Hellraisers Journal: “The Wheatland Boys”-Herman Suhr and Richard Ford Convicted of Second Degree Murder; Appeal Expected

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Quote JP Thompson re Wheatland, June 25-26, 1918, Chicago IWW Trial of H George, p71-2,—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday March 3, 1914
Herman Suhr and Richard Ford Convicted of Second Degree Murder

From the International Socialist Review of March 1914:

The Wheatland Boys

Hop Pickers, Mothers w Children, Durst Ranch, Wheatland CA, 1913

HERMAN Suhr and Richard Ford, leaders of the strike on the Durst Hop Ranch at Wheatland, have been convicted of murder in the second degree, in the trial for the murder of District Attorney Edmund Manwell, killed in the raid of the sheriff’s posse on a peacable meeting of men, women and children strikers. William Back and Harry Bagan, who stood trial with them, have been released “on account of insufficient evidence.”

Ford and Suhr are convicted of murder. But they are not convicted of actually having murdered Mr. Maxwell. They are convicted of conspiring to murder, of being accessory before the fact.

The evidence of several eye witnesses proved that the District Attorney was killed by a Porto Rican, who came to the rescue of his fellow strikers. But the Porto Rican was killed himself; Ford and Suhr were not killed. And, as Prosecuting Attorney Carlin says, “The blood of Ed Manwell cries from the ground for their conviction.” The employing class cry for their conviction, Mr. Carlin might have added with less false sentiment and more truth. For these men, Ford and Suhr, were strike leaders, and their strike promised to be successful, had not the sheriff’s posse acted as strikebreakers for the Hop Barons.

These are the reasons for the conviction of Ford and Suhr. The precedent of a conviction of a labor leader for conspiracy to murder, of being accessory before the fact to any violence fomented by the employers in time of industrial trouble, is choked down the throats of the working class in California. And a staggering blow is given of the organization of the migratory workers, in whose vast army they urge toward organization had just begun to take embryonic shape.

Immediately behind the four prisoners during the trial sat Mrs. Suhr and Mrs. Ford, each with her two children. Suhr is desperately broken by the tortures of the Burns detectives, and even wiry, spirited hopeful Ford shows the long imprisonment and the strain. But the men show their ordeal hardly more than their wives.

As they sat before the twelve men who were to decide their fate, it was difficult to imagine a situation where justice would be more bitterly impossible to secure than in this county of Yuba, from which change of venue had been denied the four prisoners. Not a man in the jury who would not consider (however falsely) that his financial interest would be more secure for the conviction of these men. Not a man there who knew them or had ever looked upon their faces before. Not a man there who did not know at least by reputation, the dead man, his widow and orphans. Not a man who had not read the bitter attacks of the local press, condemning these men to the gallows before they were even brought to trial. Not a man who had ever read a word favorable to them (the reading of the pamphlet [“Plotting to Convict the Wheatland Hop Pickers”] sent into Yuba County by this league having been declared by the judge to disqualify a man from jury service). Not a man in the jury, probably, who did not share the prejudice of the man with a home, against the so-called hobo.

Austin Lewis’ plea for the defense was brilliant, profoundly human and convincing. It took the evidence, as given by both sides and utterly demolished the case of the prosecution with the sword of cold reason, slashed the cowardly Stanwood for his persecutions of helpless prisoners, and then flung itself upward in such an appeal to the blood-kindred of all men in aspirations for betterment and freedom, such as the strike on the Durst Ranch, as must have stirred the blood of every listener. But Lewis was a stranger to the jurymen, and their petty life in an agricultural community rendered it impossible for them to judge in a case involving an industrial question.

Prosecuting Attorney Carlin, who followed, had set his stage well. Opposite the jury sat the widow of the dead man with her six children. Intimately, as a man might talk to them leaning over the front fences, Carlin drove his plea home to the jury, every man of whom knew him, and many of whom, it is stated, were under obligations to him. Analysis of the testimony there was none; argument there was none; reason there was none.

A poor, shabby, cowardly speech, vulgar and dull. But it did not have to be very clever. All was well prepared without a clever plea. The judge read to the jury instructions from the law exactly covering a conviction for conspiracy in these cases, and hastily skipped over the instructions which would have freed the men by showing that Ford and Suhr did not aid and abet the Porto Rican who did the shooting.

