Hellraisers Journal – Thursday June 9, 1904
Summary of Miners’ Strikes in Colorado and Utah for May 1904
From The Salt Lake Herald of May 06, 1904:
Mother Jones with Delegates at Utah State Convention of Western Federation of Miners
From the San Francisco Chronicle of May 1, 1904
Southern Coalfields of Colorado – Union Organizer Beaten, Not Expected to Live
The strike zone of the southern coalfields of Colorado continues to be a dangerous place for union organizers working for the United Mine Workers of America. Brother Wardjon was brutally assaulted there and was not expected to live. The San Francisco Chronicle reported on that assault and other news regarding the labor situation in Colorado:
ASSAULT ON A LABOR LEADER
———-
Mine Union Organizer Wardjon Beaten on Head
in Colorado So Severely That He May Die
———-
DENVER, (Col.). April 30.-W. M. Wardjon, national organizer of the United Mine Workers of America wasterribly beaten on the head and shoulders with revolvers by three unknown men at Sargent, Col., to-day and lies in a critical condition at the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad Hospital at Salida. Wardjon was traveling eastward from Crested Butte, where he had been organizing the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company’s miners, and was attacked in a car while the train was standing at Sargent.
He is suffering from concussion of the brain, and the hospital physicians say his recovery is doubtful.
In a lengthy brief filed before the Supreme Court to-day by Attorney E. F. Richardson in the habeas corpus case of Charles H. Moyer, president of the Western Federation of Miners, who is held as a military prisoner at Telluride, Governor James H. Peabody is declared to be a usurper. Governor Peabody is compared by Richardson to a soldier drunk with power, and his acts in trying to suppress the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus compared to the acts of tyranny practiced on the people of England by the olden kings.
Richardson, in his brief, attacks the decision of the Supreme Court of Idaho in a similar case, and says it is the only court in the country that has said that the military was above the judiciary. He says that the decision does not follow precedent or commonsense, and that the Judges of the Supreme Court of Colorado should not consider it when deciding the present case.
The Legislature alone, Richardson says , has the authority to determine when the conditions require the suspension of the privilege of habeas corpus and then to suspend it.
PUEBLO (Col.).-April 30.-Because Charles Demolli, a former organizer of the United Mine Workers, failed to appear to-day as complaining witness against Oreste Pagnini, charged with being the ringleader of a gang whichassaulted the Italian labor leader several weeks ago, the case was dismissed by Justice McCallip. Pagnini, however, will be held on a complaint sworn to by William Gearhard, charging him with assaulting Demolli with intent to kill. Demolli is in the coal fields of Kansas and is in communication with friends here.
INDIANAPOLIS (Ind.), April 30.-The Colorado situation was again taken up at to-day’s session of the national executive board of the United Mine Workers of America……
President Mitchell has telegraphed to “Mother” Jones, who is being held in quarantine near Price, Utah, directing her to report to him in person in this city as soon as possible. He says that there is no significance attached to this, and that the order was issued because the work in the district 15 at the present time is scarcely suitable for a women.
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”
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.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday June 5, 1914 Excerpts from “Class War in Colorado” by Max Eastman
From The Masses of June 1914:
CLASS WAR IN COLORADO
Max Eastman
[Illustrated by M. H. Pancoast, John Sloan, and Art Young]
“FOR EIGHT DAYS it was a reign of terror. Armed miners swarmed into the city like soldiers of a revolution. They tramped the streets with rifles, and the red handkerchiefs around their necks, singing their war-songs. The Mayor and the sheriff fled, and we simply cowered in our houses waiting No one was injured here-they policed the streets day and night. But destruction swept like a flame over the mines.” These are the words of a Catholic priest of Trinidad.
“But, father” I said, “where is it all going to end?”
He sat forward with a radiant smile.”War!” he answered. “Civil war between labor and capital!” His gesture was beatific.
“And the church-will the church do nothing to save us from this?”
“Yes, this is Colorado,” he said. “Colorado is ‘disgraced in the eyes of the nation’-but soon it will be the Nation!“
I have thought often of that opinion. And I have felt that soon it will, indeed, unless men of strength and understanding, seeing this fight is to be fought, determine it shall be fought by the principals with economic and political arms, and not by professional gunmen and detectives.
