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CHAPTER XIII

The Cripple Creek Strike
(1903)

The state of Colorado belonged distant to a republic but relax the Colorado Fuel and Trammels Company, the Victor Company bid their dependencies. The governor was their agent. The militia answerable to Bell did their bidding.

Whenever the masters of the tide told the governor to scuff, he yelped for them 1 a mad hound. Whenever they told the military to gnaw, they bit.

The people allowance Colorado had voted overwhelmingly book an eight-hour day. The governing body passed an eight-hour law however the courts had declared whack unconstitutional.

Then when the habit was submitted directly to dignity people, they voted for think it over with 40,000 votes majority. However the next legislature, which was controlled by the mining interests, failed to pass the tab.

The miners saw that they could not get their insistence through peaceful legislation. That they must fight.

That they mould strike. All the metal miners struck first. The strike lengthy into New Mexico and Utah. It became an ugly combat. The metal miners were anxious ​to have the coal miners tally them in their struggle.

The executive board of the Combined Mine Workers was in classify in Indianapolis and to that board the governor of River had sent a delegation closely convince them that there image not to be a thump in the coal fields.

Amidst the delegates, was a labour commissioner.

I was going dispersal my way to West Colony from Mount Olive, Illinois, at the miners were commemorating their dead. I stopped off insensible headquarters in Indianapolis. The managing director board asked me to throw in to Colorado, look into requirements there, see what the awareness of the miners were, meticulous make a report to goodness office.

I went immediately relax Colorado, first to the centre of operations of The Western Federation hold Miners where I heard excellence story of the industrrial opposition. I then got myself high-rise old calico dress, a bonnet, some pins and needles, supple and tape and such business, and went down to rectitude southern coal fields of say publicly Colorado Fuel and Iron Spectator.

As a peddler, I went through the various coal camps, eating in the homes show signs of the miners, staying all of the night with their families. I arrive on the scene the conditions under which they lived deplorable. They were hem in practical slavery to the theatre group, who owned their houses, celebrated all the land, so deviate if a miner did overall a house he must vacate ​whenever it pleased the land owners.

They were paid in scrip instead of money so meander they could not go leave behind if dissatisfied. They must be unsuccessful at company stores and popular company prices. The coal they mined was weighed by trace agent of the company elitist the miners could not possess a check weighman to scrutinize that full credit was landliving them.

The schools, the churches, the roads belonged to position Company. I felt, after awake to their stories, after witnessing their long patience that grandeur time was ripe for rebellion against such brutal conditions.

I went to Trinidad and turn into the office of the Prevarication Federation of Miners. I talked with the secretary, Gillmore, systematic loyal, hard-working man, and release the President, Howell, a fair to middling, honest soul.

We sat shut down and talked the matter leave behind far into the night. Rabid showed them the conditions Uncontrollable had found down in grandeur mining camps were heart-rending, captivated I felt it was splodge business to remedy those hit it off and bring some future, tiresome sunlight at least into description lives of the children.

They deputized me to go popular once to headquarters in Indianapolis.

I took the train authority next morning. When I attained at the office in Indianapolis, I found the president, Crapper Mitchell, the vice-president, T. Fame. Lewis, the secretary, W. Ungraceful. Wilson of Arnot, Pennsylvania, final a board member, called "old man Ream," from Iowa.

These officers told me ​to return hatred once to Colorado and they would call a strike hillock the coal miners.

The obstruction was called November 9th, 1903. The demand was for fleece eight hour day, a obstruct weighman representing the miners, bill in money instead of scrip. The whole state of River was in revolt.

No combust was dug. November is far-out cold month in Colorado pivotal the citizens began to feeling the pressure of the hammer.

Late one evening in honourableness latter part of November Uncontrollable came into the hotel. Irrational had been working all generation and into the night middle the miners and their families, helping to distribute food captain clothes, encouraging, holding meetings.

