Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday December 8, 1914 Denver, Colorado – J. F. Welborn Testifies Before Walsh Commission
J. F. Welborn
The testimony of J. F. Welborn, President of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, before the Commission on Industrial Relations, which was begun on Friday afternoon, continued all day Saturday. Welborn was grilled by Chairman Walsh regarding telegrams he had received from John D. Rockefeller, Jr, concerning the conduct of the strike and was requested to bring such telegrams forward.
The telegram from Mr. Rockefeller to Mr. Welborn, released by John R. Lawson to the press on the Friday, was identified by Welborn and entered into the record of the Commission by Chairman Walsh.
Pamphlets issued by the “Committee of Coal Mine Managers,” which contain errors regarding the salaries of U. M. W. of A. officials, including that of Mother Jones, were discussed. Welborn admitted that the pamphlets were prepared for the coal operators by a hired “press agent” whose identity has not, thus far, been revealed.
From The Cincinnati Enquirer of December 6, 1914:
ADVICE ———- On Strike in Colorado ————
Received From Rockefeller in New York, Welborn Testifies. ———- Coal Company Says “Press Agent” From Outside State Prepared Operators’ Pamphlets. ———-
SPECIAL DISPATCH TO THE ENQUIRER.
Frank P. Walsh
Denver, Colo., December 5.-“Is there anyone you communicate with in New York except John D. Rockefeller, Jr.?” Chairman Walsh, of the Federal Industrial Relations Commission, asked J. F. Welborn, President of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, who resumed his testimony to-day in the investigation of the Colorado mine strike.
Welborn said he had heard from George J. Gould and others of the seven New York Directors of the company.
“To save time I shall ask you to file with us all the telegrams you have received from Rockefeller, Star J. Murphy and Jerome Green,” said the Chairman.
“I will bring all the telegrams I have,” replied Welborn.
The witness then identified a telegram from John D. Rockefeller, Jr., made public yesterday by John R. Lawson of the United Mine Workers. “But I should not care to have the telegrams given out as this was yesterday,” he said.
[Note: the telegram, from Rockefeller to Welborn, was entered into the record by Chairman Walsh during his grilling of Mr. Welborn.]
Welborn said the company had thirteen Directors, seven living in New York, and six in Denver, that the meetings were held in Denver, and communication held with the Rockefeller interests as represented by Rockefeller, Murphy and Green.
Welborn was questioned regarding pamphlets entitled “The Truth About Colorado,” and “Facts About the Colorado Struggle.” He said he would assume responsibility for the document, the writer of which did not wish his name known.
The company, he said, had spent about $12,000 printing the bulletins, and had distributed about 40,000 copies to educators, legislators, ministers and the general public.
Questioned by Walsh, the witness admitted that some statements in the bulletin might not be strictly accurate.
The writer, Welborn said, was not in Colorado.
“Does he expect compensation for his work?”
“I don’t know,” said Welborn, “when his work is completed, I shall have to audit his bill.”
“Who contracted his employment?”
“There was no contract. There was an oral understanding that he was to be compensated later. He is still making statements for us. His work is not finished. I don’t know whether the company or some one interested in the company is going to pay him.”
Walsh called the attention of the witness to a table appearing in a pamphlet, giving the sums alleged to have been paid to national officers of the United Mine Workers. According to this table sums paid out in nine weeks were as follows:
Frank J. Hayes $4,502, plus $1,667 for expenses. John McLennan $2,683, plus $1,469 for expenses. John R. Lawson, $1,773. Mary Jones, $2,668.
“Do you accept the personal responsibility for this?” asked Walsh.
“For as much of the published statement as has not been denied,” replied Welborn.
“If it is true that McLennan gets $4 a day will you correct it?”
“Just as soon as I believe it is wrong.”
Commissioner O’Connell said that the figures given were from the report of William Green, secretary of the United Mine Workers, and covered total salary and expenses for one year, not nine weeks. The statement in the pamphlet, which alleged that the delegates to the Trinidad convention that called the strike were selected and sent there by the officers of the union, Welborn declared he could not substantiate.
The total loss to the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company caused by the strike was $800,000, Welborn said.
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:
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.
