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Victor
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The
Cripple Creek
Strike:
a History of
Industrial Wars
in Colorado,
1903-4-5
By Emma Florence Langdon
pages 479 to 486
ADAMS CASE.
Not many days elapsed after the imprisonment of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone before another member of the Western Federation of Miners, Steven Adams, was arrested on his farm in Oregon, and taken to Idaho and placed in the penitentiary. McParland had another brain storm and gave the Associated Press several thousand words as to Adams' corroboration of Orchard's "confession" and how Adams would testify to the crimes that had been committed and others anticipated by the "inner circle."
Steve Adams was placed in the cell with Orchard. In September, 1906, however, Adams, in an affidavit, which was published, swore that he was coerced by McParland into signing the confession. He declared that Gooding threatened him with death did he refuse to "confess" that he was implicated with Orchard in the Steunenberg affair, and in the other crimes revealed in Orchard's "confession."
Up to the making of the affidavit by Adams, both he and Orchard were kept in solitary confinement. No one was permitted to visit them save Gooding and McParland. The Orchard "confession" and the Adams corroboration comprised the evidence that was to take the lives of the imprisoned leaders of the Western Federation of Miners. When Adams broke down and declared he had been forced by McParland into signing a lie, he was released through habeas corpus proceedings instituted by Attorneys Darrow and Richardson, but was immediately re-arrested and charged with the murder of two men in northern Idaho, Tyler and Boule.
Again the interests of corporations ran counter to the welfare of the people. For years great lumber companies had been plundering the common heritage. Nature's magnificent gift, the forests, protecting man's water supply and furnishing the means of shelter had been ravaged to satisfy the greed of corporations. In carrying out their nefarious work, the robbery of the people, they committed crimes ranging from perjury to murder. Their tools were men, sunk almost to the level of Pinkertons, who entered lands swearing they were for their own use and benefit, later they turned them over to the lumber companies, but bonafide settlers who had to make a living while perfecting title had entered valuable tracts—it was part of the professional perjurers work to jump these claims. The men who have developed the West place the claim jumper below the horse thief.
Tyler and Boule were found dead in the woods. They were tumbled into their graves without ceremony. Dead men can make no profits. So whether the victim meets his fate in the infamous occupations of deputy, scab, homesteader or as a man at his work, crushed on the railroad, maimed in the factory, blown up in the mine, there is the same callous indifference to his fate. Tyler was forgotten until there seemed to be an opportunity to implicate a member of the Western Federation of Miners, then the lumber companies joined with the Mine Owner's Association in using all the machinery of the state of Idaho, not to avenge him, but to plant fear in the breasts of all opposers.
After Adams repudiated his confession the remains that were supposed to be Tyler's were dug up to be used in the trial by the prosecution. About three weeks were spent in the trial. The jury was out two days when they returned into court announcing that they could never agree and were discharged. From the first to the last ballot they stood seven for acquittal and five for conviction. Adams was returned to jail to await another trial.
In November, 1907, he was again tried. The prosecution entertained the opinion that the conviction of Adams could be trusted to a jury of farmers, a change of venue was asked by the State, in order that the trial might take place in an agricultural district. In the first trial of Adams at Wallace, Idaho, in the very heart of the Coeur ' d'Alenes, where Standard Oil reigns supreme, the jury stood seven for acquittal, and at the second trial, held at Rathdrum, the jury stood eight for acquittal, yet Adams was still held to appease the vengeance of mining corporations at the expense of the taxpayers of Idaho.
The attorneys for the Western Federation of Miners after the disagreement of the jury the last time, secured his release on bond. Shortly after this legal procedure he was again arrested and taken to Telluride, Colo., confined in jail and it is said he is to be tried at some future date for the murder of Arthur Collins. At this writing no time has been set for the trial.
THE WORKERS BUSY.
