Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday December 6, 1904 Denver, Colorado – Governor Peabody Plots to Hold On to Power
This week’s Duluth Labor World sounds the warning:
Governor-Elect Adams
Colorado is resting over a political volcano. Everyone is on the qui vive and following closely, and in most cases bitterly, the extraordinary antics of the [Colorado] Supreme Court.
Governor Peabody continues his machinations with the assistance of the Court to thwart the will of the people of the State of Colorado. The election of Alva Adams, Democrat, by a plurality of 11,000 votes has not deterred Peabody from his quest to hold onto power.
The latest twist in the plot involves the unseating of three Senators who have been elected from areas of the state where strikes have been conducted during the past year.
From The Labor World of December 3, 1904:
PEABODY’S PLOT TO
HOLD COLORADO GROWS
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“Czar” Seeks to Unseat Three Senators
Who Were elected From Strike Centers.
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Colorado Resting On Political Volcano
Outbreak Is Momentarily Expected.
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Governor Peabody
Denver, Col., Dec. 1.-The rounding out of the Peabody plot to retain the Gubernatorial chair was developed more clearly today by the renewed trial of men charged with contempt. Precinct Eight of Ward Five was the scene of operations. The men arraigned are prominent Democrats-Frank Kratke, Edward O’Mally, Joseph Ray and Charles Kofsky.
The defendants, half an hour before, were arraigned before the United States Commissioner charged with violating the federal laws in regard to the election. The commissioners postponed their hearings until the Supreme Court should pass upon the charges of contempt against them.
The trend is more and more toward a situation wherein the spectacle will be presented of two Governors ruling the same state.
At Pueblo the grand jury will begin consideration of the alleged Republican frauds tomorrow.
A banquet will be given here tomorrow night in honor of Adams’ election, and next day the Republicans will ask the Supreme Court to begin throwing out Democratic precincts.
Colorado is resting over a political volcano. Everyone is on the qui vive and following closely, and in most cases bitterly, the extraordinary antics of the Supreme Court.
Each hearing of cases by that body develops in which direction the efforts of the Republicans are tending, indicating what returns are to be attacked and what valuable precincts are to be thrown out.
To Control Senate.
Upon the face of the returns received from every county in the state, the Democrats elected ten members of the State Senate, without counting any of the members from this county. These, with the nine holdover Democratic Senators, would give that party the control of the Senate.
The Peabody managers have daily asserted that they would be able to organize the Senate. The basis of their claims was not apparent until yesterday when they announced that they contemplated unseating Martin of Pueblo, Ward of Boulder and maybe Beshoar of Trinidad, all Democrats.
The state canvassing board is looked to to do the work. The official canvass in Boulder County was completed several days ago and showed the re-election of Senator Ward by a small majority. No charge of fraud was made in that county until yesterday. In Las Animas County the canvass showed that Dr. Beshoar was elected if every contested ballot were counted for Barela. In Pueblo [County] the official canvass is not competed, but both sides concede that it will show Mr. Martin’s election. It is not charged that Mr. Martin’s supporters committed fraud, but the Peabody managers assert that Republicans voted for him and this is to be made the ground of contest.
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.
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.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 2, 1900
Washington, District of Columbia – House Investigates Coeur d’Alene Troubles
From The Railroad Telegrapher of April 1900:
IDAHO’S DISGRACE.
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THE investigation before the Committee on Military Affairs of the House of Representatives, with reference to the charges made against the United States soldiers under Brigadier General Merriam, growing out of the labor troubles in the Coeur d’Alene mining district in Idaho, has been creating intense interest in labor circles and elsewhere for some time past. Even those who are callous to labor’s wrongs and pin their faith to the theory that the survival of the fittest is the prevailing law in heaven as well as on earth and the other place, have felt some qualms of conscience that such things should happen in “The land of the free and the home of the brave.”
After a strike and some riotous proceedings, which latter could easily have been quelled by the local authorities, the Governor of the State [Frank Steunenberg] suspended the writ of habeas corpus, an infringement of the liberties of the people not even within the prerogative of the President of the United States, without the sanction of Congress. Over eleven hundred citizens were arrested without warrant by this tyrannically-inclined “servant of the people” and confined in a place unfit for human habitation, and kept there for a period ranging from a few days to eight months.
By and through the courtesy of the Miner’s Magazine and the Pueblo Courier, we are enabled to present pictures of some of the men who have been made “Martyrs of the Bull Pen.”
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday March 12, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for February 1910, Part I:
-Found Fighting for Working Women of Philadelphia and Milwaukee
From the International Socialist Review of February 1910:
Fighting to Live
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By Tom A. Price.
