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Tuesday June 28, 1904
From the Appeal to Reason: Part IV 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 fourth in a series featuring the stirring front-line coverage from the Cripple Creek Strike Zone by this most intrepid correspondent:
Closing of the Portland Mine
James Burns, a sturdy Scotchman, a practical miner and formerly a member of Victor No. 32, was the only large mine owner and operator in the district who refused to enter the Mine Owners' Association. He was president of the Portland Gold Mining Company, and, being in thorough sympathy with the strikers, had acceded to their demands early in the strike. His principal mine was the richest producer in the district and employed about six hundred men.
After realizing that Burns could not be intimidated into submission, and anxious to wipe unionism completely from the map, the mine owners decided to take advantage of the martial law that prevailed to close up the Portland mine and drive the union miners from the camp.
So, one afternoon, after issuing a proclamation to the effect that the Portland mine was harboring large numbers of lawless and dangerous men who must be deported for the good and welfare of the district, General Bell filled a train with armed deputies and militia and proceeded to the invasion of the mine. As the train neared the big gates of the mine a large, new flag bearing the national colors was unfurled from the flagstaff over the main office. The gates were thrown open and the mine manager, W. F. Kurie, welcomed the invaders with a smile.
General Bell, with his army at his heels, strode up to Mr. Kurie, handed him the proclamation, and ordered him to close up the mines at the end of the shift. Several pump men were left on duty to prevent an absolute destruction of the property, but the rest of the men were ordered to tear up their union cards and secure new ones having the stamp of recommendation from the Mine Owners' Association, or leave the district within six hours. It was also given out at the Mine Owners' Headquarters that the Portland mines would remain closed until "Jim" Burns became a member in good standing of the Mine Owners' Association.
Mr. Burns was in Denver when this outrage occurred, and though he has as yet taken no definite steps to prosecute the invaders for damages for thus forcing a suspension of work at his mines, it is understood that he is contemplating calling upon the Federal government for aid. But the folly of this step will be best appreciated when it is understood that General Bell is a warm personal friend of President Roosevelt, and that the Mine Owners' Association controls absolutely the military conduct of General Bell.
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During the Most Strenuous Times.
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Diabolical Acts of the Militia and Deputies.
When W. A. Davis, of No. 19, stepped itho a grocery store with his wife to make a purchase, thee deputies presented their rifles to his breast with the words, "Throw up your hands, you __ __!"
Mrs. Davis swooned away as her husband was marched to the bull pen with his hands held high above his head.
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J. A. Donnelly, formerly mayor of Victor, and classed as a union sympathizer, had his home broken into on the day following the riot by deputized non-union miners, who remorselessly wrecked the furniture, and repeatedly cursed Mrs. Donnelly for not revealing her husband's whereabouts.
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On one occasion "Fatty" Ferry, a well known young man about town, was ordered to move on by the militia. "All right," he said, and started to obey, when the soldier, to hurry him along, struck him a heavy blow on the head, rendering him unconscious for an hour.
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Tim McCarthy, of Victor No. 32, had his right arm broken in a similar manner, after which he was arrested and made to prostrate himself full length in the dust as a token of his abject and complete surrender.
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Horace Burham, a union carpenter, before being thrown into the bull pen, was compelled to salute the United States flag three times. Between each salute he was prodded in the rear with a bayonet wielded by a uniformed member of the state guard.
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Marshal Prodded With Bayonets.
Perhaps the most diabolical and inexcusable piece of cruelty perpetrated by the militia was that inflicted upon the person of Mike O'Connell the deposed marshal of Victor. After being ruthlessly torn form the bosom of his family, he was prodded with bayonets all the way from his home to the bull pen by the militia, who derisively called out:"Step along there, marshal!" "Be lively now, officer!" etc. After his incarceration Mrs. O'Connell was telephoned by the officers every hour of the day that a noosed rope had been prepared and that if she wished to witness her husband hang she "had better hurry." All this was done to make him renounce hie union sympathies.
