You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Sunday May 24, 1914
From the Appeal to Reason: Upton Sinclair Sends Report from Colorado
Upton Sinclair Protesting at Rockefeller Headquarters
Wilson Must Close Mines, Says Sinclair
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Appeal Correspondent Urges Socialists to Agitate Against the Importation of Scabs Under the Protection of Federal Troops-Warns Against Plot of Rockefeller's Hirelings to Railroad Leaders of Striking Miners.
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BY UPTON SINCLAIR.
By telegraph to Appeal to Reason.
Denver, Colo.-The situation in this state exceeds all imagination.
Having read the ten big volumes of testimony before the House committee I am only at the beginning of the story and each new eye witness has a fresh lot of horrors to unfold. There can be no question that militia have continually used explosive bullets-which are barred in civilized warfare. They have seized unarmed men and shot them in cold blood. There has been no crime too horrible for them and the whole story of the miners' experiences suggest Russia or Turkey.
John Reed, Mexican war correspondent, just returned from southern coal field, declares he has seen nothing in Mexico to equal it.
Court martial of militia criminals opened yesterday will be a farce. It has already acquitted commanding officer. It is intended to prelude indictment of all miners' leaders for murder. Another Moyer-Haywood case may be expected.
I saw Governor Ammons today. He declares his intention, if necessary, to take charge of state militia in strike field. This means civil war again, all observers agree. Public sentiment must prevent it at all hazards. Corporations owned legislature has voted a million dollars for expenses of murders. This is all the state has to say in the crisis.
All the political machinery here has broken down. Progressive party now making secret deal with republicans to drop radical candidates and vote for platform of Denver chamber of commerce, which is law and order under Rockefeller rule.
I addressed a meeting of the Women's Peace League yesterday and urged deputation to President Wilson to demand closing of mines upon ground of military necessity until operators agree to adjust settlement by federal commission. Mine leaders endorse suggestion and declare that if the mines were closed, six federal soldiers in a district could keep order. Public sentiment of the country must be centered upon this demand. This is the only possible solution of the present tense situation. Socialists are urged to hold meetings. Those in the east should join deputation of women and miners in Washington.
Women here are thoroughly aroused, and declare their intentions to do anything to prevent another outburst of murder in coal districts. Let the mines be closed until justice has been done or until the state is prepared to run them itself. That is the demand of the people in this crisis. It is the only policy that will trouble the operators.
This whole nine months' campaign of murder was begun and maintained for profits and the way to prevent such deviltry in future is to make clear to the murderers that they will never again be allowed to get away with the swag. They got away with it in Paterson, in West Virginia and in Michigan. They are standing pat at this moment, convinced that they can get away with it in Colorado. To permit them to do so is to put a premium upon crimes against strikers, to hang another scalp to the belt of the Baldwin-Felts detective agency.
The meaning of this deadlock is plain to the dullest mind. The Rockefellers have been branded as guilty of murder before the world. They have murdered babies and the question now before the people is shall they be allowed to rob the corpse. Let President Wilson hear the answer!
This week's edition of the Appeal also carries this disturbing report of Colorado union leaders being charged with murder and conspiracy to murder:
THIRST FOR WORKERS' BLOOD.
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Rockefeller's Court Indicts Miners' Union Leaders for Murder.
Boulder, Col.-Indictments charging first degree murder were returned by the grand jury here against William T. Hickey, secretary of state federation of Labor; John O'Connor, president of the Louisville (Colorado) local union of the United Mine Workers of America, and Jerry Carter and Joe Potestio, union leaders. Indictments charging conspiracy to murder were also returned against Edward L. Boyle [Doyle], treasurer of district No. 15, United Mine Workers of America; John R. Lawson, international board member of the United Mine Workers, and forty-eight others, including the four men named in the indictments charging first degree murder. No mine owners were indicted.
The report of the Colorado Women's Peace League was also covered:
Militia Began Fight, Say Colorado Women
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Charge Soldiers with Sabering Children and Chasing Pregnant Women from Home
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Denver.-The report of the committee of the Women's Peace League, headed by Mrs. Alma V. Lafferty, which has just completed an investigation of the coal strike within the last five weeks, excoriates the state militia and the commanders at the Ludlow battle, Major Hamrock and Lieut. Linderfelt.
"Women and children were given sabre scars that they will carry to their graves; a sixteen-year-old girl was kicked in the breast by a commanding officer, and others were maimed by having gun butts dropped on their feet," is one declaration in the report.
Another reads: "There is no question that the coal companies have violated every law on the statute books for the protection of their employes. From the commencement of their residence in this land of the free, these people from other lands have been made the victims of unbearable oppressions."
Cruelty Against Women.
The women investigators paint a picture of cruelty against women in the Ludlow fight, after declaring that the battle itself was not started by and firing by the strikers, but by explosion of three bombs that Major Hamrock admitted were his own signal for the battle to begin.
"The utter unpreparedness of the strikers for fighting," the report says, "is demonstrated by the fact, that many of the women and children in the Ludlow tents were still in bed and were compelled to flee for their lives half dressed.
"Fifty of these hunted women, we beg to state, were about to become mothers and one unfortunate actually gave birth to her baby while trying to escape the hail of bullets from Hamrock's machine guns. Many ran eight or ten miles in their mad terror and others huddled in wells and holes for eighteen hours without food.
Tell of Much Looting.
"Whole sale looting followed the massacre, and one of the pictures painted for us by homeless women was that of the soldiers carrying trunks to the station, dancing with stolen blankets about their heads to the music of a stolen accordion and grabbing here and there in the tents for valuables.
The report of the military investigating committee appointed by Gov. Ammons declared that little Frankie Snyder was accidentally shot while escaping from the Ludlow tents, but the women declare that the boy's father told this story "under the same compulsion that induced one striker to dig what he thought to be his own grave." They assert that the small boy was shot while sitting in his father's tent with his baby sister in his arms.
"Imported Assassins."
Far from being exaggerated, the women find that the published accounts of the happenings in the strike regions tell only half the horror and declare that the militia who fought at Ludlow was hastily formed "out of the mine guards, mine employes, itinerant gunmen and slum sweepings together with desperadoes under command of Lieutenant Linderfelt in Company B-imported assassins who masqueraded as sons of Colorado in the uniform of the National Guard."
SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-of May 23, 1914
Photos:
1). Upton Sinclair Protesting at Rockefeller HQ
http://www.loc.gov/...
2). Policy Committe of Distric 15, UMW
https://archive.org/...
3). "The Oil of Rockefeller" by Ryan Walker
-from Appeal to Reason, May 23, 1914, p.2
See also:
Humour and Social Protest
Marjolein t'Hart, Dennis Bos
Cambridge University Press, 2007
http://books.google.com/...
-search preview with "Ryan Walker" and choose pages,
especially page 51
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Ludlow Massacre - Christy Moore
We took some cement and walled that cave up,
Where you killed these thirteen children inside,
I said, "God bless the Mine Workers' Union,"
And then I hung my head and cried.
-Woody Guthrie
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