You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Sunday October 25, 1914
From the Appeal to Reason: Colorado Militia Preparing for Another Attack?
Residents of Ludlow Tent Colony once again to be subjected to militia's terror?
Reporting from the strike zone in Southern Colorado,
Appeal corespondent John Murray describes the conditions under which the strikers and their families now must live. The militia appears to be rearming scabs and gunthugs in preparation for another attack. In Huerfano County, "the Kingdom of Jeff Farr," a grand jury is preparing to indict miners on behalf of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. Will strikers soon fill the jails of that county as they now do in Las Animas County? John Murray counts himself fortunate to be among those soon to be brought before the bar of "justice" in Colorado.
From the Appeal to Reason of October 24th:
Ready for Another Clash
BY JOHN MURRAY.
Staff Correspondent Appeal to Reason.
Trinidad, Colo.-The first snow of the season is falling on the flimsy, eight-once duck tents of the striking miners as this news comes from Walsenburg:
Three hundred warrants have been issued for the arrest of strikers in Huerfano county and are being served by Jeff Farr's deputies.
And more, Judge A. W. McHendrie has called for a special grand jury to convene at Walsenburg, where the state's attorney general, Farrar, will come and personally direct its operation.
And still more, Governor Ammons has issued orders for the reorganization and mobilization of the militia, saying,
I expect the federal troops will leave Colorado by the middle of November and if the strike is not settled by that time the state will be prepared to take charge of the situation.
Winter and Rockefeller have at last combined to freeze out the last remnant of resistance among the coalminers. Woodrow Wilson is apparently out of the game.
The organization of militia companies which has been secretly going on in the coal camps of Delagua, Hastings, Walsenburg, Forbes and a score of other points under the control of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, is now to be done in the open under orders from General Chase.
In short, the state of Colorado has signified its intention to provide arms, ammunition, clothing, camp equipment and military instructors for the army of John D. Rockefeller.
Rockefeller Overruled Wilson.
The proclamation of the president of the United States calling for the disarming of all persons in the strike zone has been completely superseded by Rockefeller's orders to Governor Ammons.
Result is the disarmed strikers now face armed scabs.
And the other portions of President Wilson's orders in relation to stopping incoming scabs are no more carried out by the federal troops than the matter of disarming. Only last Tuesday a box car was sidetracked at Forbes and after nightfall 65 men came from its interior and reported at the company's office. They had come all the way from the Mitchell mine in Boulder county. Company K now has its full complement of men who can dig coal while waiting for the arrival of guns and uniforms.
Sometimes there are careless maneuvers on the part of militiamen that cause great embarrassment to the federal officers. Last Thursday one of these confusing exposures came about on the platform of the Ludlow railroad station when a militia captain by the name of Bartlett accidentally opened his valise before a crowd of passengers and showed that its interior was a small arsenal containing 150 rounds of high power rifle ammunition and 50 rounds for his revolver. United States Captain Shelly could pursue no other course than to confiscate the cartridges, which he did.
Scabs to Join Militia.
The truth is that the organizing of Rockefeller's army has taken its present form because it was found impossible to obtain recruits from the sources usually looked to, namely, store clerks, college boys and farmers' sons. Ludlow had left such and infamous brand upon all those that marched with the militia of that day that when General Chase even offered to reorganize the companies of the Arkansas valley in the attractive form of cavalry, and make every new recruit a present of a fine horse, there were no applicants. Consequently it is the scabs at work in the mines that are to be uniformed and armed for the next campaign under the flag of Rockefeller.
General Chase has issued orders that a new signal corps be organized at Trinidad, that the headquarters of Troop A be moved to Hastings with Captain Frank D. Bartlett in command, that Company B of the Second infantry at Trinidad be reorganized, that the new Company K be organized at Berwin and that Troop E be transformed into an artillery platoon of Battery B.
No one in southern Colorado doubts the issue-winter and war are coming.
"Crime" Is Popular.
To live in Colorado and never have the experience of being branded as a "criminal" is to miss the real life.
Of course if one only come for climate it is different. To be merely in the pursuit of health is a valid excuse for saying nothing, for doing nothing.
But the minute that a live man states an active opinion in this martial law zone he finds that he has entered upon a career of "crime" which may end in a cell if it does not go as far as the gallows.
Without boasting I can truthfully say that in one morning's walk to the postoffice of Trinidad I have shaken hands with as many as six "murderers," passed the time of day with tree "arsonists" and nodded to half a dozen "rioters."
Respectable women without a trace of embarrassment stop to chat in the street and politely inquire of each other if their husbands are out of jail and if not, what the day's chances are for obtaining bail.
