You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Tuesday December 29, 1903
Cripple Creek, Colorado - Former U. S. Rep. Glover defies military order to give up guns.
We have received a copy of a letter written by former Missouri Congressmen John M. Glover. Glover currently resides in Cripple Creek where he is a practicing attorney. The letter has been sent to the Denver Republican where it will be published for all to read, including the state's militia which now occupies the strike zone:
Cripple Creek, Colo., December 28, 1903
I observe that Colonel Verdeckberg issued still other proclamations calling for more arms and detailing the strenuous things he will do if they are not surrendered. Tell the colonel that there are two guns in my office and they are not registered; they are mine; the constitution gives me the right to carry them; they are loaded to the brim. The colonel can have them when the supreme court ratifies his criminal usurpation against the liberties of the people of this county, and before that whenever he is brave enough to murder under his illegal orders.
I look to see the supreme court ransom this people and all the active agents in this conspiracy against human rights sent to the penitentiary, where they belong.
A disorderly and lawless governor, who prostitutes the military arm to crush one side of an industrial controversy-I don't care which side-is the chief anarchist in the state. Where agitators make single socialists he makes them in shoals. Tell the colonel to come when I am at home and to come at the head of his squad. If, whenever a governor is base enough to tell a transparent and wicked lie about a community, he can by virtue of that lie, wipe away all constitutional rights and put me under the government of a San Hedran of wild asses' colts like Bell, Chase and McClelland and company; I am ready to pass in my chips at any time.
As for unionism, it is stronger today than ever. It is built on a basic principle of human nature. It can't be stamped out by the military heel. Persecution strengthens it as it strengthened the early church.
JOHN M. GLOVER
SOURCE
The Cripple Creek Strike
-by Emma F Langdon
(Part I, 1st pub 1904)
NY, 1969
To read directly from the book by Emma F. Langdon:
http://www.rebelgraphics.org/...
Also: Wikipedia, see below
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Monday December 29, 1913
Calumet, Michigan - 50,000 March to Cemetery Behind Small White Caskets
Funerals for those who died at the Italian Hall on Christmas Eve were held in six churches yesterday. At the front of the churches were the small white caskets of the little children along with the larger caskets of the adults with whom they perished, most of these adults being mothers of the youngest victims. After the funerals, the march began from the churches and merged into one as it headed out to the Lakeview Cemetery two miles distant. Here mass graves had been dug.
Following the hearses and the choir, came Annie Clemenc bearing her massive flag as usual, but with the flag draped in black crepe in honor of the dead. Tears were streaming down her face but she remained quiet and calm. Behind her marched twenty-one thousand union men in a line two miles long. The march included the Kaiku Finnish band and the Mohawk Miners' Union band.
Snow fell on the small white caskets as four men carried each one the distance to the cemetery. Grown men broke down in their grief and had to pass the little flower-covered caskets off to others near-by.
One of the victims was a member of the Women's Auxiliary of Calumet, #15 of the Western Federation of Miners. Beside the vehicle carrying her casket walked eight women, four on each side, in honor of their fallen sister.
The service at the cemetery began with the hymn "Nearer My God to Thee," and was followed by funeral orations in Finnish, Austrian, English and Croatian. The main address was delivered by Attorney E. A. McNally of Chicago. Clarence Darrow had been invited to speak but was unable to attend. McNally spoke for all, the living and the dead, when he said:
It is not charity we want; it is justice.
It was said that the sobbing of the mourners could be heard in the town, two miles away.
SOURCES
Big Annie of Calumet
-by Jerry Stanley
NY, 1996
Death's Door
The Truth Behind Michigan's Larges Mass Murder
-by Steve Lehto
MI, 2006
Annie Clemenc
& the Great Keweenaw Copper Strike
-by Lyndon Comstock
SC, 2013
Photo: Small White Caskets
http://www.pasty.com/...
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Sunday December 29, 2013
More on John M. Golver and his challenge to military despotism:
Glover's challenge to the military to come and take his guns led to a shoot-out at his office in which he was severely injured. Emma Langdon does not give a date for the shoot-out and the newspaper articles which I have found report the consequences of the shoot-out rather than reporting when the actual attack on Glover's office took place. We will cover more of this story in January.
John Milton Glover (June 23, 1852 - October 20, 1929) was a U.S. Representative from Missouri, nephew of John Montgomery Glover.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
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Sunday December 28, 1913
This song was sung at the mass funeral:
Nearer My God to Thee-Sharon Mennonite Singers
Then with my waking thoughts
Bright with Thy praise,
Out of my stony griefs,
Bethel I'll raise;
So by my woes to be
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee.
-Sarah F Adams, 1841