From the kidnapping of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone on February 17, 1906, until Haywood was acquitted in July, 1907, the working class was aroused as never before in its history. The methods used by the State of Idaho to obtain custody of the prisoners was considered indicative of the principle that would guide the court in the hearing of the case. The workers had not forgotten how the Pinkertons, through perjured evidence had hurried the Mollie Maguires to the scaffold, nor that a court had given legal sanction to the verdict of a mob in hanging the Chicago anarchists. They knew the mighty forces united for the destruction of labor's most advanced organization.
Knowing the power they had to combat, organized capital in control of all the departments of government, they prepared for the contest. Fearing nothing but falsehood, asking nothing but justice, they called the American people into court and submitted their case to a jury that only needs to know the truth to do right. As labor reared its Titanic form its shadow fell across the palace and the counting house and its voice penetrated the dim recesses Where owl-like men pondered over the mouldy precedents of the past and aroused them with the call of the new day.
The way had been blazed for such a campaign. Labor was already aroused. The Colorado strike had been discussed in every hamlet. Every phase had been given on the floor of local unions, in mass meetings, before national conventions of labor bodies with the result that the workers of the country felt as if the wrongs done in Colorado had been committed against them in their own town.
Working men are accustomed to seeing laws and constitutions set aside when their interests are affected and are passed by with little thought, but deportations, bull pens and insults to women are understood by the dullest, resented by the most submissive.
In carrying on the strike the officials of the Federation had found it necessary to appeal to organized labor for funds, the necessity was even greater when the three men were put on trial for their lives, confronted by the treasury of a state as well as the wealth of the Mine Owner's Association. Obedient to the request of Gov. Gooding, the Idaho legislature appropriated $104,000—not for the prosecution of Steunenberg's murderer, but for the prosecution of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone. Labor rose to the needs of the hour. Protest meetings grew in number and fervor. Money for the defense and resolutions of protest poured in from all sides. The Appeal to Reason sent out more than three million copies of a single edition stating the worker's side of the controversy. No lie could live in such a light—no wrong could triumph before such a jury.
The Mine Owner's Association, standing for the capitalist class, were not prepared for such a test. They had thought to strangle these men in the dark, their best appeal is to prejudice, their reliance the Pinkerton perjured by their gold, their answer to citizens demanding constitutional rights had been the bayonet and bull pen. Their methods were disclosed, their batteries unmasked. How could they meet this new giant, an aroused working class, grown conscious of his power?
They had hoped to procure a legal assassination and justify it by labor's traducers, the capitalist press, but the light of millions of copies of the Socialist and Labor press fell upon them. They had hoped Labors groan would go out in silence, but it was transformed into speech, its cry on a world's lips.
They had thought to pillory these men but lo! Their prison became the loftiest height in the western world. Capitalism will yet climb the scaffold it erected for these men, from it one may see the light of a new day and in its shadow discern the grave of the old system.
All along the line the battle raged. Nothing that malice could invent or fraud encompass was neglected by the prosecution. The writer has only space to note a few of the sensations intended to prejudice the cause of the defendants, will only mention that every agency controlled by capitalism from Roosevelt down was used against them. Fearing that the Idaho laws gave the accused a fair chance for life, protecting them from prejudice, the legislature raised the number of peremptory challenges that could be used by the state from five to ten, bankers were remarkable for their presence and union men for their absence in the several venires called for jury duty. Roosevelt took occasion to denounce them on several occasions and in a letter to Congressman Sherman coupled Harriman's name with Moyer and Hay wood as "undesirable citizens." It was a blow worthy of the man who could boast of shooting another in the back.
Friends of the accused were alarmed as to its effect on the trial. Haywood issued a statement to the effect that the words of the President would do more to prevent a fair trial than all that had occurred before. The effect was overestimated. Most men felt that passing on the guilt of the accused was not among Presidential prerogatives. We are "undesirable citizens" became the slogan of the defense and will doubtless become the battle cry of the workers in the campaign of 1908.
TAFT TO THE RESCUE.
