WE NEVER FORGET: Big Annie Clemenc, Heroine of Michigan’s Copper Country, and Christmas Eve, 1913, Italian Hall Tragedy

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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

Annie Clemenc w Flag, ISR p342, Dec 1913

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.

WE NEVER FORGET Strikers Alois Tijan and Steve Putrich, Shot Down by Gunthugs, August 14, 1913, at Seeberville, Michigan

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WE NEVER FORGET 

Alois Tijan-18 and Steve Putrich-40
Who Lost Their Lives in Freedom’s Cause
August 14, 1913, Seeberville, Michigan

Grave Marker Putrich and Tijan, by Putrich Family 2004

Funeral for Steve Putrich and Tijan, Calumet MI, Aug 17, 1913
Funeral for Steve Putrich and Alois Tijan,
Calumet, Michigan, Sunday August 17, 1913

The Seeberville Murders

Boarding House of Joseph and Antonia Putrich, Site of Seeberville Murders of Aug 14, 1913
Boarding House of Joseph and Antonia Putrich
Site of Seeberville Murders of Aug 14, 1913

On August 14, 1913, deputies and Waddell Detectives, some of whom had also been sworn in as deputies, came to the Croatian boarding house, operated by Joseph and Antonia Putrich, in Seeberville, Michigan. They came to arrest two striking miners who had used a well-worn path, part of which crossed company property. They came without warrants, and on the orders of a company supervisor who wanted the men brought to him. When the two men resisted this unlawful arrest these gunthugs surrounded the little boarding house and fired through the windows until their guns were empty.

Inside the house, men, women, and little children took cover as best they could. When the shooting ended, four men and a baby (daughter of Antonia) were found wounded. Stanko Septic and John Stimac survived their wounds. The baby was burned on the face while held in her mother’s arms and soon recovered. Alois Tijan and Steven Putrich did not.

The Death of Alois Tijan
Alois Tijan was shot in his left side. He was taken to an upstairs bedroom where he died in the arms of his brother, Albert. He was 18 years old, and a striking miner.

The Death of Steven Putrich
Steven Putrich was also a striking miner. He lived at the boarding house with his brother and his brother’s wife and their four little children, ages 7 months to 4 years. His brother and sister-in-law, Joseph and Antonia, ran the boarding house.

Before he was taken to the hospital, Steven said:

I am shot and if anything happens to me send my money to my children.

Joseph later testified that the doctor told him:

If I operate on your brother and he gets well he will just go out and fight again. You go and tell your Croatian people to go back to work, and I will treat your brother.

Steven Putrich died in that hospital.

Continue reading “WE NEVER FORGET Strikers Alois Tijan and Steve Putrich, Shot Down by Gunthugs, August 14, 1913, at Seeberville, Michigan”

WE NEVER FORGET: August 16, 1913, Gerald Lippiatt, Age 38, Shot Down by Gunthugs on the Streets of Trinidad

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WE NEVER FORGET

Gerald Lippiatt
Shot Down by Gunthugs at Age 38

Gerald Lippiatt, Scott Martelle Blog, Aug 16, 2013
Gerald Lippiatt

Gerald Lippiatt did not come into Trinidad looking for fight. He was a striker from the northern field who was in the southern field working as an organizer. But, sadly, he took the bait when George Belcher and Walter Belk, two well-known Baldwin-Felts gunthugs, began to butt him with their elbows as he attempted to walk around them on Commercial Street. Other gunmen joined in, cursing him as they lurked about on the sidewalk, smoking their cigarettes.

Brother Lippiatt headed to the Packer block for his gun. Several of his fellow organizers in the union office tried to stop him to no avail.

“All right, you rat, let’s have it out,” Lippiatt shouted at Belk. The professional gunthug knew his business, and Lippiatt was soon lying dead in the center of the street.

The Colorado State Federation of Labor met for their yearly convention in Trinidad two days after the killing of Brother Lippiatt. The chair which would have been occupied by Lippiatt was draped in black. Perhaps, Brother Lippiatt was on their minds as they voted their support to District 15 of the United Mine Workers of America for any action deemed necessary with respect to conditions in the southern coalfields. Efforts were underway to avoid a strike against coal operators of southern coalfields, but the likelihood of avoiding that strike was fading with each passing day.

The coffin of Brother Lippiatt left Trinidad accompanied by the delegates from northern Colorado who were returning home from the C. F. of L. Convention. Gerald Lippiatt was brought home to Colorado Springs for burial. As the flag-draped coffin was taken from the baggage car and loaded onto the hearse, the delegates stood silently by, hats in hand, remembering who was responsible for his murder.

