to do some purchases that I wanted to — buy some things, and came down in an automobile, and I reached town, I guess, about 15 minutes to 3, and the parade and everything had passed over, and they were bringing the people back from the first block on West Main Street. I was about 20 yards farther away than the First National Bank. When I turned back — I saw a crowd coming back, and there was some militiamen pulling me over with a fixed bayonet, and told me to keep on moving, and I went on and reached Judge Bowers’s office here. I guess I walked about 30 or 40 yards when I went up three of the steps, and this militiaman said “Move on,” and I said, “I don’t have to.” He said, “You want to be pinched?” I said, “Please yourself,” and he pulled me down by my fur here and twisted me around until I nearly stumbled on my face. I didn’t know what he was trying to do, and he knocked again right back here [indicating her back with her right hand] until I stumbled on about 2 yards, and I stumbled, and then I tried to knock back on him until he knocked me again as if he was a pugilist, and he kept on knocking me and I tried to do the best I could with my muff, and some one came up and gave an order to have me arrested, and two soldiers took me a little farther down near the post office and kept me waiting there, I guess for about an hour, and Gen. Chase came along, and I heard one of them tell him that “there is Mrs. Thomas.” “Oh, that is her, is it,” he says, “from Ludlow, is it,” he says, and they marched me on with about 12 men up to the county jail. They kept me there 11 days, and I demanded to have my children with me, and they brought the children down. Q. Your children are small, are they? — A. Very, very small; one about 3 and the other 4. Q. How long did they keep you in there ? — A. Eleven days. Q. In the upstairs part of the jail ? — A. Upstairs part of the jail. Q. Was anyone else up there ? — A. Yes; there were other prisoners there. Q. Men and women there? — A. There was an old man there when I was taken first, about 82 years of age, I guess. Q. In the cell in which you were confined state whether there was any toilet there. — A. There was a toilet outside and I told him I wanted to go there, and there was a militiaman came up and gave me authority, and I went out to the toilet and then the militiaman came up and gave general orders to put me back in my cell. Mr. Clark. That is all.
By Capt. Danks [Representing the “military organization of the State of Colorado”]: Q. You were confined upstairs in the county jail ? — A. Upstairs. Q. All the time ?— A. All the time. Q. Do you remember looking out the window and hollering to the soldiers when they were bringing women up ? — A. Hollering ? Q. Yes. — A. I remember of singing the union song; that is all.
Hellraisers Journal – February 6, 1914 Trinidad, Colorado – Mary Thomas Held in Filthy Cell
SINGING IN JAIL THROUGH BROKEN WINDOW
Mary Thomas, noted singer and resident of the Ludlow Tent Colony, was one of the women arrested on January 22nd, the day that General Chase tumbled from his horse and ordered his troops to “Ride Down the Women!” Soon her two little daughters, three and four, were brought to her, and the three of them were held in the filthy cold cell for eleven days.
Her crime was talking back to an officer who had ordered her to move off the sidewalk from where she had been watching the parade. She told him:
You go on and go wash your dirty clothes you have on before you order me off of the sidewalk.
The militiaman began to pull her and she fought back using her fingernails on him. She was taken to jail where she placed a call to Louie Tikas at the Ludlow Tent Colony to let him know of her arrest.
At night she stood at the broken window and sang beautiful arias to her supporters gathered outside in the ally. She gives this account:
Then the hundreds of men prisoners in the basement jail…joined in. It almost drove the police and military out of their minds. It caught on through town, and soon all you could hear was “Union Forever” throughout Trinidad. I continued this procedure daily. The crowds came, and grew bigger and bigger. Finally it got so that the police had to disperse them. This made them angry and they would break the jail windows. It was no use to replace the panes, for they would just be broken again the next day.
Apparently, the little girls also caused some trouble in the jail cell. Mrs. Thomas tells the story of her release:
In the middle of the night two officers came rattling the door. “What are you trying to do?” they yelled. I didn’t know what they were talking about having been wakened out of a sound sleep. Then I noticed that the place was swimming in water. My children must not have turned off the tap. A mopping crew came immediately, supervised by a guard.A few hours later the jailer and another man unlocked our door and said angrily, “Get out!” “What? Without notice?” I said jokingly. “Get out, and take that wrecking crew with you!” I lost no time in obeying that welcome command, and we headed for the union headquarters.
Note: Newsclip from The Rocky Mountain News of January 23, 1914.
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MARY THOMAS DESCRIBES COMPANY TOWN
Mary Thomas, the greet-singer at the Ludlow Tent Colony, came from Wales with her two little daughters last July. Her husband, Tom, picked her up at the Trinidad train depot, and on the way back to the Delagua mining camp, he warned her in a whisper, “Don’t talk about anything important within hearing of that stool pigeon driver for the company.” As they approached the camp he cautioned her, “Don’t be nervous if the mine guards question you. I’ll answer their questions.”
