You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Saturday March 12, 1904
From The Inter Ocean: Chicago Girls on Strike Offered Shelter By Wealthy Club Women
The Inter Ocean carried this story at the top of page one yesterday morning:
RICH WOMEN OFFER HOMES TO STRIKERS
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Will Take Girls Into Their Palatial Residences
Until Trouble with Corset Company Is Settled.
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"Come into our homes and stay as long as you wish." That is the invitation which wealthy club women of Chicago have extended to the locked out girl corset workers in the factory of the Chicago Corset company at Aurora. This project of offering homes to the penniless girls, which is the first of its kind ever attempted during a labor dispute, originated with the members of the Woman's Trade Union league, an organization launched about two months ago for the purpose of bettering the conditions of working girls.
Yesterday Miss Gertrude Barnum, secretary of the Woman's Trade Union league, went to Aurora to make an investigation of the financial resources of the girls who have been locked out for the past four months. Many of them are blacklisted and cannot find employment in Aurora. Some of the women philanthropists who are connected with the league are ready to pen up their homes as a shelter for the girls until they can find some other employment.
Addresses Girl Strikers.
Mrs. Laura Dainty Pelham, in an address to the striking girls at the Wieboldt store on Milwaukee avenue yesterday afternoon, told what the club women were doing for the corset workers. "Miss Barnum, our secretary," she said, "returned from Aurora this morning with a great project which we intend to carry out. Some of our members are wealthy and do not have to work for a living, but they have sympathetic hearts and can feel for those who are fighting against injustice. Some of the girls in Aurora are without money and are blacklisted so that they cannot find work in that city. We have urged them never to return to work until their employer agrees to treat them humanely.
"We have said to them, 'Come into our homes and stay as long as you wish.' We feel that they are fighting in a just cause, and we must do something to help them. The firm is talking of getting out an injunction against us because we have sent out circulars asking women not to purchase the product of the concern. We are to keep up the work until girls secure justice. The lockout is not settled, but there is a ray of hope which was not visible a week ago. The girls will never return to work until their right to organize for self-protection is guaranteed them. That much is certain."
May Help Clerks.
Mrs. Pelham told the Wieboldt strikers that the Woman's Trade Union league stood ready to help them in any way possible. "We shall get up and entertainment for your benefit and fill the largest hall on Milwaukee avenue," she said, "if your organizers think it advisable. We are going to give an entertainment at Hull house on April 9 for the skirtmakers. This is our plan of organizing girls: We get up an entertainment and see that as many nonunion workers as possible in any particular trade are given invitations. We do not say anything about unionism before the night of the entertainment. Then, when we get them there, we give them the hottest trades union speech that they ever listened to, and we get most of them before they get away. The entertainment costs them nothing.
SOURCE
The Inter Ocean
(Chicago, Illinois)
-of Mar 11, 1904
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Thursday March 12, 1914
From The Indianapolis Star: Forbes Tent Colony Destroyed By Colorado State Militia
The Forbes Tent Colony Destroyed By Militia
Photo by Lou Dold
WASHINGTON., March 10-Chairman Foster, of the House mines committee, which investigated the Colorado coal mine strike, today received the following telegram from officers of the United Mine Workers' Union in Colorado:
"Twenty-three militiamen, under orders of Adj. Gen. John Chase, this morning demolished strikers' tent colony at Forbes, Col. Men, Women and children are homeless in a blinding snowstorm. Inhabitants of the upper tent colony ordered by militiamen to leave their home within forty-eight hours or be deported."
Chairman Foster said the committee stood ready to report drastic recommendations to Congress as soon as it could assemble its data.
[emphasis added]
Today's issue of the
Star also featured this article:
ASK FEDERAL INTERVENTION IN COLORADO MINE STRIKE
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Declaring that Federal intervention is sorely needed tin Colorado, officers of the united Mine Workers of America sent a telegram to President Wilson yesterday demanding the release of Mother Mary Jones. The telegram follows:
"We again protest against the outrageous treatment accorded Mother Jones and demand her release from Colorado military prison, where she has been confined for more than two months.
"Federal intervention is sorely needed in Colorado. We can ill afford to talk about protecting the rights of American citizens in Mexico, as long as a woman, 80 years old, can be confined in prison by military authorities without any charge being placed against her, denied trial and refused bond, her friends prevented from communicating with her, her request for proper medical attendance denied and every right guaranteed by the constitution of the United States set aside.
"Colorado militia yesterday tore down tents of striking miners at Forbes, leaving miners and families without shelter and causing great suffering. Let us hear from you."
The telegram is signed by John P. White, president of the miners; Frank J. Hayes, vice president , and William Green, secretary-treasurer.
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SOURCE
The Indianapolis Star
(Indianapolis, Indian)
-of Mar. 12, 1914
Photo: Lou Dold: Forbes Tent Colony Destroyed by Milita
http://margolis.faculty.asu.edu/...
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Wednesday March 12, 2014
More on the Destruction of the Forbes Tent Colony:
Now it was bitter cold. Emma [Zanatell] was pregnant. Her time came two months early, and there was trouble. She was carrying twins, and they would not come out right. They phoned the camp doctor at Forbes but he refused to come down. Then they called the union doctor, Ben Beshoar. They waited, the women running in and out out of the tent, scared, not knowing what to do. It was hours before Doctor Beshoar arrived from Trinidad. When he got there he was soaking wet. The deputies had shot up his car and he'd had to abandon it and crawl up the creek bed. When the babies came, they were dead.
The next day the people of the Forbes colony went to Trinidad to bury the stillborn twins. They left Emma and a woman to sit with her in the tents. It was then the militia came down out of the hills. They stormed into one of the abandoned tents, broke open a cupboard and made themselves a breakfast of ham, eggs, bread-the kind of meal they had not eaten in a while. Then they set to work cutting the guy lines of the tents and scattering the gods. One of the soldiers came into Emma's tent and asked who she was and what she was ding there. She told him about the twins and he said that in that case they weren't going to tear her tent down, they'd just light a match to it. Just then another militiaman stepped in. "I'll kill you before you hurt her," he said. "She's there sick in bed and they're burying her twins. You're not going to hurt her." Emma always remembered that boy. For a long time she said prayers for him.
SOURCE
Buried Unsung
Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre
-by Zeese Papanikolas
U of Utah Press, 1982
http://books.google.com/...
Note: There are variations on the spelling of her name in other accounts-Zanetelli, Zacanelli, etc.
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Goran Bregović - Lullabye