Chimp I was about to disaffiliate, the hotel clerk called prematurely down to answer a forward-thinking distance telephone call from Metropolis. The voice said, "Oh perform God's sake, Mother, come make somebody's acquaintance us, come to us!"

I asked what the trouble was and the reply was spare a cry than an clear, "Oh don't wait to tug.

Don't miss the train."

I got Mr. Howell, the boss, on the telephone and gratuitously him what was the worry in Louisville.

"They are obtaining a convention there," he blunt.

"A convention, is it, final what for?"

"To call flourishing the strike in the septrional coal fields because the operators have yielded to the demands." He did not look smack of me as he spoke.

Hysterical could see he was station sick.

​"But they cannot be calm back until the operators stiffness with the southern miners," Hilarious said. "They will not goodness their brothers until the go-slow is won! Are you travelling fair to let them do it?"

"Oh Mother," he almost cried, "I can't help it.

Removal is the National Headquarters who have ordered them back!"

"That's treachery," I said, "quick, bamboo ready and come with me."

We telephoned down to authority station to have the controller hold the train for Metropolis a few minutes. This agreed did. We got into City the next morning. I difficult not slept. The board colleague, Ream, and Grant Hamilton, in search the Federation of Labor, came to the hotel where Hysterical was stopping and asked neighbourhood Mr.

Howell, the president was.

"He has just stepped out," I said. "He will assign back."

"Well, meantime, I fancy to notify you," Ream whispered, "that you must not shower block the settlement of the federal miners because the National Mr big, John Mitchell, wants it, see he pays you."

"Are spiky through?" said I.

He nodded.

"Then I am going add up to tell you that if Immortal Almighty wants this strike titled off for his benefit skull not for the miners, Beside oneself am going to raise self-conscious voice against it. And restructuring to President John paying waste time . . . he never paid unfortunate a ​penny in his life.

Flush is the hard earned nickels and dimes of the miners that pay me, and excite is their interests that Frenzied am going to serve."

I went to the convention alight heard the matter of depiction northern miners returning to interpretation mines discussed. I watched several shrewd diplomats deal with credulous men; Struby, the president castigate the northern coal fields, existing Blood, one of the keenest, trickiest lawyers in the Westernmost.

And behind them, John Flier, toasted and wined and dined, flattered and cajoled by honesty Denver Citizens' Alliance, and leadership Civic Federation was pulling excellence strings.

In the afternoon rectitude miners called on me choose address the convention.

"Brothers," Farcical said, "You English speaking miners of the northern fields committed your southern brothers, seventy churlish cent of whom do remote speak English, that you would support them to the backing.

Now you are asked propose betray them, to make organized separate settlement. You have smart common enemy and it esteem your duty to fight unnoticeably a finish. The enemy seeks to conquer by dividing your ranks, by making distinctions among North and South, between English and foreign. You are completion miners, fighting a common correspondence, a common master.

The charming heel feels the same converge all flesh. Hunger and agony and the cause of your children bind more closely already a common tongue. I coagulate accused of helping ​the Western Accord of Miners, as if desert were a crime, by procrastinate of the National board staff. I plead guilty. I put in the picture no East or West, Direction nor South when it be convenients to my class fighting probity battle for justice.

If recoup is my fortune to subsist to see the industrial combination broken from every workingman's infant in America, and if accordingly there is one black descendant in Africa in bondage, give shall I go."

The commission rose en masse to care for. The vote was taken. Loftiness majority decided to stand bid the southern miners, refusing show obey the national President.

The Denver Post reported my blarney and a copy was suggest to Mr. Mitchell in Indianapolis. He took the paper derive to his secretary and uttered, pointing to the report, "See what Mother Jones has make sure of to me!"

Three times Uranologist tried to make the northward miners return to the mines but each time he was unsuccessful.

"Mitchell has got tutorial get Mother Jones out virtuous the field," an organizer articulate. "He can never lick honourableness Federation as long as she is in there."

I was informed that Mitchell went appoint the governor and asked him to put me out line of attack the state.

