The conclusion seems forced upon us that we must look to ourselves;
protect ourselves and our loved ones as best we can; by whatever means we can muster.
This may be treason, according to the corporation-picked legislature of Colorado;
but the civilized world will applaud; and whether it does or not, this duty we owe to ourselves.
-United Mine Workers Journal
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Monday April 19, 1915
From the United Mine Workers Journal: "In Memoriam," Ludlow Martyrs Honored
As the poem above by
Frank Hayes reminds us, it was only one short year ago that the name "
Ludlow" was forever etched upon the memory of the working class of America, and, perhaps,
of the world. In this week's edition of the
Miners' Journal, The Martyrs of Ludlow are remembered and honored. We present a few of those tributes below, beginning with "In Memoriam," by Mother Jones, and continuing with other tributes in English, Italian, and Slovak, from the three languages sections of the
Journal.
From the United Mine Workers Journal of April 15, 1915:
IN MEMORIAM.
(By Mother Jones.)
To you, fair babes of Ludlow, who gave up your lives on the altar of industrial freedom:
Ludlow has become the synonym for tragedy. On the 20th of April, 1914, more than twenty women and children went down to death among the flames of fire and smoke while the whiz of the leaden rain belched from the machine guns of murder, chanted the awful requiem over the dead bodies of human beings that were sacrificed to appease the hatred of insatiable greed.
They did not die in vain, for all over the bosom of the continent the story of the brutal slaughter has been written into the memory of every man and woman whose hearts beat for liberty, and the story of the Ludlow massacre will remain indelibly engraved on the memory of labor until the solidity of the working class shall purple the horizon of the not far distant future with the rosy dawn of that coming civilization where man, woman and child shall breathe the breath of freedom, and no master shall dictate the amount.
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A TRIBUTE TO A SMALL,
BUT HEROIC AND MIGHTY BAND.
(By Samuel J. Lewis.)
They did not wear the scarlet coat,
For blood and fire are red,
And Arson's blood was on their hands
When they found them with their dead—
And poor dead people that they burned
And murdered in their bed.
—Paraphrased from "The Ballad of Reading Goal."
The Twenty of the Mighty Soul arose in the morning and looked toward the coal-ribbed hills.
The April sun—the rising sun, the warming sun—shone full in their wan, tired and harassed faces.
It was the sun that smoothed the care lines from the foreheads of the old and weary. It softened the work-worn, sweat-creased cheeks of the middle-aged. It caressed the happy, laughing faces of little children.
It was the glorious sun of a new day—April 20, 1914—peeping its promise over the hills of Ludlow town.
It played among the weather beaten, winter scarred tents that these people for seven long months had called Home. It warmed the bodies of old and young. It sent ambition and the thrill of new life into aged and youthful hearts. It breathed of coming flowers; of summer's green vigor; of the spring's beauties and pleasures.
God was good! He had sent His best to His children. It was for man, and man only, to mar the heavenly splendor.
Before the day was done, all ordinary things would be changed. Bright day would be turned to darkest night. Sunshine would become gloom. Beauty would be sadness. Laughter would drown in tears. The bugle-blown "reveille" would be changed to "taps" for this courageous score. The funeral dirge of eventide would replace the joyful music of the morning. The sun, rising in promise for the living, would go down in benediction for the dead!
A dull, reverberating sound is heard from a nearby hillside. The report catapults against mountain and is thrown off in echoes, to hurl itself against other hills and become other echoes, which only die as they race up canons and against sheer rock-sides.
There comes another starting explosion, to be disrupted and scattered into the echoes that din on eardrum and appall the spirit.
Two bombs! The signal for attack!
Down, then, came the troopers—two score of them left to guard where guards were not needed—left to goad, harass, badger and browbeat where all should have been peace-left to scheme and plan for a deluge of smoke and death where all should have been happiness! Left to turn the joys of life-giving spring into the drum beats of untimely destruction!
It came as suddenly as the flashing sword of death!
Rifles rattled hideously. Sabers swished frightfully in the yellow of the morning. Machine guns sputtered, choked, vomited their leaden hail. Disaster! Cataclysm! Fire and Sword!
The story has been told. It gains nothing but sorrow and horror in the repetition. Forty fully armed, war caparisoned, strong, strutting men against a thousand huddling, running, weeping, pleading, crazed and terrorized human beings. And twenty men, women and children—strikers and their loved ones—fell in that horrid storm of lead and flame. Fell by gunshot, bludgeoning from rifle butt, by blow from saber, by burning in the fired tents, by smothering in the black holes beneath those tents to which they had fled to escape Arson's awful clutch.