Many reproaches will fall on the heads of the Rockefeller interests for acts of tyranny, exploitation, and contempt of the labor laws of Colorado-acts which are only human at human’s worst. They have gone out to drive back their cattle with a lash. For them that is natural. But I think the cool collecting for this purpose of hundreds of degenerate adventurers in blood from all the slums and vice camps of the earth, arming them with high power rifles, explosive and soft-nosed bullets, and putting them beyond the law in uniforms of the national army, is not natural. It is not human. It is lower, because colder, than the blood-lust of the gunmen themselves.
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:
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!.
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.”
Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 29, 1914 New York City- Testimony of Ludlow Survivors Describe Actions of “Neutral” Militia
Judge Lindsey with (left to right) Mary Thomas, Pearl Jolly, Mary Petrucci, and daughters of Mrs. Thomas
Dear Reader: We will leave it to you decide just how neutral has been the attitude of Governor Ammons during the ongoing conflict in Colorado between the Coal Operators, led by Rockefeller’s Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, and the strikers, lead by the United Mine Workers of America. Read the following article in which Major Boughton, in his position as Judge Advocate of the Colorado National Guard, indicates the testimony that he will present today before the U. S. Commission on Industrial Relations. Then read the testimony of Pearl Jolly and Mary Thomas, both of them miners’ wives who withstood the machine-gun fire from that “neutral” militia all throughout that terrible day of the Ludlow Massacre.
We only ask that our readers remember that it is ultimately Governor Ammons, Democrat of Colorado, who is in command of the Colorado National Guard. And, we might add, we know of no instance when those machine guns were ever aimed at the homes of Rockefeller or of his managers in Colorado, and, to our knowledge, none of them have ever been arrested and held incommunicado in spite of having, year after year, ignored the labor and safety laws of the state of Colorado:
From the New York Sun of May 28, 1914:
WILL TELL OTHER SIDE OF COLORADO RIOTING ———- Major Boughton of National Guard to Appear before Industrial Commission ———
“AMMONS WAS NEUTRAL” ———- Judge Lindsey Leaves Without Getting to See J. D. Rockefeller, Jr. ———-
Major Edward J. Boughton, who commanded a battalion of the Colorado National Guard during the fights with the striking miners at Trinidad, arrived yesterday to give testimony before the United States Commission on Industrial Relationsnow sitting here in the matter of the coal strike. His presentation of the incidents of the strike will supplement the testimony given yesterday before the commission by Mrs. Pearl Jolly arid Mrs. Mary Hannah Thomas, wives of striking miners.
While Mrs. Jolly and Mrs. Thomas denounced the militia, Major Boughton will present the situation in a new light. He would not go into details when seen at the Waldorf-Astoria, but he admitted he had come here in answer to a subpoena that he might “tell the people of New York of the real conditions In Colorado.”“I want to correct,” he said, “the erroneous impression that prevails here regarding the part taken by the State troops.”
Major Boughton was an important factor during the strike trouble. On October 28, when the troops were called out, he served as Field Major. On November 20 he was made Judge Advocate for the military district. While he was Judge Advocate there were 172 cases presented lo the military commission.
“In this controversy between capital and labor,” said the Major, “Gov. Ammons has maintained a neutral attitude toward both parties. He did all he could to avert the bloodshed. He did not leave a stone upturned in his effort to have the matter settled amicably by arbitration. He is still doing all he can in this direction.”
Mrs. Jolly and Mrs. Thomas asked to be heard by the Commission and there was some objection, Whereupon Mrs. J. Borden Harriman of the commission, said: “I believe that if there has been gross wrongs committed against these women, they ought to be heard and I represent the women and children of the country on this commission.”
There was no further demur. Mrs. Jolly told practically the same story which she gave on Sunday in the Manhattan Lyceum, as did Mrs. Thomas…
Judge Ben B. Lindsey, who has been trying to see John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in an effort to get him to use his influence toward having the Colorado difficulty submitted to a Federal arbitration board, will leave this afternoon for Colorado without having seen Mr. Rockefeller.
“Although I did not see Mr. Rockefeller personally,” said Judge Lindsey, “we have communicated. From what I have learned I have reason to hope that Mr. Rockefeller’s attitude has changed in regard to the situation and that he will help toward having the matter arbitrated.”
