You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Tuesday February 9, 1904
From The San Francisco Call: Mass-Meeting Denounces Military Rule in Colorado
Representatives of Labor Organizations Protest Against
Methods Pursued in Colorado
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At a mass-meeting held in the Alhambra Theater last night [Sunday] under the auspices of the American labor union organizations of San Francisco to protest against "military despotism in Colorado," Governor Peabody, the military authorities, certain members of the judiciary and the owners of the mines at Telluride and Cripple Creek were soundly rated.
James A Smith, president of the State Council of the American Labor Union, presided. He outlined briefly the purposes of the meeting and made some stirring remarks regarding abuses of authority by high officials. He then introduced, Charles M. Huribut of Denver , a member of the United Brotherhood of Railway Employees. His address was a direct attack upon Governor Peabody of Colorado for his conduct during the strike. He drew a harrowing picture of the horrors of the bull-pen, to which he said innocent men were dragged at night with no charge against them. The military authorities never attempt to prosecute any person placed under arrest, according to the speaker, but as soon as he is released upon one charge he is immediately rearrested on another.
The employes of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company are subjected to inhuman treatment, according to reports. Forty of them are crowded into a room so small that they have barely room to stretch their limbs at night, and the food furnished is of the poorest quality, but the price is high.
Arthur Lewis and Mrs. Lewis of the Federal Union followed with addresses, in which the advisability of workingmen standing together was strongly emphasized. F. R. Whitney of the Street Carmen's Union introduced resolutions condemning Governor Peabody, the military authorities, the Citizens' Alliance and the Mine Owners' Association.
Prior to the adoption of the resolutions a collection was taken up in behalf of the striking miners in Colorado and about $55 was realized. The meeting closed with a brief address by Thomas Booth of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers.
[paragraph break added]
SOURCE
The San Francisco Call
(San Francisco, California)
-of Feb 8, 1904
Photo: In Unity Strength
http://blogs.mtu.edu/...
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Monday February 9, 1914
From The Indianapolis News: Subcommittees to Investigate Mining Conditions
CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE IN MICHIGAN LACKS QUORUM.
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Hancock, Mich. February 9.-The train bearing Representative Joseph Howell, of Utah, the member necessary to make a quorum of the congressional investigating committee, was reported storm-bound somewhere on the lower peninsula today and prospects for a meeting dwindled as the day advanced. Chairman Taylor said that it was unlikely that hearings would begin before tomorrow.
The heaviest snowfall of the winter has kept Mr. Taylor and Representative Casey of Pennsylvania indoors since their arrival on Saturday and they have had no opportunity to see any of the copper country beyond the range of vision from their hotel.
OPENS HEARING IN DENVER
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Denver, Colo., February 9.-Hearing of testimony in the federal investigation of the Colorado coal miners' strike began in the senate chamber of the state capitol today. The subcommittee of the house committee on mines and mining which arrived from Washington yesterday, will hold hearings in Denver and at Trinidad, Pueblo, Boulder and other points, to determine whether federal statutes have been violated and to determine on recommendations for the settlement of the Colorado strike and the prevention of future labor struggles.
When today's hearing opened E. V. Brake, deputy labor commissioner; Professor Russell D. George, state geologist, and James Dalrymple, chief coal mining inspector, gave testimony as to general coal mining conditions in Colorado.
Two distinct strikes are included in the investigation, to be made by the committee. The miners in the northern Colorado coal fields were called out in 1910, and that strike never has been settled. Since then, many of the strikebreakers who took the places of the union men have been organized by the United Mine Workers of America, and a considerable part of them walked out with the southern men when the strike of all the coal miners in the state was called on September 23, 1913.
The investigating committee consists of Martin D. Foster (Dem.), Chairman, Illinois; James Francis Byrnes (Dem.), South Carolina; John M. Evans (Dem.), Montana; Richard Wilson Austin (Rep.), Tenn., and Howard Sutherland (Rep.), West Virginia.
SOURCE
The Indianapolis News
(Indianapolis, Indiana)
-of Feb 9, 1914
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Sunday February 9, 2014
Eugene Debs on the American Labor Union
Whatever difference may have prompted the separation several years ago -- and whether it was wise or otherwise, I shall not now consider, having no share in the praise or blame, as the action was taken by the Western miners upon their own motion and they are entirely willing to accept the responsibility -- it is certain that there is to-day a radical fundamental difference between the Eastern and Western wings of the American Labor movement and that in their present state and with their present conflicting policies and tendencies, they can not be united and even if they could be, factional and sectional strife would be at once engendered and disruption would be inevitable.
The Western movement could only have consented to go back and backward to the American Federation by stultifying itself and betraying and humiliating its thousands of progressive members who are far enough advanced to recognize the futility of labor organization without class-conscious political action and who will never retrace their steps to the fens and bogs of “pure and simple” unionism.
The Western men want unity and they want harmony, but they will not go backward, they will not sacrifice progress to reaction to secure it.
They have declared their class-consciousness and they can not and will not snuff out that beacon light to emancipation.
They have committed their organization to the Socialist Party and they can not unite with an organization that is hostile to independent political action by the working class.
There is one way and one only to unite the American trades-union movement. The American Federation of Labor must go forward to the American Labor Union; the American Labor Union will never go back to the American Federation of Labor. Numbers count for nothing; principle and progress for everything.
When the American Federation of Labor sheds its outgrown “pure and simple” policy, when it declares against the capitalist system and for union, class-conscious action at the ballot box, as the supreme test of union principles, as the American Labor Union has done; when it relegates “leaders” to the rear who secure fat offices for themselves in reward for keeping the rank and file in political ignorance and industrial slavery, when it shall cease to rely upon cringing lobbying committees, begging, like Lazarus at the gate of Dives, for a bone from a capitalist legislature and Congress it helped to elect, and marshals its members in class-array against their exploiters on election day to vote their own class into power, then unity will come and the Western men will hail with joy that day. And it is coming. It is simply bound to come.
SOURCE
International Socialist Review
-of November 5, 1902
"The Western Labor Movement"
-by Eugene Debs
http://www.marxists.org/...
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Solidarity Forever-Solidarity Singers
It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they trade;
Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid;
Now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonders we have made;
But the union makes us strong.
-Ralph Chaplin, 1915