They slew them as the beast is slain;
They did not even toll
A requiem that might have brought
Rest to the startled soul,
But suddenly they mowed them down
And hid them in a hole.
All day the one-sided battle continued. All day though men dropped in their tracks; mothers sobbed over the dying babe on their bosoms, only to be stricken themselves; children were stifled, bullet-riddled, asphyxiated! And when kindly night descended-when the golden sun of the morning set blood-red in the west, changing his promise to the living to the benediction for the dead—those rifles, machine guns and torches had sounded "taps" for a score of workers of God's world. Here, then, is the grim picture of Ludlow—the smoky, blurred and blackened painting that must mar the galleries of the twentieth century!
And what of it?
Just this: That score died in their own cause. They perished for what they thought was right. They laid down their all— their lives!—that others might live and work in peace. Their greatest sin was that they held out against capital's greed. Hungry themselves, they asked only the bread that was refused. Sick, they pleaded only for the necessary medicines of life. Downcast, they begged only for the barest crumbs of happiness.
All honor to the Twenty of the Mighty Soul!
Like Another long before, who had given His life to bring solace and comfort to the hearts of men, so did that twenty die to insure industrial peace, betterment and greater reward to the sweating, striving, toiling hosts of the earth.
For Ludlow is the beginning and the end!
Some sporadic assaults on other striking bands followed; a few scattered acts of reprisal were noted on its dark wings. But Ludlow stands out from all these as the climax, the culmination, the final stand of Courage, Heroism and Self-Sacrifice.
Ludlow carried home to the nation the horror, wantonness and futility of the very things which had created Ludlow!
Ludlow aroused the people to the realization that capitalistic rapacity had overreached itself in producing Ludlow.
Ludlow sounded the emphatic notice that there must never again be an other Ludlow!
The Twenty of the Mighty Soul brought these things to pass. As they stood upon those brown hilltops and watched their canvas homes go up in smoke and flame, waiting for the next bullet to single them out as victims, had they been given with prophetic eye they might have seen a kindlier, more indulgent spirit of the future rising from the gray and somber ashes of the present!
Dying, if given with the same prophetic eye, they might have been a friendlier, easier, better employer taking the place of the old-greed-obsessed taskmaster—a future employer who would listen to the decently framed and fairly presented complaints of his workers.
Going to their reward, they might have realized that there would never be a repetition of the scenes of April 20, 1914, but that the coming years would bring an industrial peace to make for happier homes, greater education, more advancement among the workers, and, by doing that very thing, bring more profit, more humane feeling and wider vision to the employer.
Perishing from the earth they might have foretold that the day had closed on privately hired guards, gunmen, wandering soldiers of fortune and those men who live by coercing, threatening and killing their fellows—a closing of the day on intimidation, browbeating, harassment and starving by those who do such things for unholy wage!
Departing into the shadows, they might have seen all the publicity, the investigations, the condemnation of the monstrous system responsible for Ludlow; the wrath of an aroused people, the action of an indignant congress and the moves of a president-all these things and more growing out of their valorous death at Ludlow, but all bringing the emphatic word that there must be no other Ludlow.
They might have seen a stauncher unionism—grown mightier because of their own courage and hardships—moving forward and onward and upward, until it had proved to all the world that in it, and in it alone, lay the common man's hope of the future.
They might have seen that unionism, winning its peaceful battles of the future, because the Mighty Score of Ludlow had shown to capital that it is better to treat and confer and reason than it is to slay and maim and burn!
These men and women and children of the hard life, the grinding toil, the sweating days, the many tears and few joys—this People of the Great Sorrow and Great Spirit—might have seen all this. They might have understood that their tremendous sufferings would help the strugglers of all time to come—that their names on each succeeding April 20th would be honored and their memories revered as the Saviors and the Rebukers of Greed, the Heralds of Peace.
And standing on the summit of life, with the depths of eternity at their feet and the setting sun shining golden in their faces, they might have cried out to all the world:
Behold! The Great Martyrs.
It is a far, far better thing that we do than we have ever done! It is a far, far better rest that we go to than we have ever known!
