You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Thursday June 3, 1915
From the Chicago Day Book: Walsh Blames Rockefeller for Ludlow Disaster
Chairman Frank P Walsh
of the Commission on Industrial Relations
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An article in the June 1st edition of the
Day Book quotes Frank P. Walsh at length regarding John D. Rockefeller Jr. and the Ludlow Massacre of April 20, 1914. Mr. Walsh, as the Chairman of the Commission on Industrial Relations, places the blame for the Ludlow Disaster squarely upon the shoulders of Mr. Rockefeller:
Political domination, intimidation of the governor, contempt for government and the American people as a whole, the prostitution of the state to private interests; an utter contempt and disregard for the state and federal constitutions as well as for statute laws, the horror of the Ludlow massacre, the exploitation of miners by economic pressure and the viler forms of larceny; the attempt to make it appear that the coal companies had met in conference representatives of the strikers when such was not the case; the carefully organized and extensive campaign undertaken to deceive the people-all these have been established beyond all doubt from the testimony of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and his personal lieutenants.
Above all, the commission has proved the absolute responsibility of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., himself for everything that happened in Colorado.
[Emphasis added.]
From The Day Book of June 1, 1915:
BLAME FOR THE LUDLOW DISASTER PLACED ON SHOULDERS
OF JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, JR.
John D Rockefeller Sr and John D Jr
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Kansas City, June 1.-That John D. Rockefeller, Fr., was personally responsible for everything that happened in Colorado was proven absolutely by the industrial relations commission, according to the statement of Frank P. Walsh, chairman, yesterday, who added that the men who led the Colorado strike were fighting the same fight for liberty "against an enemy as powerful and menacing as any ever faced by our revolutionary forefathers."
[Said Chairman Walsh:]
The record of the Washington hearing of the commission...is remarkable, to my mind, chiefly because every major indictment brought against the Rockefellers, father and son, as well as the other coal operators working with them in Colorado, by the bitterest of agitators, has been proved out of the lips of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., or the men whom he hires to carry out the joint wills of his father and himself; in most instances backed up by letters over the signature of these men.
Political domination, intimidation of the governor, contempt for government and the American people as a whole, the prostitution of the state to private interests; an utter contempt and disregard for the state and federal constitutions as well as for statute laws, the horror of the Ludlow massacre, the exploitation of miners by economic pressure and the viler forms of larceny; the attempt to make it appear that the coal companies had met in conference representatives of the strikers when such was not the case; the carefully organized and extensive campaign undertaken to deceive the people-all these have been established beyond all doubt from the testimony of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and his personal lieutenants.
Above all, the commission has proved the absolute responsibility of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., himself for everything that happened in Colorado.
If the Colorado record were not sufficient to give us the color and bent of the mind of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., we should still have a perfect record of his mental processes in the article of Prof. Stevenson, which he endorsed as "one of the soundest and most forcible presentations on the subject of capital and labor he had even seen."
It does no injustice to the spirit of the article which Mr. Rockefeller so lavishly praises to call attention to that portion of it in which Prof. Stevenson conceded, for the sake of argument, that 700,000 little die annually in America on account of under-nourishment of themselves or their parents, and asserts that their deaths must be conceded to be a blessing to themselves and to the community, adding that "such children should not have been born," and "unskilled labor is mere animated machinery."
With the record of the Colorado investigation before them the American people will be blind indeed if they fail to see the folly of trusting to the good intentions and the philanthropic impulses of men like the Rockefellers.
Chairman Walsh announced that the commission would assemble in Chicago within ten days to prepare a report of its findings.
Trinidad, Colo., June 1.-Labor extended a Memorial day tribute to the victims of the Ludlow disaster of April 29 [20], 1914, when 21 persons lost their lives in the battle and fire that destroyed the tent colony. Several hundred members of trades unions and the United Mine Workers of America paraded and afterward decorated the graves with flowers.
Small White Coffins at Mass Funeral
for Those Who Perished in the Ludlow Massacre
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[Photographs added.]
~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCE
The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-June 1, 1915, Last Edition
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
Frank P. Walsh from Harpers Weekly
of Sept 27, 1913
http://books.google.com/...
John D Rockefeller Sr and John D Jr, 1915
http://www.loc.gov/...
Ludlow Massacre Funeral Small White Coffins
http://www.du.edu/...
Ludlow Massacre, Crucified
http://john-adcock.blogspot.com/...
Prof John J Stevenson, University of New York,
Pres New York Academy of Sciences
http://en.wikisource.org/...
Ludlow Monument Victims
http://www.tripadvisor.com/...
See also:
The Survey, Volume 34
Survey Associates, 1915
https://books.google.com/...
From The Survey of June 5, 1915
"More Light on Colorado at the Last Industrial Hearing"
-by John A Fitch
https://books.google.com/...
An extract from the article in The Survey:
As in previous hearings involving the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, letters written by officials of the company and by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., played an important part. Letters written by young Mr. Rockefeller to Mr. Lee indicate that at one time there was a plan for conducting a publicity campaign in opposition not alone to the United Mine Workers, but to unionism in general. On July 17, 1914, Mr. Rockefeller wrote to Ivy Lee:
“I enclose herewith an article by Prof. John J. Stevenson of New York University on Capital and Labor from the Popular Science Monthly of May. This seems to me one of the soundest, clearest, most forcible pronouncements on this subject. I have ever read. I am wondering whether there may be a stage in our publicity campaign either connected with the Colorado situation or the union educational campaign in which parts of this article might be effectively used.”
In reply Mr. Lee stated that it might be a good plan after having laid a “foundation on fact” to send out an article by Elbert Hubbard, and a sermon by the Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis of Brooklyn which discussed the Colorado situation and took a position of extreme hostility to the strikers.
In a later letter, Mr. Lee said:
“I have read with a great deal of interest the article on Labor and Capital by Professor Stevenson. It is as you say excellent and we shall want to use it in the general campaign.”
Mr. Rockefeller was subjected to a grilling examination as to this article of Professor Stevenson's. Chairman Walsh read several extracts from it and asked Mr. Rockefeller whether he believed them. One statement was to the effect that in determining a wage no consideration should be given to whether a man had a wife or children—“the only question concerns the worth of the man’s service."
"Do you agree with that?” asked Mr. Walsh.
“No, I do not think I do,” replied Mr. Rockefeller.
Another paragraph declared that “one is told” that “in each year 200,000 women in our land are compelled to sell their bodies to procure the necessaries of life, and that each year sees 700,000 children perish because their parents had insufficient nourishment...If it be true that the alleged number of children die because they or their parents have insufficient nourishment one must concede that their deaths are a blessing to themselves and to the community. Such children should not have been born."
[Emphasis added.]
John J. Stevenson Speaks:
"Labor and Capital" by Professor John J. Stevenson
of New York University
http://en.wikisource.org/...
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I Am A Union Woman-Deborah Holland
The bosses ride fine horses
While we walk in the mud,
Their banner is the dollar sign,
Ours is striped with blood.
-Aunt Molly Jackson
WE NEVER FORGET
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