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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday March 31, 1914
Walsenburg, Colorado – Mother Jones Confined in Dark Cellar Cell
From Denver’s United Labor Bulletin of March 28, 1914:
Note: Mother was arrested at Walsenburg by the Colorado militia on Monday March 23rd, at about 5:30 a. m. She has been confined, since that time, in the same dark cold cellar cell that was the cause of the death of striking miner Kostas Marcos.
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From The Masses of February 1914: Mother Jones by Art Young
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday March 19, 1904
Telluride, Colorado – Arrested by Militia for Refusing to Scab
March 3, 1904, Telluride, Colorado-Affidavit of A. A. Pratt
AFFIDAVIT. State of Colorado, County of San Miguel, ss.
I, the undersigned A. A. Pratt, make the following statement under oath: On or about February 26, 1904, I was in Denver looking for work. A man by the name of Johnson told me I could get work as a miner in Telluride; that the strike was off and there was no martial law; that the soldiers were all withdrawn, and that transportation was furnished free. I concluded to go, and a Mr. Snodgrass gave me a ticket to Telluride.When I arrived at Telluride, on the evening of the 27th, I was met at the depot and taken to the Victoria hotel to stay all night. The next morning a horse was brought to the hotel for me to ride to the Smuggler-Union mine, about four miles away. On the way to the mine we passed soldiers standing guard. When I got to the mine I made inquires and found out that the strike was on, that the district was under military rule. As the conditions had been misrepresented to me, and I did not want to work under these conditions, I told the boss that I had forgotten something in town and thus obtained a pass to present to the soldiers between the mine and the town.
In Telluride I was arrested on a warrant sworn to by Bulkely Wells, manager of the Smuggler-Union mine and commander of the militia, charging me with obtaining money under false pretenses. He appeared as a witness against me, although there had been no agreement made with him, nor with any one else, that I was to pay anything for fare, hotel or horse hire. These were furnished me without me asking for them, and he admitted that he had no agreement with me. There was no one but myself that knew anything about the matter, so the justice found me not guilty, but it shows to what measures they are willing to resort.
I do solemnly swear that the above statement is true to the best of my knowledge.
A. A. PRATT.
Sworn and subscribed to before me on the 3rd day of March, 1904
ALBERT HOLMES,
Justice of the Peace.[Paragraphs and emphasis added.]
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday March 17, 1914
Denver, Colorado – Testimony Reveals Murderous Mine Guards Terrorize Miners
From the Duluth Labor World of March 14, 1914:
SLAVERY REVEALED IN COLORADO MINES
———-
Startling Testimony Given Before
Congressional Committee In Coal Inquiry.
———-LIBERTY IS DENIED;
WORSE THAN RUSSIA
———-
Blacklist System Kept By Operators Exposed
-Coal Districts Managed by Tyrants.
———-
DENVER, Colo., March 13,-(Special Correspondence.)-Southern Colorado today is in a state of anarchy. Men are held slaves in the coal mines, terrorized by murderous mine guards and robbed of practically every cent of the small pittance they are paid. The striking coal miners are intimidated and murdered by the hired assassins of the operators, denied their constitutional rights by the militia of the state of Colorado. These and many other outrages were brought out by the congressional committee which closed its month’s investigation of the Colorado coal strike Saturday [March 7th].
Colorado’s Liberty (?)
For years the coal miners of the state have maintained that they had less personal liberty, less rights in Colorado than have the people of Russia. For the same length of time the papers of the state have denied these reports.
If there was any doubt in the minds of the people of Colorado as to the real conditions in the coal fields those ideas were dispelled by the oppressed witnesses who appeared before the congressional investigating committee.
The operators and their gunmen have run their lickspittles in office with such a high hand, with such utter disregard of the laws and human life that conditions as they exist seem impossible to the man who has not suffered or failed to spend some time in the district.