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Ladies Insulted.
Two days after the riot, while Mrs. Ada B. Hanna and Mrs. Charles Benson were passing the postoffice, several non-union miners, in aloud voice, exclaimed: "Well, there are no _ _ _ Socialist agitators left in this camp unless they are in petticoats." These words were spoken for the express purpose of provoking the ladies, but, thinking that discretion was the better part of valor under the circumstances, Mrs. Hanna and Mrs. Benson passed on in silence.
Mrs. Hanna is the humane officer of the district, and was formerly president of the Woman's Auxiliary to the local branch of the miners' union. On the day of the riot, when she saw that a raid was about to be made on the union store, Mrs. Hanna ran to the cash drawer to hide the money. A. E. Carlton, president of the First National Bank in Cripple Creek, at the head of a mob of armed non-union miners, entered the store, and while the woman was held by the scabs, Carlton literally separated her from her clothes in his search for the funds. Giving her a swift kick with his right foot, this God-fearing, law-abiding head of the Citizens' alliance sent her sprawling into the street with the order to his men to throw the contents of the store after her. The command was obeyed to the letter.
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Wife of Victor City Jailer Arrested.
Mrs. James Printy, wife of the city jailer in Victor, was seized by six soldiers, who entered her front door unannounced, while she was bending over the wash tub. With leveled bayonets they informed her that she was under arrest. Giving her no time to change clothes, and but an instant to gather her seven-months-old baby in her arms, she was marched through the streets to the bull pen, where, in the presence of the imprisoned miners, she was searched for arms, her clothes being ripped up and partially torn off in the procedure. After this little formality she was escorted into the sweat room, where , for an hour, she was questioned concerning the whereabouts of her husband and several badly wanted union men, by the mayor of the town, Frank D. French, who resorted to all manner of insult to make her disclose their whereabouts. Finding they could get nothing from her, Mrs. Printy was finally released. Speaking of the outage later to a representative of the Appeal to Reason, Mrs. Printy said:
Three soldiers preceded and three followed me in my march from home to the bull pen. Every step I took I was fearful that I would be jabbed from behind with a bayonet. To add to the indignity of the occasion, armed non-union miners jeered and called out, "Now you are getting your medicine," "Good enough for you," "Now you can agitate Socialism, You _ _ _!"
Continuing, Mrs. Printy said:
I am for justice. I love liberty. I believe in unionism. But if the working people of this nation let the outrages in Colorado during the last three days go unavenged, then I am a scab and will leave no stone unturned to plunge them deeper into the mire of industrial slavery than they now endure. I was born in this country. There is no smell of the steerage on my clothes. My fathers helped to plant Old Glory in the skies and I have always been proud of my country's flag. but until existing conditions change I shall teach my eight children to hate, with every drop of their blood, the banner that is supposed to represent liberty and justice. Can you blame me?"
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Newspaper Man Deported
H. J. Richmond, reporter for the Victor Record, was halted on the street by a committee of deputized non-union miners, headed by A. Dahl, and was given five minutes to get out of town. He started to expostulate, when seven Winchester rifles were leveled at his breast. Richmond departed without further ceremony, hitting the road for Canon City.
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...One Soldier Who Remembered His Mother.
That not all of the individual militia are totally depraved and without a sense of justice is illustrated in the following incident. About half past eight o'clock one evening, the home of Mrs. Mary Jemerson was raided by a party of soldiers, who demanded that she divulge the hiding place of her two sons. Receiving a direct refusal, they proceeded to make a search of the house. Beds were torn apart, closet doors smashed in, and a general wreck of the furniture followed. All during this performance Mrs. Jemerson stood on a rug beneath which was a trap door leading to a basement room, in which her boys had concealed themselves on hearing the approach of the soldiers.