It was dark when they arrived at that camp, and two big guards shined their lights into the automobile, inspecting Mary and the two little girls. Tom was thoroughly interrogated and had to explain to the satisfaction of the mine guards that he was bringing his wife and children into the camp. Finally, they were permitted to enter.
Mary states that she was completely demoralized when she saw the tumbled down shack that was to be her home. The door opened directly onto the dirt street in front of the house. There was no front yard and no porch, only a block of wood for a step. The cupboard was broken, the chairs were rickety, and the walls were lined with thin cardboard, torn and sagging in several places. Should a fire ever get started, she thought, the shack would go up in flames like a tinderbox.
Hellraisers Journal- Thursday September 25, 1913 The Great Exodus of Striking Miners from Company Towns
Southern Colorado, September 23, 1913 -Evicted Families Arrive at Ludlow and Trinidad as Rain Turns to Snow.
Chicago DayBook September 24, 1913
As the miners and their families were evicted from the company towns, Don MacGregor, a reporter from the Denver Express, was a witness and filed this report which was published September 24th:
No one who did not see that exodus can imagine its pathos. The exodus from Egypt was a triumph, the going forth of a people set free. The exodus of the Boers from Cape Colony was the trek of a united people seeking freedom.
But this yesterday, that wound its bowed, weary way between the coal hills on the one side and the far-stretching prairie on the other, through the rain and the mud, was an exodus of woe, of a people leaving known fears for new terrors, a hopeless people seeking new hope, a people born to suffering going forth to new suffering.
And they struggled along the roads interminably, in an hour’s drive between Tinidad and Ludlow, 57 wagons were passed, and others seemed to be streaming down to the main road from every by-path.
Every wagon was the same, with its high piled furniture, and its bewildered woebegone family perched atop, and the furniture! What a mockery to the state’s boasted riches. Little piles of miserable looking straw bedding! Little piles of kitchen utensils! And all so worn and badly used they would have been the scorn of any second-hand dealer on Larimer Street.
Prosperity! With never a single article even approaching luxury, save once in a score of wagons a cheap gaily painted gramophone! With never a bookcase! With never a book! With never a single article that even the owners thought worth while trying to protect from the rain!
[Emphasis added]
John Lawson, International Organizer for the United Mine Workers of America, was on hand through-out the day. When a superintendent taunted him by shouting, “A good day for a strike,” Lawson replied:
Any strike-day would look good to the people from your mines.
At Ludlow, Lawson helped to set up the canteen and greeted arriving families with milk and hot coffee as the rain turned into a snow.
One thousand tents being shipped from West Virginia by the U. M. W. have been delayed. At the Ludlow Tent Colony, many miners and their families spent the night in the big central tent. Some were taken to local union halls, and others were given shelter in the homes of nearby union sympathizers. The Greek miners, many of whom are single men, spent the night camped out in the snowstorm.
Sept 15, 1913 – Trinidad, Colorado
Convention of District 15 of the United Mine Workers of America
The delegates opened their convention by singing The Battle Cry of Union:
We will win the fight today, boys,
We’ll win the fight today,
Shouting the Battle Cry of Union;
We will rally from the coal mines,
We’ll fight them to the end,
Shouting the Battle Cry of Union.
The Union forever, hurrah boys, hurrah!
Down with the Baldwins and up with the law;
For we’re coming, Colorado, we’re coming all the way,
Shouting the Battle Cry of Union.
The miners faced the grim prospect of going out on strike against the powerful southern coalfield companies, chief among them, John D Rockefeller’s Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. The coal operators had steadfastly refused to recognize the Union and had ignored all attempts at negotiation.
The miners had had their fill of dangerous working conditions, crooked checkweighmen, long hours, and low pay. They lived in peonage in company towns, were paid in company scrip, and were forced to shop for their daily needs in high-priced company stores which kept them always in debt. But, mostly they hated the notorious company guard system. Every attempt to organize had been met with brutality on the part of the coal operators.
Mother Jones addressed the convention for over an hour, urging the men to:
Rise up and strike! …Strike and stay with it as we did in West Virginia. We are going to stay here in Southern Colorado until the banner of industrial freedom floats over every coal mine. We are going to stand together and never surrender…
Pledge to yourselves in this convention to stand as one solid army against the foes of human labor. Think of the thousands who are killed every year and there is no redress for it. We will fight until the mines are made secure and human life valued more than props. Look things in the face. Don’t fear a governor; don’t fear anybody…You are the biggest part of the population in the state. You create its wealth, so I say, “Let the fight go on; if nobody else will keep on, I will.”
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Mary Thomas, camp greeter of the Ludlow Tent Colony, reports that the social life of the camp has greatly improved with the coming spring. Once again she can enjoy her morning coffee outside with her dear friends and nearest neighbors, Cedi Costa and Margo Gorci. The children are once again at play on the swings and see-saws. Many of the colonist plant flowers and vegetables around the tents bringing a festive quality to the camp.
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