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
Note: Mrs. Mary Petrucci, who lost her children in the Ludlow Massacre, has returned to Colorado. According to Mrs. Thomas, Mrs. Petrucci has been “grieving herself to death.”
Hellraisers Journal – Monday May 25, 1914 Rockefeller Safe in New York; Ludlow Survivors with President at White House
From The Washington Times of May 21, 1914:
Upper left to right: Judge Lindsey, Mary Thomas, Pearl Jolly, Mary Petrucci, Thomas Daughters. Lower left to right: Mrs. Lindsey, Frank Hayes, Mrs. Lee Champion
In Trinidad, Colorado, 1200 men, women and children, the Ludlow refugees, left homeless and with all of their earthly possessions destroyed, are being cared for by the United Mine Workers of America. While in New York City, we are pleased to report, Mr. John D. Rockefeller Jr. is, at long last, safely back at work, his “tormenters” vanquished.
From The Fort Wayne Sentinel of May 20, 1914:
JOHN D. JR., IS BACK AT HIS JOB ———-
He Emerges from Retirement to Find Tormenters Silenced. ———- THE COLORADO CASE ———-
New York, May 20.-John D. Rockefeller, jr., has returned to work after twenty days spent at the country estates of his father at Pocantico Hills. Since May first when he went into retirement most of his tormenters under the leadership of Upton Sinclair, have been silenced, several by being sent to jail.
Sinclair is in Colorado and Marie Ganz and the Rev. Bouch [Bouck] White are serving sentences on Blackwell’s Island, the latter for having broken up the services at the Calvary Baptist church ten days ago.
“Mother” Jones alone remains in the lecture field and denounces the Rockefeller interests in the Colorado coal district. Mr. Rockefeller’s secretary said yesterday that he was making no investigation of the conditions in Colorado. He was only a minority stockholder in the Colorado Fuel and Iron company, it was said, and whatever recommendations he could offer might not influence the officials of the company in dealing with the miners.
From The Socialist and Labor Star, February 13, 1914
Mother Jones, the angel of the miners, who has given almost every day of her 82 years to the fight for improved industrial conditions for the workers in all forms of trade and in all parts of the country, last night [May 18th] appealed to an audience of several hundred at the Masonic Temple to aid the striking miners in Colorado and based her appeal on a graphic and forcefully told tale of conditions in the mining district as she herself had seen them and taken part in.
Clad in a plain black dress, with a touch of color only, down the front, at her waist and around the end of the sleeves, Mother Jones by her earnestness moved the large audience to applause when she bade defiance to John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil owners and the “invisible government” which she held responsible for the sufferings of “her boys” and the cruel sacrifice of “her babes” in the Ludlow tent colony disaster; held them tense and with breath caught, while she pictured the horrible deaths from smoke and fire of the women and children in that catastrophe; and moved them to laughter by her caustic epigrams about the “uniformed rats” and their superiors who she declares “oppress her boys.”
“If I were that fellow’s mother I’d disown him,” she declared of Governor Ammons (Democrat of Colorado) after telling how he and the members of the Senate had only smiled after hearing the tale of a miner who because he had refused to leave the postoffice in the mining camp without his mail, had been taken out by the militia and made to dig his own grave until, weakened by their taunts and cruelty, he fell unconscious into it.
[She declared, while the audience cheered:]
The Revolution was not fought because of taxation without representation. It was fought because of military despotism on the part of King George III. And when King George only sneered at the warning of Benjamin Franklin that unless the despotism stopped there would be a revolution, the answer our forefathers gave was Bunker Hill and Yorktown. Let John D. Rockefeller take care lest we have another Bunker Hill and Yorktown. He says he won’t recognize the union. King George said he would never recognize the union but he had to. And Mr. Rockefeller will have to, too.
Says Pen and Brain, Not War, Must Settle Industrial Troubles.
Colorado, she said, was the key to the present industrial war in this country and she made an earnest appeal for its right and proper solution.
It must not be settled by the sword but by the pen and brain and I stand here today appealing for your assistance in the fight. We want to bury the bayonet. We are appealing to the mothers of the race, for no nation is ever greater than its mothers; and no man is more humane than his mother. If there were not among the women so much talk of temperance and foreign missionaries, if we did missionary work at home and let other nations do theirs, these conditions of which I speak would have been changed long since. The women of Colorado have had the ballot twenty-one years and yet see the horrible happenings that they have permitted in their State. It is because they have busied themselves too much with social settlements and other such things that are given to the industrial class to satisfy them and not with the real things in life about them.