From the Italian Section:
Ludlow
Il giorno 20 di questo mese ricorre il primo anniversallo del massacro di Ludlow, Colo., dove le vite di venti persone vennero spezzate col piombo bi un branco di assassini al soldo delle compagnie minerarie.
Fu un orrendo macello, commesso a sangue freddo, senza giustificazione alcuna, senza l'ombra di alcuna provocazione.
Le famiglie degli scioperanti vivevano tranquille sotto le loro tende. Minaccie e lusinghe non avevano avuto presa nei loro cuori generosi. Gli uomini avevano giurato che non sarebbero tornati al lavoro se non quando la loro Unione non ve li avesse chiamati. Le donne e i figli si erano rassegnati a quella vita di stenti, e passavano i giorni e le notti fiduciosi nella giustizia della loro causa, confidenti che il diritto e la legge avrebbero protetto la loro esistenza.
Ma gli ex-padroni non la pensavano cosi. Quel-l'accampamento di pacifiel cittadini al confine delle loro proprietà era come una spina negli occhi. Esso poteva servire come un richiamo a quel qualsiasi barlume di coscienza che fosse rimasto nelle menti dei crumiri. Era insomma una continua minaccia alla loro industria di mercanti di carne umana. Bisognava distruggerlo.
Nel cuor della notte si disposero attorno all'accampamento i briganti, e incominciarono le fucilate. All'alba il cerchio degli assalitori si strinse, e le mitragliatrici vomitarono fuoco e plombo. Il pianto delle donne e bei bimbi saliva al cielo in un grido di suprema angoscia. In poche ore l'accampamento era incendiato e distrutto. Venti innocenti giacevano al suolo sanguinanti e carbonizzati.
I mercanti di carne umana potevano cosi proseguire indisturbati nella loro industria. I crumiri non erano più turbati dal rimorso delle loro coscienze.
Ecco l'elenco dei martiri:
Carlo Costa.
Fedelina Costa.
Lucia Costa, di 4 anni.
Onofrio Costa, di 6 anni.
Louis Tikas.
Primo Larese.
Roberto Pedrigone, di 6 anni.
Clorinda Pedigrone, di 4 anni.
James Flyer.
Frank Rubino.
Giovanni Bartolotti.
Frank W. Snyder, di 11 anni.
Patria Valdez.
Eulalia Valdez, di 8 anni.
Maria Valdez, di 7 anni.
Elvira Valdez, di 3 mesi.
Rodolfo Valdez, di 9 anni.
Frank Petrucci, di 6 mesi.
Lucia Petrucci, di 3 anni.
Giuseppe Petrucci, di 4 anni.
From the Slovak Section:
Prvé Vyrocie Masiarenia Nevinnych
Na 20 Aprila bude rok tomu jak vylialá sa krv. nevinnych ludí na rovníne ludlowskej. Ze tito ludia boly nevinni kazdy to dobre zna. Bohatí kapitalisti radi ich mali, ked im shromazdovali bohatstvo a sami trpeli biede. Nuz aj cervík sa pohne, ked je hrozeny nebezpecenstvom; a com by nie ludia, ktorí majú rozum a ducha Bozského. Nuz pohli sa. Dalej nemohli trpet otroctvo. Ked vysli na strajk, ani tej najmensej myslienky nemali, ze ich protivníci, ktorí ich pred stávku krokidalskou Láskou milovali, prehlasia na nich krvavy boj.
Oni smrt neziadali; ale zivot. Oni chceli zit ako svobodní ludia, a nie ako otroci. Pre tuto slachetnu ziadost boly postrielani.
Ta sniutná udalost stala sa z rana, ked slnko vysvietalo. Deti zabavali sa okolo siatrov, a spievali si svojo detské piesne. Matky ich vykonavali svoju obycajnú pracu. Otcovia ich sedeli si pokojne vo siatroch. Radost panovalá vo tejto osade. Pravda, chudobny boly. Pocas strajku bohatstva neni, a strajk vzdy zapricinuje utrpenie. Ale predsa vo ustredku tychto zlych pomerov radost panovalá vo stankou Ludlowskych strajkujucich majnerov.
Takto zili tito ubohí majneri. Ale со sa stalo? Ozbrojeny puskami nepriatel bol vo úkryte. Bez ziadnej vystrahy vystrelil. Na koho? Ajhfa! Na malé nevinné dietky, ktorí sa tak pekne nevinne bavili, o ktorych nás Spasitel hovoril, ze ich je kralovstvo nebeské.
