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Sunday June 26, 1904
From the Appeal to Reason: Part II of Report From Cripple Creek by Comrade Shoaf
Practically the entire issue of this week's Appeal to Reason is devoted to the courageous reporting smuggled out of the Cripple Creek Strike Zone by Comrade George H. Shoaf. Today we present our second in a series featuring the stirring front-line coverage from the Cripple Creek Strike Zone by this most intrepid correspondent:
The Train Wrecking Affair.
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Events leading up to the Independence explosion.. Circumstantial evidence showing that former "horrors" were planned and executed by members of the Citizens' Alliance and Mine Owners' Association, or instigated by them.
When it grew evident that the strike called August 10 had become really effective and that the industrial paralysis throughout the district following the strike was complete, it devolved upon the Mine Owners and Citizens' Alliance people to resort to drastic and unprecedented measures to turn public opinion against the union miners, and produce a change of conditions that would necessitate a call for Federal troops.
The first move in this direction was made on the night of August 15, when K. C. Sterling and D. C. Scott informed the engineer of the train at Victor that they had inside information to the effect that an attempt to wreck their train between Victor and Elkton would be made that night by a committee of union miners especially selected for the purpose. A careful watch was kept by the train men but the expected never happened.
Early in the evening of the 17th D. C. Scott again approached Engineer William rush, of the same train, and told him that preparations for a huge wreck had been made by the same union miners and that the affair would be surely pulled off somewhere between Victor and Columbine. After imparting this cheering information Detective Scott started away, when he hesitated , turned and asked:
"Do you know of any other good place where a train wreck could be pulled off?"
"Yes," responded the engineer. "The first left curve beyond the trestle between here and Columbine is a good place."
"All right," answered Scott, who immediately started off down the track, presumably to join his companion for the purpose of watching the place from behind a near-by embankment.
A little while after midnight, as the train crew were receiving orders at the Victor depot preparatory to pulling out on their regular run, Detectives Sterling and Scott rushed breathlessly in and announced that the attempt had been made, and that a rail had been loosened on the FIRST LEFT CURVE BEYOND THE TRESTLE BETWEEN VICTOR AND COLUMBINE-the identical place recommended five hours before by Engineer William Rush.
The engineer, who all along had been suspicious that the stories reported by the detectives were fakes handed out to injure the cause of the strikers, asked:
"Where were you men when the spikes were being pulled?"
"We were behind the bank, watching," replied Sterling.
"How many train wreckers did you see?" again asked the engineer.
After a pause, which seemed an hour long, and which was noticeably embarrassing, Scott spoke up and said:
"There were three of them."
"Well, you fellows had guns; why didn't you arrest them?" again queried the engineer.
No reply was made to this question for both men began to get busy at the telephone asking for reinforcements.
When the train drew up at the place designated it was discovered that nine spikes had been pulled, two fish plates taken off and that the tools used to do the work had been left lying alongside the track. The engineer wanted to investigate the surroundings for traces of the supposed union train wreckers, but was given no opportunity by the officers. The spikes were driven back into their places and the train returned to the station.
The next day, Charles M. McKinney and August Beckman were arrested and identified by Detectives Scott and Sterling as the men who committed the crime. They were taken to Pueblo for safe keeping.
At the trial Scott belied the statement originally made to Engineer Rush by swearing that only two men were seen pulling spikes, C. M. McKinney and August Beckman. He further stated that four fish plates had been removed, whereas only two were taken off. He was mixed up in his testimony all the way through the trial to such an extent that the whole thing became a farce.
McKinney admitted his guilt, and on the stand implicated the following prominent officers of the Western Federation of Miners: Sherman Parker, Thomas Foster and W. F. Davis, as being co-partners in the conspiracy. He further said that for $250.00 he would derail a train and kill every passenger on board.
Beckman also admitted his part in the affair but said that he was employed by the detectives to play along with the game in order to find out what the union would do. He was released at once.
McKinney was at length let go but was rearrested, charged with perjury. He is now walking the streets of Cripple Creek under a $300.00 bond and is known to be on the most friendly terms with Detectives Scott and Sterling, and has open access to the inner office of C. C. Hamlin, secretary of the Mine Owners' Association.
Parker, Foster and Davis were held in bonds to the sum of $32,000.00 each, but were prevented from being released by Governor Peabody. Instead, they languished in the military prison three months, when they were dismissed by the district attorney for want of evidence to convict.
This conspiracy of the mine owners to break up the strike by saddling the responsibility of the attempted train wrecking episodes upon members of the local strike committee was so thoroughly transparent that hardly a citizen of the community was deceived. Colored reports of the affair were given out to the Associated Press, however, by the Mine Owners' Association, and the country was made to believe that a dastardly attempt to murder non-union miners had been made by officers high in the Miners' Federation.