It was the sad duty of John McLennan, President of District 15 of the UMWA, to call John Lawson, International Board Member, at his home in Denver to inform him of Lippiatt’s death. Lawson related the conversation he had with Lippiatt three days before his death:

“I am leaving for Trinidad tonight, John, and I want to tell you goodbye. I think I am going to be killed”

“Killed? What do you mean?”

“The gunmen have been pressing me pretty hard down there, John, but I am going back. I’ve got a hunch they are going to get me this time.”

“Then you mustn’t go. Stay here and we’ll send someone else down; someone who isn’t so well known to them.”

“No, John, I’m going back. It is my job, and I want to go. But this is my last trip. Goodbye.”

Gerald Lippiatt was born in England in 1874, and came to America in 1891 with his parents and five siblings. The family settled in Ohio. He was survived by an older brother in Colorado Springs. He was engaged to be married to Edith Green of Rugby. He was likely a father as Martelle mentions a descendant. He had been Secretary of the UMWA local union in Frederick, Colorado, and was active in the northern coalfield strike before being sent to the southern field as an organizer.

Continue reading “WE NEVER FORGET: August 16, 1913, Gerald Lippiatt, Age 38, Shot Down by Gunthugs on the Streets of Trinidad”

WE NEVER FORGET: Night of February 7, 1913, Holly Grove, West Virginia, Francis Estep Shot Down by Gunthugs, Leaving Behind Pregnant Wife and Small Child

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Quote Mother Jones, Pray for dead, ed, Ab Chp 6, 1925—————

WE NEVER FORGET
Night of February 7, 1913, Holly Grove, West Virginia
Francis Estep Shot Down by Gunthugs, Survived by Pregnant Wife and Small Child

United Mine Workers of America marker to honor Francis Estep, placed at his grave at Holly Grove, WV, many years after his death:

UMWA marker at grave of Francis Estep, place there many years after his death on February 7, 1913, at Holly Grove WV

The Estep home at Holly Grove, 1913:

Estep Home at Holly Grove, Sen Com June 1913, p464

Clifford Allan Estep, son of Francis Estep, about 1913:

Clifford Allan Estep, Son of Frances Estep, about 1913

Poem written for little son of Cesco Estep, Martyr of Holly Grove

THE STRIKER’S ORPHAN CHILD

-by Walter Seacrist

My father was a striker back in nineteen and thirteen.
He was the sweetest daddy; he never treated us mean.
He worked in dark and danger, almost day and night
To earn for us a living, to bring us all up right.

We all were Oh so happy. We were so wondrous blest.
The Union issued a strike call. Dad came out with the rest
To better his condition, that he might not be a slave,
That they might have a Union, and get a living wage.

They cared no more for the miner than a cat does for a mouse.
They came on cold and rainy days and throwed them from their house.
Mothers with newborn babies, so innocent and so sweet,
Without the least protection were cast out in the street.

And as I look around me and see the same thing near,
I wonder what would happen if Daddy could be here
With some of his old buddies of nineteen and thirteen
For he could not stand to see little children treated mean.

On February the seventh, eleven o’clock at night,
The sky was clear and beautiful, the stars were shining bright.
The high sheriff and his gunmen up from Charleston came
And shot up our village from that fatal Bull Moose train.

My Daddy heard the shooting and rushed us from our bed
And a few moments later he was found dead.
While trying to get us to safety and find for us a place
An explosive rifle bullet had torn away his face.

Don’t weep for me or Mother, although you might feel bad,
Just try to help keep alive some other boy’s dad.
And when we meet in heaven, on that golden strand,
Then you can see my Daddy and clasp his blessed hand.

Continue reading “WE NEVER FORGET: Night of February 7, 1913, Holly Grove, West Virginia, Francis Estep Shot Down by Gunthugs, Leaving Behind Pregnant Wife and Small Child”

WE NEVER FORGET: June 10, 1913, Nicholetta Paudelopoulou Shot Down by City Police at Gates of Ipswich Hosiery Mill

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Quote BBH IWW w Drops of Blood, BDB, Sept 27, 1919—————

WE NEVER FORGET  – Tuesday June 10, 1913
Ipswich, Massachusetts – Nicholetta Paudelopoulou, 27,
Shot Down by Police on IWW Picket Line

Ipswich Murder of N Paudelopoulou Charged to IWW, NYTb p16, June 12, 1913
New York Tribune
June 12, 1913

On Tuesday June 10, 1913 in Ipswich, Massachusetts, Nicholetta Paudelopoulou left Brown’s Essex Mill at the end of her work day and walked down the street to the Ipswich Hosiery Mill. Here she stopped to observe a picket line of I.W.W. strikers. The Industrial Workers of the World had been conducting a strike at this mill for seven weeks. Five hundred of the strikers were Italians, and one hundred were Greeks, perhaps friends of hers. Sadly, five hundred English-speaking workers had chosen to scab on their fellow workers.

