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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 15, 1914
“The Capture of Mother Jones” by W. A. Pease
From The Socialist and Labor Star of February 13, 1914:
Tag: Trinidad CO
Hellraisers Journal: From The Masses, Drawing of Mother Jones by Art Young: “Come On, You Hell-Hounds!”
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday February 12, 1914
Drawing of Mother Jones by Art Young: “Come On, You Hell-Hounds!”
From The Masses of February 1914:
Hellraisers Journal: From the American Labor Union Journal: Report from the Colorado Strike Zone by Bertha Howell Mailly-Mother Jones Happily Recovering
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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.)
[Emphasis added.]
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Surrounded by 150 Soldiers, Seized and Taken to Military Bastile at San Rafael Hospital, Held Incommunicado
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 8, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Mother Jones Seized by Soldiers, Held Incommunicado
From the International Socialist Review of February 1914:
Hellraisers Journal: Duluth Labor World: Hastings, Colorado-“Mother Jones Says Rockefeller Oppresses the Coal Miners”
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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.]
Hellraisers Journal: Mary Thomas, of Ludlow Tent Colony, Held in Filthy Jail Cell, Keeps on Singing Through Broken Window
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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: From The Day Book: B. F. Gurley on the “Daredevil Soldiers” of Colorado Who Obeyed the Order of General Chase to “Ride Down the Women”
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 31, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – “Women Victims Tell of Shameful Charge”
From The Day Book of January 30, 1914
-“Rose Slater” is incorrect; Sarah Slator is age 16:
Hellraisers Journal: Trinidad, Colorado: Strikers’ Wives March with Protest Banners Held High, “Mother Jones Has Not Done Anything That We Would Not Do”
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 26, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – “Mother Jones Has Not Done Anything That We Would Not Do”
From The Rocky Mountain News of January 25, 1914:
Women March for Mother Jones with Banners:
MOTHER JONES HAS NOT DONE
ANYTHING THAT WE WOULD NOT DO.WE HAVE BUT TO SEEK AND
SURELY GOD WILL SET US FREE
Hellraisers Journal: Trinidad-Women March in Support of Mother Jones; Chase Orders, “RIDE DOWN THE WOMEN!”
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 24, 1914
Jan. 22-Trinidad, Colorado – General Chase Orders Cavalrymen:
“Ride Down the Woman!”
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: Gertrude A. Lee, Suffragist and Chairman of Democratic State Committee of Colorado, Could Help Free Mother Jones from Military Bastile
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 21, 1914
Mrs. Gertrude Lee of Colorado’s Democratic Party Could Help Free Mother Jones
From The Cincinnati Post of January 20, 1914
-Write or Wire Mrs. Lee, of Colorado’s Democratic Party, to Help Free Mother Jones:
