You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Saturday May 14, 1904
From The Labor World: A Special Correspondent Reports from Colorado
General Bell
-by B. S. White
Governor Peabody
-by B. S. White
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COLORADO IS TIED HAND AND FOOT BY MILITARY DESPOTISM
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Indianapolis Star Sends Correspondent to Colorado to Inquire Into Industrial Conditions. Gives an Impartial View of Conditions There.
Militarism Holds Full Sway.
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Character Picture of General Bell. Is Bitterly Opposed to Western Federation of Miners. Has No Time for Supreme Courts. Peabody Protects Himself With Gun.
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Indianapolis, Ind., May [?]-The Indianapolis Star sent a representative to Colorado to make an investigation of the strike conditions in the state and gave him instructions to "write nothing but the truth as he found it."
To show what a set of ruffians are in control of Colorado it is only necessary to quote the following from the account sent to the Star by its reporter:
Take Adjutant General Bell, for instance. The Star correspondent interviewed him today. He is a young man with a face bearing and speech that are so bold and daring as to give one the impression of tyranny. Utterly fearless and heartless, he seems yet a man who is following his honest convictions.
The only thing General Bell had for the Telluride miners were oaths and condemnation. He sat at his desk in his rough soldier suit and cursed the miners for a good half hour.
"Have you any idea how long martial law will be enforced at Telluride?" he was asked.
Leaving out the oaths the gist of his reply was this:
"The soldiers never will be taken out of there until we have rid the county of the cut-throats, murderers, socialists, thieves, loafers, agitators and the like who make up the membership of the Western Federation of Miners.
"We don't care what the supreme court, the newspapers, or anybody or anything else does. The soldiers are going to stay there regardless of court decisions and if there is any more monkey business there is going to be some machine gun shooting.
"If we were to withdraw the trouble brewers would cross the ridge and return as soon as the snow is gone. The mines are going to run and the willing man, union or not, will be protected in his employment. There is not room in Colorado mining camps for these loafers. Either we are going to rule or they are. We can't go on as we have been doing. If they can kill us off they will rule but if necessary we will try our best to kill them off to maintain our authority."
Governor Peabody is more careful in his choice of words but hardly less emphatic. A great, black revolver, it must be a 48, lies in his desk in the state house.
"No, that isn't a Colorado paper weight," he replied in answer to a question. "It's here for a purpose and I can use it too. I don't know what might happen, and so I have it handy."
After all Breathitt county, Ky., need not feel that she hasn't any relatives left.
Governor Peabody frankly admits that the time has come to crush the Western Federation, and that he will do everything in his power to bring this about.
The reader can well ask himself upon which side the capitalistic politicians take their stand in all crises. They are class conscious and defend the privileged few. They are teaching the workers daily lessons of loyalty to class interests. We are perfectly satisfied that the capitalists should stand together industrially and politically as long as they are doing. Let the working people intimate [imitate?] their example. If it is fair for capitalists to fight the unions and vote together, there is no reason in the world why workingmen should not do the same.
Labor can, ought to and will rule in every state in the union when it cuts loose from its narrow party prejudices and earnestly aspires to become economically free from the domination of industrial and political bosses.
And, speaking of Labor voting together in its own class interest, we have this news from the
Appeal to Reason:
For President
EUGENE V. DEBS
OF INDIANA
For Vice-President
BENJAMIN HANFORD
OF NEW YORK
Special Telegram.
Chicago, May 7.-The Socialist National Convention closed its work last night, it was, without doubt, the greatest Socialist convention ever held in the United States. Every state was represented by a full delegation, and many alternates were also there. It marks an epoch in American politics.
Eugene V. Debs, of Indiana, and Benjamin Hanford, of New York, were nominated for president and vice-president. No fitter candidates could have been selected to stand for the working class of the nation. Both are members of organized Labor and powerful platform speakers, and actual workingmen.
The platform is a clean cut declaration of the Socialist philosophy and will appeal to the working class wherever they read it. Yesterday morning, Comrade Debs delivered a masterly address, accepting the nomination, sounding the slogan for the campaign. Comrade Hanford's speech of acceptance put so much fire in the convention that the daily papers say it raised the roof.
FRED D. WARREN.
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As the Appeal goes to press one week before its date, it will not be able to give a full report before next week.
Now, let the Appeal Army get behind the wagon and push as it never pushed before. Let us show the country what kind of stuff we are made of. Let our weapon be literature and the tongue, and with these we can overcome the ignorance that enables the capitalists to rule with an iron hand.
SOURCES
The Labor World
(Duluth, Minnesota & Superior, Wisconsin)
-of May 14, 1904
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-of May 14, 1904
Photos:
Governor Peabody by BS White
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
General Bell by BS White
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
See also:
Representative men of the West in caricature, Volume 1, Issue 1
B. S. White, American Cartoonist Magazine
American Cartoonist Magazine, 1904
http://books.google.com/...
