You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Monday January 18, 1904
Victor, Colorado - Mrs. Morrison Dragged from Her Home by Militia, Marched to Victor
Yesterday militiamen commanded by Lieutenant Gunn paid a visit to Independence where they surrounded the home of Mrs. Mart Morrison. She was home alone at the time. Nevertheless, when they demanded entrance, she opened the door. After searching her home, the lieutenant questioned Mrs. Morrison. Not caring for her answers, the lieutenant had Mrs. Morrison seized and dragged from her home, during which act of "military necessity," her dress was torn. She was not allowed to change, and, in that torn dress, she was forced to march on the road all the way to Victor where she was charged with disturbing the peace. She was later released by Colonel Verdeckberg, but, to the best of our knowledge, was not provided transportation back to her home in Independence.
SOURCE
The Cripple Creek Strike
-by Emma F Langdon
(Part I, 1st pub 1904)
NY, 1969
http://www.rebelgraphics.org/...
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Sunday January 18, 1914
From The Labor World: Coroner's Jury Fixes Blame for Vulcan Mine Explosion
The Wives and Children
Waiting as Hope Fades
Yesterday's issue of the
The Labor World reported on the findings of the Glenwood Springs Coroners's Jury regarding the explosion at the Vulcan Mine a few weeks ago which killed 37 men:
Driven to desperation [during the ongoing coal strike], the coal operators have risked the lives of hundreds of men in their effort to get out coal. Cotton pickers, free lunch grabbers and hundreds of other who know nothing about mining coal were sent into the mines. These men violated all of the laws of the state regarding practices within the mine. This fact and the utter disregard of the laws by the local corporations, sent 37 men to their death in an explosion at the Vulcan mine at New Castle [on December 16th.]
The jury summoned at Glenwood Springs by Coroner G. A. Hopkins returned a verdict charging that the blast was due to the negligence of the Coryell Leasing company, a subsidiary the Rocky Mountain Fuel company.
The verdict recites that the operators were negligent in that they did not sprinkle that mine properly, that they permitted the use of open lights, that smoking by the men was permitted, and that the firing of shots while the men were on duty in the mine was a common practice.
The verdict further recites that the recommendations made by Deputy State mine Inspector Oberdine on October 24, were not complied with.
Throughout the inquest the evidence indicated that the men were in the habit of smoking cigarettes and pipes and that because they were not experienced coal miners they violated many laws of the state, regarding practices within the mine.
Ignored the Law.
Under the law the men should have been provided with copies of the state mining statutes: This the company, the verdict says, failed to do.
A further requirements of the law is the posting of notices printed in the various languages represented in the mine. This, the jury found, was not done.
The Rocky Mountain Fuel company offered to contribute $75 toward the funeral expenses of the dead. They become real philanthropists, in their minds, when they offer to bear part of the funeral expenses. The widows and orphans of these men who were killed by the operators' negligence starve.
SOURCE
The Labor World
(Duluth, Minnesota)
-of Jan 17, 1914
Photo: Fairmont, WV, Mine Disaster of 1907
Used here to represent the wives and children of the miners who
perished in the Vulcan Mine Disaster of 1913 as they waited and hoped
(in vain) that their husbands and fathers would be found alive.
http://digitaljournal.com/...
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Saturday January 18, 2014
Colorado Labor Laws v the Feudal Domain of the Coal Operators
Each mining camp was a feudal domain, with the company acting as lord and master. It had a marshal, a law enforcement officer paid by the company...The "law" consisted of the company rules. Curfews were imposed. Company guards-brutal thugs armed with machine guns and rifles loaded with explosive bullets-would not admit any "suspicious" stranger into the camp and would not permit any miner to leave...
On paper, Colorado had an excellent code of laws for the protection of workers. But in reality the will of the operator was the law. The operators prohibited the miners from appointing their own coal checkweighmen with the result that they were robbed of from 400 to 800 pounds in each ton; they paid their workers in company-printed scrip instead of legal currency, so that the average daily wage of $1.60 had a purchasing power of about one dollar; they worked the miners for more than eight hours a day; they prohibited them from patronizing stores of their own choice and compelled them to buy at company stores, where prices were often twice as high as elsewhere; and they forced the miners to vote as the foremen directed- all in open defiance of the law. The truth is that neither state, county , nor federal law counted for much in the feudal domain dominated by the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company [and others]. Reverend Atkinson of Colorado reported the following exchange in an interview with Colorado Governor Elias Ammons:
Rev Atkinson: Have you no constitutional law and government in Colorado?
Gov. Ammons: Not a bit in those counties where the coal mines are located.
Rev. Atkinson: Do you men to say that in large sections of your state there is no
constitutional liberty?
Gov. Ammons: Absolutely none.
Most of the demands put forward by the United Mine Workers in both the 1903-04 and 1913-14 strikes were already on the statute books of the state of Colorado, but willfully ignored by the coal operators. In other words, 20,000 men, women, and children were driven from the shacks of the company towns to live in tents through the Colorado winter of 1913-14 because they dared to demand that the laws of the state of Colorado should be followed by the Coal Operators.
We will note that, while miners and their families were rounded up and held incommunicado during the strike, no coal operator was ever arrested, let alone charged, for violating the laws of the state of Colorado, not even when that blatant disregard of the law led to injury and death in the mines.
SOURCE
History of the Labor Movement in the United States Vol. 5
The AFL in the Progressive Era, 1910-1915
-by Phillip S. Foner
International Publishers, 1980
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Dream of Miner's Child-Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley
"Oh, I dreamed that the mines were all flaming with fire,
And the miners all fought for their lives.
Just then the scene changed, and the mouth of the mines
Was covered with sweethearts and wives.
"Oh, daddy, don't go to the mines today,
For dreams have so often come true.
My daddy, my daddy, please don't go away,
For I never could live without you.
I never could live without you."
-Reverend Andrew Jenkins