One of the just grievances of the miners, established by the men as well as mine superintendents and foremen, was that of short weights. Since the first mine was opened in the state it has been the common practice of the coal operators to steal from 400 to 800 pounds of coal from miners on each car.
Miners Were Discharged.
To offset this robbery the miners had a bill passed providing for checkweighman. When the miners sought to take advantage of this law they were promptly discharged or given such a poor room that they could not make a living and were forced to quit. Instead of abolishing this thievery of coal by the operators, the checkweighman law seemed to increase it for the operators were filled with a desire to demonstrate how they were superior to the law and could do as they pleased in a state where they owned a majority of the officials body and soul.
Probably one of the most notorious works of the operators exposed by the witnesses was the blacklist system that has always been in existence against union miners. After the 1903-4 strike 6,000 men were blacklisted and but few of them have been able to get work up to this time except where companies signed up with the union. Witnesses testified that superintendents at all of the mines in the state had a list of the union men. They told of going to mines, being refused work because they were union men and seeing scores of men employed while they stood there.
Owners Dominate Politics.
One of the most notorious conditions existing in the south has been the domination of politics by the coal companies. They own the courts, the juries and practically every other officer.
Jack McQuarry, a witness and who was deputy sheriff of Huerfano county for seven years, testified that when a man or number of men were killed in the mines, he was ordered to take the coroner to the superintendent and find out who he wanted on the jury, as well as what the verdict was to be.
When Jeff Farr [Sheriff of Huerfano County] and his ring did not have sufficient votes to carry an election, they voted the sheep in the hills or else arrested enough of their opponents to carry the election and held them until they promised to vote the way Sheriff Jeff Farr wanted them to.
It has always been common practice for the superintendent to take his men to the polls and vote the entire gang one way.
“Got” Mine Leader.
McQuarry told how in 1906 the deputies were told to “get” John R. Lawson, International Board Member of the United Mine Workers. They could find no legitimate reason for arresting Lawson so two deputies went up to him, stuck a gun in his pocket, and then arrested him for carrying concealed deadly weapons.
Tony Langowsky, a member of the union and spotter for the operators, threw a bomb into their camp when he testified that he and the mine guards framed up all the dynamite explosions which terrorized Sopris, Colo., for six weeks last fall.
The operators sent out the reports that these explosions were the work of the “lawless” strikers. Langowsky’s testimony absolutely fixes the blame for the outrages which have occurred in Southern Colorado on the operators, who have heretofore been convicted of every crime except that.
It is impossible to bring out even a small part of the testimony in one story. While the operators were convicted of every crime on the calendar, the militia of the state suffered like exposure.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 9, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Writ of Habeas Corpus Denied for Mother Jones
From El Paso Herald of March 6, 1914:
MILITIA MAY HOLD WOMAN, COURT RULES
———-
Judge Denies Writ of Habeas Corpus
in the Case of “Mother” Jones.
———-POWER OF MILITARY OFFICIALS UPHELD
———-
Trinidad, Colo., March 6.-In a verbal decision rendered at the opening of the district court this morning, Judge A. W. McHendrie denied the writ of habeas corpus for “Mother” Mary Jones, the noted woman strike leader held under military guard at the San Rafael Hospital, and remanded the prisoner to the custody of the respondent in the action, Gen. John Chase, commander of the state militia in the strike zone.
The ruling of the court was brief. Immediately upon hearing the decision, attorney F. W. Clark, local counsel for the United Mine Workers, asked for and was granted 60 days to prepare a bill of exceptions to be submitted to the supreme court.
Like [Albert] Hill Case, Says Court.
The court held the case in all essential respects to be the same as the case instituted early in February for others who were held prisoners by the military authorities for alleged connection with the burning of the Southwestern mine tipple and postoffice.
The court in its ruling upheld the powers of the military authorities in arresting and detaining the petitioner under specific instructions form governor Ammons, who in his order to Gen. Chase, declared the woman to be a “dangerous person” and one likely to raise riot or disorder.