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Thursday May 14, 1914
From The Brooklyn Daily Eagle: Mother Jones to Speak to Women's Relief Committee
Refugees from the Ludlow Tent Colony in Trinidad
MOTHER JONES TO SPEAK HERE MONDAY
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Committee Meets at Home of Mrs. J. P. Warbasse to Perfect Arrangements.
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FOR AROUSING SYMPATHY
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She Will Tell of Her Experiences in Colorado Strike, Where She Was Arrested.
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The committee in charge of the Mother Jones meeting, to be held at the Masonic Temple Monday evening met at the home of Mrs. James P. Warbasse, 386 Washington avenue yesterday afternoon, and discussed the arrangements. The object of the meeting on Monday is to arouse interest and sympathy for the wives and children of the Colorado mine workers who are suffering for want of food and clothing, and all who attend are requested to bring warm clothing blankets, etc., to be sent to Colorado.
Mother Jones who was in Colorado during the mine trouble, was asked to go to Washington to testify before the Senate in the investigation of the alleged massacre of women and children in the fight between the strikers and the militia. She has never spoken in Brooklyn before, and has come at the request of the women of Brooklyn, who formed the Colorado Relief Committee, to tell of her experiences in Colorado, where she was arrested on her way from Denver to Trinidad, and held by the military court for three weeks incommunicado not being allowed to employ a counselor or see a physician during that period and being released just before the serving of a writ of habeas corpus.
"This was all illegal, according to the laws of Colorado," declared Mrs. James P. Warbasse to an Eagle reporter, at her home, yesterday afternoon. "A military court should not have been held when the civil courts were in session, and then think of an old woman like Mother Jones being held without the opportunity of consulting a physician. However, she is free now and she is going to tell the public just how things stand out there. She accepts no remuneration for her talks, and says it is payment enough to arouse the interest and sympathy of the public in the oppression and suffering of the Western miners."
Mrs. Warbasse, who is actively interested in social work, was present in her automobile when Miss Elizabeth Dutcher was arrested on Tuesday evening, in front of Stern's store on Forty-second street, Manhattan, where she had gone to speak to the employees on the unionization of clerks in department stores. Mrs. Warbasse furnished the bail.
Miss Dutcher is a member of the committee in charge of the meeting on Monday, as is also Mrs. Frank H. Cothren, who is acting as advisory counsel to Miss Dutcher, and Miss Hildegarde Kneeland, who was also present at the time of arrest.
"I think it a very significant thing that Mother Jones is coming here for the first time, at the request of the women of Brooklyn," said Mrs. Warbasse, "and we think the time is ripe for bringing before the public some of the wrongs and oppressions suffered by the poor people in this country. I think this quotation will explain our attitude as well as anything. 'He who would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression.' We have tried to help the sufferers in Colorado by sending Miss Helen Schloss, a trained nurse, and at her request we are raising funds for clothing and food, for which these people are suffering. A collection will be taken up for their benefit on Monday evening.".....
And from The New York Times:
REGISTERED LETTER 'REFUSED'
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Mother Jones Shows Unopened Envelope Sent to 26 Broadway.
Mother Jones, the eighty-two-year-old Socialist agitator, who came here several days ago from Trinidad, Col, to make an effort to interview John D. Rockefeller, Jr., exhibited to friends in her room at the Union Square Hotel yesterday an unopened registered letter which she had sent to Mr. Rockefeller at 26 Broadway. Across the face of the envelope was written the word "Refused."
"Of course," said Mother Jones, as she passed the unopened letter around, "I could hardly hope that John D. Rockefeller, Jr., would listen to a woman in her eighty-third year, who has given her whole life to the interests of the people he is exploiting, when he had already turned down the President of the United States through his representative, Congressman Foster.
"I personally knew many of the miners wives living in the tent colonies in Colorado, and having been intimately acquainted with the exact conditions I had reason to think that Mr. Rockefeller would gladly avail himself of an opportunity to receive information from other sources than those upon whom he has heretofore relied . However, it seems that he has decided to cast his lot with his officials in Colorado, who have broken the State labor laws, and invited armed conflict by their invasions of the rights of Man."
.....
SOURCE
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle
(Brooklyn, New York)
-of May 14, 1914
The New York Times
(New York, New York)
-of May 14, 1914
Photo:
Refugees from the Ludlow Tent Colony in Trinidad
https://www.facebook.com/...
See also: Mother Jones Lives
https://www.facebook.com/...
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Dream of a Miner's Child - Johnson Mountain Boys
Our thoughts and prayers are with the Turkish Miners and their families.
See diary by HoundDog.