Don't let the ministers bother you, we know the Lord Jesus Christ as well as they do.
They don't let us go into their church conferences and they have no right to come into ours.
-Mother Jones
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Wednesday April 14, 1915
From the International Socialist Review: "The Reward of the Miners"
From this month's edition of the Review we offer an article which gives us a first hand account of conditions as they exist in the former strike zone of Colorado. Strike benefits ended this past February, yet many of the coal miners have not been able to return to work. Mary R. Alspaugh of Oak Creek, Routt County, Colorado, is the author who tells the story of the wretched condition of the former strikers and their families.
TODAY the United Mine Workers of Colorado are starving in the golden West—in the "land of opportunity." There is no bread to give the children. We have not even prison fare—not so much as bread and water. We have only water.
It is cold. The snow in my door-yard is hip-deep. We go about on skis. Last Saturday the last shred of strike relief was cut off; and only scabs and Christians are able to get work at the mines. We were left without one day's food ahead of us.
O, you United Mine Workers of America, who go into towns and call strikes and break up Socialist Locals! Is this the best you can do for your comrades who, for more than fourteen months, faced hot lead and cold steel—who kept their children out all night in winter storms and in holes in the ground—who had their tents burned over their heads and their children cremated before their eyes in the interest of a common cause—your cause as well as ours! Is this really the best you can do by us or have you just naturally lost interest in us now that we are no longer necessary to carry on a strike? Is starvation for our children the reward you offer us for having fought a good fight? Or has your whole fund gone to pay officers' salaries?
We are curious about this, and we feel peeved. We should like to know just how our organization regards us. And we more or less respectfully make the suggestion that when a labor union is no longer able to take care of its strike victims until they can get their bearings, it might be advisable to cast about a bit in search of more progressive, up-to-date and effectual methods of gaining our point than those now employed.
Truly, we are ''The rear guard of a forlorn hope." We fight always a losing fight. We employ seventeenth century methods. When have we won a strike in recent years?
The United Mine Workers of America is afflicted with the creeping paralysis and another year will see it relegated to oblivion. There are many United Mine Workers in Colorado who will hesitate a long time before repeating the experience of 1913-1914, with only starvation awaiting them at the finish. Craft unionism has just about lost its lure for the majority of us, and one hears much talk of industrial unionism these days.
Notice the demoralized condition of the Socialist movement and the Socialist vote in every district where the craft unions have conducted a strike. The Socialist Press and the Socialist purse have ever been open to the strikers' cause since I have known of the organization. The union and the Socialists have fought as one man for the cause of labor, and always where the Socialists chanced to be in power they gave the strikers their undivided support. The Socialists are the only friends that labor has, and yet when election time has come the strikers have joined forces with the business element, the church people and the scabs—all of whom had literally stood over them day and night with drawn guns—and fought the Socialists with all the fury of beasts.
(Article continued below the fold.)
(Continued from above.)
I am writing from Oak Creek; Routt County. Four miles east of this town, on the railroad, there is a little settlement called Phippsburg. It is the property of one of the coal companies operating here and persons employed at the mine live at Phippsburg. During the recent strike this town was, of course, occupied exclusively by scabs. Last fall's election returns showed that there were more Socialist votes cast in Phippsburg than in Oak Creek, although it is a smaller town and has fewer inhabitants.
We fight the boss industrially and support him politically. What operator could ask more of union people! Who ever heard of the boss voting the workers' ticket! What influence is brought to bear upon union people to cause them to act in this manner? There is a cunning and a craftiness at the bottom of it all so fine and so finished that it compels admiration. And the pity of it all is that our people stubbornly refuse to see it or to use their own heads, but seem to have a vague idea that some time, some how, some one is going to do something for them.
In this connection one cannot refrain from thinking of Father Peter Dietz and the Catholic Church working through the A. F. of L. Of course if the A. F. of L. is controlled by an agency that is bitterly opposed to all forms of industrial and political progress we can hardly expect results to be other than they are. Personally, I have never been able to understand why a priest of any church should be allowed to sit in a labor hall. It is absurd. Verily our heads are "solid ivory" and twenty-five years from now people will be digging them up and using them for billiard balls and saying what a useful race of people inhabited this world in the dark ages.
