You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Saturday April 3, 1915
Denver, Colorado - Treason Bill Passes House, Penalties of Life Imprisonment or Death
Could strikers soon be found guilty of treason for refusing to obey the orders of thugs such as these?
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From the March 13th edition of
The Leavenworth Times of Kansas:
DEFINE TREASON IN COLORADO.
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Denver, March 12.-The Colorado legislature today passed a bill defining treason against the state and providing penalties of life imprisonment or death. The vote was 34 to 25.
The house thereby disposed of the last of the four bills designed to increase the power of the governor to deal with disorders within the state. One prohibits making or publishing in a newspaper a speech or an article "tending to incite riot" and provides for prosecution in such cases. The second makes it a felony to attack a member of the National Guard and the third makes it a misdemeanor to refuse to obey an order issued by a militia officer. The last three passed the house several days ago. The four measures now go to the senate.
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A Response from the United Mine Workers Journal of April 1, 1915:
Shackling the Workers
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Colorado's Proposed Anti-Treason Bills Betray the Workers.
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(By Adolph Germer.)
Socialist of Illinois
It seems that the name Colorado is synonymous with despotism. At least in labor circles Colorado expresses every form of capitalist infamy.
Although the strike has been called off, the "Law and Order" element is ever active, adding insult to injury.
Now comes Alphonse P. Ardourel and introduces four bills in the Colorado Legislature that, if enacted into law and carried into effect, will further fasten the clutches of corporate greed upon the throat of labor.
According to the inference of the bills, the corporation-owned Governor did not have power enough in his raids upon the homes of the striking miners. His power must be increased; it must surpass that of the Czar of Russia. And the Ardourel bills are to accomplish that.
One of the bills makes it an offense for anyone interested in, or friendly to the cause of labor to tell or print the truth about the heartless demons who have in the past or who will in the future dagger to death the most sacred principles upon which we are taught this government was founded.
Under the operation of this bill it would be a criminal offense to arouse the people to revolt against the Government by murder as administered by "Agitating"-General John C. Chase and Jeff Farr, who has been the undisputed king of Huerfano county for the last twenty years. Neither is one permitted to tell that Jesse Northcutt, the C. F. & I. attorney, is the lawless highbinder who, as much as any one on the side of the coal barons, is responsible for the many crimes that were committed in the name of "law and order" during the recent strike.
State Representative
Alphonce Pierre Ardourel
from Boulder, County,
Democrat of Colorado
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But Alphonse does not stop here. He goes one better and introduces another bill making it a criminal offense for anyone to "attack" a gunman in military uniform "when on duty." Anyone who is at all familiar with the way laws are juggled and twisted in Colorado will know that anything workingmen do in the way of defense will be regarded and declared as an "attack" and the Ardourel laws will apply.
Alphonse supplements these bills with another, making it a criminal offense for anyone to resist the aggressions of uniformed murderers of the Ludlow variety. While Alphonse Ardourel will deny it, there is no question but that these bills are the pet measures of the mine owners and their cohorts.
It would be far more honorable for this servant of Rockefellerism to introduce a bill setting forth in clear terms that the doctrine of self-defense is wiped out when striking workers are attacked by the hired assassins of unscrupulous mine owners. Persons resorting to such sneaking, stealthy methods of depriving the common people of their most fundamental right merit the scorn and contempt of those who place man above the dollar. After they have done the bidding of their masters and they are no longer useful to plundering corporations, they will be cast aside and forgotten as were the notorious Peabody and Bell.
Even the bills heretofore enumerated do not satisfy this "apostle of peace." He caps the climax with another that adds no dignity to his statesmanship. In order that there may be no misunderstanding, I here with quote the bill in full. One thing we must give him credit for; he doesn't mince words. It reads:
House. Bill No. 203. By A. P. Ardourel.
A Bill for an Act to Define the Crime
of Treason and to Provide
a Penalty Therefor.
Be it Enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Colorado:
Section 1. That treason shall consist of levying war against the State or in adhering to its enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
Sec. 2. Any person convicted of treason shall be sentenced to death.
Sec. 3. The General Assembly hereby declares that this act is necessary for the immediate preservation of the public safety.
Ex-Governor Ammons
Miners and their families were
massacred under this
Democrat of Colorado
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What is designed by this law? Nothing less than effective preparation for the impending industrial conflict. Colorado is bound to have an other strike, and perhaps a more bitterly contested one, unless the workers are permitted to exercise their legal rights.
Let us not regard this disguised legislation lightly. It has passed the House and is now in the Senate. If this bill becomes law, which it apparently will, it will not only be dangerous to be a member of a union, but it will be likewise dangerous to be on friendly terms with the union.
The third section of the bill leaves no room for doubt as to the intent and purpose of the bill. To be sure, Alphonse Ardourel swears by all that is holy that the bill is not designed to deal with labor agitators. In a letter to me, he says: "You are mistaken when you believe that the treason act is directed at union labor in the State of Colorado." But he does not tell me what it is directed at if not union labor.
Be that as it may, the fight for the right will continue in Colorado and elsewhere, and if that be treason, Ardourel and his masters may make the most of it.
Is it to be death for treason under
the new Republican Governor?
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Legislation of that kind will cause the tide of revolt to rise and hasten the day when the oppressors of those who toil will be swept into oblivion and right and justice shall reign supreme.
Even oppressors of labor render some valuable service to the working class. Every new move that has a tendency to bind the workers to servility points out the urgent need of political unity along working class lines.
The unity that now exists among the workers, weak and inadequate in many respects as it proves to be, is the outgrowth of capitalist oppression and suppression.
The forces that in the past drove us into unity will continue in the performance of their historic mission until a sufficient number have enrolled in the emancipating movement of the working class to enable us to march from the servitude of a Colorado to the freedom of the co-operative commonwealth.
ADOLPH GERMER.
Mount Olive, March 28, 1915.
[Photographs added.]
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SOURCES
The Leavenworth Times
(Leavenworth, Kansas)
-Mar 13, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
The United Mine Workers Journal, Volume 23
Executive Board of the United Mine Workers of America,
Dec 3, 1914-May 6, 1915
http://books.google.com/...
UMWJ of April 1, 1915
http://books.google.com/...
"Shackling the Workers Colorado's Proposed Anti-Treason Bills Betray the Workers."
-by Adolph Germer
http://books.google.com/...
IMAGES
Officers of Colorado National Guard
The last three perpetrated the Ludlow Massacre.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Adolph Germer
http://www.marxists.org/...
State Representative Alphonce Pierre Ardourel
from Boulder, County, Democrat of Colorado
http://www.genealogybug.net/...
E M Ammons, Democratic Governor of Colorado
who presided over the military despotism
which resulted in the Ludlow Massacre of April 20, 1914.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Governor Alfred Carlson, Republican of Colorado
Inaugurated in January of 1915
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
See also:
House Journal of the General Assembly of the State of Colorado
Colorado. General Assembly. House of Representatives, 1915
(Search: treason, all pages relevant.)
https://books.google.com/...
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Colorado Strike Song -John McCutcheon
We have fought them here for years, boys,
We'll fight them in the end,
Shouting the battle cry of union.
We have fought them in the North,
Now we'll fight them in the South,
Shouting the battle cry of union.
-Frank Hayes
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