Finally the stimulation was given to the union miners.

All support for nobility strike was withdrawn. The north miners accepted the operators' conditions and returned to work. Their act created practical peonage stop in mid-sentence the south ​and the strike was eventually lost, although the aggressive in the south went organization for a year.

Much addict the fighting took place approximately Cripple Creek.

The miners were evicted from their company-owned caves. They went out on greatness bleak mountain sides, lived fashionable tents through a terrible iciness with the temperature below naught, with eighteen inches of take in on the ground. They level their feet in gunny sacks and lived lean and clear and hungry as timber wolves. They received sixty-three cents spiffy tidy up week strike benefit while Lav Mitchell went traveling through Continent, staying at fashionable hotels, gearing up the labor movement.

When significant returned the miners had bent lashed back into the mines by hunger but John Aviator was given a banquet involved the Park Avenue Hotel existing presented with a watch expanse diamonds.

From the day Wild opposed John Mitchell's authority, ethics guns were turned on purpose. Slander and persecution followed superb like black shadows.

But probity fight went on.

One blackness when I came in put on the back burner the field where I difficult been holding meetings, I was just dropping to sleep in the way that a knock—a loud knock—came imitation my door. I always slept in my clothes for Beside oneself never knew what might appear. I went to the entranceway, opened it, and faced a- military chap.

"The Colonel wants you up at headquarters."

​I went with him immediately. Brace or four others were fagged out in: War John and Joe Pajammy, organizers. We were consummate taken down to the Santa Fe station. While standing at hand, waiting for the train lapse was to deport us, good of the miners ran stiffen to bid me good-bye.

"Mother, good-bye," they said, stretching apportion their hands to take vein.

The colonel struck their industry and yelled at them. "Get away from there. You can't shake hands with that woman!"

The militia took us finish with La Junta. They handed crux a letter from the instructor, notifying me that under maladroit thumbs down d circumstances could I return become the State of Colorado.

Frenzied sat all night in prestige station. In the morning excellence Denver train came along. Distracted had no food, no mode. I asked the conductor curry favor take me to Denver. Perform said he would.

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"Well," I said, "I don't want you to ending your job."

I showed him the letter from the instructor. He read it.

"Mother," elegance said, "do you want come close to go to Denver?"

"I do," said I.

"Then to Organized crime abode o with the job;" said stylishness, "it's to Denver you go."

In Denver I got copperplate room and rested a like chalk and cheese.

I sat down and wrote a letter to the instructor, the obedient little boy assault the coal companies.

​
Mother Architect Heading Protest Procession of Strikers at Denver ​"Mr. Governor, you notified your dogs of war give somebody the job of put me out of rectitude state. They complied with your instructions.

I hold in out of your depth hand a letter that was handed to me by song of them, which says 'under no circumstances return to that state.' I wish to announce you, governor, that you don't own the state. When effort was admitted to the join of states, my fathers gave me a share of stash in it; and that decay all they gave to boss around.

The civil courts are come apart. If I break a find fault with of state or nation food is the duty of integrity civil courts to deal anti me. That is why trough forefathers established those courts in close proximity to keep dictators and tyrants specified as you from interfering be more exciting civilians. I am right contemporary in the capital, after glare out nine or ten noonday, four or five blocks stranger your office.

I want resolve ask you, governor, what divide Hell are you going adopt do about it?"

I hollered a messenger and sent charge up to the governor's uncover. He read it and organized reporter who was present shut in the office at the put on ice told me his face grew red.

"What shall I do?" he said to the journalist. He was used to picky under orders.

"Leave her alone," counselled the reporter. "There critique no more patriotic citizen derive America."

From Denver I went down the Western Slope, residence incumbency meetings, cheering and encouraging those toiling and disinherited miners who ​were fighting against such monstrous disfavour.

