You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Thursday November 26, 1903
From the Indiana Fort Wayne Weekly Journal-Gazette: "President Mitchell Talks"
BOSTON, Mass., Nov. 22-"In times of popular excitement incident to a bitter strike, accidents, pure and simple are often alleged to be the work of strikers," said John Mitchell, president of the United Mine Workers, when shown the dispatch from Cripple Creek, Col., relative to the explosion at the Vindicator mine. He added: "I do not care to comment further on the charges of the operators until I know more of the details of the case. The Western Federation of Miners is affiliated neither with the American Federation of Labor nor with the United Mine Workers, but is a rival of the latter organization.
Mitchell may consider the W. F. of M. to be a rival organization, but the state governments and their militias make no such distinction. Adjacent to the above article we found:
CALL FOR TROOPS IN UTAH
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah Nov. 22-Sheriff Wilcox of Carbon county, has appealed to Governor Wells to call out the state troops to protect the coal mine districts of his county, which are included in the recent strike order issued by the United Mine Workers of America.
In his telegram to the governor, Sheriff Wilcox states that the civil forces at his command are powerless to cope with the lawlessness and protect life and property and maintain law and order....
SOURCE
Fort Wayne Weekly Journal-Gazette
(Fort Wayne, Indiana)
-of Nov 26, 1903
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Wednesday November 26, 1913
Southern Coalfields, Colorado - Louis Zancanelli Confesses to Killing George Belcher
Louis Zancanelli, who was arrested at the scene the night that George Belcher was shot and killed, has confessed. Also, according to General Chase, Zancanelli has named several union officers and organizers as part of a conspiracy to assassinate Belcher. Organizers Anthony B. McGarry and Sam Carter were named as having offered payment to Zancanelli, as well as Adolph Germer, who, it is claimed, arranged the assassination.
Arrest warrants have been issued for McGarry and Carter, but the two men cannot be found. Germer, who is in charge of U. M. W. operations in Walsenburg, has not yet been arrested, but scores of other striking miners have been arrested without warrants and are being held, many of them, incommunicado. Ed Doyle, Secretary-Treasurer of District 15, was seized by the militia on Monday, and Bob Uhlich, head of the miners' office in Trinidad, was arrested on Tuesday. Uhlich was charged with being a "dangerous agitator," and was ordered held indefinitely.
SOURCES
Out of the Depths
The Story of John R. Lawson, a Labor Leader
-by Barron B. Beshoar
(1st ed 1942)
CO, 1980
Blood Passion
The Ludlow Massacre and Class War
in the American West
-by Scott Martelle
Rutgers U Press, 2008
Photo: Adolph Germer, 1910 Congress Socialist Party of America
http://www.marxists.org/...
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Tuesday November 26, 2013
More on Adolph Germer (1881-1966):
Germer's chief genius seems to have been as an organizer, and he often played “behind the scenes.” It was seldom that his role achieved national publicity, but in a rare instance the St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial of January 24, 1937, pictured Germer as the moving force in the unionization of the automobile industry: “Back of Homer Martin, youthful president of the United Automobile Workers of America, stands the rugged figure of Adolph Germer, an active participant in the battles of labor for decades and now one of the field marshals in the industrial army commanded by John L, Lewis, creator of the Committee for Industrial Organization,” It is probable that Germer played a major role in the widespread adoption of the “sit-down strike” as a useful strategy in the industrial conflicts of the 1930's. (Rose Pesotta once addressed him as "“Adolph, of the sit-down fame”). By his own claim, it was he who first got Walter Reuther started in union activity (see Germer's letter of April 11, 1946, to J.A. Phillips).
SOURCE
Adolph Germer Papers, 1898-1966
Biography/History
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/...
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Dump The Bosses Off Your Back-Utah Phillips
Are you almost split asunder?
Loaded like a long-eared jack?
Boob - why don't you buck like thunder,
And dump the bosses off your back?
All the agonies you suffer
You can end with one good whack;
Stiffen up, you orn'ry duffer
And dump the bosses off your back.
-John Brill, 1916