You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Monday June 7, 1915
Denver, Colorado - Thousands March With Flag of Ludlow at "Lawson Protest Meeting"
The American Flag and Flag of Ludlow
carried at the parade.
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On June 5th, a mass meeting was held in Denver, Colorado, to protest the unjust conviction of John R. Lawson, hero of the recent Colorado Coalfield Strike. John Lawson was there with his wife, Olive and their daughter, Fern. Mother Jones was also seen, arm in arm with Lawson.
Of the thousands in attendance, Mother said to John Lawson:
Sure, boy, and they're all for you.
Everyone of them loves you.
The Lawson Protest Meeting was preceded by a parade of thousands of men, women and children accompanied by a band. Proudly held aloft were the American Flag and the Flag of Ludlow. The Greek Flag was carried in honor of Louie Tikas, martyred leader of the Ludlow Tent Colony, who was murdered during the Ludlow Massacre.
The following is a first-hand description of the parade preceding the meeting:
Before the meeting, seven thousand men, women and children paraded through Denver's business section. They marched with set faces through densely packed streets. A fife and drum corps, with a hug American flag in the center, led the way. Two hundred women, dressed in white represented the Justice League.
Fifty children, also in white, carried a monster banner bearing the words.
"The Children Demand Justice for John Lawson."
Then came the garment workers. A platoon of police opened the way through the streets. There were no automobiles or carriages. Everyone walked except the marshal, Benjamin F. Perry of the machinist's union, who was mounted.
At the head of the second division marched a 25-piece band follow by the tattered Ludlow flag which was carried by a stalwart Greek miner. Beside the flag bearer marched another swarthy miner, carrying a Greek flag in honor of the murdered Tikas. The railroad orders, miners and several hundred sympathetic citizens marched behind the two flags. In the third division, led by another band marched the hosts of the Denver Trades and Labor Assembly. Union banners, interspersed with American flags, gave color to the parade. The fourth division consisted of members of the Building Trades Council-hundreds of carpenters, painters, bricklayers and other skilled workers. As the parade swept down 17th Street, coal company officials watched silently from the Denver Club. The union line did not hurl taunts, but as each group swung by, the cheer went up, "Hurrah for John Lawson."
John Lawson, Mother Jones,
Attorney Horace Hawkins
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At the corner of Lawrence and 17th streets, each division sent a mighty shout of approval up to a window in the German-American Trust Bldg., where two valiant warriors, John R. Lawson, and old Mother Jones, stood, arm in arm, looking down into the street.
"Sure, boy, and they're all for you." Mother Jones beamed. "Everyone of them loves you."
The parade moved on to City Auditorium. It had originally been planned to hold the mass meeting at the state Capitol, but governor Carlson had banned it at the last minute.
The meeting was opened by Mrs. Lee Champion, president of the Justice League:
We have several speakers here, but first I want to present a charming young lady who has a few words to say to . Miss Fern Lawson.
Miss Lawson, a dark-haired beauty, dressed in white, rose to speak. Fern Lawson is no stranger to the dangers that come with standing for justice. As a little girl she was thrown from her bed when the family home in New Castle was dynamited along with the homes of several other union leaders. Her father was then shot and nearly killed by the coal operator who had been suspected of ordering the bombings. Such was her early experience as the daughter of a coal miner and a stalwart union man.
Now a young lady, 15 years old, she bravely rose to thank the thousands present for their support of her father and the other indicted miners:
It is not the liberty of my father alone that is in danger, it is the liberty of every man, woman and child which is in danger. I thank you for my mother and myself for what you have done for my father and for us.
Many present had tears in their eyes as Fern finished speaking.
Mrs. Champion then spoke, attacking the state government, the coal operators and the newspapers:
Hundreds of indictments have been brought against miners. The operators go free though 23 persons, many of them women and children, were murdered at Ludlow. The Rocky Mountain News now asks you to forget that women and children were driven like rats into a trap and then murdered. It says the state has tried to make amends. that is an absolute untruth. Nor can the state make amends except by bringing to the bar of justice those who live by the corporations, those who are responsible for that reeking, putrid cesspool which exists in southern Colorado. When the bankers, whom Bowers says he whipped into line, learn to consider all the people-when it becomes impossible for a governor to hire out the militia-when those responsible for the murders at Ludlow have been brought to justice-when all these things have happened, then, and only then, will the state have made amends.
Mrs. Champion informed the audience that the position of Professor Brewster at the University of Colorado, was being threatened by the authorities of the School of Law who were attempting to oust the Professor because he had taken up the strikers' cause. She declared that the Denver school system was under the jurisdiction of a school board made up of relatives of Colorado Fuel & Iron Co. officials, and that the C. F. & I. had spread vicious lies against everyone and anyone who opposed the domination of the Rockefeller Interests over state and local affairs.