Suddenly, the police opened fire on the picketers, wounding eight. They later gave the excuse that the “foreign” strikers were “jostling” the English-speaking strikebreakers. Seven of the wounded were taken to a hospital in Salem. Miss Paudelopoulou was shot in the top of the head. She was taken to a nearby doctor’s office where she died just before 8 PM without regaining consciousness.

Nicholetta Paudelopoulou was 27 years old. She was survived by her mother, six sisters and a brother in New York, and her father and brother-in-law in Greece.

—————-

From The Boston Globe of June 12, 1913:

Funeral of Miss Pandelopulos.

[…..]

Ipswich N. Paudelopoulou, Witness says police shot her,  NYTb p2, June 14, 1913
New York Tribune
June 14, 1913

The funeral of Miss Pandelopulos, the only victim of the engagement of last night, was held this afternoon. A large company of men and women of her race gathered in the tenement at 22½ Market st, where she lived with her mother, six sisters and a brother, at 3:30  for prayers. Subsequently, they followed the body to the Greek Orthodox Church on Agawam Heights, where the services were conducted by Rev. Paulikop Marinika.

The ritual was punctuated by the pitiful lamentations of the members of the family of the young woman. Later, at the grave in the Highland Cemetery, the burial service of the church was supplemented by demonstrations of grief by the sisters of the deceased, the rending of the fabric of their waists and the mutilation of their braided hair.

The dead woman had been the sole support of her mother, five sisters and brother. All but the youngest girls worked in the mills, and all save the girl now dead were on strike. The father is in Greece and the husband of one of the sisters is serving in the Grecian Army.

Nicolata Pandelopulos, when shot, was an innocent witness of the encounter between the police and her striking countrymen.

[Newsclip and emphasis added.]

Massachusetts Death Certificate for Nikoleta Pantelopolou

Continue reading “WE NEVER FORGET: June 10, 1913, Nicholetta Paudelopoulou Shot Down by City Police at Gates of Ipswich Hosiery Mill”

We Never Forget: April 24, 2013, Rana Plaza Factory Collapse at Dhaka; Kalpona Akter, “I Have Broken Heart Today.”-1,134 Killed

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We Never Forget: April 24, 2013
Rana Plaza Factory Collapse

-Savar Upazila, Dhaka District, Bangladesh
-1,134 killed, 2,500 injured
-Suspect: Sohel Rana, Charge: Murder
-“The search for the dead ended on 13 May 2013 with a death toll of 1,134.”

Rana Plaza Factory Collapse, Photos of Missing, Dhaka Apr 27, 2013
Photograph by Sharat Chowdhury [edited]
Rana Plaza Factory Collapse of April 24, 2013, at Dhaka, Bangladesh 
-Board of the Missing, taken April 27, 2013

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rana_Plaza_collapse
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2013_savar_building_collapse_-_missing_photos_01.jpg

—————

From Warehouse Workers United
– Statement from Kalpona Akter on
Rana Plaza Factory Collapse of April 24, 2013

Our deepest sympathies go out to the families of workers lost in this tragic event.It must be said, these tragedies can be prevented by multinational corporations like Walmart and the Gap that operate in Bangladesh. Because of these companies’ negligence and willful ignorance, garment workers are in danger every day because of the unsafe working conditions.

As we learn more details, we will better understand the brands that were manufactured in these factories, but we already know that the largest retailers in the world hold tremendous power to transform conditions for garment workers – mostly young women – in Bangladesh.

Today’s news is yet another reminder that Walmart and the Gap must immediately adopt the Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Agreement, a transparent and legally binding agreement that includes worker representation, independent building inspections, worker rights training, public disclosure and a long-overdue review of safety standards. The safety agreement is the first step toward ensuring no more lives are lost.

More from Warehouse Workers United:

Kalpona is the Executive Director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity. She is a former garment worker and is currently in the United States calling on retailers like Walmart, the Gap and Disney to lead on improving working conditions and adopting fires safety standards in Bangladesh.Today, international worker rights groups are calling for immediate action from international corporations and brands following the horrific news of a deadly collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Savar, in Dhaka Bangladesh. The collapse of the eight story building that housed five factories and a mall, has reportedly killed at least 80 people and injured over 800[*]. For the last month Kalpona has been touring the United States with Sumi Abedin, a young garment worker who jumped out of a third story window to save her life as the Tazreen factory burned killing on 112.