And, in the mean time, please remember that we are starving. When I was a child I was taught that "whatever is, is right." So perhaps after all it is right that we should starve, for it means that John D. will have more to give for charity, and charity, you know, covereth a multitude of sins. The ship that carried the Rockefeller gifts of food to the stricken Belgians was wrongly named. It should have been called "The Ludlow," in commemoration of a deed that enabled John D. to give vast sums of money to charity.
If the Socialist movement harbored a man like John D. Rockefeller it would be the scorn of honest men and women everywhere, and it ought to be. Better that we should bury our children tomorrow than have them sit in Sunday-school and take council of the human hyenas acting as teachers there. But to a powerful strike-breaking agency John D. is a fitting ornament, and perhaps we should not criticise the organization for its acquisition. Rather we should feel flattered that he would scorn to become a member of our movement.
During the strike no one who valued their good name would attend church for fear of being considered a scab. The gun men were dubbed "Boy Scouts," and the Chamber of Commerce, "The Thugs' Alliance.'' Last spring one of the churches here celebrated Lincoln's birthday. This was regarded as a huge joke, and some one said, "Would not Lincoln turn over in his grave if he knew the scabs were celebrating his birthday?"
Yet despite all this, when it came time to nominate a town ticket the union people united with the Christians and business people to elect the bosses' ticket. They called it (unofficially) a United Mine Workers' ticket. Of the five candidates on the ticket three were business people, two were United Mine Workers. It would have gone through smooth as clock-work but for the fact that a mere handful of loyal Socialists, who were union people as well, had raised a horrible roar about it, and that one of the "United Mine Workers" was employed as a strike breaker before he was sworn into office. I think this was a little disconcerting to some of the union people who had called the Socialists scabs for opposing the ticket, but the enemies of humanity were equal to the occasion and played their trump card with a skill that I have never seen equaled anywhere. To the union people they said:
Now all this is the fault of the Socialists. If the pesky Socialists had not been so all-fired contrary and so set in their ways it never would have happened. If they had been just a little bit reasonable we'd have had a Socialist ticket with one or two popular non-Socialists on it and everything would have been lovely. You can only thank them for this result.
And the rank and file took it up with parrot-like intonation and sent it down the line with the speed of chain lighting:
The Socialists; they did it.
The streets were hardly wide enough for Socialists and union people to walk in at the same time. Somewhere there was a mailed fist pulling wires with a dexterity and skill that comes only of long practice. And when the fist moved, our people danced.
In all this disgraceful piece of political cunning there was no more prominent nor active figure than the school principal, formerly a minister, who occasionally conducted funeral services. I believe conditions here are typical of conditions in the labor movement all over the country and it behooves us to wake up and use what little gray matter we possess.
[Paragraph breaks and photographs added.]
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SOURCE
The International Socialist Review, Volume 15
ed by Algie Martin Simons, Charles H. Kerr
C.H. Kerr, July 1914 - June 1915
http://books.google.com/...
"The Reward of the Miners" by Mary R. Alspaugh
(Also source for title image.)
http://books.google.com/...
IMAGES
Peter E Dietz
http://www.newspapers.com/...
Socialist Party of America Button
http://www.marxists.org/...
See also:
"Hellraisers Journal: New York Times Reports Miners of Colorado
Are Destitute & JDR Jr Will Aid Them" by JayRaye
(Last pay disbursement of strike benefits was February 20th.)
http://www.dailykos.com/...
"Hellraisers Journal: Rev. Dietz, editor of "Michigan Catholic,"
on Arrogance of the Copper Barons" by JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Divided Loyalties: The Public and Private Life
of Labor Leader John Mitchell
-by Craig Phelan
SUNY Press, 1994
https://books.google.com/...
For more on Peter Dietz, the Militia of Christ,
and John Mitchell:
https://books.google.com/...
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Coal Tattoo - Hazel Dickens
I stood for the union and walked in the line. I fought against the company.
I stood for the U. M. W. of A. Now, who's gonna stand for me?
‘Cause I got no house and I got no pay. Just got a worrying soul
And a blue tattoo on the side of my head
Left by the number nine coal. Left by the number nine coal.
-Billy Edd Wheeler
(pdf)http://www.wvmusichalloffame.com/...
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