You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Friday February 26, 1904
Cripple Creek District, Colorado - In Trial of District Leaders, W. F. Davis "Not Guilty"
The "persecution" is proceeding with its version of events in the trial of Sherman Parker, W. F. Davis, and Thomas Foster for "train wrecking" in connection with an alleged plot to derail trains last November. The three men are all members of the Western Federation of Miners, and leaders of that organization in the Cripple Creek District.
Mrs. Emma F. Langdon sent in this report from the courthouse on Tuesday:
Beckman implicated Sleuth Sterling as connected with the plot, stating that he had prearranged signals with Sterling whereby he could watch himself and McKinney pull the spikes in the hellish scheme to send martyrs to the penitentiary!
Mrs. McKinney, star witness No. 3, in the "persecution," assisted very materially in exposing the nauseating plot. Her face was alternately suffuse with blushes and blanched to marble whiteness as her relations with the sleuths were uncovered. She proved a more artful liar than her miserable poltroon husband, yet she was forced to acknowledge the wanton falsity of her statements, and when cornered she simply admitted that she lied, and with every such confession her eyelids drooped with shame. She admitted that Sleuth Sterling had "kept" her, paid her expenses, bought her meals, slept in adjoining rooms, swore that her husband gave her no money , and when cornered as to where she got the money to pay for $4 meals for herself and Sterling, swore her husband gave it to her! But she is a woman, and in charity I say no more of her-suffice it that when the ordeal of cross-examination was finished she left the court room with shame-flushed face and downcast eyes, closely followed by Sleuth Scott.
The case of the "persecution" began to unravel in earnest yesterday. Mrs. Langdon reports:
Sleuth Sterling was placed on the stand and proved himself skillful in refraining from incriminating himself by adroitly fixing the responsibility for dirty detective work on sleuth Beckman. He tried hard to shield Mrs. McKinney, but did not spare her husband. His evidence was clearly presented and conflicted but little in a few details. Sleuth Scott was called to the stand and sorely disappointed the "persecution." His direct testimony showed a careful and studied comparison with Sterling's, but on the cross-examination he became sadly mixed. He admitted that he lied to Sheriff Robertson, to Judge Seeds, to President Jesse Waters and to many others. Sleuth Scott left the witness box a self-confessed liar.
Hard words, these, but true. The testimony of these self-confessed conspirators and apparently unprincipled sleuths and their accomplices was intended by the "law and order" "persecutors" to send to the penitentiary honest men, known by them to be innocent!
But now came a sensation and a bombshell to the "persecution"-the testimony of an hones man! W. W. Rush, who was at the throttle of the "ill-fated" train the night of the "wreck." Under cross-examination the nervy engineer fatally contradicted stories sworn to by Sleuth Scott and startled court and spectators by declaring that Scott had approached him some time before the "attempted wreck" and told him that it would be "pulled off." Scott further asked Mr. Rush where he considered the best location for a wreck. Rush answered that the overhead bridge would be the most dangerous place. The "attempt" was later made at the identical place suggested by Rush! This blow paralyzed the "persecution," and Judge Lewis immediately ordered the jury to bring in a verdict of "not guilty" in the case of Davis and "not guilty" on one count against Foster.
after months of imprisonment, innumerable indignities and persecution, but little freedom under an exorbitant bond of $15,000, W. F. Davis, and innocent man, was liberated and free, now fully vindicated and by the very witnesses who were summoned to railroad him to the penitentiary. No witnesses were necessary to vindicate him. No witness was questioned in his behalf. No lawyers' plea made to defend him. Not one scintilla of evidence produce against him. He, as the reader will well see, was the innocent victim of one of the most damnable and foul pieces of jobbery in the annals of degenerate sleuthdom. How plainly did the jobbers overjob themselves!
SOURCE
The Cripple Creek Strike
-by Emma F Langdon
(Part I, 1st pub 1904)
NY, 1969
http://www.rebelgraphics.org/...
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Thursday February 26, 1914
From The Inter Ocean: Tanner Details Deportation at Hands of Citizens' Alliance Mob
STRIKE INQUIRY TO SHIFT TO CHICAGO
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Congressional Committee to Take Testimony of Michigan National Guard in answer to Charges.
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MOYER DEPORTATION DETAILED
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(By the Associated Press.)
HANCOCK, Mich., Feb. 25.-Announcement was made by the copper mine strikers' counsel at the opening of the afternoon session today that they had concluded the presentation of their case before the congressional committee.
Chairman Taylor announce that at the conclusion of the inquiry here the committee would sit for one day in Chicago to take testimony of Michigan national guard in answer to the strikers' charges.''
The committee then adjourned the public hearings until Saturday. In the meantime the Congressmen will make an inspection of the mines, stamp mills and smelters. The operators will begin the introduction of witnesses on Saturday or Monday. Charles H. Tanner auditor of the Western Federation of Miners, took the stand today before the committee and described the deportation of Charles H. Moyer and himself.
SAYS GUNS WERE DRAWN.
"Moyer was standing at the telephone in his room," Tanner said, "when there was a rap on the door. I was standing by the bed and Moyer himself opened the door with his free hand. A crowd of twenty or thirty rushed in shouting 'Where is Moyer? Where is Moyer?' At the same time three men covered me with automatic revolvers. Then Moyer, by the telephone replied "I am Moyer."
"Several men made a rush for him and bent him over almost double. Another man rushed in from the hallway and struck Moyer, as he was bent over, on the head with a revolver. The gun exploded and Moyer was wounded in the back."
WARNED NOT TO RETURN.
Tanner said Moyer and he were then rushed out of the room, down the stairs and out of the hotel. They were hustled across the bridge to Houghton, where they were placed on a train for Chicago in charge of two deputies, one named Hensley and warned if they ever came back they would be hanged. On the bridge the witness said he was struck over by his captor and he showed the committee a scar resulting from the blow.
"Did not Moyer say he believed the shooting to be accidental?" asked Attorney Rees of Counsel for the companies.
"He did not, to me."
"Did either you or Mr. Moyer offer any resistance," asked Chairman Taylor.
"We didn't have time," said Tanner.
Tanner was the only witness called on this subject.
Left out of this account is the fact that the "twenty or thirty" men who rushed into the room were a mob made up of members of the Citizens' Alliance. Many of them were proudly wearing the well-known button of that organization, including Deputy Hensley, named above, who kept guard upon Tanner and the wounded and bleeding Moyer after they were forced onto the Chicago-bound train. The other deputy who boarded the train to assist with guarding the two captive union men was named McKeever. He also wore the button of the Citizens' Alliance, right next to his deputy's badge.
SOURCES
The Inter Ocean
(Chicago, Illinois)
-of Feb 26, 1914
Death's Door
The Truth Behind Michigan's Largest Mass Murder
-by Steve Lehto
MI, 2006
See also:
Conditions in the Copper Mines of Michigan: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Mines and Mining, House of Representatives, Sixty-third Congress, Second Session, Pursuant to H. Res. 387, a Resolution Authorizing and Directing the Committee on Mines and Mining to Make an Investigation of the Conditions in the Copper Mines of Michigan.
-United States. Congress. House. Committee on Mines and Mining
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1914
Part II-III, p.521-1327
http://books.google.com/...
Testimony of Charles H Tanner begins on page 1300.
(page number of the investigation, not of scroll bar)
Photo: Citizens Alliance Button
http://www.copperrange.org/...
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Vigilante Man-Ry Cooder
Well, what is a vigilante man?
Tell me, what is a vigilante man?
Has he got a gun and a club in his hand?
Is that is a vigilante man?
-Woody Guthrie