Theodore Roosevelt, she said, refused to see a group of miners’ children she had once brought down to Oyster Bay so he could see for himself their maimed hands and the other effects work in the mines had on them.
Roosevelt, like Ammons, refused to see these children; Roosevelt, whom you think, is next to God Almighty, refused to see them because they were mine workers and not mine owners’ children.
[Speaking of the Ludlow catastrophe, she asked:]
Was it fair, was it fair of Rockefeller to burn up my babes so he could enslave those men?Can’t we find some other way of settling the question? Has this nation reached that stage in its history when babes have to pay the penalty-when on the altar of greed, we place the helpless infant and roast it to death for more coin?
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 19, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Nurse Helen Schloss Writes Story of the Colorado Strike
From The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of May 17, 1914:
Helen Schloss Writes Colorado Strike Story
———-
(By Helen Schloss.)
Miss Helen Schloss is a trained nurse who has been active as a suffrage organizer in this borough in behalf of the Woman Suffrage Party. She was sent to Colorado by the Brooklyn Committee for the Relief of Wives and Children of Colorado Strikers to organize a relief station at Trinidad. Mrs. Frank H. Cothren, Mrs. Herbert Warbasse and James P. Warbasse are especially active on this committee. This is the story of conditions as Miss Schloss heard it from the strikers:
———-
THERE has been a strike in the State of Colorado, since last September, and if memory serves rightly, there have been strikes ever since the mines began operating. Mines are unsafe, and hundreds of men are being killed in them every year. Water is scare in this part of the country, and coal dust is very plentiful. When a sufficient amount of coal dust has gathered in the air there is an explosion and many lives are snuffed out. When the operators are asked why they do not sprinkle the mines, they answered that the country lacks sufficient water.
The present strike has been in progress, in a peaceful manner, since September. There was no trouble of any moment till April 20. The militiamen were in the field to protect the mines, and incidentally to break the backbone of the strike.
The militiamen had nothing to do, but to have a good time. So for just a little pastime, they started with Ludlow.
Ludlow had 12,000 [1200] inhabitants, with over 100 tents. The Ludlow people were about twelve nationalities in that small colony. They had parties and feasts, the women had plenty of time to go visiting, and to gossip. The men hung around, laughed and sang. There was nothing to do but wait until the strike was settled. The militiamen had work to do, and that was to break the strike.
Long before April 20, the tents of the strikers were searched. Trunks were ransacked, floors torn up, and there seemed to have been brooding a general feeling of hatred for the militia.
While the militia searched the tents, they usually had a machine gun on top of the hill. Be it known that Ludlow is sitting in a valley. The militia were stationed on the hills. This gave them a good chance to watch the doings of the strikers.
Militia Fires on Camp of Women and Children.
Monday morning, April 30 [April 20], at 10 a. m. the Ludlow people heard an explosion, and rushing out to the tent doors, they saw the machine guns in full blast, firing down upon them.
Under almost every tent was a large cave. The women and children scrambled into them, while the men grabbed their rifles and ammunition, and went up on the hill to fight.
The women and children who were in the caves tell horrible stories. The firing from the hills kept up all day, until 3 o’clock the next morning. No one knew whether his companions were alive or not. No one knew whether they would ever see his friends again. The rumbling kept up on the hill.
One young woman [Pearl Jolly] who had some training as a nurse, put Red Cross on her breast, and carrying a white flag, went from cave to cave with food, and drink for the women and children. She was fired at from all directions, and it is a great wonder that she lives to tell the tale. The heel was shot off one of her shoes.
One time when she ran into one of the tents, to get some food, so many shots followed her through the canvass that she had to lie still on the floor for hours. A dresser in the tent was shot to pieces.
It is said that the explosive bullets that were used set the tents on fire. The tents began to burn towards evening, and the fires kept up all night. The women and children fled from the caves, to the nearest ranch, and as they were running , shots followed them. The firing became so insistent that the people had to flee from the ranch. The militia looted the house, and left a note on a blank check, saying “this will teach you a lesson not to harbor strikers next time,” signed with the initials of the Baldwin gunmen.
