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.
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