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The Labor History of the Cripple Creek District;
A Study in Industrial Evolution
by Benjamin McKie Rastall
pages 30-36
The Second Crisis
There followed a period of six weeks of comparative quietness. The eighteen miners against whom warrants had been issued submitted peaceably to arrest. All pleaded not guilty in the district court at Colorado Springs, and all were upon trial acquitted.11
STATE MILITIA ON GUARD AT DISTRICT CC, DURING HABEAS CORPUS TRIALS
The troublesome week in March had advertised the strike widely through the newspapers, and the result was a large influx of a rough element into the district. The most turbulent element from the Cceur de A'lene District came in large numbers, and tramps, and criminals, and roughs of all description flocked in from all directions.12 Many of these men were admitted to the miners' unions. And here is where the union made its great mistake.13 The evident willingness of the union to come to a compromise in the trouble, the peaceful submission of its members to arrest and their acquittal by the courts, and the mass meetings held by President Calderwood, had gained a large degree of sympathy for the men throughout the state. But the overt acts later committed by a few criminal men, and the reign of terror brought on by the rougher element, lost them the prestige which they had earlier gained, and brought upon them the just condemnation of the law-abiding citizens of the state.
It will be remembered, that at the time of the first trouble between Superintendent Locke and the employees of the Isabella, one of the deputies captured with him was a man named Wm. Rabedeau. Mr. Rabedeau was also warned to leave camp, and did so, but returned shortly afterward. He was deprived of his commission as deputy by Sheriff Bowers, but remained as a guard in the employ of some mine owners.
On April 8th the miners' union started out in a body to attend the funeral of a miner who had been killed in an accident. Scattered around everywhere they found "dodgers" calling a meeting at Anaconda for 11 o'clock, the time set for the funeral. The funeral services were short, and the men hurried over to Anaconda, where they found the meeting already called to order, with Rabedeau and another man named Taylor presiding, and Rabedeau making a speech in favor of going to work on the ten-hour schedule. It was evident that the scheme was to have the meeting pass resolutions favoring going to work on the ten-hour schedule, and to report in such a way to the press as to give the impression that the majority of the men were in favor of going to work, but were being intimidated by radical members. The men were greatly infuriated. Rabedeau was taken from the platform and terribly beaten. Later he was subjected to all sorts of indignities, and run out of camp, with the threat that next time he showed his face in the district his life would pay the forfeit.
During the latter part of April, and throughout May, conditions grew steadily worse. The rough element was gradually becoming more prominent, and the men were getting into a more threatening mood. Small bands of men raided throughout the district, stealing provisions and arms and ammunition, getting into drunken rows, and sometimes maltreating nonunion men. Many of the smaller merchants in isolated places closed their stores entirely, and families in the unsettled districts very generally moved into the towns.14 Sheriff Bowers spent his whole time in the district, but hampered by the refusal of the county authorities to furnish sufficient deputies, found it exceedingly difficult to preserve any semblance of order.
Early in May various discussions were held among mine owners relative to making a determined effort to open the mines. It was felt that something must be done soon. No mines had been able to open as yet, and under the present conditions, violent opposition was expected. The movement finally resulted in the quiet circulation of a subscription paper, and the offer by the mine owners to the county to advance arms and money, if a large body of deputies should be enrolled to protect the opening of the mines. The offer was accepted by the county commissioners, and steps were taken to carry out the plan at once.
Word of the plans of the mine owners had early reached the miners and they began to prepare to resist to their utmost. President Calderwood was in Salt Lake City attending a convention of the Western Federation of Miners, and J. J. Johnson15 came to the front as the military leader of the union. Mr. Johnson proceeded to get the miners into as complete military organization as possible. Headquarters and a military camp were established on Bull Hill.16 The choice was an unusually fortunate one. Bull Hill is a high steep bluff, overlooking the town of Altman. It overtops several of the most important mines, and is at once the most commanding and most inaccessible point in the district. A large boarding house was established, a commissary department put in operation, systematic search made for arms and ammunition; and as thorough military discipline enforced as was possible under the conditions.
On May 24th, one hundred twenty-five deputies, largely ex-police and ex-firemen, left Denver in command of ex-Chief of Police J. C. Veatch. They were armed to the teeth, and prepared for immediate action. The miners had news of their departure, and prepared to give them a warm reception. There was still an insufficient supply of fire arms, so a raid was made on a Cripple Creek hardware store for rifles and ammunition; the Victor Mine also was held up and a number of Winchesters taken from it. The commissary department got in a number of range cattle. Orders were issued, and everything put in readiness.