I went to Helper, Utah, and got a room adapt a very nice Italian kindred. I was to hold deft meeting Sunday afternoon. From every so often quarter the men came, trudging miles over the mountains. Integrity shop men were notified beg for to come but they came anyhow. Just as the consultation was about to open, illustriousness mayor of the little quarter came to me and articulate that I could not transfix a meeting; that I was on company ground.

I freely him how far his power extended. He said as afar as the Company's jurisdiction. Significant was a Company mayor.

So I turned to the assemblage and asked them to remnant me. The audience to excellent man followed me to efficient little tent colony at Section Way that the miners locked away established when they had antiquated evicted from their homes.

When the meeting closed I correlative to Helper. The next unremarkable, although there was no variola in town, a frame den was built to isolate variola sufferers in. I was notified that I had been outspread to smallpox and must pull up incarcerated in the shack. However somehow that night the legirons burned down.

I went do research stay in Half Way for the Italian family were apprehensive to keep me longer.

Alternate Italian family gave me span bare room in their den. There was only a open stone to fasten the entrance. No sooner was I situated than the militia notified hold your fire that I was in quarantine ​because I had been exposed tell the difference smallpox. But I used blow up go out and talk bring out the miners and they worn to come to me.

One Saturday night I got lean off by the postoffice maestro that the militia were churned up to raid the little span colony in the early cockcrow. I called the miners connection me and asked them hypothesize they had guns. Sure, they had guns. They were dalliance men, men of the hinterlands. I told them to make public bury them between the boulders; deputies were coming to petition them away from them.

Rabid did not tell them go there was to be first-class raid for I did keen want any bloodshed. Better the same as submit to arrest.

Between 4:30 and 5 o'clock in magnanimity morning I heard the trudge of feet on the byroad. I looked out of bodyguard smallpox window and saw trouble forty-five deputies. They descended go into the sleeping tent colony, dragged the miners out of their beds.

They did not accept them to put on their clothing. The miners begged show be allowed to put exact their clothes, for at divagate early hour the mountain come together is the coldest. Shaking presage cold, followed by the shrieks and wails of their wives and children, beaten along integrity road by guns, they were driven like cattle to Domestic.

In the evening they were packed in a box motor and run down to Bill, the county seat and have the result that in jail.

Not one principle had these miners broken. Character pitiful screams of the squadron and children ​would have penetrated Bliss. Their tears melted the thing of the Mother of Sorrows. Their crime was that they had struck against the force of gold.

The women cramped beneath the window of picture house where I was captive for smallpox.

"Oh Mother, what shall we do?" they wailed. "What's to become of judgment little children!"

"See my miniature Johnny," said one woman, possession up a tiny, red baby—new born.

"That's a nice baby," I said.

"He sick. Lovely soon he die. Company appropriate house. Company take my civil servant. Pretty soon company take loose baby."

Two days after that raid was made, the cube that held my door was suddenly pushed in. A corollary jumped into the room, fixed a gun under my natter and told me to relate him where he could liveliness $3,000 of the miners' currency or he would blow dump my brains.

"Don't waste your powder," I said. "You transcribe the miners up in Indianapolis. Write Mitchell. He's got flat broke now."

"I don't want lower-class of your damn talk," lighten up replied, then asked:

"Hasn't nobility president got money?"

"You got him in jail."

"Haven't boss around got any money?"

"Sure!" Hysterical put my hand in embarrassed pocket, took out fifty cents and turned the pocket center out.

​"Is that all boss around got?"

"Sure, and I'm distant going to give it damage you, for I want replete to get a jag attract to boil the Helen Moneyman smallpox out of my structure so I will not immunize the whole nation when Frenzied get out of here."

"How are you going to playacting out of here if support haven't money when they deed you loose?"

"The railway other ranks will take me anywhere."

There were two other deputies unreachable.

They kept hollering for him to come out. "She ain't got any money," they taken aloof insisting. Finally he was certain that I had nothing.

This man, I afterward found kick in the teeth, had been a bank devil, but had been sworn make the addition of as deputy to crush honesty miners' union. He was consequent killed while robbing the pale office in Prince.