At length the soldiers withdrew, leaving three men on guard outside. When the hour of midnight struck two of these left, leaving only one man in charge. When the steps of his departed comrades died away the soldier knocked at the door for admission, saying, "Do not be frightened, lady, I am your friend." Reassured by the tone of the man's voice, Mrs. Jemerson opened the door, whereupon the fellow, going to the spot where she had stood during the devastation of her house, stuck his bayonet in the floor, opened the trap door and called to the boys to come out. They came out in an instant, when, to their surprise, the young militiamen sheathed his bayonet, laid aside his gun, stretched his hand to them, saying to the mother:
Madame, I have a mother, and I feel how great has been this outrage. I suspected you were standing on a trap door but I never communicated my suspicion to the other men. Now that we are alone I want to beg your forgiveness and say that if I didn't obey orders to do this thing I would have been shot. Not all of us militiamen are heartless, but we are helpless to do otherwise than we are doing. Some day this thing will change and then you will see us fighting for the perpetuation of union labor as strenuously as we are now compelled to suppress it.
Needless to say, these words were joyfully received by the astonished mother and her two sons, and upon their promise to say nothing about the affair the soldier went his way.
Met a Warm Reception.
Another soldier, at another time, bent upon a similar mission, met a different reception. Mrs. F. D. French, chairman of the Woman's Democratic Club of Teller county, was reported as having severely criticized the governor of the state for sanctioning and recommending the high handed outrages that were being daily committed by the soldiery. A youthful militiaman was sent out to bring the lady to headquarters, but when he received the contents of a kettle of scalding water, and through the window saw her standing with a loaded revolver in her hand, he changed his mind and departed without making the arrest. When a squad of deputies arrived later the woman had fled.
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Thomas Whitney, a non-union miner, who was arrested for beating his wife, upon being brought to the headquarters by a party of militiamen, was promptly turned loose and no further arrest by the civil authorities was made.
Numberless instances of petty and unwarranted villainies such as the foregoing might be recorded. Houses of union men and their suspected sympathizers were wantonly pillaged. Women and children were subjected to the most revolting insults. In some instances homes were surrounded and watched for days that male members of the family might be surprised and captured on their return. Frequently children went into hysterics and women would faint as a consequences of the savage brutality visited upon them by the beings fleshed in human form bearing the stamp of the state guard of Colorado. Any resistance by any one was immediately silenced by bayonet thrusts, followed by threats of being shot. One non-union miner, who scabbed in the '94 strike, and who has since been the target of attack for union men, declared that the existing situation completely satisfied the ambition of his life.
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Prison Camps of Siberia Outdone.
Only a parallel description of Sherman's raid through Georgia or an accurate revelation of the conditions as they actually exist in the prison camps of Siberia would begin to do justice to the situation as presented in the treatment of the arrested union miners and the pillaging and searching of their homes by the deputized scabs who have long waited this opportunity to strike this blow of vengeance.
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Sunday June 28, 1914
From the The Ogden Standard: Fate of Fellow Worker Joe Hill Now in Hands of Jury
JOS. HILLSTROM IS CLOSELY GUARDED
Salt Lake, June 27 Failing to reach a verdict by 11 o'clock last night, the jury in the case of Joseph Hillstrom, charged with the murder of J. G. Morrison, were locked up for the night by order of Judge M. L. Ritchie
The case was given to the jury at 4:45 o'clock yesterday afternoon, following two and a half days of argument by contending counsel.
Four hours later there was no evidence of a verdict. The bailiffs in charge of the jury telephoned Judge Ritchie for instructions and were ordered to lock up the jury for the night. Until that hour a score or more of Hillstrom's friends, including a number of I W. W. men hers, remained in the corridors awaiting a verdict.
Sheriff Andrew Smith .Jr and several of his deputies were on hand until the jury retired for the night. The sheriff said this was as a precaution against any possible demonstration that might be attempted by Hillstrom's friends in case of conviction.
Denounces Legal Procedure.
