You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Sunday May 29, 1904
From the Appeal to Reason: Striking Italian Coal Miners Driven 20 Miles "Like Cattle"
Miners in the Bullpen
Military Bandits Control Colorado
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Military Prisoners Driven from Berwind to Trinidad, like a Bunch of Steers
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Pueblo, Colo, May 20, 1904.
Special Telegram to Appeal to Reason.
The latest military outrage in Colorado is the command that all idle men belonging to the United Mine Workers and Western Federation of Miners must submit to being photographed and registered under the Bertillion [Bertillon] system, the same as used to register criminals. The oft asked question, if Colorado is in America, can now be safely answered in the negative. The following account of the latest atrocity of Jim Peabody and his military brutes is here given in full, taken from the leading newspaper of Colorado, the Rocky Mountain News. The Dr. Grass mentioned is one of the most prominent citizens of Trinidad, and a republican, but he cannot sanction the barbarities of Governor Peabody and the coward, Sherman Bell.
MINERS DRIVEN LIKE CATTLE
Measured and Photographed Like Criminals
TRINIDAD, Colo, May 19.-Eighty striking miners were marched on foot from Berwind to Trinidad this afternoon by a troop of cavalry. The men had all refused to register at Berwind and have their descriptions written for future reference according to the order issued a few days ago by Major Hill.
The men were brought to military headquarters here and photographed in groups and registered according to Bertillion [Bertillon] system, after which they were turned loose. They had been marched a distance of twenty miles over the mountains in a scorching hot sun, and several fell by the road side from exhaustion. They were given water by the military authorities when they arrived here, but no food. The strikers were orderly and made no outward sign of the suffering they must have endured.
All men arrested are Italians and have created no disturbance whatever. They were either living at home or in strikers' camp. One man, through an interpreter, told the following story of their trip:
A troop of cavalry, eleven in all, on horseback, herded us like cattle and started from Berwind about 10 o'clock this morning. The troops drove us as I see men drive cattle, and they repeatedly struck us and several times when men would lag behind they would run their horses against them and compel them to run or stagger out of the way to keep from being killed. The troops cursed us all the time. It was like pictures I see in American newspapers of Russian cossacks running over people in Siberia. One Italian about sixty years old became so weak he could not walk and two of the soldiers kept hitting him on the head until he fell by the road side where he was left in the broiling hot sun, and I do not know but what he is dead. He had been sick and was not fit to walk, and only got a few miles when he fell. Several men became weak, but they bore up, rather than take the blows of the soldiers. We were not given any thing to eat all day, but were driven to a trough at Bowen, five miles from Trinidad, and allowed to drink. After arriving at Trinidad, all registered except three, and they were thrown in jail, and the rest of us turned loose. None of the men had any money or place to go to, and we were fed by friends at the strikers' camp at Trinidad, and homes of our friends. Some of the men will not be able to walk back to their homes for several days.
Union leaders here will not discuss the action of the military today as they fear the result of an interview.
Most of the men driven in here are old miners, and have property in the county. They have not created any trouble since the strike started, on November 9, last, and were not begging, as they were plentifully supplied with provisions by the commissaries of the union. Much indignation was expressed by the people here when they saw the men driven in, and a large crowd gathered at the military camp, but Major Hill gave orders to disperse the crowd, after which no one was allowed to stop, for even a second, in the vicinity of the camp.
Dr. John Grass, who was republican candidate for governor at the time Peabody was nominated, and who is still a staunch republican, openly denounce the action of the military authorities, and of Governor Peabody, on the streets here tonight. Dr. Grass is very bitter against prevailing conditions and went to the military camp this afternoon to see how the miners were being treated by the soldiers. He said nothing there, but came down town and openly denounce Peabody's administration in language, not over polite, as he was much worked up, when he saw the condition of the eighty miners after being driven over rocks for twenty miles on the hottest day of the year in southern Colorado.
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PUEBLO, Colo., May 21. Special Telegram to Appeal to Reason.-Another outrage of diabolical fiendish comes from Trinidad this morning. An inoffensive striker named Joseph Raiz was ambushed by four militiamen, tied to a tree and mutilated in an unspeakable manner. The soldiers were masked. This victim of Gov. Peabody's uniformed hirelings is an old man and is dying as the result of his injuries. The republican and democratic newspapers will not print the truth, it therefore, remains for the Socialist papers to spread the story of Colorado's shame and infamy.
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MORE MINERS DEPORTED.
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Carbondale, Colo., May 10-Yesterday. The Law and Order Element.(?) arrested 16 strikers at Spring Gulch, a coal mine near here and brought them down to Carbondale to take the evening train for Glenwood Springs (the jail town) where these wage slaves are to be incarcerated on the trumped up charge of intimidating men who were seeking work at the mines. Two miserable scab herders, disguised as miners, led the men into a trap and thus secured a pretext to put them under arrest.
Carbondale has only a few scab sympathizers, chief among whom is a democrat who misrepresented our county in the last legislature, and who, altho pledged to vote for an eight-hour law and other labor measures, opposed every bill in favor of labor and the workingman. This corrupt faker is trying to secure the nomination for state senate. The Socialists are hoping he will get on the ticket.
Carbondale is not a scab town. When the deputies marched their prisoners to the depot, the band met them and serenaded the prisoners with several lively airs. The crowd gathered and shouted themselves hoarse, hurrahing for the strikers and the union men and down with the scabs and scab herders.
The people's patience is well nigh exhausted and this arbitrary rule of Rockefeller and his military despotism is rousing all classes of citizens to a realization of the true situation in our distracted state. These gold mad fools are marching hard to their fall. Socialism is gaining ground on all sides and peace on earth will soon take the place of this cruel war of classes.
Wagery will die the death of the villain. King Profit will be dethroned and the Co-operative Commonwealth will be ushered in.
Fraternally yours,
W. F. FARRAR.
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[drawing added]
SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-of May 28, 1904
Photos:
Miners in the Bullpen
http://www.rebelgraphics.org/...
(Cripple Creek Strikers, used here to represent the coal miners of 1904.)
Bertillon System
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
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Fire In The Hole - Hazel Dickens
Stand up boys, let the bosses know
Turn you buckets over, turn your lanterns low
There's fire in our hearts and fire in our soul
But there ain't gonna be no fire in the hole
There ain't gonna be no fire in the hole
There ain't gonna be no fire in the hole!
-Hazel Dickens
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