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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 543 to 555
General Summary
THE Industrial conflict in the West while to the public at large has seemed more strenuous, perhaps, than in other sections of the country, but while that seems to be the case on the surface, the conditions that have prevailed in the West, exist to a large degree, over the entire country. The powers in control brook no opposition to their absolute tyranny. When the corporations are opposed they become insane—resort to any method in order to subdue.
The arrest and imprisonment of the president and secretary-treasurer of the Western Federation of Miners was due to an erroneous idea of the mine owners that if they could dispose of the officers of the Federation that it would disrupt the organization —they had resorted to every other means and failed. The unfaltering loyalty and eternal vigilance of these men had baffled every effort of organized capital to crush organized labor. For once the power of wealth had met opposition immovable—they had met face to face men at the head of a powerful organization, whose honor was proof against their bribes. They were accustomed to bribing judges, using governors as their willing tools, Supreme Courts to render favorable decisions for them.
The Federation has in its ranks many men who are capable and would jump to the helm and steer the Western Federation ship clear of the corporate rocks had the plotters succeeded in their plan of judicial murder. They met their Waterloo.
Upon the kidnapping of President Moyer and Secretary Haywood, Vice President C. E. Mahoney became acting president and James Kirwan succeeded to the duties of secretary-treasurer. They picked up the banner that had fallen at the prison doors and bore it on until the imprisoned men regained their freedom.
The Federation lost nothing in the efficiency of its officers. The labor movement has passed beyond that stage in which the fate of an organization depends upon one or a few men. Whether in the work of organizing his men or conferring with the employers, President Mahoney displayed excellent judgment. At headquarters everything went smoothly under the direction of Secretary Kirwan. His genial personality, united with rare ability and unfaltering devotion to the cause of labor, won prestige for the organization and hosts of friends for himself.
The imprisonment of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone and other members of the miner's organization marks once more the seduction of government from its primary functions as an instrument for the promotion of the common welfare of the people. It is a surrender by those in authority to the machinations of capitalist conspirators.
Organized labor nor the Socialist party do not object to punishment of crime—exactly the contrary—crime is especially repulsive if committed in the name of law. To organized labor, kidnapping is simply kidnapping whether taken part in by individuals or by governors officially. In fact, when the offender is clothed with official authority he becomes not only infamous but monstrous and inexcusable.
The beginning of the fight seemed a mere skirmish but soon developed into an irrepressible conflict between capital and labor. When the crimes recorded in the pages of the first edition failed to exterminate the miner's organization another was planned; the scene of it was laid and the conditions of its commission so arranged that when its actual execution had taken place, the world, following the accusing finger of the Mine Owner's Association, would at once fasten its gaze upon the officers of the Western Federation of Miners.
Backed by millions of dollars and the assistance of hundreds of agents, the mine owners stealthily enlisted the support of many other corporations in the concoction and execution of its final conspiracy.
This organization, through its power, political and financial, managed to reach the President of the United States. There is no question in the writer's mind as to the truth of thefact that the plutocracy and the government of two states at least, and the National government, (at the behest of the two,) were leagued together to effect the judicial murder of the three men. Plutocracy selected the ground and laid out the campaign but the brave Spartans of labor from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the lakes of the North to the Gulf at the South, raised its voice which said in its might to organized greed: "Beware, thou shalt not murder these innocent men!" In the language of the noble Debs: "If Mover and Haywood die 20,000,000 working men will know the reason why."
Twenty years ago brave, courageous men were hanged in Chicago, not because they committed crime, but because they stood with their faces to the foe, true and dauntless, with their hearts beating for the economic freedom of their fellowmen.
Since that judicial murder in Chicago labor has learned some lessons from the book of experience, that have enabled the wage slave class to observe more clearly the infamy of the monstrous system that sacrifices human life to perpetuate the merciless reign of profit.
The general sum total of the kidnapping cases reviewed are about as follows:
The state officials of Idaho, without the slightest hesitation, issued certificates of indebtedness to the amount of more than $50,000. When the legislature met the governor in his message devoted the greatest space to urging that body to not only redeem the certificates but advised that they make an additional appropriation, in order that the prosecution would be enabled to hang their victims to gratify a mine owner's organization and all at the expense of the taxpayers.
The governor in his zeal assured the legislature that with available funds the conviction of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone was certain. Not only was the state looted of its funds but even the legislature was infested by a lobby that railroaded bills into law that gave the prosecution special advantages. The legislature appropriated $104,000 and that amount was practically exhausted at the end of the Haywood trial.
It mattered not that the state of Idaho paid out $40,000 to the blood-hounds of detective agencies to furnish a corroboration of the Orchard frame-up; it mattered not that $147,000 were expended in corpulent fees to attorneys and for booze and debauchery to make life one continuous round of pleasure for professional perjurers; yet the state of Idaho was again fleeced and plundered in the trial of George Pettibone. The prosecution must have known the case would end disastrously for their side of the controversy.
