You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Wednesday September 9, 1914
From The Lincoln Star: Leader of Butte Mine Workers Union Denies Rumors
Mine Workers of Butte
From Saturday's edition of the Nebraska
Lincoln Star:
McDonald Denies Rumors Circulated Through Butte
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Butte, Mont., Sept. 5.-President McDonald of the Butte Mine Workers' Union, who had been a fugitive since martial law was declared here, has sent a letter to a newspaper denying rumors circulated here since he departed.
McDonald writes that Joe E. Bradley, vice president of the union and two other men are with him; that they are armed with pistols and rifles, and although they left with less than $8, they now are well supplied with money. McDonald says he would surrender if he knew that he would be released on bail, and not be tried by a military court.
Saloonkeepers of Butte appealed today to Major D. J. Donohue for permission to reopen their places. Major Donohue advised them to discharge their bartenders in order to save expense, as present conditions were not opportune to consider the re-opening of the saloons.
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From today's Wichita Beacon of Kansas:
THE OPEN SHOP IN BUTTE TODAY
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FOR 36 YEARS HOME OF LARGEST "LOCAL" IN WEST.
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Quarrel in Ranks of the Miners Over the New Charter
-Scale of Wages Will Be the Same.
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Butte, Mont., Sept. 9.-Open shop went into effect today in Butte, the home for 36 years of the largest union "local" in the far west.
Some ten thousand miners, until recently all members of Butte Miners' Union No. 1 of the Western Federation of Miners, but now divided between that organization and the newly formed Butte Mine Workers' Union, were notified that from the viewpoint of their employers it made no difference whether they belonged to either organization or none. This decision, signed by the twelve companies which represent the copper output of Butte, was reached late last night and the town, tight in the leash of martial law, bristled with excitement today when confronted with it.
Wage Scale Holds.
The employers announced that wages and hours of work existing under union contracts will be continued.
Thee companies asserted that the new organization had adopted an attitude impossible of recognition and the old one was virtually extinct.
An Open Revolt.
[The official statement said:]
So far as the local union of the Western Federation of Miners is concerned,..it became apparent immediately after the dissension of June 13 that the vast body of men employed in the Butte mines were openly in revolt against that organization and that they would in no circumstances longer be identified with it. Since then that organization has demonstrated its inability to control the underground workers of Butte. Indeed, so impotent has it become that it was unable to protect its own property or to offer its members the slightest protection when organized mobs deprived them of employment and drove them from the community. The companies declared the old union proving incapable of living up to its contracts had released them from the agreements by which the union had been given jurisdiction over their employes until June 1, 1915.
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Holds for the Union.
Butte, Mont., Sept. 9.-Judge George M. Bourquin in the United States District Court today overruled the motion of the National Guard of Montana to quash the application for a writ of habeas corpus, asked in behalf of three men held prisoners by the militia here.
The court gave the military officers until 2 o'clock this afternoon to show cause why the writ should not issue. The court's ruling holds that notwithstanding that martial law is in effect here, habeas corpus has not been suspended.
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SOURCES
The Lincoln Star
(Lincoln, Nebraska)
-of Sept 5, 1914
http://www.newspapers.com/...
The Wichita Beacon
(Wichita, Kansas)
of Sept 9, 1914
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGE
Metal Miners of Butte, Montana
(exact date unknown, used here to represent miners of 1914)
http://www.miningartifacts.org/...
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Hellraisers Journal is on vacation!
Hellraisers will be on a vacation of sorts until September 22nd, and will appear in abbreviated form until that date. A complete vacation is not possible since the ruling class never took a vacation from their suppression and oppression of the working class.
There are no limits to which powers of privilege
will not go to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
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