John Lawson with Louie Tikas at Ludlow
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Professor Brewster, was introduced and stated, in part:
I have to be careful when I stand for justice or I will offend someone at the University of Colorado. I spent weeks independently investigating the strike. It was then that I first knew the man I am now proud to call my friend, John R. Lawson. If I were to tell you the wrongs done by the militia alone it would take hours. Militiamen in uniform robbed strikers of the few possessions they had. I do not blame every militiaman. There were fine men in the militia. But I want you to notice one thing. Did you ever hear of the recent legislature, which wanted to pay coal companies for property destroyed, suggesting the state pay back to the miners the money which the militiamen stole from them?
He did not mention the name, of Judge Hillyer, but everyone present knew who he was referring to when he spoke of Lawson's trial:
No reputable lawyer would sit in a case in which one of the parties had previously retained him. Do you suppose any man employed by the miners would have the indecency to sit as judge in a case in which an operator was to be tried? I am a lawyer. I don't intend to abuse any court. But I can't conceal my contempt for a man who will accept an appointment for special purposes to try special cases.
Also speaking at the protest meeting were Congressman Frank Buchanan of Illinois and Clint C. Houston, president of the Denver Trades and Labor Assembly. They urged union men to stand together in their common cause for justice.
Hellraisers is quite sure that Denver's "Lawson Protest Meeting" will not be the last such protest meeting held by the union men and women across the nation.
Below the fold we offer the full text of the speech made by Professor Brewster.
The Speech of Professor James H. Brewster, delivered June 5th, at Denver:
I wish to direct your attention briefly to what some great men of the world have said about justice: Hamilton, in explaining the federal constitution, said: "Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained or until liberty be lost in its pursuit." We all know what justice means. When we feel the sunshine when we feel the heat, or the cold, do we have to stop to define them? The desire for justice has always been in the human heart. It is a familiar term, just like the terms of heat, cold, sunshine and dark.
In Magna Charta, the fundamental constitution of Anglo-Americans, it is averred: "To no one will we deny justice; to no one will we delay it." This has been understood always as a universal guarantee of impartial justice to high and low. Cicero says; "Nothing can be honorable where there is no justice." But long before the time of Cicero, far back in the beginning, almost, of historic days, justice was the first consideration. Six hundred years before Christ, the Israelites were doing (some of them) very much the same things that people have done ever since that time.
There were false priests and false prophets, who, upon a temporary adjustment of troublesome airs, said: "Peace, peace where there is no peace," and the prophet Jeremiah rebuked those people. They pointed to their "temples of the Lord"-temples of Jehovah-as evidence of prosperity. He asked what it was, as we are asking now, that makes a state or a nation prosperous. See what Jeremiah, the great prophet of Israel, said: "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place. Trust ye not in lying words, saying: "The Temple of Jehovah, the Temple of Jehovah, the Temple of Jehovah, are these.
For if ye thoroughly mend your ways and your doings; if ye thoroughly execute justice between man and his neighbor; if ye oppress not the sojourner, the fatherless and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other Gods to your own heart, then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, from of old, even for evermore."
Notice the first thing: in amending their ways; they were to "executive justice between a man and his neighbor." And six hundred years after Jeremiah there came a man who has exerted such an influence upon the world the civilized world takes its name from him-Christendom. Many people believe him to be verily the Son of God, but whether all believe that or not, nearly everyone recognizes the wisdom, the justice, the love that he taught, and nearly everyone believes that if we had a little more now of the Christ-like in our lives, there would be none of the trouble that has now existed in Colorado for thirty years past.
See what Christ said: "Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye tithe, mint and anise and cumin and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faith." The weightier matters of the law, and first of all comes justice!
Now, allusions to the sayings of the great men of the world might be multiplied to show that justice is everything. Why, then, should we be asking for justice in the state of Colorado? Why shouldn't we assume that that inestimable thing, the basis of civil society, should be ours without the asking? The truth of the matter is that justice has been denied in Colorado to many people. I do not care to rake up the past. I don't wish to; but I must refer to some matters in the past in order to make certain things perfectly clear and incontrovertible. Others have opened up the sores, and it may be just as well to keep them open until the poison and pus of injustice have run from those sores, and until the balm of justice, truth, mercy, and love have cured those sores and left no scar.
What, then, are some of the injustices? I am not going to rehearse the early ones, fifteen, twenty, ten years ago. Many of you know them. They are matters of public record. I recall more recent events, which we ought not to forget, and which we must not let certain other people forget: What was, for instance, the battle of Forbes: You know about the battle of Forbes, It was the week before John Nimmo was killed, for the killing of whom John Lawson is sentenced to spend his life in the penitentiary. The battle of Forbes; I will come to that again presently.
Have you heard, by the way, that the attorney general of this state has had indicted any of the mine guards who used the machine gun over the tent colony of Forbes and killed a man, and put nine bullets in the legs of a boy, who is still crippled and always will be? Has the attorney general investigated that case and informed against any of those men? Mack Powell was killed on October 9 1913. The mine guards then told Mrs. Powell, not knowing who she was, and while her husbands body was still warm, "They got none of us, but we got one of Green's cowboys," and the only one of Green's cowboys that was got was Mack Powell. The mine guards told Mrs. Powell they shot him.