Towards morning at the break of day, that they saw the militia looting and setting fire to tents.
On going through the ruined tent colony, one was struck with the terrible amount f bullets lying everywhere. Everything had been riddled.
The stoves that might have been used after going through the fire were full of holes, where the bullets struck. Barns, sheds and everything in sight was destroyed. It was a ghastly sight to walk through the ruined colony, with the frames of the bedsteads standing out like ghosts amid the ruins.
We stopped near the cave, where eleven children and two women were smothered alive. Big, strong men stood at this cave, in silence, with bowed head. We slid down the gruesome hole, and I gave it a sort of rough measurements and found it 5 feet high, 7 feet wide and 9 feet long. A little high chair and a baby’s gocart were still there.
The Red Cross party that went to Ludlow to recover the dead were arrested and detained for a little while. At first they received permission to pass, but later on General Chase told them he had received word they could not pass. Later this same general became abusive and called the minister choice names.
The Red Cross party recovered the eleven children and two women, but it is said that there are a great many bodies still missing, which are not accounted for.
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 Dutcherwas 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.”…..
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 13, 1914 Coroner’s Jury Blames Militia for Ludlow Massacre
From the Appeal to Reason of May 9, 1914:
Coroner’s Jury Puts Blame on Militia
Trinidad, Colo.-The coroners jury investigating the Ludlow horror has officially placed the blame of it on the mine guards. Following is the text of the verdict relative to the fire:
Cecelia Costa, Petra Valdez, Begrata Pendregon, Clovine Pendregon, Lucy Costa, Orafrio Costa, Elvira Valdez, Mary Valdez, Elulia Valdez, Rudolfo Valdez, Frank Petrucci, Lucy Petrucci and Joe Petrucci came to their death by asphyxiation of fire, or both, caused by the burning of the tents of the Ludlow tent colony, and that fire in tents was started by militiamen under Major Hamrock and Lieutenant Linderfelt or mine guards, or both, April 20, 1914.
[Emphasis added.]
Firing of Ludlow Ordered.
R. J. McDonald, stenographer for the military commission, testified that an officer of the Colorado national guard gave the order for burning the colony, but he was not sure whether it was Major Hamrock or Captain Carson.
McDonald said he stood within a few feet of Hamrock and Carson, who were inspecting the colony from the top of a hill. It was well toward night.
“We’ve got just forty minutes to take and burn that colony.” he testified one of the two remarked, “before it gets dark.”
A few moments later the troops and mine guards, he said, swept down the tracks in the charge that meant the colony’s destruction and the death of the women and eleven children, who sought refuge in the colony’s safety pit.
Tikas Beaten to Death.
McDonald was questioned about the capture and death of Louis Tikas, Greek leader of the strikers. He said that while near the scene of the battle he heard a commotion behind some box cars and was told that Tikas was a prisoner and probably would be hanged.
A little later he met Lieutenant F. K. Linderfelt. He asked Linderfelt if Tikas had been hanged.
“No,” he testified Linderfelt replied, “I gave instructions that Tikas was not to be killed, but I spoiled a good rifles.”
The witness swore that Linderfelt was carrying his rifle over his shoulder, stock to the rear, and holding it by the barrel. The physicians’ autopsy showed that Tikas’ skull was fractured.
Open Butchery of Women.
Riley, a Colorado & Southern fireman, said he was on the engine of a freight train which pulled up at the Ludlow station in the hottest of the battle. He said that two tents already were in flames.
“I saw a man in a militia uniform touch a blaze in a third tent,” he said.
He said he saw women and children screaming on the railroad right of way apparently trying to escape from the colony.
When the train drew up at the station, he said, several militiamen put guns to the engineer’s head and ordered him to “pull out and do it damned quick.”
J.S. Harriman, conductor of the same train, testified that as the train pulled out of the station and past the tent colony he heard women and children screaming and apparently trying to escape. He said that during this time, the militia was firing into the colony.
Threat a Day in Advance.
“Have your big Sunday today, old girl,” Mrs. Pearl Jolly, leader of women at Ludlow, testified a militia man told a striker’s wife on the day before the tragedy, “tomorrow we’ll have the roast.”
G. A Hall, a chauffeur, told the jury that he had heard a militia officer give the order to “clean out” the tent colony and burn the tents.
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