 |
Victor
|
The
Cripple Creek
Strike:
a History of
Industrial Wars
in Colorado,
1903-4-5
By Emma Florence Langdon
pages 525 TO 527
ATTORNEY JOHN H. MURPHY.
John H. Murphy's part in the struggle is best told by a glowing tribute from the pen of the gifted Journalist and Orator John M. O'Neill, editor Miner's Magazine, which appeared in the Magazine August 8, 1907.
"THE NOBLEST ROMAN OF THEM ALL."
"While the Western Federation of Miners is being showered with congratulations, and while Richardson and Darrow, the shining lights of the legal profession, are receiving the highest encomiums of praise for their ability and eloquence as lawyers, yet, when we return to our normal condition of mind after such a grand and glorious victory achieved, we can behold the wan and wasted figure of a man looming up before us, whose very name and work are linked inseparably with the history of the Western Federation of Miners.
"The history of the labor movement of this country cannot be written in full without placing the name of John H. Murphy upon its pages. Murphy, the general attorney for the Federation, has made history in every state and territory covered by the jurisdiction of the organization. From the statute books of Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Missouri and other states, eight-hour laws arise as monuments to perpetuate the heroic energy of the man whose advice and counsel have been priceless to the organization that has faced courts, bull pens and deportation. Murphy, the attorney, Is a man who has carved an enviable name and record out of the hard rock of adversity. His youth was not spent in the lap of luxury. As a boy he revelled In no dazzling magnificence, but was among the great army that was struggling for the necessaries of life. In his young manhood, with the bloom and blush of health upon his cheek, we find him upon an engine, serving in the capacity of fireman. But while he was exhausting his physical energies in the battle to secure the necessaries of life, this student upon the engine was communing with Blackstone and other great legal minds that had filled the libraries with the products of their brain.
"Murphy, the fireman, became the lawyer, and his heart and soul at once became aroused in a yearning desire to render service to the great mass that were struggling against the wrongs of oppression. In the state of Utah he made his first great fight for the constitutionality of the eight-hour law. With the ablest lawyers which corporations could secure to assassinate the validity of the Utah eight-hour law, Attorney Murphy ultimately won a decision from the Supreme Court of the United States which stamped him as a gladiator in the judicial arena worthy of the best steel.
"For four years Attorney Murphy has been in a battle against death. His close attention to his work and the long hours that he has spent in equipping himself to meet the ablest at the bar, has undermined his vitality, and he is now a physical wreck, bravely struggling against the inevitable.
"No member of the Western Federation of Miners can forget the services that Attorney Murphy has rendered to the organization.
"When the great trial at Boise, Idaho, opened, he arose from his bed of pain, and though the dew of death was gathering upon his brow, he wended his way towards the 'Gem of the Rockies' to give his counsel and advice in one of the greatest trials that has ever taken place in this country. Day after day he sat in the court room in the sweltering heat, and though he endured agony of a thousand deaths, yet his loyalty to the organization nerved him for the ordeal. The pale and emaciated face, upon which disease had written the lines of pain and suffering, lighted up with hope and joy whenever the defense scored a point in the great legal battle that had human life at stake, and the future of the militant labor organization of the West.
"When Haywood was at last liberated and vindicated by a jury of twelve men, and rushed from the court room to embrace the silvery haired matron at whose knee he once lisped the name of mother; when he had clasped his invalid wife to his breast and folded in his strong arms his two loving daughters, in his great joy he did not forget the brave, fearless little man upon his couch of pain in the hospital who had braved death to be identified in the struggle. In that moment, when Haywood lifted in his arms the devoted attorney of the Western Federation ot Miners, and when there broke from the lips of the frail and wasted lawyer, 'Bill! In this hour of your great triumph be humble and thankful,' the great, big, whole-souled Haywood must have felt that here is a loyalty that rivals the fraternity of a Damon and a Pythias. In the years that are to come, when memory shall revert to the great trial that has taken place at Boise, Idaho, when men and women shall be paying tributes to the great lawyers who have participated in the battle, the name of John H. Murphy shall shine as 'the Noblest Roman of Them All'."
Attorney John H. Murphy passed away, at his home in Denver, March 3. His life had been one of continuous service to organized labor. In the death of this gifted attorney, the workers lost one of their staunchest and most able defenders.