You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
Monday August 17, 1903
Cripple Creek District, Colorado - Speech of President Charles Moyer
Charlse Moyer, President of the Western Federation of Miners, also spoke at the union picnic held at Pinnacle Park last Saturday. This is an account of his speech:
The responsibility for the present conditions has been laid by most of the newspapers at my door. I wish to say that I am ready at this time to assume any responsibility in a fight for humanity and living conditions for the miners of the Cripple Creek district. All I ask is that the other people in the state, who are responsible for the present conditions in this, shall be saddled with like responsibility. The facts are that the legislature of 1899 passed an eight-hour bill, the supreme court declared it class legislation and unconstitutional. Notwithstanding this, the representatives of organized labor went before the men who were working twelve hours in the smelters and urged them to wait, and a future legislature would do something for them. The eight-hour constitutional amendment was carried by 40,000 majority, 70,000 votes being cast for the amendment.
The Fourteenth Colorado legislature went into session pledged to the enactment of an eight-hour day. The representatives of the mill and smelter trusts went into session with them. The result was no law was passed. Upon this legislature I place the responsibility for the present trouble. Had this legislature performed its duty there would now be no strike in the Cripple Creek district...
A small per cent of the press has been clamoring that this is a sympathetic strike. This I most emphatically deny. It is a strike of the Western Federation of Miners. The mill men are a part of the Federation, and to deny them support at this time is the same as denying one of the unions here support should it be attacked by a corporation. The men have pledged themselves to support their brothers of the Federation and they will do it.
SOURCE
The Cripple Creek Strike
-by Emma F Langdon
(Part I, 1st pub 1904)
NY, 1969
Sunday August 17, 1913
Trinidad, Colorado - Gunthugs Kill U.M.W. Organizer, 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, yesterday, when Belcher and Beck, 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.
SOURCE
Out of the Depths
-by Barron B Beshoar
(1st ed 1942)
CO, 1980
Hellraisers Journal on vacation!
Hellraisers will appear in abbreviated form until Sept 2nd for a vacation of sorts. A total vacation is not possible since the capitalist never took any time off in their suppression of the U.S.labor movement.