Trials of Colorado's citizens, most hated by the corporations: the secret kidnapping; special train to Idaho; denial of writ of habeas corpus; Supreme Court's decision; Orchard's tale of murder; a complete expose of Pinkertonism; Roosevelt's "undesirable citizen" utterance and the unexpected awakening of the workers—all these things in this particular case are now history in America's most thrilling battle of Capital versus Labor.
The writer does not suppose our children in the public schools will be told any thing of the details—our public schools will go on teaching reverence of "Old Glory," "that all men are equal," that this is the "land of the noble free"—that any poor farmer's son may become President of the United States, etc., etc. But by and by what an awakening!
Governor McDonald of Colorado in 1906, who allowed the kidnapping, and Governor Gooding of Idaho, who provided money for McParland and Orchard, the banks that floated the loans, Senator Borah and all others who gave freely their time and energy have been dealt a crushing blow, for these champions of "law and order" burned all bridges behind them in an attempt to convict.
The acquittal of Pettibone, January 4, and the dismissal of the charges in the Moyer case is a complete vindication of these men, which should compel that champion of the "square deal"— Roosevelt—to hang his head in shame for prostituting his mighty office in an attempt to sway public opinion and cover the retreat of mine owners and land thieves in the Northwest.
The cases aroused international interest and the workers in this country stormed the very White House doors with strange threats because of Roosevelt's statement.
Monster meetings and parades of workers were held everywhere. In Boston alone 40,000 men and women marched twenty abreast, while 100,000 assembled on the city's historic Commons to hear the Chief Executive grilled and flayed in a dozen tongues. The mighty wave of angry protest served its purpose and a change of front was made by those who saw the growing sentiment of class hate.
If the writer should offer a comment as to who of the three kidnapped men suffered the most in the Idaho outrage it would be from a general point of view, Pettibone. Moyer was president of an organization founded upon the principles of liberty—principles that will live through all eternity, even though the organization be disrupted—Haywood in charge of the funds, what more natural than that they should be selected as targets by the enemies of organized labor.
And yet who can judge another's suffering or measure anothers happiness! To the writer, who knows each of the three men personally, there is something indescribably pathetic in the Pettibone case. Passing lightly over the manner of his kidnapping from his home, wife, business, city and state, the slander of the capitalist press, the President's words of "undesirable citizen," we reach the acquittal of Haywood and the release of Moyer on bond. After eighteen months of confinement mitigated, at least, by the presence of his fellow prisoners, he is left alone. He is made to endure another six months imprisonment. All the time aware the case against him cannot be stronger than that which failed to convict his comrade. Notwithstanding his health is failing every day, he is gayety personified. His spirit is at all times heroic and irrepressibly humorous. He wins the heart of every man with whom he comes in contact. During his imprisonment he refused to face the future with anything but the whimsical smile with which the heroes of Les Miserables met death behind the barricade.
Now, when, after two years of unjust imprisonment, he is acquitted by "twelve men true," his release comes to him as an expression of the world's belief in his innocence, he is broken in health by his long confinement. Here lays the tragedy! While unionism never had a more loyal friend, yet he was not even a member of the Western Federation of Miners at the time of his arrest. Years ago, Pettibone served months of imprisonment for the same principle he has served two years in jail in Idaho, later, the organization in recognition of his loyalty and indomitable spirit made him an honorary member. For the benefit of those who hate the word Socialism, the writer adds that Pettibone has never held a membership card in a Socialist local.
This man endured with a smile and a jest all an individual could be made to bear on account of his loyalty to the cause of humanity. Now that his liberty has been restored by a jury of peers, the very shadow of death seems to hover near. What can the world offer a man in return for loss of health? There is a pathos in these facts which no incapacity of the chronicler can obscure. There is a tragedy here nothing can hide!
Now that the legal proceedings are over, so far as this chapter in the class conflict is concerned, who is to compensate the victims who have been made the butt of the tyranny of the ruling class? Is Pettibone to suffer the injustice, false imprisonment, and ruined health of the past years without compensation? Is it possible that in the land of so many bitter and historical struggles for liberty and right—-in the land which owes its existence as a nation to the fact of its struggles for liberty? and the proud—perhaps arrogant—position it holds amongst the socalled free and independent nations of the world, because of its demand for liberty—is it, can it be possible, that in this land whose very foundations, walls and roots are constructed out of the sacrifices made by our ancestors for that little of freedom which is left—that such things can be done?