The Death Special,
used in the attack upon the Forbes Tent Colony.
Have you heard at all that any of the legislators who wished to pay for some property destroyed that belonged to the mine companies-destroyed after "Ludlow"-have you heard that they ever suggested the return of the money taken from man after man by officers of law in the garb of the state militia? Have you heard that even suggested? Has it ever been done? The evidence was clear, not only before the congressional committee, but long before that-before the committee investigating the militia-the evidence was perfectly clear that man after man had been robbed by men wearing the uniform of the state, who were down in Las Animas and Huerfano counties for the preservation of "law and order." Is that justice?
Forbes Tent Colony Destroyed
Was it justice, when, last summer, Sheriff Grisham chose a grand jury to investigate the troubles that had occurred the previous year and to bring in indictments against the guilty parties-was it justice, I say, when Grisham appointed [to?] that grand jury, Wilson? Wilson admitted before the congressional committee that he guided the mine guards- some of them from Texas-to Forbes on October 17. Wilson was there during the murderous onslaught against that little tent colony. Wilson was put by Sheriff Grisham on that grand jury. Is that justice?
But to come to something nearer that has aroused the people. Witness what is going on in the southern coal fields of this state under the name of law. Let us recall a certain important historical fact. About two hundred and twenty-five years ago, a cruel, revengeful, deceitful despot sat upon the throne of England-James. He sent a special judge into the western counties of England to try the people who had protested and risen against his tyranny, and the name of Judge Jeffreys, and the "Bloody Assizes" that resulted from that sending of the special judge have been blots upon the pages of the history of England ever since.
Three hundred men were executed as a result of the sending of that special judge to try these men who spoke against tyranny and oppression. Shall history repeat it self in Colorado and in the United States? If so, we might as well remember that three years after the "Bloody Assizes," King James left England forever in disgrace.
Now, many of you are immediately interested in the special case of John Lawson; and I must say that it is extremely difficult for me to speak with composure and restraint upon that subject, because I know John Lawson well, as some of you here do. I knew him very well for months, night and day. I was with him. I saw him under all sorts of circumstances, with every condition of men. He told me confidentially some of his most secret thoughts, his hopes and aspirations, and I know, as you know, that he is absolutely free from any taint of murder. Murder, or thought of murder never entered into his heart.
You know very well that many people considered him too fair, to the other side, too humane, too just; but I will tell you he was not, on the whole. He had a far seeing vision which would have led us all out of trouble if he had had the whole say. I have known many fine men in this country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and I have known them well, but I have seldom seen, if I have ever seen, a finer man in character than John Lawson. But he is convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor! Is that justice, especially when you consider upon what testimony he was convicted?
No one ever charged him in the case with having fired a shot, and all he was really guilty of was being a member of the international board of United Mine Workers of America; and he was convicted upon the testimony of such men as Linderfelt and that despicable spy and traitor, Snyder.
That testimony convicted John Lawson. It will never stand.
[Photographs and emphasis added.]
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SOURCES
Out of the Depths
The Story of John R. Lawson, a Labor Leader
-by Barron B. Beshoar
(1st ed 1942)
CO, 1980
The Labor World
(Duluth, Minnesota)
-Jun 26, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
U. S. Flag and Ludlow Flag
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/...
John Lawson, Mother Jones, Attorney Horace Hawkins
http://ludlowsymposium.wordpress.com/...
John Lawson with Olive and Fern
from Day Book of April 23, 1915, Last Edition
http://www.newspapers.com/...
John R Lawson with Louie Tikas during the strike.
http://ludlowsymposium.wordpress.com/...
James H Brewster, Professor of Law, Colorado
https://archive.org/...
The Death Special
https://www.du.edu/...
Forbes Tent Colony Destroyed March 1914
http://margolis.faculty.asu.edu/...
See also:
"Hellraisers Journal: Constitutional Rights Were Abolished
by Colorado Troops in the Strike Zone" by JayRaye
(Testimony of Professor Brewster before CIR)
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Militarism in Colorado: report of the committee appointed at the suggestion of the Governor of Colorado to investigate the conduct of the Colorado National Guard during the coal strike of 1913-1914.
Colorado State Federation of Labor, 1914
"Are the track, the tipple and the tank more precious than the lives and liberties of men? If so, let us no longer pretend that this is a country for free men; let us openly announce that the dictator’s will is our law, and let us blow the constitution to shreds at the mouth of the mine owner’s machine gun."
Image:
https://www.facebook.com/...
To read:
pdf!http://more.ppld.org:8080/...
Hellraisers + Brewster:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
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Coal Miner's Daughter-Loretta Lynn
Well, I was born'd a coal miner's daughter,
In a cabin, on a hill in Butcher Holler,
We were poor, but we had love,
That's the one thing that daddy made sure of,
He shoveled coal t' make a poor man's dollar.
-Loretta Lynn
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