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[Mother Jones in Philadelphia.]
Mother Jones. This little woman whose heart is as big as the nation and beats wholly for humanity, came to Philadelphia while the trumpet was still reverberating after the call to arms had been sounded. Under her bold leadership the fighters were organized before the manufacturers had fairly realized that their workers had at last been stung to revolt by the same lash which had so often driven them to slavery.
In impassioned speech after impassioned speech Mother Jones urged the girls on to battle. Shaking her gray locks in defiance she pictured the scab in such a light that workers still shudder when they think of what she would have considered them had they remained in the slave pens of the manufacturers. Every man and woman and child who heard her poignantly regrets the fact that her almost ceaseless labors at last drove her to her bed where she now lies ill.
But she had instilled into the minds of her followers the spirit which prompted her to cross a continent to help them. That spirit remains and is holding in place the standard which she raised. It is leading the girls to every device possible to help the cause. Many of them are selling papers on the street that they may earn money to contribute to the union which they love.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 28, 1900
President Boyce on Gen. Merriam: “pusillanimous tool…of the mine operators…”
From the Kansas City Labor Record of January 25, 1900:
THE WARDNER TROUBLE
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General Merriam Censured for his Persecution
of Union Miners. Not a Union Man
Allowed to Work.
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In the initial issue of the Miners Magazine President Boyce pays his respects to General Merriam in the following caustic manner:
The following interview with General Merriam by a reporter of the Rocky Mountain News was published in that paper Dec. 13th:
You can say for me,” said the general yesterday to a News man, “that the more Congress investigates the Coeur d’Alene troubles the better it will please me. I am pleased to know that such a movement is on foot.
“The constitution speaks for itself,” continued General Merriam. “Martial law was proclaimed by Governor Stuenenberg May 3d last. Three days after I was ordered to the scene. Arrests were made by the stale authorities, but I do not care to discuss the question. The records speak for themselves.”
Had this pusillanimous tool in the hands of the mine operators, clothed in the uniform of a general bearing the U. S. brand, been animated with no other desire than to do his duty when he reached the Coeur d’Alenes, there would be no need of a congressional investigation.
Did he not arrest every man in the country at the suggestion of the mine operators without cause or provocation and confine them in a filthy barn unfit for habitation, with instructions to shoot any man who showed his head, and denied them the right to consult with counsel?
Did he not examine and approve over his signature one of the most infamous proclamations that ever emanated from the brain of man, which denied every man the right to seek employment in the mines of Shoshone county unless he denounced organized labor and obtained a permit from Dr. France, the Bunker Hill and Sullivan company doctor, noted for his extreme prejudice against organized labor?
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday October 28, 1899
Cincinnati, Ohio – Presidents Samuel Gompers and Edward Boyce Speak
From The Indianapolis Journal of October 27, 1899:
MILITARISM DENOUNCED
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PROTEST AGAINST THE TREATMENT OF
COEUR D’ALENE MINERS.
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Mass Meeting at Which Samuel Gompers Spoke,
and Strong Resolution Were Adopted.
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CINCINNATI, Oct. 26.-An enormous meeting was held to-night at Music Hall, the officers of which were of the Central Labor Council of Cincinnati and the speakers were Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, and Edward Boyce, of Butt Mont., president of the Western Federation of Miners. Fully 6,O00 men remained during the two long speeches. The announced purpose of the meeting was to protest against the treatment of prisoners held in the Couer d’Alene region in the “bull pen.”
Before the speaking began the resolutions were read. The first resolution was a demand of the President of the United States to enforce the Constitution, especially in the sixth section, which, they claim, has been violated. The second resolution demanded of the President the withdrawal of the United States troops from Shoshone county.The next resolution demanded a court-martial of General Merriam and his subordinate officers. The last resolution was that all the federal, the military and civil officers responsible for the alleged illegal acts committed by them should be held to the strictest accountability.
President Gompers said the present afforded a great opportunity for laboring people. He said this enormous attendance and the passage of these resolutions would have a far-reaching effect and would do much to relieve the oppressed in Idaho and to bring the oppressors to Justice. President Gompers said that he was in the mountain region near the scene of the uprising in Shoshone county but a few days before it occurred. He said that by conversation with men who knew about the situation he learned the condition of affairs at Wardner, Bunker Hill and Sullivan mines. He vehemently denied that labor organizations had anything whatever to do with that uprising. The labor unions had been locked out by the operators, who went outside and brought in inferior and dangerous nonunion men and set them to work in the mines. These ignorant miners, unused to the ways of the union, demanded union prices and were denied.
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