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The Vindicator Mine Explosion.
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About half past eleven o'clock on the morning of November 14, a report, followed by failing debris, attracted the attention of men working on the eight level in the Vindicator mine in Independence. Investigation proved that a horrible explosion had occurred on the sixth level and that Charles McCormick, superintendent, and Melvin Beck, shift boss of the mine, were killed. It was further found that the two men were blown apart from each other as if the infernal machine which did the job had been placed directly between them.
As soon as the explosion was reported above ground militia were place on guard at every possible entrance to the mine to apprehend, if possible, the union miners who were at once charged with responsibility for the crime. A thorough search of the immediate district was made, but no union miners were discovered anywhere.
At the coroner's inquest no convicting evidence that could possibly incriminated union men was produced, yet Sherman Parker and a number of members of the strike committee were arrested, thrown into the bull pen and accused of the crime. Some of these men were soon released but a number are still in prison.
One peculiar and inexplicable incident developed at the trial when McCormick's step-son, Larry Ramsey, testified that just a few minutes before the two dead men descended he was refused a request from his father to accompany him down the shaft.
Though nothing was ever definitely proved, it is generally held by the union men throughout the district that the explosion was a plot concocted by the Citizens' Alliance and Mine Owners' Association in which the men who were to carry the thing into execution were themselves killed.
During the week it was given out that the militia were to leave, contrary to the wishes of the mine owners. So it was arranged to have McCormick and Beck explode a mine in the sixth level in order that it could be said that union men had slipped into the mine and tried to kill scabs while going up and down the shaft. This crime would incense the community, prejudice the public mind against the cause of the strikers and force the military to stay. In these things the scheme worked admirably.
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Blowing Up the Independence Depot.
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Monday morning at 2:45 o'clock, June 6, while some twenty-five or thirty non-union miners were standing on the platform of the Florence & Cripple Creek depot station waiting for a train, which was at that moment just pulling around the curve from Goldfield, some person or persons pulled a wire attached to a revolver which exploded into a couple of hundred pounds of dynamite placed beneath where the men were standing. The result was terrific. The station was wrecked. Men were hurled in every direction. Arms and legs, detached portions of dead men, were found scattered seventy-five yards from the scene of the explosion. eleven bodies were picked up in pieces and eight more were so severely injured that two have since died.
The news of this terrible catastrophe was at once heralded to the limits of civilization as the deliberate villainy of union men.
Before entering upon a relation of the facts or a description of the conditions that prevailed in the Cripple Creek district immediately preceding this awful holocaust, it would be well for the reader to let the significance of the circumstantial evidence contained in the narratives of the two foregoing incidents sink deep in his mind.
Charles M. McKinney, whom the detectives accused of trying to wreck the F. & C. C. passenger train, stood a self-confessed perjurer and would-be wholesale murderer. It was an open secret that after the attempted train wrecking affairs were hushed up, McKinney enjoyed the fullest confidence of several prominent mine owners and Alliance men, and was the intimate associate of the two detectives who arraigned him at the trial.
K. C. Sterling for years has borne the reputation of being the most cold-blooded villain unhung. He is a desperate gambler, has a private grave yard to his credit, and is not ashamed to admit that when necessity demanded he never hesitated to drum up business for women in the red light district. Recently, however, when the mine owners organized to resist the demands of unionism, he was employed by them as a detective because of his utter lack of principle and for the further reason that in some things he was a really fearless man.
Clarence C. Hamlin, secretary of the Mine Owners' Association, is a good talker, is fearless, unscrupulous and his only apparent ambition seems to be the utter extinction of the Western Federation of Miners.
A. E. Carlton, president of the First National Bank of Cripple Creek, is several times a millionaire. His cowardice and cruelty were demonstrated in his unwarranted attack upon the person of Mrs. Ada Hanna in the union store on the day of the riot at Victor. He is cordially hated by every man of principle in the district and would stop at nothing to achieve his ends.
In addition to the attempted train wreck and explosion in the Vindicator mine, there is another incident well worth considering.
Several months ago, at the same hour of the night, eleven assayors' offices in the district were blown up by dynamite. Though it has never been judicially determined, yet no informed man acquainted with mining affairs doubts for an instant but what the responsibility for those simultaneous explosions rests absolutely with the Mine Owners Association. No one else would be interested in heir extermination.
In the case of the Independence depot explosion, several theories are advanced, among the most probable of which are the following:
The union stores, established at the beginning of the strike on account of the regular business men refusing credit to the striking miners, were doing an enormous business. That in Victor, in the last month of its existence alone, cleared $15,000.00, the others profiting in proportion. This successful competition was almost bankrupting the other business houses.