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.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 3, 1914 “Calumet” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part II-Profits, Wages and Working Conditions
From the International Socialist Review of February 1914:
[Part II of II]
We have seen how the copper country is governed by an “invisible government”; from the judge on the bench, to the grand jury in session; from the national guard of the state of Michigan, on “duty,” since July 24, 1913, to the sheriff with his hundreds of imported professional strike breakers whom he swore in as deputies. The Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, Calumet, is the invisible government of Michigan.
This poor-little-rich corporation was “created” in the early fifties. According to a statement given out by Attorney Peterman, and endorsed by General Manager W. F. Denton, and General Manager C. L. Lawton, we find this devout confession: ”The profits of the Calumet and Hecla have been large, but they were due solely to the fact that the Creator put such rich ore in the company’s ground.”
However, Congress in the year of our Lord, 1852, seems to have been in total ignorance of this little gift on the Creator’s part to the copper crowd, for we find that “it gave to the state of Michigan 750,000 acres of public land, to aid it in building a ship canal around the Falls of St. Mary. The state in turn bargained this land to the contractors who built the canal, at a dollar and a quarter an acre. The lands thus disposed of at so beggarly a price were supposed to be swamp, or overflowed lands, but somehow, and strange to say, a part of them are now the rocky matrices from which the Calumet and Hecla has long been extracting shot-copper,-that company having in some way got hold of them. Years later a man named Chandler, who claimed to have bought the same land over again from the State of Michigan, brought a suit to dispossess the copper company,-charging all sorts of fraud in the switching of swamps so as to be quarries of copper-bearing rock. But the Supreme Court ruled against him, on the ground that as he got his deed from the state, he was in no better plight than the state, and that the state could not go back on its first deed to the canal contractors: so the Calumet and Hecla people kept it.”
This “good thing” was capitalized for $2,500,000 in shares of $25 each, instead of $100-note that. Of this $25 a share, only $12 was paid in. A total cash investment of $1,200,000. According to the Mining and Engineering World of December 27th, Calumet and Hecla has declared dividends on issued capitalization to December 1, 1913, amounting to $121,650,000, or $1,216 a share or $101 profits for each dollar invested.
Dividends for 1900 amounted to 320 per cent; for 1906, 280 per cent; for 1907, 260 per cent. In the Boston market, the stock was quoted on the day before New Years, at 427, bid price. Bearing in mind that the par value of the shares is but $25, this figure means that the stock is now worth more than 1,700 per cent, and bearing in mind also that only $12 a share was actually paid in, it means more than 3,400 per cent, market value. The president of the company receives a salary greater than the president of the United States.
Not long ago, when dividends threatened to be unusually enormous, the company purchased an extensive island in Lake Superior, stocked it with the finest game, and it is now used by stockholders of the company as a hunting preserve.
And the capitalists, who have never seen the inside of a mine shaft, who have stolen and defrauded to gain possession of the Calumet mines, have refused to permit their wage slaves, who produce all the wealth brought out of the mines, to organize into a union. They have denied the right of these workers to organize to demand more wages and better working conditions. Their arrogance is summed up in the words “We have nothing to arbitrate.”
These capitalists want MORE labor from the laborers. They are not satisfied with having stolen hundreds of millions from the men who have dug the wealth from the dangerous recesses of the earth. They demand still MORE.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 1, 1914 Indianapolis, Indiana – President Moyer Speaks at Mine Workers’ Convention
From The Indianapolis News of January 26, 1914:
Charles Moyer, President of the Western Federation of Miners gave a long speech at the Convention of the United Mine Workers now in progress in Indianapolis. In his speech, President Moyer described the ongoing violations of Constitutional Rights in both the Colorado and the Michigan strikes:
…..What is being done in the state of Colorado in the miners’ strike, is being done in the state of Michigan. I don’t think it is any worse. In the state of Colorado men and women have been mistreated by the military, by the armed thugs of the mine owners’ association; they have been arrested without warrant; they have been sent to jail; they have been deprived of all of those rights that are supposed to belong to an American citizen, or one living under this government, the same as they have in Colorado.
Mother Jones has been deprived of her liberty by the military, and is now confined in the custody of the military of that state, without any warrant, absolutely deprived of her constitutional rights.
In the state of Michigan representatives of organized labor have been assaulted, ordered from the state, deprived of every right that we are supposed to enjoy under this great Constitution of ours, and yet, after months of effort we are at this time uncertain as to whether our national government, our representatives down at Washington, are going to make an investigation: are going to inquire into the facts as whether or not these things that we claim and that we believe we furnished them a preponderance of evidence of, are in violation of our American citizenship. They say, I believe, as an excuse for their hesitancy in acting, that they do not want to interfere with state rights, and in answer to that we say that the Constitution of the United States gives the right to every American citizen to meet in peaceable assembly, to freely express himself in speech…..