Warehouse Workers United
http://www.warehouseworkersunited.org/

Corporate Action Network
http://corporateactionnetwork.org/

*As of April 28th: death toll-372, injured-more than 1000, missing-up to 900. The owner of the building had been arrested.
http://beta.dawn.com/…

—————

Continue reading “We Never Forget: April 24, 2013, Rana Plaza Factory Collapse at Dhaka; Kalpona Akter, “I Have Broken Heart Today.”-1,134 Killed”

WE NEVER FORGET: February 25, 1903-Mother Jones and the Massacre of Raleigh Co. Miners at Stanaford Mountain, WV

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Has anyone ever told you, my children,
about the lives you are living…?
-Mother Jones
———-

MOTHER JONES, MINERS’ ANGEL

“I am one of you, and I know what it is to suffer.”

Mother Jones by Bertha Howell (Mrs Mailly), ab 1902

Let us stop and consider, for a moment, what would cause thousands of miners to lay down their tools and go out on strike, when striking meant homelessness and hunger for themselves and their families. Striking also brought down upon them the terror of the company guards, heavily armed deputies (often one and the same), state militia, bullpens, raids, court injunctions, and the wrath of the capitalistic press. In 1897, Mother Jones was in West Virginia traveling and speaking to miners and their families. John Walker of the United Mine Workers of America was traveling with her. In 1904, a reporter who had accompanied her wrote this account of one of her speeches:

Has any one ever told you, my children, about the lives you are living, more so that you may understand how it is you pass your days on earth? Have you told each other about it and thought it over among yourselves, so that you might imagine a brighter day and begin to bring it to pass? If no one has done so, I will do it for you today. I want you to see yourselves as you are, Mothers and children, and to think if it is not time you look on yourselves, and upon each other. Let us consider this together, for I am one of you, and I know what it is to suffer.

So the old lady, standing very quietly in her deep, far-reaching voice, painted a picture of the life of a miner from his young boyhood to his old age. It was a vivid picture. She talked of the first introduction a boy had to those dismal caves under the earth, dripping with moisture often so low that he must crawl into the coal veins; must lie on his back to work. She told how miners stood bent over until the back ached too much to straighten, or in sulpher water that ate through the shoes and made sores on the flesh; how their hands became cracked and the nails broken off in the quick; how the bit of bacon and beans in the dinner pail failed to stop the craving of their empty stomachs, and the thought of the barefoot children, at home and the sick mother was all too dreary to make the homegoing a cheerful one….

And so, while he smoked, the miner thought how he could never own a home, were it ever so humble; how he could not make his wife happy, or his children any better than himself, and how he must get up in the morning and go through it all again; how that some day the fall of rock would come or the rheumatism cripple him; that Mary herself might die and leave him, and some day there would be no longer for him even the job that was so hard and old age and hunger and pain would be his lot. And why, because some other human beings, no more the sons of God than the coal diggers, broke the commandment of God which says, “Thou shalt not steal,” and took from the toiler all the wealth which he created, all but enough to keep him alive for a period of years through which he might toil for their advantage.

[Said Mother Jones:]

You pity yourselves, but you do not pity your brothers, or you would stand together to help on another.

Continue reading “WE NEVER FORGET: February 25, 1903-Mother Jones and the Massacre of Raleigh Co. Miners at Stanaford Mountain, WV”

We Never Forget: Fellow Worker Joe Hill-Four Postcard Drawings Sent to Childhood Friend, Charles Rudberg in San Francisco

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—————

Drawings of Joe Hill, 1911 & 1914, from Postcards
Sent to Charles Rudberg

From Labor History Journal of Fall 1984:

JOE HILL-CARTOONIST

by PHILIP MASON

In 1980, the Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University acquired four postcards written by Joe Hill, the “Wobbly songwriter and poet,” to a friend, Charles Rudberg, between the years 1911 and 1914. The four postcards contained more than the usual short message-each included a cartoon of drawing by Joe Hill…..

Mason goes on to describe the postcards (see below).

Mason fails to mention exactly how the postcards were acquired, but perhaps they came from Rudberg’s daughter, Frances Horn, of Ventura, California, with whom Mason had communicated. Horn stated that her father and Joe Hill were childhood friends in Galve, Sweden, and reunited later in San Francisco shortly before the San Francisco Fire. Both Rudberg and his daughters cherished the postcards from Joe Hill and kept them as “priceless heirlooms.”

Mason was, in 1984, Director of the Archives of Labor History and Urban Affairs , Wayne State Univ., Professor History Dept.

