Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday February 10, 1904 Coal Creek, Tennessee – Company Gunthugs Murder Four Men
From the Coffeyville Daily Journal of February 9, 1904:
A STRIKE TRAGEDY. ———- Four Men Killed and Three Wounded in Tennessee.
The New York Times February 8, 1904
Knoxville, Tenn., Feb. 9.-A bloody tragedy was enacted [Sunday, Feb. 7th] in the little mining town of Coal Creek, Tenn., forty miles northwest of Knoxville, as the result of which four lives were snuffed out and three persons wounded, one perhaps fatally. The clash was the culmination of the trouble between union and non-union labor. Three of the dead men were killed by guards employed by the Coal Creek Coal company, while the fourth victim, a deputy sheriff, was killed by a guard he had gone to arrest. The dead:
MONROE BLACK, miner, aged 24 years; married; leaves wife. W. W. TAYLOR, miner, aged 31; leaves wife and four children. JACOB SHARP, section hand; a bystander, aged 35; leaves wife and six children. DEPUTY SHERIFF ROBERT S. HARMON, killed by Cal Burton, a guard at the Briceville mine.
The wounded are:
A. R. Watts, merchant of Coal Creek, an innocent by stander, shot through both cheeks. Mote Cox, miner, shot through the left arm. Jeff Hoskins, engineer on the Southern railway; slightly wounded.
When the wage scale was signed in district 19, United Mine Workers of America, the Coal Creek company refused to comply with the demands of the men. They refused to resume work in the Fraterville and Thistle mines, and for several months these two mines were shut down. Efforts were made to resume with non-union men, but these were either induced to join the union or were chased away, presumably by union men. The aid of the courts was invoked to oust families of union miners from the houses owned by the company. Scores of arrests were made for trespassing, and ill feeling was thus engendered. Recently a dozen guards, in charge of Jud Reeder, who served as lieutenant of police in this city for many years, were employed to guard the mines and protect the men who had been induced to go to work.
Non-union men were being brought to the mines every few days and Reeder and his guards would go to the railroad station and meet them. Today the crowd of idlers around the station was increased. Reeder and twelve guards came from the mines to meet a few non-union men who were to arrive on the morning train. When the non-union men got off the train, they were seen by a number of small boys, who began yelling, “Scab.” The killing grew out of this taunt. It is hard to tell what the provocation was, but the miners must have crowded up and attempted to take away the non-union men bodily or offered some direct insult to the guards.
Reeder and another guard drew their pistols and began shooting, Reeder doing the most of it. Miners and bystanders were taken by surprise and before they could realize what had happened the guards had climbed into their wagons and driven back to the mines.
About 12 o’clock a dispute arose between Deputy Sheriff Bob Harmon and Guard Cal Burton [whom Harmon was attempting to arrest]. Burton shot Harmon twice, killing him instantly.
[Newsclip and emphasis added.]
It is interesting that the reporter’s account supplies the company guards with an excuse for opening up gunfire on unarmed protesters. Seems the reporter could not believe that company gunthugs would murder striking miners and bystanders for no other reason than that some small boys hollered “Scab.”
Note: Willful neglect of safety standards by the Coal Creek Coal Company led to deaths of 184 men and boys in the Fraterville Mine Explosion on May 19, 1902.
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 February 2, 1914 “Calumet” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part I-The Fighting Finns
From the International Socialist Review of February 1914:
[Part I of II]
SEVENTY-TWO copper miners, with their wives and children, met death at these doors on Christmas Eve in Calumet, Michigan.
A brief hour before this little company of silent ones had passed up the stairs into the Italian Hall to join hundreds of other strikers and their families. A Christmas tree had been arranged by the Women’s Auxiliary of the Western Federation of Miners to put a bit of cheer into the hearts of the kiddies and perhaps to encourage the men and women in their struggle against the copper barons for more bread and better working conditions.
But “Peace on earth and good will toward men” is not down on the capitalist program. For months past imported thugs and gun-men, in the pay of the copper companies, as guards, had gone about shooting up strikers, breaking up union headquarters, disrupting meetings and otherwise “establishing law and order.”