The crooked, brutal case was about finished. The prophecy of gentlemen intimately associate with the ever clever Burns detectives to the effect that the verdict would be brought in at 1:30 p. m. on January 31, was correct. Society women and social workers who had come up from San Francisco, representatives of the press, investigators from the new Federal Commission on Industrial Relations, townsmen and townswomen crowded the courtroom. And the impious mock dignity of the law went on its wind-inflated way, to free the two men whom it dare not hold and to pronounce guilty the two whose sole crime was that they rose to lead out of the darkness, a helpless crowd of men, women and children, to convict these men who used what talents were theirs to voice the will and aspirations of these people for clean and decent conditions and a wage sufficient to allow them to hold up their heads as men.

Their cases will be appealed, and the storms of protest and wrath will not be downed until they are free.

[Photograph and Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “Class Struggle News; The Latest from Trinidad; the Mother Jones Parade”

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Quote Mother Jones, Chase No Own State, RMN p3, Jan 12, 1914—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 1, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Mother Jones Still a Military Prisoner, Held Incommunicado

From the International Review of March 1914:

Trinidad CO Parade f Mother Jones ISR p517, Mar 1914

The Latest from Trinidad

INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW,
Chicago, Ill.
Dear Comrades:

Replying to yours of Feb. 5, regarding a letter to Mother Jones, I must say it is impossible. She is held absolutely “incommunicado”-no one having seen her since incarceration except Horace Hawkins, attorney for U. M. W. A., and his admission was since the Congressional investigation was approaching. I enclose you clipping from yesterday’s daily showing how even medical advice from outside was denied her. “Military discipline” and general conditions are softening down much since the investigation has become a certainty. This puts new hope and courage into us all.

Yours for Socialism,
GRACE B. MARIANS,
Local Secty., S. P.
Feb. 10, 1914

Mother ]ones Parade

On January 22 a women’s parade was formed to make a demonstration protesting against the imprisonment of “Mother Jones.” The line of march was to proceed from Castle Hall up Commercial street, along Main to the postoffice, and then return to Castle Hall. One of the leaders was an Italian woman, who did not speak or understand English well. She was carrying an American flag in the form of a large banner. Not knowing that the parade was to turn at the postoffice, she led the parade towards the hospital where Mother Jones is held. A block from the postoffice the parade was met by a troop of cavalry commanded in person by General Chase. The soldiers immediately pulled the flag out of the woman’s hands. Other women ran up and demanded the return of the flag. This was finally returned to them amidst cheers.

Colorado Militia at Trinidad, ISR p519, Mar 1914

On receiving the flag the paraders re-formed, turned around and started back to the hall. They had not proceeded a block when the troop of cavalry, who had now been reinforced by the infantry, charged at full gallop with drawn sabers. Women were rode down, others flocked to the sidewalks. The cavalry then charged the sidewalks, beating the people with the flat of their swords. One woman received a gash on the hand from the saber stroke. Mrs. Margaret Hammond was struck by a militiaman with his fist, cutting her forehead above the left eye and blackening both eyes. Any person objecting to the treatment was immediately seized and taken to jail.

The infantry backed up the charge with drawn bayonets, forcing the people before them. Private lawns were invaded and any persons standing on them were herded off. Even government property was not sacred. The troops drove people from the postoffice steps.

A number of people were injured in this charge, mostly women, and eighteen were taken to prison. The streets were then blocked by the militia and no person was allowed to pass up or down them without permission of an officer.

Governor Ammons upheld General Chase in his chivalrous attack upon the women of the community.

—————

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “Class Struggle News; The Latest from Trinidad; the Mother Jones Parade””

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Surrounded by 150 Soldiers, Seized and Taken to Military Bastile at San Rafael Hospital, Held Incommunicado

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Quote John Lawson 1913, after October 17th Death Special attack on Forbes Tent Colony, Beshoar p74—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 8, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Mother Jones Seized by Soldiers, Held Incommunicado

From the International Socialist Review of February 1914:

Cartoon Mother Jones Surrounded by Soldiers Trinidad, ISR p462, Feb 1914Nine Sharpshooters Colorado, ISR p462, Feb 1914Nine Sharpshooters Colorado, ISR p463, Feb 1914

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Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “Calumet” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part II-Profits, Wages and Working Conditions

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Quote re Annie Clemenc at Mass Funeral Calumet, Day Book p4, Jan 6, 1914—————

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:

Calumet MI by LH Marcy, ISR p453, Feb 1914

[Part II of II]

Italian Hall Massacre Calumet MI, Small White Caskets, ISR p457, Feb 1914

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.