Not to have been indicted, when grand juries are holding special sessions under the guidance of attorneys for the coal companies, naturally leaves an active man under a cloud, under the shadow of a doubt that he may be a company gunman, an official follower of Rockefeller or, even worse, that he belongs to the militia.
Murray Joins Fellowship.
For my part it was with a feeling of considerable relief that I read one morning among the press dispatches off a certain news writer who was to be tried for contempt of court and realized that this person was myself.
Now I could enter into the real fellowship of Colorado, be sure of the confidence and consideration that is only given to residents who have had "careers of crime." Now no one could possibly be suspicious of my antecedents or mistake me for one of those degraded persons who is never arrested, indicted or jailed by the officials of Las Animas or Huerfano counties.
Not for a moment should this be considered a light or bantering view of the subject for it must be borne in mind that a grand jury, on which sat a number of company gunmen, has just adjourned in Las Animas county after indicting several hundred citizens for murder, assault, arson and rioting, and that another like grand jury has just been called in Huerfano county by the same judge-Judge A. W. McHendrie-which will, in the course of human events, fill the dungeons of Jeff Farr with many hundreds more.
The Huerfano grand jury is billed to meet just before election, the election in which Jeff Farr is making the last stand for his official life.
I would not like to be thought of as one who might cast a ballot against Jeff Farr on election day if I lived in Huerfano county.
Grand juries, judges, sheriffs and militiamen-they make a wondrous pageant in the kingdom of Jeff Farr.
SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
Oct 24, 1914
http://www.newspapers.com/...
See also:
"List of Colorado Miners Charged with Murders
Includes Father of Ludlow Victims" by JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/...
IMAGE
Striking Miners, Ludlow Tent Colony
https://www.du.edu/...
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Saturday October 25, 2014
More on Rockefeller's Control of Huerfano County, the "Kingdom of Jeff Farr:"
Editorial from The Pittsburgh Press of July 1, 1916:
Colorado Is Being Redeemed
Justice Tully Scott
Colorado is being redeemed from Rockefellerism. The state's Supreme court is doing the work in a series of decisions which will become historic. Twelve years ago, after the Cripple Creek labor war, the late Justice Robert W. Steele was the only man who protested against the connivance of the state Supreme court in denial of the constitutional right of habeas corpus in the Moyer case. His dissenting opinion was heralded all over America as being morally and legally right. The Moyer decision proclaimed to the world that privilege owned the judicial as well as all other branches of the Colorado government. And now the Colorado court by its decisions is proclaiming to the world that the courage of Justice Steele has borne fruit and justice is no longer a stranger to the commonwealth.
A number of the most notable remedial decisions have been rendered in the last ten months. The Rockefeller attorney elevated by a Rockefeller governor to a judgeship in the coal counties which was specially created by a Rockefeller legislature has been disqualified from trying strikers who had been indicted by grand juries in counties where Rockefeller officials controlled the machinery of government. The Supreme court has set aside sentences of strikers convicted before this judge and released the men on bonds. New strike trials have been held before unprejudiced judges and those on trial acquitted. Scores of other strike cases have been dismissed. And finally the high court has condemned as a fraud and a cheat the election in the fall of 1914 in Huerfano county which permitted Jeff Farr to succeed himself as sheriff. Farr had been the Rockefeller sheriff in that county 16 years. He had testified before the United States commission on industrial relations that he had deputized more than 300 imported mine guards as deputy sheriffs without ever seeing them, though he knew they had been in the state less than a day when he issued their commissions.
The most conspicuous figure on the Colorado Supreme bench during the time these decisions have been checking the rampant perversion of justice by organized greed is Justice Tully Scott. He wrote the opinion ousting "King" Farr and three associate county officials. Summing up the logical result of the coal company control of Huerfano county, which is typical in Colorado, Judge Scott said:
Thus were the public districts and the public election machinery turned over to the absolute domination and imperial control of private coal corporations. The plain purpose of the formation of the new precincts by the county commissioners was that the coal companies might have opportunity to conduct and control the elections therein.
It was by changing polling places from the public highway to coal property stockades that the corporation-owned sheriff got the votes that "put him over."
More power to Justice Scott!
[photograph and emphasis added]
SOURCE
The Pittsburgh Press
(Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
July 1, 1916
http://news.google.com/...
IMAGE
Justice Tully Scott
(search with "Scott")
http://books.google.com/...
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Which Side Are You On? - Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman
The bosses ride big fine horses
While we walk in the mud;
Their banner is a dollar sign
While ours is striped with blood.
-Florence Reese
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