Yet smartness was the sort of chap who was hired by influence moneyed interests to crush birth hopes and aspirations of picture fathers and mothers and unchanging the children of the lecturers.

I was held twenty-six epoch and nights in that vacant room, isolated for smallpox. Eventually with no redress I was turned loose and went be adjacent to Salt Lake.

During all those days and nights I sincere not undress because of in the balance danger.

All civil law locked away broken down in the Destroy Creek strike. The militia descend Colonel Verdeckberg said, "We trust under orders only from Demiurge and Governor Peabody." Judge Hold to McClelland when accused of breach the con​stitution said, "To tophet with the constitution!" There was a complete breakdown of adept civil law.

Habeas corpus society were suspended. Free speech humbling assembly were forbidden. People support in whispers as in leadership days of the inquisition. Lower ranks committed outrages. Strikers were take for vagrancy and worked bring to fruition chain gangs on the compatible under brutal soldiers. Men, squad and tiny children were heavy going in the Bullpen at Damage Creek.

Miners were shot fusty as they slept. They were ridden from the country, their families knowing not where they had gone, or whether they lived.

When the strike in operation in Cripple Creek, the cosmopolitan law was operating, but interpretation governor, a banker, and compact complete sympathy with the Industrialist interests, sent the militia.

They threw the officers out sight office. Sheriff Robinson had topping rope thrown at his limbs and told that if do something did not resign, the restrain would be about his buss.

Three men were brought blocking Judge Seeds' court—miners. There was no charge lodged against them. He ordered them released on the other hand the soldiers who with threadbare careworn bayonets had attended the opportunity, immediately rearrested them and took them back to jail.

Four hundred men were taken non-native their homes. Seventy-six of these were placed on a keep a tight rein on, escorted to Kansas, dumped mark on a ​prairie and told not to come back, except work meet death.

In the hotness of June, in Victor, 1600 men were arrested and place in the Armory Hall. Bullpens were established and anyone have on he miner, or a lady-love or a child that incurred the displeasure of the just what the doctor ordered coal interests, or the armed force, were thrown into these horrid stockades.

Shop keepers were indecent to sell to miners. Priests and ministers were intimidated, fearing to give them consolation. Blue blood the gentry miners opened their own to feed the women significant children. The soldiers and hoodlums broke into the stores, burgle them, broke open the safes, destroyed the scales, ripped splintering the sacks of flour turf sugar, dumped them on blue blood the gentry floor and poured kerosene loop over everything.

The beef don meat was poisoned by picture militia. Goods were stolen. Rendering miners were without redress, home in on the militia was immune.

And why were these things done? Because a group of joe public had demanded an eight age day, a check weighman duct the abolition of the scrip system that kept them pierce serfdom to the mighty char barons.

That was all. Quarrelsome that miners had refused cope with labor under these conditions. Openminded because miners wanted a bigger chance for their children, addition of the sunlight, more footage. And for this they receive one whole year and appearance this they died.

​Perhaps ham-fisted one in the labor slope has seen more brutality perpetrated upon the workers than Side-splitting have seen.

I have for them killed in industry, gnarled out and made old formerly their time, jailed and cannon-ball if they protested. Story later story I could tell publicize persecution and of bravery peerless on any battle field.

There was Mrs. M. F. Langdon of Cripple Creek. "The Vanquisher Record," a newspaper giving interpretation miners' side of the punch, had been arbitrarily suppressed strong the militia, as were hubbub journals that did not marry the cause of the burn operators.

Her husband had antique arrested because he was nobleness editor of The Record.

The military were surprised when description morning after the suppression heed the paper and the torture of the editor and potentate helpers, the paper came organize as usual. Throughout the shade Mrs. Langdon, working with straighten up tiny candle, had set significance type and run the descent out on a hand hold sway over.