* * * * * * *

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “Calumet” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part II-Profits, Wages and Working Conditions”

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “Calumet” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part I-The Fighting Finns

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Quote re Annie Clemenc at Mass Funeral Calumet, Day Book p4, Jan 6, 1914—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday February 2, 1914
“Calumet” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part I-The Fighting Finns

From the International Socialist Review of February 1914:

Calumet MI by LH Marcy, ISR p453, Feb 1914

[Part I of II]

Italian Hall Doors Calumet MI, ISR p453, Feb 1914

SEVENTY-TWO copper miners, with their wives and children, met death at these doors on Christmas Eve in Calumet, Michigan.

A brief hour before this little company of silent ones had passed up the stairs into the Italian Hall to join hundreds of other strikers and their families. A Christmas tree had been arranged by the Women’s Auxiliary of the Western Federation of Miners to put a bit of cheer into the hearts of the kiddies and perhaps to encourage the men and women in their struggle against the copper barons for more bread and better working conditions.

But “Peace on earth and good will toward men” is not down on the capitalist program. For months past imported thugs and gun-men, in the pay of the copper companies, as guards, had gone about shooting up strikers, breaking up union headquarters, disrupting meetings and otherwise “establishing law and order.”

It should surprise no one then to learn that upon this occasion a “mysterious” stranger appeared suddenly in the doorway of Italian Hall with a false cry of “fire!”

Comrade Annie Clemanc [Clemenc] had just finished her address of welcome; the toys were still on the tree-when forty-eight pairs of little feet arose at the alarm and ran down the stairway. They were met by “deputies,” who blocked the doors to escape. In the crush and panic that followed seventy-two human beings were killed.

* * * *

A bleak mining region and the rigors of a Lake Superior winter, with the hardship of five months’ strike, made still more poignant the crushing sorrow. Over the two miles of road from Calumet to the bit of ground owned by the Western Federation of Miners marched the procession with hearse, undertakers’ wagons and an automobile truck carrying a few coffins, followed by 480 miners, in squads of four, carrying 67 coffins. They lowered them into two long trenches that yawned in the snows of the copper country. Behind them came fifty Cornish miners chanting hymns, their voices thick with emotion. Thousands of miners with their wives and children formed the procession. All but a dozen of the burials were in common graves dug by members of the union.

Italian Hall Calumet MI Interior View, ISR p454, Feb 1914

Came the Finns to the fair state of Michigan about sixty years ago-to spend their lifetime and labor time in the mines.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “Calumet” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part I-The Fighting Finns”

Hellraisers Journal: Miners’ Bulletin: “Harvest of Death, Striking Miner’s Children In Christmas Joys Are Called By The Angel Of Death”-Italian Hall Massacre

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

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday December 28, 1913
Calumet, Michigan – Men, Women and Children Perish in Midst of Christmas Joy

From the Michigan Miners’ Bulletin of December 28, 1913:

MI Miners Bulletin p1, Dec 28, 1913MI Italian Hall Massacre, Mnrs Bltn p1, Dec 28, 1913

In the midst of Christmas good cheer and happiness twenty eight little girls, twenty four little boys, fifteen women and five men were swirled into the cruel jaws of death in less than five minutes at the Italian hall, Calumet, on Christmas eve. The striking miners of Calumet had prepared Christmas exercises and the distribution of presents for the little ones and at the appointed time the hall was filled with the happy little tots accompanied by their parents. The Christmas tree gaily decorated and loaded with presets stood upon the stage of the hall. The program was started by Mrs. Annie Clemenc who was making a talk to the children telling them that old Santa had not forgotten them just because their fathers had been denied work, and that they were all to be made happy by receiving many nice presents, candies, fruits and nuts.