To Appeal Case.
But few people were in court when the opinion was rendered this morning. The attorneys for the petitioner will now submit the case on appeal to the supreme court, which a short time ago denied an original application.
[Drawing and emphasis added.]
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 24, 1914
Hancock, Michigan – Deputized Company Gunthugs Brutalize Women
From the Detroit Evening Times of February 17, 1914:
From the Duluth Labor World of February 21, 1914:
BERGER TESTIFIES AT STRIKE INQUIRY
———-
Says Socialist Party Had Nothing to Do With Strike
Simply Contributed Money
———-Victor Berger appeared before the congressional committee at Hancock [Michigan] Tuesday to tell what he knew about the copper strike. Mr. Berger appeared as a committee witness. He was not called by the Western Federation of Miners. He declared the Socialist party had nothing to do with calling the strike and nothing to do with fomenting it. “When the strikers got hard up” he said, “the Socialists gave them financial aid up to $25,000 in money and a greater quantity of clothing.”
Mr. Berger said the national flag of the Socialists was the Star Spangled Banner, but “the red flag is our international flag-the red flag of brotherhood.”
Women Were Assaulted.
The committee listened to a large number of women witnesses during the week. One woman said she was hit in the back by a rock thrown by a gunman. She was afterwards arrested and was taken to jail in an automobile carrying her 4-months-old baby with her. The baby died from exposure from the cold a few days later. She has not been able to find out why she was arrested…..
The woman whose baby died was Margaret Cibacca. Her testimony, describing how she was taken into custody along with her children and then dumped out into the cold, is disturbing. Mrs. Cibacca the wife of a striking copper miner, was at home with her five children, ages 3 months to six years, when the deputies came pounding at her door. They told her that they wanted her to come to the mining office to visit a sick woman.
She gathered up her five children and went with them in their automobile to the mining office of the Baltic Mine. They forced her to leave the three older children outside in the cold with only the six-year-old to watch them. The two littlest ones, they allowed her to take inside. Once they had her in the office, they locked the door. She was alone in there with three deputies. There was no sick woman.
She asked why she was there, what she had done, and they laughed at her and beat her, even as she held her little children. She begged them to let her go home and feed her children, and they laughed at her again and began to beat her with a club on her side and on her back as she attempted to ward off the blows and protect her tiny children. The bruises can still be seen on her back.
Finally, they forced her with her children into the automobile for the drive to Houghton to see Justice Little. On the way they told her that she would be locked up for six months. Justice Little questioned her for about a half hour and then told her she was free to go, but go where? There was no ride back to Baltic, eight miles away, the deputies were gone, and she had no money.
At last, her husband was able to come for her. He brought blankets for the children who were cold to the bone, especially the three-month-old baby, from waiting outside for their father. They were too late for the train back to Baltic, and the striking miner was forced to spend his meager strike benefit on a rented automobile to take his tired, hungry, and terrified family home.
The baby came down deathly ill the next day, and died shortly thereafter.
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 7, 1904
Hastings, Colorado – Mother Jones Exposes Rockefeller’s “Sunday School Methods”
From the Duluth Labor World of February 6, 1904:
MOTHER JONES
Says Rockefeller Oppresses the Coal Miners.
Hastings, Colo., Feb. 5.-[Mother Jones, the miners’ friend, who is now going up and down among the striking miners in Colorado, says:]
Rockefeller’s mining company cleared $39,000 [*] last year, and every dollar of it was wrung form the miners.
At some of these mining camps a miner is not even allowed to bring a pound of butter from the outside. He is compelled to buy everything at the company’s store. Every man who comes to the mines to work must be searched, and when he goes to visit a friend outside the camp an armed guard goes with him.
What would a Chicago workingman think if he had to pay 90 cents for a quart of syrup that cost at wholesale $1.25 a gallon? What would he think if his employer taxed him a dollar a month for a doctor whether he needed one or not? What would he think if he was obliged to pay his employer 50 cents a month for a preacher?