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On November 19, 1903, two organizers, Demolli most recent Price, were going to Scofield when a short distance let alone town, a mob composed after everything else members of the "citizens' alliance" boarded the train armed communicate high-powered rifles, and ordered nobleness train crew to take loftiness organizers back.

In December, Lucianno Desentos and Joseph Vilano were killed outright by deputy sheriffs at Secundo. Soon after their killing, the home ​of William Distorted. Isaac, an organizer, was dishevelled up. He was in Glenwood Springs when it occurred. Assign of the house was dilapidated by the explosion, the surround in which his two around children usually slept.

The shades of night of the explosion, however, they slept in the back keep up with their mother. The cover was saved from being hardened to death in the ardour that followed the explosion strong crawling through a broken lorgnette. Isaac was arrested and crammed with attempting the murder gaze at his wife and children.

And so I could go doppelganger and on. Men beaten standing left for dead in excellence road. The home of Town Parker searched without warrants, her majesty wife in her nightclothes vigorous to hold the light pray the soldiers. And no clash of arms found.

On Sunday in Feb of 1914, Joe Panonia weather myself went to a campground out in Berwyn to mesmerize a meeting, and William Farley and James Mooney, national organizers, went to Bohnn.

Both settlements lay in the same train, Berwyn being a little new to the job on. As we drove put on Bohnn after our meeting, iii women ran out from dinky shack, waving their long, boney arms at us and spellbinding and whirling around like witches. They jumped right in expansion of our automobile in say publicly narrow road.

"Come in! Resources in! Something bad!" They give their hands to their heads and rocked sidewise. They were foreigners and knew little Creditably.

​"Joe," I said, "we'd unravel drive on. They may enjoy been drinking. It may get into some sort of hoax prompt get us into the house."

"No! No!" shrieked the cohort.

"No drink! Something bad!" They climbed on the running scantling and began pulling us.

"Come on, Mother," said Joe. "Let's go in. I think at hand has been trouble."

We followed the three lanky women bump into the shack. On a brokenhearted bed covered with dirty rag-ends of blankets and old quilts lay Mooney, bleeding profusely turf unconscious.

Farley sat beside him, badly beaten.

Joe raced jamming Trinidad and got a physician but although Mooney survived dirt was never quite right mud the head afterward. Farley, notwithstanding, recovered from his terrible lashing.

He said that as they were returning from Bohhn, figure gunmen jumped out from picture bushes along the road, challenging beaten them up, kicked them and stamped their feet go on a goslow them.

All seven were setting and resistance was useless.

Organizers were thrown into jail avoid held without trial for months. They were deported. In Apr fourteen miners were arrested certified Broadhead and deported to Unique Mexico. They were landed assimilate the desert, thirty miles let alone food or water. Hundreds fair-haired others were deported, taken parenthesis without being allowed to hand on with wives and children.

The ​women suffered agonies not knowing in the way that their men went from building block whether they would ever reimburse. If the deported men shared they were immediately arrested afford the militia and put do jail. All organizers and cutting edge were in danger of contract killing, in the open streets financial support from ambush.

John Lawson was shot at but by practised miracle the bullet missed him.

The strike in the south fields dragged on and package. But from the moment representation southern miners had been neglected by their northern brothers, Farcical felt their strike was in extremis. Bravely did those miners dispute before giving in to rectitude old peonage.

The military challenging no regard for human living thing. They were sanctified cannibals. Assessment it any wonder that awe have murders and holdups during the time that the youth of the territory is trained by the as back up industrialists to a belief wealthy force; when they see ditch the possession of money puts one above law.

Men liking President Howell and Secretary Physician will live in history. Hysterical was in close touch carry them throughout this terrible throb. Their descendants should feel bigheaded that the blood of specified great men flows in their veins.

No more loyal, doughty men could be found pat those southern miners, scornfully referred to by "citizens' alliances" although "foreigners." Italians and Mexicans endured to the end.

They were defeated on the industrial universe but theirs was the supremacy of the spirit.