You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Sunday July 10, 1904
From the Appeal to Reason: Courageous Organizer Wardjon Vows to Return to Colorado
In this week's issue of the Appeal to Reason there appeared a letter to the editor, J. A. Wayland, from W. M. Wardjon, organizer for the United Mine Workers of America. Brother Wardjon vows to return to the coal strike zone of southern Colorado as soon as he has recovered sufficiently from the serious injuries he sustained at the hands of gunthugs on April 30th:
I may say that after the brutal attack upon me by those damnable corporation thugs and assassins at Sargents, Colo., last April 29th [sic], I, as soon as I could be removed from hospital, came here to Pittsburg (Kans.) to recuperate and get strong so that I may be able to go back there again and do my humble part in waging the fiercest and bloodiest battle fought upon the industrial battlefield.
Wardjon further calls for unity between the United Mine Workers of America and the Western Federation of Miners for both unions are engaged in the same desperate struggle in the state of Colorado:
Let every workingman realize that this is a fight of organized capital against organized labor: the cause is one and the same, though represented by two organizations there, and everybody within the ranks of labor should realize this. In conclusion I desire to say, let whoever may cry "down with the Western Federation of miners," I, for one, hail that organization as one of the most progressive and aggressive of all the labor unions in the country today. That the great and fierce struggle of both the coal and metalliferous miners in Colorado may be crowned with success is the earnest wish and prayer of yours in every effort for the upbuilding and unifying of labor's cause.
From National Organizer U. M. W. of A.
J. A. Wayland, Girard, Kans.
Dear Sir and Brother: Send me 200 copies of Appeal dealing with the Colorado situation. I may say that after the brutal attack upon me by those damnable corporation thugs and assassins at Sargents, Colo., last April 29th [sic], I, as soon as I could be removed from hospital, came here to Pittsburg (Kans.) to recuperate and get strong so that I may be able to go back there again and do my humble part in waging the fiercest and bloodiest battle fought upon the industrial battlefield. I can truthfully re-echo the words of Comrade Morris of Pueblo, that the press there, and throughout the country, is gagged, and, being subsidized by the corporations, does not and will not publish facts. I know this to be true, for I had the experience.
I was working for our cause side by side with Mother Jones from the 9th of last November until we were driven out of the southern field by the soldiers sent there to force those miners into submission by the corporation henchman, the great assassin, Governor Peabody. Then when they could not silence us, thy quarantined Mother Jones when she went to Utah and sent their secret service tools and murders to beat me almost to death, when they caught me alone, on my way back from Crested Butte. But though deported, hounded and clubbed, we are not yet defeated, neither can the great cause of labor be stamped out, for in the end it will conquer and the common working people shall have their own.
Those writing of the conditions in Colorado will not be able to paint them too black, for I have, with my own eyes, seen the most hellish atrocities perpetrated upon those striking miners, their wives, children, and their homes, that it is possible for the greed and the cruelty of man or devil to invent. Let every workingman realize that this is a fight of organized capital against organized labor: the cause is one and the same, though represented by two organizations there, and everybody within the ranks of labor should realize this. In conclusion I desire to say, let whoever may cry "down with the Western Federation of miners," I, for one, hail that organization as one of the most progressive and aggressive of all the labor unions in the country today. That the great and fierce struggle of both the coal and metalliferous miners in Colorado may be crowned with success is the earnest wish and prayer of yours in every effort for the upbuilding and unifying of labor's cause.
W. M. WARDJON,
Pittsburg, Kans.
[paragraph break added]
SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-of July 9, 1904
http://www.newspapers.com/...
See also:
"A Report on Labor Disturbances in the State of Colorado from 1880 to 1904, Inclusive: With Correspondence Relating Thereto"
United States. Bureau of Labor, Carroll Davidson Wright
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1905
(search with Wardjon)
http://books.google.com/...
Hellraisers + Wardjon
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Image
Terror in Colorado
http://www.newspapers.com/...
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Thursday July 10, 2014
More on the Attack by Gunthugs on Wardjon and other UMW organizers and officials:
From the The Indianapolis Journal, of May 1, 1904:
From The Indianapolis Journal
-of May 1, 1904
From Chapter XX of
The Pinkerton Labor Spy by Morris Friedman:
In the beginning the strike seemed destined to succeed. The demands of the poor miners were so just, that their cause ought to have won on its merits. Again, almost all the coal miners in the Southern fields had responded to the call, quit work, and affiliated with the union.
The United Mine Workers of America and the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company now faced each other on the industrial battle field, the former confident of success, the latter grimly secure in the knowledge of victory already won.