The little ones had crowded near the stage their little faces beaming with delight when a fiend in the shape of a man sneaked up the stairway leading to the hall, opened the door and waving his arm cried “fire, fire,” then quickly making his way to the street where he disappeared in the gathering darkness. At the cry of fire the great throng arose as one and made a dash for the front exit of the hall. The way was made for the children first and they filled the stairway so full and crowded from the rear so fast that some of the children were swept off their feet. These little bodies acted a stumbling blocks for those who followed and within a few seconds the stairway was a mass of bleeding crushed, dead and dying humanity. The crowd from above kept crowding into the stairway until it was completely filled with bodies.

As soon as the cry of fire had been sounded the city fire alarm was bellowing its harrowing warning and the firemen upon arriving at the scene quickly placed ladders to the front windows of the building and ascended to the hall where they stopped any more from crowding into the stairway upon the dead bodies of their comrades. Within a few minutes the hall had been emptied and the work of removing the dead taken up. The bodies were so tightly wedged into the hallway that they could not be released below and had to be taken from above and carried back into the hall. The bodies were taken to a temporary morgue in the city hall where after identification they were sorrowfully removed to their homes.

The scene was one beggaring description and those who witnessed it will never have it effaced from their minds as long as they live. While the front hallway was being crowded and jammed full of men, women and children others were seeking escape at a fire exit in the rear of the hall, many getting out in this manner. Others jumped from windows and in nearly every instance were severely injured, one little boy who jumped had both legs broken.

One little girl who was jammed in the hallway in a dying condition begged one of the rescuers to save her. She grasped his hand, kissed it, then her little head dropped upon her breast and she was dead. One man whose name was not learned got in the hallway and tried to prevent the frenzied crowd from crowding down the stairs upon those below. He placed his arms across the hall way and checked them momentarily but the force behind became too great and he was swept into the vortex of death, his dead body being taken out a few minutes later. Holding high above her head her little child, a woman and her husband were carried into the mass of humanity trying to get out of the hall. This man and his wife were swept to their death but the child miraculously escaped.

The fiend who caused this terrible disaster made his escape and is still at large. From persons who stood near the door it is learned that he was rather stockily built, a little under medium height, and wore his hat well pulled down over his countenance. Upon the lapel of his coat he wore a Citizens Alliance button, is a statement made by several who got a good view of him. How anyone with reasoning power could have deliberately committed the act is beyond comprehension.

President Moyer of the Federation who was in Hancock at the time of the accident hurried to Calumet and assured those afflicted that their wants would be attended to by the organization at whose head he stands. The funerals of the victims will be held at Calumet this afternoon and will be attended by thousands of sorrowing friends and companions of those who, while in life, stood valiantly by their side in the great fight for justice which still holds within it grasp the entire district. The funerals will be held under the auspices of organized Labor, and no funds other than those donated by such organizations will be accepted. Organized labor has made this request and the wishes will be respected in this matter…..

[Emphasis and paragraph breaks added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Miners’ Bulletin: “Harvest of Death, Striking Miner’s Children In Christmas Joys Are Called By The Angel Of Death”-Italian Hall Massacre”

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Coal Miners Fight to Win in Colorado by Robert M. Knight, Part II

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Quote John Lawson 1913, after October 17th Death Special attack on Forbes Tent Colony, Beshoar p74—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday December 4, 1913
Coal Miners of Southern Colorado Are Fighting to Win, Part II

From the International Socialist Review of December 1913:

Miners, Women, Children Parade at Trinidad, ISR p333, Dec 1913

[Part II of II]

Some one has said, “A fool in revolt is infinitely wiser than a learned philosopher apologizing for his chains.” Believing this, fully 95 per cent of the miners answered the call to strike [September 23, 1913]. Men with families within three days of starvation and without clothes enough to protect their frail bodies from the biting winds of mountain winters came out fully determined to win or die in the attempt. And who will blame them? Work such as the miner does is no longer honorable but has come to mean “drunkenness, vice and superstition.” It makes men and women unscrupulous, hard and restless. It destroys for others the treasure of life-a home. All the noble sentiments of liberty and the joy of labor mean in reality to the miner slavery of the worst type.

With thoughtless hymns of praise of this massacreing of labor, society allows one wholesale slaughter after another without a protest. While I am writing this the news arrived of the Dawson, New Mexico, disaster, in which the lives of 261 miners were lost and the operators refused to allow Secretary Doyle of the miners’ union to give the widows and orphans $1,000 donated by the union because the camp was non-union. And just as certain as that nothing becomes better without the desire to improve it so it is a healthy sign of the times that starvation wages for conscientious drudgery no longer fills the miner with heartfelt gratitude toward the master class.