“Yet such are Mr. Rockefeller’s Sunday school methods of conducting his mining business in Colorado,” says Mother Jones.
[Emphasis added. Newsclip added.]
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 24, 1914
Jan. 22-Trinidad, Colorado – General Chase Orders Cavalrymen:
The women of Las Animas County gathered in Trinidad on Thursday afternoon to protest the military imprisonment of Mother Jones. They came marching with their children across the Picketwire River bridge and headed up Commercial Street passing by the Columbian Hotel. These were the women from the strikers’ tent colonies and they came singing the strikers’ song: “The Battle Cry of Union.”
Their banners proclaimed:
God Bless Mother Jones
We’re For Mother Jones
As they moved past Main Street, they were met by General Chase on his cavalry horse, and behind the General were his cavalrymen. Behind them were the infantry blocking the street. Nevertheless, the women and children continued singing as they marched toward the brave General and his troops. The General began to yell, “Don’t advance another step. You must turn back.”
The General spurred his horse forward and brushed against 16-year-old Sarah Slator. He berated her, raised his foot, and kicked her in the breast. His horse backed into a buggy and the General fell off. The women began to laugh at the site of the pompous General on the ground beneath his horse.
The General regained his feet, red-faced and furious, and shouted to his men:
“RIDE DOWN THE WOMEN!”
The cavalrymen spurred their horses forward, waving their sabers about and rode straight into the women and children. Several women were slashed: Mrs. Maggie Hammons received a gash across the forehead, Mrs. George Gibson nearly lost her ear, Mrs. Thomas Braley’s hands were sliced as she covered her face. Mrs. James Lanigan was knocked to the ground, and 10-year-old Robert Arguello was smashed in the face. A cavalryman chased the flag-bearer, Mrs. R. Verna, down the street, knocked her down with his horse, and tore the American flag away from her.
Young Sarah Slator showed great courage when she challenged a cavalryman who was threatening a mother with his bayonet as she struggled to run with her three-year-old child in tow. Sarah said, “You’re so low you could do anything.” Sarah was among the six women arrested. Twelve men were arrested later in the afternoon.
Colorado newspapers are full of derision for the victorious General and his triumphant cavalrymen. The Denver Express reported:
Great Czar Fell!
And in Fury Told Troops to Trample WomenA craven general tumbled from his nag in a street of Trinidad Thursday like humpty-dumpty from the wall. In fifteen minutes there was turmoil, soldiers with swords were striking at fleeing women and children; all in the name of the sovereign state of Colorado…The French Revolution, its history written upon crimson pages, carries no more cowardly episode than the attack of the gutter gamin soldiery on the crowd of unarmed and unprotected women.
Newsclip inset from above: The Rocky Mountain News of January 23, 1914
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Photographs from Trinidad Protest of January 22, 1914:
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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.
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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.]
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 8, 1914
Denver, Colorado – Stormy Petrel of the Strikers States She Will Return
From the San Francisco Bulletin of January 7, 1914:
From the Chicago Day Book of January 5, 1914:
MOTHER JONES DEPORTED
Denver, Col., Jan. 5.-“Mother” Jones, the “angel” of the miners, was forcibly deported from the coal strike district at Trinidad on orders of General Chase, who had her met at the depot “when she arrived from El Paso and kept under surveillance of a detachment of military until the arrival of a train for Denver, when she was put aboard.
Lieut. H. O. Nichols and four soldiers guarded her to Denver. When the train reached Walsenburg, where “Mother” Jones had expected to make a speech to the strikers, she tried to talk to a group gathered around the station, but was prevented.
As the train pulled out of the station, she shouted: “I expect to visit you again, when Colorado is made part of the United States, but now-”
General Chase has ordered that she be sent out of the district never to return so long as the strike lasts. He says she will be deported every time she comes back. Mother Jones says she will return in two weeks.
[Emphasis added.]
