Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.
-Mother Jones
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Tuesday November 17, 1914
Denver, Colorado - Labor Vote Defeats Governor Ammons in Colorado
From Sunday's Tulsa Daily World of Oklahoma:
LABOR VOTE CARRIED COLORADO ELECTION
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MINERS GAVE SUPPORT TO CANDIDATES
WHO HAD.
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MANY VOTES SCRATCHED
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Democratic Senator, Republican Governor
and Woman Superintendent of Schools.
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DENVER, Colo., Nov. 14.-Voters of Colorado sustained President Wilson in his efforts to settle the coal strike when they returned three Democrats to congress and re-elected their Democratic senator last Tuesday.
E M Ammons, Democratic Governor of Colorado
who presided over the military despotism
which resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of April 20, 1914.
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The striking feature of the election was that these same voters repudiated the Ammons Democratic administration which permitted the Ludlow massacre and other strike disorders resulting in the murder and cremation of thirty-four men, women and children. With the exception of two offices every Democratic candidate was defeated.
John D. Rockefeller spent $100,000 to make the state go dry, it is said, and Senator Patterson claimed in a public speech that he also handed the Denver Post $600,000 to support his candidate for governor. This with the odium attached to the Ammons administration was too much for the Democratic state candidates to carry.
Labor won a splendid victory when they elected District Judge Teller to the supreme court bench, thus defeating Judge Campbell who has been notoriously opposed to organized and unorganized labor.
Labor centered most of its support on Mary C. C. Bradford, superintendent of public schools and re-elected her by a handsome majority.
The faith of the people of Colorado in the president is well shown by the vote for United States senator. While the disgust of Colorado citizens with anarchistic rule of the Ammons Democratic administration led them to elect a Republican governor by a vote of 121,061 to 87,533, the voters returned the present democratic United States senator, Charles S. Thomas, by a vote of 94,834 to 90,173.
Congressman Edward Keating, who has put up such a splendid fight in congress for the striking miners, was re-elected by a good majority, while Congressman George Mindel, the only Colorado representative to oppose the workers, received but 5,000 votes for the United States senate as against the 94,000 vote of Thomas.
Keating's majority in spite of a Republican landslide, is a splendid tribute-a handsome reward for faithful service to his constituents.
The corporation steal of county offices in the strike district was even more corrupt than in former years. Heretofore the coal companies were content with voting their pay roll. This year it is claimed that they voted 356 more men than were on their pay roll. With an honest election the labor ticket would have been elected by a majority of at least three hundred.
[photographs added]
Meanwhile the persecution of Colorado's striking miners continues, as shown by the following illustration by K. R. Chamberlain from The Masses:
Colorado Mine Owner: "We only got fourteen of them.
Better go ahead and indict a couple of hundred more for murder."
The Las Animas county grand jury, after investigating the Colorado strike disorders, has indicted two hundred members of the miners union for murder. Chief among the "strike disorders" they investigated, is the Ludlow Massacre, in which fourteen of the miners' women and children were murdered in cold blood by mine-guards and militiamen. No mine-guards or militiamen have been indicted. The situation is capable of just one interpretation, and that is the one presented in this picture.
Drawn by K. R. Chamberlain
The Masses, November 1914
Detail from Chamberlain's drawing:
From yesterday's Cincinnati Enquirer:
FEDERAL COMMISSION
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To Investigate, December 1,
Causes of Colorado Miners' Strike.
Frank P Walsh
Chicago, November 15.-The causes of the Colorado Coal miners' strike will be sought by the United States Commission on Industrial Relations in a series of hearings to be begun in Denver December 1, according to announcement here to-day by Frank P. Walsh, Chairman of the commission.
The commission will make no effort to bring about a settlement of the strike, but will limit itself to studying the conflict in its relation to the general problem of industrial unrest. Operators, union officials, public officials, citizens and officers of the militia will be called to testify.
The commission will undertake an interpretation of the facts in order to formulate recommendations to Congress.
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[photograph added]
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WE NEVER FORGET
SOURCES
The Morning Tulsa Daily World
(Tulsa, Oklahoma)
-Nov 15, 1914
http://www.newspapers.com/...
The Cincinnati Enquirer
(Cincinnati, Ohio)
-Nov 16, 1914
http://www.newspapers.com/...
See also:
Industrial relations: final report and testimony
United States. Commission on Industrial Relations
D.C. Gov. Print. Office, 1916:
Vol. 7: search with "6345," continues to p.6990
http://books.google.com/...
Vol. 8: search with "6991," continues to p.7425
& search with "7763," continues to p.8013
http://books.google.com/...
Vol. 9: search with "8017," continues to p.8480
http://books.google.com/...
IMAGES
Elias M Ammons
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Governor Ammons, Spineless Tool of Coal Operators
https://archive.org/...
Colorado Mine Owner Instructs Judge
http://dlib.nyu.edu/...
Frank P Walsh (search link with name)
http://books.google.com/...
Names of Martyrs from Ludlow Monument
http://www.tripadvisor.com/...
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They'll Never Keep Us Down-Hazel Dickens
Well we've been shot and we've been jailed, Lord, it’s a sin
Women and little children stood right by the men
But we got that union contract that keeps the worker free
And they’ll never shoot that union out of me
They’ll never shoot that union out of me, oh no
They’ll never shoot that union out of me
Got a contract in our hand signed by the blood of honest men
And they'll never shoot that union out of me
-Hazel Dickens
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