The mine slaves were so cowed that the operators were sure that not more than 25 per cent would quit and when practically every miner laid down his tools, completely tying up the coal industry of Colorado, the wrath of the masters knew no bounds. They immediately got busy and sent a deputation of their lackeys, consisting of a lawyer, banker and a Catholic priest (Father Malone), to Washington to repeat the lies of the operators that the miners were satisfied with conditions but forced to strike by eastern agitators like Frank Hayes and Mother Jones. Their thugs began to terrorize the country, shoot up the tented camps of the strikers, insult the women and abuse the children and the operators began to call for the militia that the state might pay the cost of breaking the strike and thus save John D. a few paltry dollars with which to build a few more churches and start more Sunday schools where they sing and PREY-“servants obey your masters.”

Failing to get the militia as soon as they called, the operators had to content themselves with filling the jails of Colorado with strikers who dared to exercise their constitutional rights of peacefully asking imported strikebreakers to not work. In the city of Boulder and within the shadow of Colorado’s greatest educational institution, the state university, thirty-six were confined in the county jail until the court permitted the prisoners to bail each other out. Forty-nine others were arrested in Las Animas county and marched seven miles to the Trinidad jail between two rows of armed guards with Belk and Beltcher (out on bond for murder of Lippiatt), following up the rear with a Gatling gun mounted on an armored automobile.

Frank Hayes says, “The operators have several machine guns mounted on autos. They also have what is known as the ‘steel battle ship [Death Special].‘ This is an automobile with a high body of solid sheet steel built up so as to almost conceal the guard inside. The steel furnishes resistance to the bullets and is so arranged that the assassins on the inside may shoot their rifles in perfect safety. It is a splendid refuge for a coward. The body of the machine is shaped like a torpedo and was designed and built for mine guards. It carried a rapid fire machine gun with a range of more than two miles. As bad as West Virginia was there was nothing down there to compare with this latest instrument of murder that the operators of Colorado are using.”

As this procession neared town, G. E. Jones, a member of Western Federation of Miners, attempted to get a picture of the armored car. A. C. Felt beat him insensible and destroyed his camera and had him arrested for disturbing the peace.

Gun men patrol the public roads in armored autos, shooting up first one camp and then another. The first resistance the strikers offered was at Forbes, October 17, one striker was killed, two wounded and a deputy shot in the hip. One hundred and forty-seven bullets from a machine gun passed through a tent occupied by an aged Scotchman, who saved his life by lying flat on the floor. After this battle the miners made preparations to defend themselves from further attacks of the guards.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Coal Miners Fight to Win in Colorado by Robert M. Knight, Part II”

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Coal Miners Fight to Win in Colorado by Robert M. Knight, Part I

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Quote John Lawson 1913, after October 17th Death Special attack on Forbes Tent Colony, Beshoar p74—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday December 3, 1913
Coal Miners of Southern Colorado Are Fighting to Win, Part I

From the International Socialist Review of December 1913:

Mother Jones Marches with Boys in Trinidad, ISR p330, Dec 1913

[Part I of II]

THE fight is on. We would have avoided it; we still stand ready at any time to meet representatives of the other side with hopes of effecting a settlement. We hold out the olive branch continually. But because we wish for peace must not be construed as a sign that we are not able to fight. Our past record should dispel such idle dreams. We will aid our brothers in the Colorado fields with all of our resources; with the advice of men of experience; with the hearty good will and sympathy of the vast army of sturdy workers that make up our membership. And these will give a good account of themselves against all the powers of darkness the operators may bring against us.”-Mine Workers Journal.

For months the leading newspapers (?) of Denver and all the capitalist sheets throughout the state, both daily and weekly have been repeating the same rigmarole in regard to the coal strike. While they insult the union men, they anxiously defend themselves against any suspicious of sympathy with the Standard Oil crowd. Their excuses are: A strike is an industrial war for more wages and not one of principle, it does not in their opinion affect the question of morality; finally, even if right and justice is on the side of the miner it is a vain attempt to subjugate by force of a strike, the peaceful relations of No. 26 Broadway [Rockefeller’s HQ in New York City]. Would not open shop conditions free the miner of all his trouble? Therefore, should not the miners welcome the open shop as a happy event instead of seeking a recognition of the union through a “bloody and ruinous strike”?