Franklin Rosemont states that in a letter to Mason on January 29, 1980, Frances Horn wrote that her father told her older sister that Joe could also “sing like an angel, play the violin like a master and write like a fury.”

POSTCARD DRAWINGS by JOE HILL

January 24, 1911
-from Joe Hill at Coalinga CA
to Charles Rudberg at Sailors Rest Mission, San Pedro CA:

Big Show Tonight from Joe Hill at Coalinga to Rudberg at Sailors Rest San Pedro,  Jan 24, 1911
“Doings of Väran Kalle”

—————

April 29, 1911
-from Joe Hill at Sailors Rest Mission, San Pedro CA
to Charles Rudberg at Sailor’s Union Hall, East Street, San Francisco CA:

From Joe Hill at San Pedro to Rudberg at San Francisco, Mission to Fill, Apr 29, 1911
“I’ve Got a Mission to Fill Don’t Ye Knauw, JO-EL”

—————

September 2, 1911
-from Joe Hill at San Pedro CA
to Charles Rudberg at Sailors Union Hall, East Street, San Francisco CA:

From Joe Hill at San Pedro to Rudberg at San Francisco, Hobo Gets Boot, Sept 2, 1911
“Oh you Hoboeing”

With Poem by Joe Hill:

The song of Mauser bullets
may be exciting
and the rattle of machine-guns
may also have its thrills-
but Oh you hoboeing!

—————

December 18, 1914
-from Joe Hill at Salt Lake County Jail, Salt Lake City UT
to Charles Rudberg at San Francisco (?) CA 
Note: Joe was not moved to Utah State Pen until July 1915, after appeal for new trial was denied by Utah Supreme Court.

From Joe Hill at SL County Jail to Rudberg, Merry XMass, Dec 18, 1914
“Merry X-mas and then some. Joe”

—————

Continue reading “We Never Forget: Fellow Worker Joe Hill-Four Postcard Drawings Sent to Childhood Friend, Charles Rudberg in San Francisco”

Hellraisers Journal: Pawtucket, Rhode Island: Police Fire Riot Guns at Textile Strikers, One Killed, Many Wounded

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Quote Mother Jones, Pray for dead, ed, Ab Chp 6, 1925—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday February 24, 1922
Pawtucket, Rhode Island – Police Fire on Strikers, One Killed, Several Wounded

From the New York Evening World of February 21, 1922:

PAWTUCKET, R. I.. Feb. 21.-One man was killed, two were seriously wounded, and six persons were hurt when the police used riot guns today on a crowd of 1,000 person who gathered at the plant of the Jenckes Spinning Company, where a strike is in progress. The guns were brought into play when several patrolmen had been knocked down after the arrest of three strike sympathizers.

The dead man is Juan D’Assumpcau [Joseph Assuncao, Jose D’Assunpcao]  of Valley Falls. Tony Regoss and Joseph Diaz of this city were taken to hospitals in a critical condition.

Mayor Robert A. Kenyon witnessed the shooting. He had arrived at the gates of the plant early in the morning to observe the crowd that has customarily gathered to watch working operatives enter the mill. The Mayor, believing that there was danger in the crowd, read the riot act. He then told the patrolmen to be careful and calm but to do their duty and to “shoot if necessary. ” 

[…..]

[Machine Guns at Natick]

NATICK, R. I., Feb. 21,-While striking textile workers and sympathizers jammed the streets of this village to-day mounted cavalry troops and police kept strict patrol, forcing the throngs to keep moving, Hundreds of children, each bearing a tiny American flag, swelled the ranks of the strike sympathizers. There was no cheering, and in spite of the size of the crowd and the tenseness of the situation there was little noise.

A machine gun detachment of the 103d Field Artillery mounted guns at the mills involved in the strike, and a company of field artillery formed the patrol.

[Machine Guns at Providence]

PROVIDENCE. Feb. 21.-The conflict at Pawtucket was followed by an increase in the militia forces called to aid the civil authorities. Two troops of cavalry, a machine gun detachment and a Coast Artillery Company, all acting as infantry, patrolled the Pawtucket valley villages of Pontiac and Natick, maintaining order where riotous outbreaks occurred last night.

While the military were trying to maintain order in the mill districts, mediators of both State and Federal jurisdictions were sitting here with representatives of the union organizations of strikes and mill managements to learn their views on a suggestion for arbitration of the differences.

Two of the mill corporations have formally announced that the issues-a wage reduction of 20 per cent, and, in some instances, an increase of working hours from forty-eight to fifty-four were not such as could be ironed out by arbitration.

—————

[Emphasis added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Pawtucket, Rhode Island: Police Fire Riot Guns at Textile Strikers, One Killed, Many Wounded”