During the campaign of 1906, when Governor Gooding of Idaho, was a candidate for re-election, he made the Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone case the chief issue. Political speeches teemed with denunciations of the defendants. Secretary of War Taft was sent to Idaho and made Gooding's cause the administration cause. United States Senator Heyburn raised his voice and denounced the opponents of Gooding as enemies of law and order and friends of anarchy and crime. Gooding, by the help of Taft and the influence brought to bear from Washington was reelected. He recommended that the legislature appropriate $104,000 to prosecute Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone. The money was appropriated unanimously.
HAYWOOD CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR.
The battle took on national proportions, it was made an issue in the states of Idaho and Colorado. In Colorado the Socialist party took up the gauntlet which capitalism had flung down.
July 4, 1906, the Socialist party of Colorado, in convention assembled nominated Wm. D. Haywood for governor of Colorado. J. W. Martin made the nominating speech and the eloquence of his words will long be remembered.
The Socialist party did themselves proud when they selected the prisoner in Caldwell jail to carry the banner of Socialism— the working class party—in the state campaign. Haywood was not the first candidate of the Socialist party nominated while confined in a capitalist prison—Eugene V. Debs, the hero of Woodstock jail, was twice Socialist candidate for the Presidency of the United States.
Mr. Haywood accepted the nomination in a manner worthy of his ability, intellect, and the principles of the class which he was to represent. I quote the first paragraph of his letter of acceptance:
"Ada County Jail, Boise, Idaho, July 14, 1906.
"State Committee Socialist Party of Colorado.
"Comrades and Fellow Workers: While sitting with my lately widowed, gray-haired mother, in the shadow of this jail, surrounded by guards, I received your message notifying me that I had by acclamation been nominated by the Socialist party, candidate for governor of Colorado. After a brief reflection on the duties of a member of the party, I said to mother, 'I will accept the nomination.' The maternal love in her eyes was partly veiled with a mist gathered from the lake of tears, while, like a benediction, she spoke these words: 'It is well, my son.' Thus your notification was received and accepted."
THAT FIRE FIASCO.
Few things were more effective in arousing the indignation of organized labor than the continual postponements of the trial by the prosecution. They seemed determined the men should be punished before the trial if they could not be afterward. The Victor safe was one of these. The time set for trial was approaching, something must be done to explain the lack of evidence. The cry of fire was sent in from the National hotel, Cripple Creek, Colo., where the Mine Owner's Association had offices. When the firemen arrived smoke was pouring from the cracks between the door and walls of the safe. The secretary of the association was standing by, the heat had not affected the lock yet he said it could not be opened.
The safe was supposed to contain acids, "Pettibone dope," photographs and evidence incriminating the accused. Certainly a strange jumble. Only men with the prescience of a Mine Owner's Association would place supposedly valuable papers in conjunction with such inflammable material. The unduly critical might suggest that such articles constituting a part of the evidence should have been in the care of the prosecuting attorney where the trial was to be held.
BLACK MAIL MOYER.
"You told a lie; an odious, damned lie;
Upon my soul, a lie; a wicked lie."—Shakespeare: Othello.
There appeared in the Chicago Journal of May 10, 1907, an article from the pen of some tool of the combination fighting unionism, which declared Charles H. Moyer, president of the Western Federation of Miners, was an ex-convict, claiming he had served time in the Joliet, Ill., prison from 1886 to 1887. It was easy to prove that from 1886 to late in the fall of 1887, Mr. Moyer was working for J. H. Damon, in the Black Hills. Having gone to South Dakota in 1884.
This malicious report was not circulated without reasons. While a dastardly, base falsehood, it was used with the hope of blackening the name of President Moyer and to create the impression that the Federation was a criminal organization, with hope that organized labor would withdraw support. This resort to trickery was soon discovered and cooly met by a record of Moyer's residence at the date given by the false report.
NEXT: Kidnapping Case Before Congress