Already the business men were organized into the Citizens' Alliance, and though they were intimate bed-fellows of the Mine Owners, and had received the promises of the latter organization to help in their work of driving out the union stores, still they were inclined to be a trifle suspicious. When it was oven out that a settlement of the strike was under serious contemplation, the week preceding the Independence explosion, the business element was driven to desperation. They saw that if the strike was settled with union recognition their houses might as well suspend. With them it was a question of exterminating the union or leaving the district.
So, to prolong the strike, recall the militia, create a reign of terror and effect the deportation of the union miners during the mad riot they knew would follow, a secret agreement was formed which resulted in the explosion that has astonished the civilized world.
Another theory popularly entertained by many people fixes the responsibility directly upon K. C. Sterling, Charles M. McKinney and A. E. Carlton. Chagrined at the defeat of the attempted train wreck, and disappointed at the mild results following the explosion in the Vindicator mine, these worthies determined to accomplish another villainy that would exceed anything before attempted. With them it was also a question of wiping the Western Federation of Miners off the map.
They saw that the only way to destroy the miners' organization was to deport the individual members. This they could not do in a time of profound peace. To inaugurate the proper conditions necessary for deportation purposes, some crime of unbelievable proportions must be committed. This was found in the blowing up of the Independence depot.
Still another theory is found by some people in the fact that the Western Federation of Miners is the best organized, most class-conscious and most advanced labor body in the world. To effect the overthrow of this organization was a glory of which any coterie of capitalists might be proud. They could then point with pride to their energy and initiative and tell the capitalists of the effete East to go and do likewise. Then the driving of the union miners from the Portland mine and bringing of that company into the Mine Owners' Association was a feat that amply repaid any loss of conscience or money which the transaction might occasion.
The claim that union men were the instigators of that explosion is the merest balderdash. Up to the time of its occurrence the union had everything coming its way. Negotiations were pending for a speedy, triumphant settlement of the strike. The union stores were prosperous, every member of the striking organization was being cared for, and though constant effort was made by hired thugs of the corporations to embroil union men in petty disturbances so that exaggerated reports of union lawlessness could be sent East, still peace prevailed and everybody was apparently contented.
One of the cardinal policies of organized labor is to refrain from violence. Union men are aware that in order to keep public sympathy while on strike it is imperatively necessary to abstain from every form of disorder. Since the inauguration of this strike not one union man has been convicted in a court of justice of a crime of any kind, while on the other hand, scabs have been sentenced for stealing ore, beating their wives and engaging in petty depredations against their neighbors' property. In every strike which has been forced upon organized labor since the first union was formed the employers have not hesitated to resort to the foulest measures to break them, and the situation in the Cripple Creek district is no exception to the rule.
Why the Blood Hounds Were Called Off.
In inquiring into the causes of the Independence depot explosion and trying to ascertain the identity of the person or persons guilty of the crime, the representative of the Appeal has unearthed many facts which, to the present moment, have been kept in the background but whose significance throws a great deal of light on the situation.
When the bloodhounds were put on the trail of the assassin at the end of the wire in the Delmonico shaft, they went directly to cabin occupied by Marshal Bemore, of Independence, formerly a well known spotter for the Mine Owners' Association. Leaving this place they made off down the track to the Vindicator powder magazine, where they ran around in circles until called off by their owner.
Ready to Make Affidavit.
Mrs. Will Adams, Mrs. Jack Green, Essie and Lizzie Faragher and Janie and Leta Henry, who were standing on a near-by dump, witnessed the performances of the dogs and say they are ready to swear in any court to what they saw. In addition, Max Morrison, the 12-year-old son of Mrs. Maggie Morrison, with several playmates kept close to the dogs all the while and followed them direct to Bemore's house, where they saw them enter.
"The first dog," says Mrs. Adams, "after smelling the chair rung to which the wire was attached, threw up his head and bounded off in the direction of Bemore's house. Mrs. Bemore was standing in the doorway with her arms akimbo. The dog jumped past where she stood and stayed in the house several minutes before reappearing. When it made off to the Vindicator powder magazine. The other dogs acted precisely like the first in every particular, with the exception of the last, which was prevented from entering the house by his owner, who, by this time, had got up to the door. They were finally called off, and the trailing by bloodhounds was not resumed that day."
Held in Solitary Confinement.
The writer is the first person to whom these ladies conveyed this information, but there were several men in the trailing party who saw how the dogs acted, but who never made a public report. John Meany, a well known character about town, was with the party of officers at the time, and it is significant that immediately upon his arrival in Victor after the incident, he was arrested and held in solitary confinement six hours before being released. Since then he has absolutely nothing to say about the matter.
Another feature connected with the investigation of this explosion, is that instead of trying to run down the clues that might lead to the capture of the murderers, the officers bent every effort upon throwing union men into the bull pen. It was taken for granted that the Western Federation of Miners were guilty parties and the extermination of that organization was commence.
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[emphasis added]
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