The deputies arrived next morning on the Florence and Cripple Creek Railway, and prepared to go into camp in full view of Bull Hill. The miners had prepared to show that they were determined, and to give the deputies an object lesson. As the train pulled into view a party of men hastened down the hill, warned everyone away, and placing large charges of dynamite in the shaft house of the Strong mine blew it to pieces with a tremendous explosion.17
Then pandemonium broke loose. The day before the Florence and Cripple Creek Railway had completed the grading on its line and discharged nearly two hundred laborers, each with a pay check of from ten to twenty dollars. These men all came into camp; pay checks were exchanged for cheap whiskey, and the usual result followed. At such times every man considers every other man his chum and whiskey is free for everybody. Railroad men, miners, toughs, all shared in a terrible debauch, and by the time the Strong mine was blown up hundreds of men were crazed with liquor. A car was loaded up with dynamite, and prepared to run down into the deputies' camp and blow them into atoms. But the deputies had taken warning and retired several miles down the track to a safer place. Then the cry went up to destroy the mines. Men ran for dynamite and fuse, and for a time there was every reason to expect enormous destruction of property. But Mr. Johnson, with the help of his aids, had been working constantly, asserting his authority and endeavoring in every way possible to quiet the men. At last he succeeded by diverting their attention toward attacking the deputies, in getting control of them, and the danger was avoided.18
The energy diverted from the destruction of property expended itself in an attack upon the deputies. The deputies, it will be remembered, had become aware of the danger of their position, and retiring some distance down the track they had gone into camp at Wilbur. Just where they were the miners did not know, but it was determined that wherever they were, an attempt should be made to capture them and get possession of their arms. Arms were still lacking at the miners' camp.
About midnight a Florence and Cripple Creek construction train was captured, quickly filled with men, and with a miner at the throttle, started down the track for the deputies' camp. The deputies, anticipating attack, had pickets out in all directions. Unawares the train ran into the the picket line. A few quick shots brought it to a standstill. The miners poured out among the rocks; the deputies, roused, hurried to the assistance of their pickets, and the fight was on. There was no semblance of order. Every man fought for himself, shielding himself so far as possible behind tree or rock, and firing in the darkness at the flash of the opposing guns. Five miners got separated from the main body and into a swarm of deputies, and were captured. A deputy, the man named Rabedeau who has appeared before in these pages, received a shot in the chest and was killed almost instantly. A miner, George Crowley by name, was accidentally shot from behind by one of his comrades and was found dead in the morning.
A half hour's fighting convinced the miners that they could gain nothing. Skipping from rock to rock, and firing as they went, they began a gradual retreat up the valley. The deputies held their position. Little by little the firing ceased. All was quiet again, and doubling their pickets, the deputies turned in for the remainder of their night's rest.
News of the blowing up of the Strong mine reached Colorado Springs early in the day and caused great excitement. Later the feeling was intensified by the arrival of Mr. Strong himself, who had witnessed the destruction of his property, and ridden all the way to bring the news. A number of men were known to have been in the mine at the time of the explosion, and they were all supposed to have been killed. Business was suspended, and excited groups of men discussed the question along the streets everywhere.
A mass meeting was held in North Park, at which resolutions were passed calling upon the county authorities to put down the insurrection of the miners, and to restore law and order at whatever cost. In the evening a call went out from the sheriff's office asking for volunteer deputies to go to the scene of action, and calling upon all citizens to bring in arms to equip the posse. Over a hundred armed men left the city for the deputy camp next morning, and another hundred on the day following. Men were also being hurried in from Leadville, and Denver, and all the surrounding country. The deputy camp was transferred from Wilbur to Divide, a point farther north on the Colorado Midland Railway, and here all the new recruits came.
Miners heard men talking down in the shaft of the Strong mine, and compelled them to come out. They proved to be Superintendent Sam MacDonald, Engineer Robinson, and Miner Greenough, the men who were known to have been in the mine when it was blown up, and supposed to have been killed. Between hunger, and cold, and smoke from the burning timbers, they had had a terrible and almost fatal experience. They were taken to Bull Hill by the miners, and held as prisoners in retaliation for the capture of the five miners at Wilbur.
