You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Friday October 23, 1903
Trinidad, Colorado - U. M. W. Organizer, Duncan MacDonald followed by gunthugs.
Duncan MacDonald, organizer for the United Mine Workers of America, reports that armed gunthugs hired by the coal operators have followed him wherever he goes in Las Animas and Huerfano Counties. Company spys point out any miner seen greeting him with a friendly handshake, and that miner is summarily fired. The coal operators are paying for the hiring of new deputies in both counties and supplying them with a large arsenals of weapons.
Newspapers across the nation predict that the twenty-thousand coal miners of District 15 will soon be on strike. This reporting from the Springfield Missouri Republican serves as an example:
Trinidad, Col. Oct. 22.-Any efforts by the United Mine Workers of America to induce the coal mine operators of the district union, No. 15, embracing Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, to confer with their miners for the purpose of establishing an 8 hour day, increasing wages and to make a more ample provision for the protection of life and health, have been abandoned and a strike may be called within a week.
SOURCES
Mother Jones
The Most Dangerous Woman in America
-by Elliott J Gorn
NY, 2001
Springfield Missouri Republican
-of Oct 23, 1903
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Thursday October 23, 1913
Dawson, New Mexico - Mine Disaster Leaves Nearly 300 Miners Entombed, Hope Fading
These are the latest bulletins from
The Anaconda Standard:
Dawson, N. M., Oct.23-Fourteen bodies have been recovered and seven men have been found alive by rescuers early this morning working in shaft No. 2 of the Stag Canyon coal mine, where an explosion occurred yesterday afternoon, entombing the day shift, variously given as numbering 230 to 280 men.
Trinidad, Col., Oct. 22-A special rescue train carrying scores of experienced miners equipped with rescue apparatus left here at 6 o'clock tonight for Dawson, 125 miles from here.
Raton, N. M., Oct. 22-About 100 feet of progress has been made by the rescuers at mine No. of the Stag Canyon Fuel company at Dawson, N. M., in their fight against the debris which has choked the mine entrance. A few mangled bodies have been recovered, and it is believed that the blockades exist for hundreds of feet further into the mine.
Little hope is entertained here for the rescue of the entombed men...
Appeals for aid started scores of experienced miners from Trinidad and the surrounding coal camps, shortly after 6 o'clock, and they were expected to reach Dawson before midnight.
Dawson, N. M., Oct 22-...The rescuers believe they will be able to reach the interior by tomorrow night at the latest. They think no exits exist at present from the mine. So far all rescuing parties have had to enter the mine equipped with oxygen tanks
Women Gather
In the relief camps situated near the entrance to mine No. 2, are gathering the women and children of the entombed miners. Women of the town are in the camp comforting and cheering the wives and children of the miners, whose fate still is a matter of conjecture.
Among those on the train which left Trinidad last night to join the rescue effort in Dawson was Louie Tikas, leader of the Ludlow Tent Colony. Ed Doyle, Secretary of District 15, and Ed Wallace, editor of the United Mine Workers Journal, are also in Dawson at this time; they arrived with a thousand dollars in relief for the women and children. The young photographer, Lou Dold, was also reported to have arrived on the train from Trinidad.
SOURCES
The Anaconda (MT) Standard
-of October 23, 1913
Buried Unsung
Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre
-by Zeese Papanikolas
U of Utah Press, 1982
Photo: Remembering 100 years later:
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/...
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Wednesday October 23, 2013
Remembering the Dawson Mine Disaster 100 years later:
100 years later, site of mining disaster a ghost town
-By Tina Jensen
...No one who lived in Dawson in 1913 is alive today, but 82-year-old Ed Zavala, the son of a Dawson miner, knows the story well.
"They said they heard it down here and they knew something happened because it rumbled the earth like an earthquake and the loud bang - so they all started going up there," said Zavala, who was born and raised in the town.
A second disaster happened a decade later - where more than 100 miners died.
Many of them were sons of miners who died in the first disaster.
"Even after the first explosion, they went in. They said, 'We have to make a living. How else can we survive?'" Zavala remembers. "We have to take care of our families."...
Full story with video here:
http://www.kasa.com/...
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Dream of a Miner's Child-Doc Watson