As the last pages of this work is being completed, the very shadow of death hovers over the martyr in the case—George Pettibone. For awhile it was hoped he would recover. But Sunday, March 15, a telegram was received at Federation headquarters from San Diego, California, where he is confined in a hospital, announced that he was very low and not expected to recover. The telegram requested the presence of President Moyer at the bedside of his devoted friend and Moyer left at once for San Diego.
Some day, the unthinking man animal will shake himself from his long sleep and realize that his freedom is a farce, that his power is equally so and that he is but a strong man bound and when this time dawns he will shake off his fetters.
This brief history of the Idaho cases is not written for the purpose of eulogizing individuals. The acquittal of Haywood and Pettibbne and the dismissal of the Moyer case has a greater significance than any consideration of individuals can impart to the drama. The verdicts of the Idaho jury mark a phase of the conflict between the employing and the working class. It is the dawn of consciousness. Henceforth he will make history as well as dividends, each page luminous with a people's hope. The Idaho cases, like the strike at Cripple Creek, Telluride and Goldfield, Nevada, are a series of connected incidents in the class struggle.
The Mine Owner's Association, in this case, represented the employing class and was a clear forecast of the conduct of that class in many incidents that will write the history of the future. The acts of the employing class in any of the conflicts recorded are conspicuous for nothing but their brutality and cunning. Capital in its fight against organized labor has depended upon money, fraud, the abuse of great power, the perjuries of convicted and unconvicted criminals, the destruction of legal safeguards to the individual, and recourse to the prejudices of men whose material interests had been menaced by the organization they attempted to disrupt.
In the Idaho cases, labor won its first great victory in a court room, won it through the aroused intelligence of the working class. The mine owner's gold weighed naught in the scales against simple truth. The plain straight-forward evidence of working men and women secured an acquittal from the jury and what is of vastly more importance, vindication at the bar of history. Ten years ago it is highly probable, the men would have been hung. We shall furnish no more martyrs. When capitalism makes the mistake of selecting a man for that role, we shall send him to the State house instead of to the scaffold. For humanity sweeps onward.
Capitalism's faith in gold is shaken, broken—labors' faith in man supreme. We need naught but light, they fear but that. By that we conquer. All the forces of the universe are behind the workers.
Had those men been hung through perjured testimony, no man prominent in labor circles could have felt secure. The course followed in this case would have been followed in scores of others. The Pinkertons could have vied with the Supreme Court for the favor of capitalists, but now they are thoroughly discredited.
There are so many salient phases of the case—so many that should not be passed lightly—one other should be mentioned in particular, briefly—the establishing of precedents.
The class in power have set precedents and examples that may some day be followed by the brain and brawn of this nation. Suppose, by way of illustration, the workers were as vindictive as the capitalist class have proven themselves to be. What would happen when the working class gain control of the machinery? They will have these precedents before them for their guidance. If they should follow the examples set by the class now in control what would prevent the proletarian government from kidnapping Justice Harlan, Rockefeller, Morgan, Harriman, or some of the lesser lights, the Rev. Buchtel, Gooding or U. S. Senator Borah, taking them on a "Kidnapper's Special," to some place where the workers control the powers of government, placing the accused on trial before a proletarian jury from which every capitalist had been carefully excluded?
Do you realize if the workers should do this at some future time, they would not establish a precedent but merely follow one recently established by the Supreme Court of the United States? The reader thinks that would be wrong—we agree with you that the workers are lovers of liberty and would be more just than the corporations have been. But the Supreme Court says this method of procedure is legal. If legal for mine owners, it must be alike lawful for the miners. So it will be seen at once a dangerous precedent has been established.
Cannot the ruling class learn something from history? Are they too dense to learn even from the book of experience? Do they imagine they will always be in control because they hold the reins today? The slave-holders had control as did their prototypes of the French Revolution. But a day of awful reckoning came when wrongs were wiped out in an ocean of blood!
The conflict between capital and labor does not cease with the vindication of the men kidnapped from Colorado any more than their liberty rights the wrongs endured by them. Every device that can be concocted by the retainers of capital will be used without scruple or mercy against those who dare to do aught to incite slaves of capital to tug at their chains. Before wage-slaves are free the list of Labor's martyrs will be a lengthy one. We must keep this tragic fact ever before us, remembering the words of a great statesman: '' Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
Even now, as the writer pens the closing words of this record, the country is in the throes of a financial crisis. Thousands of people who are willing to work have been thrown out of employment, leaving them penniless with families dependent upon them for food and clothing. It is practically impossible to convince a man the country is overflowing with prosperity when his loved ones are facing starvation, while he begs for the most menial labor at any wage in order to provide for his destitute family. Yet we read in the capitalist daily papers of multi-millionaires whose ambition (as expressed through the press) it is to dispose of their wealth "in order to die poor." It seems this would be easy to arrange if they were consistent. Alas, the best they offer is a Public Library, where human beings, who have created their wealth, are perishing for bread. Books are a boon —education a necessity, but when the pangs of hunger are unsatisfied they are scarcely appreciated. If Carnegie is consistent in his expressed desire to die poor it could be accomplished by ordering the great accumulation of wealth divided among the poor slaves who produced it at Homestead.
