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Saturday October 17, 1914
From the Appeal to Reason: Company Gunmen Once Again Parade Streets of Trinidad
correspondent John Murray describes company gunmen once again seen on the streets of Trinidad with their guns on full display:
John D. Arms Colorado Scabs
BY JOHN MURRAY.
Staff Correspondent Appeal to Reason.
Trinidad, Colo.-The weekly distribution of "relief" made to the members of the united Mine Workers of America in the strike zone is three dollars for the man, one dollar for the wife and fifty cents for each child.
Now a big boy will eat as much as his father and, if there are four or five children in the family, think how the miner's wife must wrack her brains to cook meals out of cheap provisions that will at least fill stomachs if it does not nourish bodies!
All the moving picture shows in Trinidad are crowded on nights following payday for here a worn woman can forget more trouble for five cents than the pennies would bring relief if expended in any other fashion.
To forget hunger, to forget patches, to forget bare little feet for which there are no shoes, to stop thinking of gunmen, arrests and foul jails filled to bursting, to escape in imagination from all these daily devilments of Rockefeller a crowd of people came together in the Crystal theater last Tuesday night and sat in the dark watching the passing story of Sinbad the sailor.
A Shot Is Heard.
Suddenly the dark interior was shot across with a tongue of flame and a woman in the middle of the audience screamed with pain.
It was a revolver shot-everyone in this gunridden community knew the sound-and back to earth came the wits of the audience, tensed to what might follow.
The lights were flashed on just in time to show the sneaking figure of a deputy sheriff making for the door. Men grabbed him and took away his gun. Others shouted his name, "Earl Tucker!" the girl into whose foot the lead had cut its way disclaimed any acquaintance with the man and the gunmen was reluctantly released on the plea that the revolver had dropped accidentally.
Striking miners and their families, once again living under threats of company gunmen
in the strike zone of Southern Colorado.
Anywhere else than in Trinidad this would be a small happening, but here it means added proof to the string of testimony showing that the coal operators are again arming their men for bloody work.
A week ago fifteen cases of Springfield rifles were taken from the Colorado & Southern Railroad Company's station at Trinidad and carted, at night to the armory. On the day following W. H. Reno, chief of the mine guards of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, arrived in town accompanied by Major H. M. Randolph and Colonel George A. Lee of the state militia.
Since the one carload of guns marked "machinery" has been shunted up the siding towards the Berwin mine near Ludlow, and two other carloads are waiting telegraphic orders just across the line in New Mexico.
Not all the money of John D. Rockefeller can keep secret his goings and coming in a community where railroad men dwell in fraternity with striking miners.
"This time we will make a killing" is the open boast of drunken company gunmen heard lately in both Las Animas and Huerfano counties, and to make their "killing" sure the coal operators must provide more guns and men than they had on the firing line at the time when the United States troops came to their rescue.
An Organized Army.
When the armed strikers were about to wipe from the face of the earth the thugs that had made the Ludlow massacre, the coal companies acknowledged that they had in operation-as appears in the records of the congressional committee investigating the conditions in the coal mines of Colorado-ten machine guns, ten rapid-fire guns that could send out a stream of bullets at the rate of five hundred a minute. Under the command of their "king" of Huerfano county, Sheriff Jeff Farr, were enrolled over seven hundred deputies. Under a like ruling sovereign in Las Animas county, Sheriff Grisham, there are recorded as being five hundred and fifty deputy sheriffs. This makes a force of over twelve hundred men, not counting the militia under General Chase.
But this force was found by the coal operators to be entirely insufficient to do the work and so it is plain, upon its face, that the preparations in progress today are upon a much larger scale.
Nothing less than a small army is now mobilizing under Rockefeller's captains in the coal fields.
Startling as all this may seem it is even more astounding to be confronted with the fact that at this very time the United States troops are here in the strike zone under instructions from President Wilson to declare marital law and disarm all persons within this territory.
Coroner Decides Quickly.
Hardly a day passes in which the daily press of Trinidad does not record the flourishing of guns by company gunmen and scabs coming into the mines. Sometimes a scab gets drunk and makes his gunplay; at other times the shooting irons are discovered in unusually heavy valises carried by strangers at the railroad stations A short time ago the wife of a scab at Valdez was found lifeless in her room with a bullet hole in her left breast and the empty shell of a 30-30 cartridge by her side. Coroner Sipe said he did not think it necessary to look up the gun-"It was a plain case of suicide," said this coroner who is the head of the Trinidad Undertaking Company in which two coal company officials recently owned shares.
Last Saturday night six company gunmen, headed by Superintendent Nichols of the Forbes mine, paraded the streets of Trinidad with revolvers strapped to their waists. Wilson's troopers took no notice of them.
To Arm All Scabs.
Citizens of Trinidad are practically unanimous in their conclusions, based on all the facts, that the plan of the coal companies is to arm every scab in the mines-and that means an army of nearly four thousand men.
Four thousand scabs have gathered in the coal mines of Las Animas and Huerfano counties since the United States soldiers were sent here by President Woodrow Wilson.
This is the "protection" given to Colorado by the president of the United States.
His policy of "watchful waiting" in Colorado consists in patiently waiting until the strikers have eaten their last pound of flour and bacon and the scabs have taken their places in the mines.
[photograph added]
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