Hellraisers Journal -Tuesday November 11, 1913 Calumet, Michigan – Ninety-Nine Arrested Marching in Fierce Blizzard
From The Calumet News of November 8, 1913:
Cavalrymen stationed in Calumet this morning [November 8] arrested ninety-nine strikers and sympathizers on a blanket charge of violating the injunction [against picketing]. The arrests were made on Calumet avenue near the M. E. church, between 6 and 7 o’clock. A parade, headed by “Big Annie” Clemenc, proceeded north from Red Jacket road and when a number of workmen passed the marchers yelled and cursed them, it is alleged…..
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday April 10, 1913 Mother Jones and the Civil War in the Kanawha County Coalfields
From The Survey of April 5, 1913:
Mother Jones
[-by Harold West]
The developments of the winter have been under the regime of a third governor, who came to the state house at season when part of the commonwealth was under martial law. In March came the trials of a number of the strikers their sympathizers-approximately fifty-by a military court on charges of inciting to riot, conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to destroy property. Among those in prison is Mother Jones, the “Stormy Petrel of Labor” who is always present in big labor disturbances, especially those of the miners and the railroad men. She has given the best part of her life to the cause of laboring men and they adore he.
This old woman, more than 80 years of age, was in the mines when I went there and I got to know her well. She passed the word along to the men that I was “all right” and reticent as they are to strangers, they told me their side of the case without reservation.
I have been with Mother Jones when she was compelled “to walk the creek,” having been forbidden to go upon the footpaths that happened to be upon the property of the companies and denied even the privilege of walking along the railroad track although hundreds of miners and others were walking on it at the time. She was compelled to keep to the county road although it was in the bed of the creek and the water was over her ankles. I protested to the chief of the guards saying that no matter what her attitude might be, no matter how much she might be hated, that she was an old woman and common humanity would dictate that she be not ill treated. I was told that she was an old “she-devil” and that she would receive no “courtesies” there, that she was responsible for all the trouble that had occurred and that she would receive no consideration from the companies.
I was with her when she was denied “the privilege” of going up the footway to the house of one of the miners in order to get a cup of tea. It was then afternoon, she had walked several miles and was faint, having had nothing to eat since an early breakfast. But that did not shut her mouth. She made the speech she had arranged to make to the men who had gathered to hear her although they had to line up on each side of the roadway to avoid “obstructing the highway,” a highway that was almost impassable to wheeled vehicle and which there was no travel. And in that speech she counseled moderation, told the men to keep strictly within the law and to protect the company’s property instead of doing anything to injure it.
I had several long talks with her. When she speaks to the miners she talks in their own vernacular and occasionally swears. She was a normal school teacher in her early days, and in her talks with me in the home of one of her friends in the “free town” of Eskdale, she used the language of the cultured woman. And this is the old woman whom nearly all the operators in the non-union fields fear, and whose coming among their workers they dread more than the coming of a pestilence. They now have her safely in jail.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday April 9, 1913 “Civil War in the West Virginia Coal Mines” by Harold E. West
From The Survey of April 5, 1913:
FOR nearly a year a state of turmoil amounting in practical effects to a civil war has existed in the coal fields of West Virginia. The situation centers in the Kanawha Valley, hardly more than twenty miles from Charleston, the capital of the state.
The military power of the state has been used with only temporary effect; martial law has been declared and continues in force; the governor of the state has been defied and denounced from the state house steps and within his hearing; men and women have been thrown into prison and are still there for espousing the cause of the miners, and the grim hillsides of the canons in which the mines are situated are dotted with the graves of men who have been arrayed against one another in this conflict between capital and labor…..
[U. S. Secretary of Labor William B.] Wilson charged that a condition of peonage existed in the mines and that men were held there by force and compelled to work against their will. The coal operators denied this vehemently, at the same time fighting bitterly a federal inquiry. Evidence I was able to gather on a trip of investigation to the mines convinced me that a form of peonage does, or did exist; that the miners were oppressed; that the rights guaranteed under the constitution were denied them; that the protection of the law of the state was withheld from them and the law openly defied and ignored by the coal operators……
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