In support of the statement that the conflict goes on and that in every case the workers' rights to life and liberty are denied by the ruling class we mention two mining sections of the country several thousand miles between, that have attracted unusual attention recently. One in the coal fields of Virginia, almost unorganized. The other in the metal mining section of Nevada, thoroughly organized. The greed for profits has cost 23,000 lives in seventeen years in coal mines alone. In Virginia in one mine five hundred men were killed because the company found it cheaper to murder than to properly timber and ventilate their coal mine. .A lesson of criminal profit may be found in this. From this same mine was taken the corpse of a boy of eleven years, a mere child. The press reports chronicled in a pathetic way that other little trapper boys were hidden in the catacombs, that they had never known the joys of tops or marbles—had never been children. That the little fellow first taken out, with his little face charred and begrimed, was a weakling and in life could hardly have lifted a bushel of coal. What pathos in those words—what tragedy!
Pages could be written, yea, volumes, recording just such incidents—this is only one individual sacrificed—thousands of children have been murdered by greed for gold—profits. Not necessarily in coal mines—in thousands of ways, in the factories, department stores, the cotton mills of the South, cellars, garrets, the cities of the United States are filled with sweatshops where little lives are crushed out by over work, lack of food, proper clothing, air and sunshine and all to gratify that monster capitalism.
In the other section, Goldfield, Nevada, the miners refused to dig the gold and be paid in worthless paper which the mine owners would not guarantee. In defense of their position the operators said they could not get the money. At the same time they advertise a production of from $300,000 to $400,000 of gold per week. It is significant that just before the announcement of the payment of wages in scrip, the Consolidated Mining company announced it had enough money on hand to pay dividends for a year but nothing for the men who brought out the gold that created the dividends. The miners offered to wait until the operators were in a position to pay in cash or to let the ore stand as a guarantee for their wages but the proposition was refused. Troops were asked for by the governor of the state and Roosevelt rushed nine companies there. Immediately wages were reduced a dollar a day and the mines resumed with all nonunion labor it was possible to secure. So the scheme of the mine owners was plain to the most dense.
The press reports have not mentioned troops being sent to Virginia to punish the operators for the disaster in the Monongah mine and it was only one of many disasters that have occurred on account of criminal neglect. Almost every day the daily papers report some horrible mine disaster and in almost every instance the cause is neglect in timbering and ventilation. Laws exist on the statute books regulating timbering and ventilation, they cost money, men are cheap. The ruling class never enforces the law against itself. Strange as it may appear to the casual observer of this state of affairs, we never read of the operators being punished. By the foregoing illustrations alone it will be seen that while the curtain has fallen on the Idaho cases, the same lessons go on, being repeated in different forms but Abraham Lincoln said:
"There are two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and they will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit which says: 'You work and toil and earn bread and I'll eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from a class of men as an apology for enslaving another class, it is the same tyrannical principle.''
Under the operation of the capitalist system, recent calculations show that fifty-one multi-millionaires in the United States have amassed total fortunes of $3,295,000,000. Of this fifty-one, John D. Rockefeller, the oil king, leads with $600,000,000. Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate of library fame, follows with half this amount. The secretary of commerce recently made a report showing the population to be 89,000,000. If we analyze the wealth of this total citizenship as given in his report we will find these fifty-one multi-millionaires control one-thirty-fifth of the wealth of the entire nation!
What an alarming concentration of wealth! What an alarming concentration of power! The class in control have gone insane in their frenzied efforts for the dollar. Men seem willing to sell their souls for one bright smile from the god of mammon. Money is king; money is their God; without wealth the doors of opportunity are closed; the doors of society are shut; the doors of the church do not welcome the unfortunate in rags and tatters. How will it all end? How shall this deplorable condition be changed?
The workers were united in demanding justice for their comrades, in the kidnapping case and thus saved them from martyrdom. United at the ballot box they could forever wipe out wage-slavery which makes possible conditions such as portrayed in the foregoing pages, and usher in a form of government which will in the truest sense of the word be a government by the people and for the people where no man could be master and no man slave.
The brief history related in these pages is truly Labor's Greatest Conflict under the yoke of capitalism.
"There Is a moving of men like the sea in its might,
The grand and resistless uprising of labor;
The banner it carries is justice and right,
It aims not the musket, it draws not the sabre.But the sound of its tread, o'er the graves of the dead
Shall startle the world and fill despots with dread;
For 'tis sworn that the land of the Fathers shall be
The home of the brave, and the land of the free."