Let us look a little into the real cause of this strike that dates, back to April 1, 1910, a time when there were not over three thousand organized miners in the state. Our contract expired then and the operators knew we would never be any weaker and perhaps they never more powerful. Therefore they sought to force an open shop by refusing to recognize the miner’s right to organize and sell his labor-power collectively. A strike resulted, one that history will perhaps record as the hardest fought mile of the miner’s road to industrial freedom.

There were but few of us and after several months the busy world outside forgot all about the strike in northern Colorado. Strikes were fought and won in various parts of the country; all the while the miners stood firm, fighting injunctions, suffering jail sentences and other hardships without complaining, yet knowing all the time our only hope for victory was an organized strike in the southern part of the state, as we were unable to seriously affect the market. National organizers were sent south and at once began the task of secretly organizing the slaves in John D.’s hell-holes of Colorado. This work was slow and dangerous requiring three and one-half years’ time (and “God knows” how much cash).

When the civil war was ended in West Virginia the militant workers of the union, including Frank J. Hayes and “Mother Jones” were sent to Colorado to assist in the organization work and with their arrival things began to move apace. Hayes soon asked the operators for a conference and demanded recognition of the union in the name of 15,000 newly organized slaves. The operators ignored all invitations to arbitrate boasting they had five millions of dollars for defense. They began preparing for a strike by importing gun men and thugs from West Virginia through the Baldwin Feltz detective agency. W. H. Reno, chief detective for C. F. & I., also opened a recruiting station in the Dover Hotel, 1744 Glenarm place, and succeeded in sending out of Denver some of the most notorious characters from the red light district and barrel house bums. Upon the arrival of these criminals in the strike zone Sheriffs Gresham and Farr (appointed by the coal companies), gave them deputy sheriff commissions.

The State Federation of Labor held its annual convention at Trinidad August 18 and when the U. M. W. of A. delegates began to arrive in town late Saturday afternoon G. W. Beltcher and Walter Belk, two Baldwin-Feltz heroes, shot and instantly killed Gerald Lippiatt, a district organizer on the main street of Trinidad. A coroner’s jury, composed of “good” business men, rendered a verdict of “justifiable homicide”; District Attorney Hendricks later preferred a charge of murder against them but the courts of Colorado do not value a coal miner’s life very high and Lippiatt’s murderers were promptly released on bond because such human hyenas are needed by the operators to maintain law and order during a strike.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Coal Miners Fight to Win in Colorado by Robert M. Knight, Part I”

Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: Machine Guns and the Striking Coal Miners of Southern Colorado

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Quote John Lawson 1913, after October 17th Death Special attack on Forbes Tent Colony, Beshoar p74—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday December 2, 1913
Machine Guns Used to Wage War Against Striking Miners of Southern Colorado

From the International Socialist Review of December 1913:

Machine Guns n Coal Miners of So Colorado, ISR p327, Dec 1913

MILITARISM is the heavy fist of the Capitalist class to beat the worker into abject submission. So well do they know the value of machine guns and soldiers that the utmost endeavor is constantly put forth by the Government-the ever-ready Servant of Vested interests, to seduce boys into the ranks of patriotic hirelings. Militiamen and soldiers are working men, hired for a consideration, to shoot and kill other workingmen in the name· of “law and order.”

Brute force, it is evident, is never entirely discarded by the capitalist robber class in their self-assumed right to exploit the worker of the product of his toil. Behind the courts, judges and injunctions, political machinery, class education and superstition, there always lurks the shadow of the big mit and the heavy club-the Military.

The velvet glove only covets the mailed hand.

Where the barons of the middle ages hired his knights and handmen to prey upon and keep in suppression the serfs of the surrounding territory, the coal barons of Colorado, New York and West Virginia maintain their teachers and editors, their preachers and professors, their lawyers, judges and political heelers for the same identical purpose-the robbing of the working class. When these forces fail to work expeditiously then-the honorable Governor is beseeched to call out the National Guard to preserve “law and order.”

The difference between the first exploiter of labor-the man with the knotted club-and John D. Rockefeller the holy, oily Christian philanthropist, is one of degree only. The robbery of the worker is equally complete. The spoils of the idle robber of today is greater than ever. Only the methods have changed.

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