Operatives Smith and Strong, being old and tried union men, were now able to render good service. Operative Smith was at this time especially worth his weight in gold to the company, for he possessed the absolute confidence of the leaders of the strike, and knew days in advance what the union intended to do. Thus, if the leaders secretly planned to send an organizer to a certain camp to address, encourage and get together the men of that camp, Operative Smith would at once send the news to the Agency and the company.
As a result of Operative Smith's "clever and intelligent" work, a number of union organizers received severe beatings at the hands of unknown masked men, presumably in the employ of the company.
The following incident was one of many events of a like nature that helped break the coal miners' strike.
About February 13th, 1904, William Fairley, of Alabama, a member of the National Executive Board of the United Mine Workers of America and the personal representative of President Mitchell in the conduct of the Colorado strike, had addressed coal miners' meetings near the towns of Hastings and Majestic. Assisting Mr. Fairley was James Mooney, of Missouri, also a member of the National Executive Board of the union. The town of Hastings is an almost impregnable stronghold of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, a town which the unhallowed feet of a union organizer may not enter.
After the union leaders had left Majestic, and while they were about one and one-half miles from Bowen, eight masked men held them up with revolvers, dragged them from their wagon, threw them to the ground, beat them, kicked them, and almost knocked them into insensibility. More than likely Operative Smith subsequently listened to their tale of woe with indignantly flashing eyes, and bewailed the cruel fate which seemed to dog them at every step.
We cannot blame the coal miners' union for their failure. How should they know that their most dangerous, implacable enemy was one who for years had been and still was above suspicion, in fact, one whose apparent zeal and self-sacrifice endeared him to all his comrades?
On Saturday, April 30th, 1904, W. M. Wardjon, a national organizer of the United Mine Workers, while on board a train en route to Pueblo, was assaulted by three men at Sargents, about thirty miles West of Salida. Mr. Wardjon was beaten into unconsciousness.
The Colorado Fuel & Iron Company will naturally disavow their connection with these outrages; yet, we ask, and the public asks: How was it possible, in the first place, for anyone not on the inside of things to follow up the route of the union organizers so correctly? In the second place, can we believe that men will mask themselves and beat their fellow-men into insensibility, unless they are ordered to do so by someone above them, and paid well for their criminal services? Third, it is impossible to believe that the leaders of the union hired thugs to hold them up, and unmercifully beat them. Fourth, there was only one way whereby the moves of the union leaders could be accurately known in advance by any outsiders, namely, through a leak in the union. Fifth, we know that this leak was in the person of the talented Pinkerton Detective Robert M. Smith. Sixth, as the latter reported exclusively to the Agency and to the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, there can be no doubt on earth that the outrages described were committed by thugs hired expressly for that criminal work by some responsible official or officiate of the company.
People have been condemned to death on circumstantial evidence far weaker than is ours; and we can see no reason why, in the interests of a common brotherhood, such rascally methods as were very probably adopted by the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company with the active co-operation of Pinkerton's National Detective Agency, should not be thoroughly aired before the public.
Turn as they would, the leaders of the coal miners in Colorado met shameful defeat. Trained and veteran leaders of the United Mine Workers, who had achieved notable victories for President Mitchell in Eastern States, met their Waterloo in the Colorado strike. That wolf in sheep's clothing in their midst, that man who was a coal miner by trade and a Pinkerton operative by profession, circumvented all their plans, defeated all their hopes, and helped rivet the shackles of a miserable servitude more closely than ever before on the emaciated limbs of those men who trusted implicitly in his loyalty and honor, and called him "BROTHER."
SOURCES
The Indianapolis Journal
(Indianapolis, Indiana)
-of May 1,1904
https://newspapers.library.in.gov/...
THE Pinkerton Labor Spy
BY MORRIS FRIEDMAN
Wilshire Book Company
New York, 1907
From Chapter XX:
"PINKERTONS AND COAL MINERS
IN COLORADO NO. 38, ROBERT M. SMITH."
http://www.rebelgraphics.org/...
IMAGE
(see link above at Indianapolis Journal)
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They'll Never Keep Us Down-Hazel Dickens
United we stand, divided we fall
For every dime they give us, a battle must be fought
So working people, use your power: the key to liberty
Don’t support the rich man’s style of luxury
There ain’t no way they can ever keep us down
There ain’t no way they can ever keep us down
We won’t be bought, we won’t be sold
To be treated right, well, that’s our goal
There ain’t no way they can ever keep us down
-Hazel Dickens
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