It should surprise no one then to learn that upon this occasion a “mysterious” stranger appeared suddenly in the doorway of Italian Hall with a false cry of “fire!”
Comrade Annie Clemanc [Clemenc] had just finished her address of welcome; the toys were still on the tree-when forty-eight pairs of little feet arose at the alarm and ran down the stairway. They were met by “deputies,” who blocked the doors to escape. In the crush and panic that followed seventy-two human beings were killed.
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A bleak mining region and the rigors of a Lake Superior winter, with the hardship of five months’ strike, made still more poignant the crushing sorrow. Over the two miles of road from Calumet to the bit of ground owned by the Western Federation of Miners marched the procession with hearse, undertakers’ wagons and an automobile truck carrying a few coffins, followed by 480 miners, in squads of four, carrying 67 coffins. They lowered them into two long trenches that yawned in the snows of the copper country. Behind them came fifty Cornish miners chanting hymns, their voices thick with emotion. Thousands of miners with their wives and children formed the procession. All but a dozen of the burials were in common graves dug by members of the union.
Came the Finns to the fair state of Michigan about sixty years ago-to spend their lifetime and labor time in the mines.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 19, 1914 Calumet, Michigan – Annie Clemenc Seriously Ill at Her Mother’s Home
From the Dayton Daily News of January 18, 1914:
Saturday January 19, 1914 – Calumet, Michigan –Annie Clemenc, Seriously Ill, Cared for at Her Mother’s Home
Annie Clemenc of Calumet has been very ill and under a doctor’s care since early this month. Charles Edward Russell who is in the strike zone as part of the Socialist Party Investigating Committee went to visit her on January 10th. He reported that “she lay in her mother’s house, unconscious part of the time and part of the time shaken with nervous convulsions.” She is receiving sickness benefits from Slovenska Narodna Podporna Jednota (Slovene National Benefit Society), something she has never needed before.
We are left to wonder how much of a role the Italian Hall Massacre plays in her illness. Annie, as President of the Calumet Women’s Auxiliary (W. F. of M.), was the driving force behind organizing the Christmas Party for the strikers’ children. The evening began with so much joy, but then ended with Annie holding a dead child in her arms, and attempting hopelessly to revive the little one.
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.
Up above the strikers stood Annie Clemenc, girl leader of the miners. She was not the usual militant Annie Clemenc. She was saying a prayer for the children. The Day Book, January 6, 1914
Annie Takes Up Her Flag
On July 23, 1913, 9,000 copper miners of the Keweenaw Peninsula, Upper Michigan, laid down their tools and walked off the job. They were led by the great Western Federation of Miners, and they had voted by a good majority for a strike: 9,000 out of 13,000. The main issues were hours (the miners wanted an eight hour day), wages, and safety. The miners hated the new one-man drill which they called the “widow-maker.” They claimed this drill made an already dangerous job more dangerous.
The mining companies had steadfastly refused to recognize the Western Federation of Miners in any way. They would continue to refuse all efforts at negotiation or arbitration, even those plans for arbitration which did not include the union, and this despite the best efforts of Governor Ferris, and the U. S. Department of Labor. James MacNaughton, general manger of Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, famously stated that grass would grow in the streets and that he would teach the miners to eat potato parings before he would negotiate with the striking miners.
The Keweenaw Peninsula was a cold, windy place, jutting out into Lake Superior from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. This area was known as the Copper Country of Michigan and included Calumet Township of Houghton County, with the twin towns of Hancock and Houghton ten miles to the south. Calumet Township included the villages of Red Jacket and Laurium.
It was here in Red Jacket, on the third day of the strike that Annie Clemenc, miner’s daughter and miner’s wife took up a massive America flag and led an early morning parade of 400 striking miners and their families. Annie Clemenc was six feet tall, and some claimed she was taller than that by two inches. The flag she carried was so massive that it required a staff two inches thick and ten feet tall. The miners and their supporters marched out of the Italian Hall and through the streets of the Red Jacket to the Blue Jacket and Yellow Jacket mines. They marched silently, without a band, lined up three and four abreast. These early morning marches, with Annie and her flag in the lead, were to become a feature of the strike.
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