Governor "Waite issued a proclamation on the 28th, in which he called upon the miners to desist from their unlawful assembling, to lay down their arms, and cease their resistance of the law. At the same time he declared that the assembling of a large force of deputies by the county authorities, largely from outside the county, was illegal, and demanded that it be disbanded immediately.19 An order was issued calling upon the state militia to be in readiness to move at a moment's notice.
President Calderwood had returned from Salt Lake City on the same day that the Strong mine was blown up. Instantly perceiving the danger of the situation, and the remedy, he set about getting all the saloons of the district closed for a period of two days. He succeeded, and at the end of the time the men had come to their senses again, and some degree of quiet was restored. The union was aroused at last to the necessity of getting entirely out of sympathy with the lawless element that had come in, and a volunteer committee of fifty took in charge the running out of camp of toughs and thugs.
11See District Court Records, Colorado Springs, June—August, 1894. People vs. Calderwood, Dean, Daly et al. Several cases, all of which were dismissed but two, which resulted in acquittals.
12It has been frequently stated that numbers of the famous Molly Maguires, of Pennsylvania, came to the Coeur de A'lene District, and that, the organization being broken up there in 1893, descended upon Cripple Creek. No direct evidence has ever been adduced on this point.
13A number of the more conservative members of the unions left them because of the dangerous element admitted at this time. A noteworthy case is that of E. W. Pfeiffer (see as County Commissioner in the strike of 1903-4). He was later opposed politically by some of the unions for this action.
14From the testimony of a number of small storekeepers, and families occupying outlying cabins, who deserted their homes and stores, sometimes to have them raided in their absence.
15Mr. Johnson was a native of Lexington, Ky., growing up among the fueds [sic] of that state. He. attended West Point for three years, but was dismissed before the completion of his course for participating in a hazing scrape. Drifting west he took up mining at Aspen, and later came to work at Cripple Creek. At the close of the strike he left the state to avoid arrest. On the opening of the Spanish War he was appointed colonel of an Arkansas regiment, but died while on the way to the sea coast with his command. He was a man of unusual ability, and of considerable military genius.
16There was a report, generally believed at the time, that an immense log fort had been built on Bull Hill, and a cannon placed in it. No such fort was built, nor did the miners possess a cannon at any time.
17It has been generally believed In some quarters that the blowing up of the Strong mine was accomplished by Mr. Sam Strong himself, In order to prevent the property from being worked, and in this manner to break the valuable lease, which would revert to himself. This is exactly what did happen, and Messrs. Lennox and Giddings, the lessees of the mine, later brought suit for heavy damages against Mr. Strong on the above charge. The admission by prominent union men that the mine was really destroyed by a party of miners now settles the question beyond doubt, and clears Mr. Strong of all suspicion.
Following is the account given by President Calderwood. See Langdon, Mrs. Emma F., The Cripple Creek Strike, p. 41.
"The following morning a number of men quietly entered the building of the Strong mine and ordered Sam McDonald, Charles Robinson and Jack Vaughn to come out. They declined to do so and retreated down the shaft. Dynamite was then deliberately placed in the boiler inside the shaft house, and with an electric battery, the same was exploded, demolishing the building together with its valuable machinery. Great interest In the fate of Sam McDonald and the two men with him In the shaft of the destroyed Strong mine was felt, but twenty-six hours after the calamity, voices were heard in an old shaft connected with the main shaft of the mine by a drift, and the imprisoned miners were taken out. After getting washed and something to eat, they were taken to what was known as 'Bull Hill stronghold.' Charles Robinson suffered considerably as a result of his terrible experience, but none of the others suffered to any extent. Who was responsible for the destruction of the Strong mine is still a mystery."
18The miners' unions, and the people of the state in general, owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Johnson for his heroic work on that day. Had hundreds of drink-crazed men broken loose with unlimited whiskey and unlimited dynamite, the result had defied description. Scarcely a mine in the district would have been left whole, and one may hardly hazard a guess as to other consequences.
19Governor's Proclamation, May 26, 1894.
cf. also Last Message of Governor Waite to the Legislature.
NEXT: Conservative movement in Colorado Springs — The non-partisan committee — The miners propose terms of peace — Failure of the arbitration committee plan — Exchange of prisoners — The mission of Governor Waite — Miners give governor full power to act — The conference at Colorado College — Attempt to lynch Calderwood — The final conference in Denver — Articles of agreement