In the defenses concluding argument to the jury Attorney E. D. McDougall denounced the prevailing system of criminal procedure as a travesty on the ideals of justice. He declared that men are convicted by the police and the prosecuting attorneys not by the juries that sit in judgment. He said:
The law gives the defendant the presumption of innocence until he is proven guilty. But the presumption of innocence which is the very foundation of justice is but a theory with our prosecuting attorneys. It is so with Mr Leatherwood and with nearly all prosecutors. The police and the prosecutors invariably presume a defendant to be guilty and they proceed upon that basis. It is an abominable system. The police are but tools of the prosecuting attorney.
McDougall declared that the prosecution, instead of getting a picture of the criminal and then trying to find the criminal had gotten Hillstrom and then tried to make up a picture that would fit him. He deplored the system in which it is left to the police, he declared, to arrest a lot of men under suspicion, select one, turn the others loose and proceed to construct a case to convict the man whom they decided should be tried. He continued:
The system is wrong that will let the police do such things. It is an outrage that such conditions should prevail. Our criminal courts are all wrong. I do not mean to criticize this court, but I mean the system is wrong. Why should the police be allowed to decide who shall be prosecuted and why should they be permitted to prosecute without leaving it to the court and jury to decide who is guilty.
ARRAIGNS LEATHERWOOD.
McDougall denounced the district attorney for having attempted to prejudice the jury by asking why the defendant had not taken the stand to tell how he was shot that night of the murder. He declared that the defendant does not have to prove his innocence, but that the state must prove his guilt.
The defendant may sit back in his dignity and demand that the state produce proof of his guilt. He is not bound to open his mouth or speak one word and the fact that he does not is no concern of yours and you can not consider it as evidence against him.
It is true that if you or I were wounded and were accused as this man is we would take the stand and tell how it happened, but Hillstrom won't. He won't tell me how it happened and he hates me because I have 'endeavored to have him tell me. That is why he rose in this courtroom the other day and discharged me as his counsel and ordered me out of the courtroom, all because I had probed and probed him to have him tell me how he was wounded. What his reason is I do not know, but it is none of my business and none of yours.
This I do know, he was not shot in Morrison's store. Where he was shot does not matter so long as it has been proven, as it has been, that he was not shot in Morrison's store.
It was noon when the defense finished. The district attorney. K. O. Leatherwood, began his final argument at 2 o'clock and concluded at 4 o'clock.
"Anarchy'' was the term he used in answering the charge of attorney McDougall that the American system of criminal jurisprudence is a travesty of justice He said:
My blood bolls with keen resentment, gentlemen, when I hear such unwarranted attacks on American institutions-institutions which are the foundation stones of our glorious concepts of liberty, equality and justice, and I tell you that when any considerable number of our fellow beings subscribe to the doctrine you heard enunciated here this morning then liberty flees the confines of our fair land and anarchy begins its sway.
Mr Leatherwood made a reply to all the charges of the defense that the state had been unfair, that the police had persecuted the defendant, and that the system under which he was tried precluded the chance of justice. Having disposed of these charges he proceeded to a summing up of the evidence, which, he declared, left no shadow of a doubt that Joseph Hillstrom was the man who shot and killed the Morrisons.
In his final remarks he asked a verdict of guilty and an enforcement of the death penalty, not, he said, as a matter of revenge upon Joseph Hillstrom, as made too much of by the defense, but as a defense to the lives of all law abiding citizens and as a deterrent warning to all evildoers.
"I bear no malice toward Joseph Hillstrom." he declared,
Would that I could undo the thing that he has done and could set him free in righteous paths. Would that I could, by some magic wand, clear him of the foul crime that is his. Would that I could by that same wand restore the lives of J G. Morrison and his little son Arlin. But I cannot, and you jury cannot. But this you can do and must do: enforce the majesty of the law as framed by the people of this great state: enforce it so that anarchy and murder and crime shall be pushed back another step beyond the pale of civilization; enforce it so that you and your wives and your daughters and your sons and all upright men shall walk the earth free from the danger of those parasites on society who murder and rob rather than make an honest living.
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