You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Sunday April 5, 1914
From The Labor World: Michigan Miners Are Determined to Win Strike
Parade of Michigan Copper Strikers
MICHIGAN COPPER STRIKE LIVE ISSUE
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A prominent Michigan miner, who desires that his name be withheld for the present, visited the [Duluth] office of The Labor World yesterday [Friday], and told us of his visit to the copper country, where the strike for better wages and decent living conditions is is still on.
The Western Federation of Miners is in the fight to win, and that organization is willing to go to the limit of its resources in order that the men in the great copper zone might enjoy their constitutional rights as American citizens.
The militant miners' organization is now making preparations to carry on the warfare against the copper barons in a more vigorous manner than before. With the approaching warm weather, the tactical advantage of the miners who have wives and children to clothe and feed will be greatly enhanced.
Strikebreakers are beginning to leave the copper country in droves. More than two hundred of them left last Sunday, following an explosion in one of the pits. These worthies will throw up their jobs every time they are shown that there is real danger ahead.
The Associated Press seems to be trying its best to give the outside world the impression that the strike is a thing of the past. Reports that the miners are making daily applications for reinstatement, and that the strikers are becoming discouraged, should be taken with a grain of salt. If there is a dearth of strikers in the copper country it is not because these men are going back to their old jobs, but because the coming of summer weather offers them employment in other fields and they are taking advantage of this situation, rather than to go back with the copper companies before the trouble is settled and settled right.
According to our informant, there are still 5,000 miners out on strike. At Hancock last week a monster parade was held by the striking miners in which more than 2,000 of them participate. Another parade was held at Ahmeek last Sunday.
Contrary to the reports sent out by the Associated Press, the Western Federation of Miners is still paying benefits to the strikers and their families, and at present that organization has no intention of withdrawing benefits at all.
The Labor World also commented on a recently released bulletin from the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:
Bulletin 139 of Uncle Sam's bureau of labor statistics is a document with food for thought. It is an encyclopedia of the Michigan copper district strike. In a heavy, official manner it tells an absorbingly interesting story -the story of copper and of humanity gone wrong.
The facts are all there-how a few men got hold of a great natural treasurer, putting in $1,200,000 and taking our $120,000,000; how, to protect this privilege, they subsidized churches and schools, endowed philanthropies, installed costly schemes of welfare work, hired private armies, controlled newspapers, swayed legislatures and courts and tried in every way but the right way to keep their workers contented.
How the workers yearned for better wages, shorter hours, fairer conditions, a say in the ordering of their lives.
How surprised, then indignant, then stubbornly cruel the task-masters became when the workers asserted themselves.
And then how the long tragedy of the combat proceeded with government meekly seeking to mediate but seemingly powerless to step in and by its commanding might establish justice.
The bulletin tells the whole pathetic story, but you have to read most of it between the lines. It is a statistical, documentary, lawyer-like report, packed full of raw facts. You can get a copy by sending to Washington.
We also found this good news for the working of people of the Duluth and Superior area:
EUGENE V. DEBS TO COME TO DULUTH SOON
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The Socialists will bring Eugene V. Debs to Duluth on June 15, the evening before the primaries. Debs' well-known ability as an orator, and his record in the battle for the rights of labor, is a guarantee that the crowd that will gather to hear this peerless orator will be a record-breaker. It is likely that the auditorium will be secured for the occasion.
SOURCE
The Labor World
(Duluth, Minnesota, Superior, Wisconsin)
-of Apr 4, 1914
See also:
Michigan Copper District Strike
(Bulletin 139 of the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
United States. Dept. of Labor, Walter B. Palmer,
John B. Densmore, John A. Moffitt, Royal Meeker
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1914
http://books.google.com/...
Photos:
1). Parade of Michigan Copper Strikers
http://1913strike.wordpress.com/
2). Debs for President 1904
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
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The Workers Song-Dropkick Murphys
And when the sky darkens and the prospect is war
Who's given a gun and then pushed to the fore
And expected to die for the land of our birth
Though we've never owned one lousy handful of earth?