Este nikdy nebola taká ohavná vrazda spachaná, vyjmuc vrazdenie dietkov vo meste Bethleheme, ked kral Herod pokusil sa usmrtit Spasitela sveta.
Kral Herod bol zly clovek. Vo nom diabol panoval. Ale aeprave bol zly a ukrutny, predsa nemôze sa porovnat s Herodami Coloradskymi, vo ktorych museli vsetci certi panovat, ked vrazdili malé dietky.
Coloradská stávka uz sa pominulá, ale jejze dôlezité udalosti nemôzu byt zabudnute. Spojené robotnietvo bude vzdy oslavovat pamet hrdinov Ludlowskych, a vo ich duche pokracovat ku osvobodeniu robotníckej triedy.
Bratia, pamätajte si, ze Ludlowski majneri za vasu svobodu zomreli. Svoboda je drahy klenot, zaco doposial statisice l'udí svojo zivoty obetovali.
Na toto vyrocie smrti nasich zasnulych bratov, ktorí obetovali svojo zivoty za industrialnú svobodu, prehlasme porekadlo slavného vlastenca tejto krajiny, Patrick Henrya, ktory v smelosti muza svobodného povedal, "Dajte my svobodu, alebo smrt."
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SOURCE
The United Mine Workers Journal, Volume 23
-Executive Board of the
United Mine Workers of America,
Indianapolis, IN, Dec 3, 1914-May 6, 1915
http://books.google.com/...
UMWJ, Apr 15, 1915
http://books.google.com/...
Tributes to Ludlow Martyrs:
From English Section
http://books.google.com/...
From Italian Section
http://books.google.com/...
From Slovak Section
http://books.google.com/...
IMAGES
Detail from Cover
http://books.google.com/...
From English Section
http://books.google.com/...
From Italian Section
http://books.google.com/...
From Slovak Section
http://books.google.com/...
See also:
Palikari- A Film for Louie Tikas
http://www.palikari.org/
A Song for Louie Tikas
http://greekodyssey.typepad.com/...
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The UMWJ Welcomes Italian and Slovak to the Family
and Google Translates
From the United Mine Workers Journal
of December 3, 1914
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Google identifies Italian and translates:
Ludlow
On the 20th of this month marks the first anniversallo the Ludlow Massacre, Colo., Where the lives of twenty people were broken with lead bi a bunch of murderers in the pay of the mining companies.
It was a horrendous slaughter, committed in cold blood, without any justification, without the shadow of any provocation.
The families of the strikers were living quiet under their tents. Threats and blandishments had not had taken in their generous hearts. The men had sworn he would not return to work if you do not there when their union had called them. The women and children were resigned to that life of hardship, and spent their days and nights are confident in the justice of their cause, confident that the law and the law would protect their existence.
But former bosses did not think so. That-l'accampamento pacifiel of citizens on the border of their property was like a thorn in the eye. It could serve as a reminder to that any glimmer of consciousness that had remained in the minds of strikebreakers. It was short, a constant threat to their industry of merchants of human flesh. You had to destroy it.
In the middle of the night arranged themselves around the camp the robbers, and the gunfire began. At dawn the circle of the assailants tightened, and machine guns spewed fire and plombo. The crying of women and beautiful children rose to the sky in a cry of supreme anguish. Within hours, the camp was burned and destroyed. Twenty innocent lay on the ground bleeding and charred.
The merchants of human flesh so they could continue undisturbed in their industry. The scabs were no longer troubled by remorse of their conscience.
Here is the list of martyrs:
Google identifies Slovak and translates:
First anniversary of the slaughterhouse of innocent
On 20 April of the year as it poured blood. innocent people to rovníne ludlowskej. These people Boly innocent everyone knows. The rich capitalists like to have them, when they gather wealth and themselves suffered from poverty. Knife and nibbles will move when a bunch of danger; com and not by people who have common sense and the spirit of God. Moved the knife. Longer be able to suffer slavery. When they came to strike, nor the slightest thoughts not from their opponents, who strike them before krokidalskou Love love, declares them to bloody struggle.
They did not ask death; But life. They wanted to be free to live as people and not as slaves. For this noble Request Boly stricken.
The sniutná event became the morning when the sun vysvietalo. Children Elise had fun around the tents, and your singing children's songs. Mothers usually they carry out their job. Their fathers were sitting in a room tents. There was joy in the colony. True, the poor Boly. During a strike is not wealth, and strajk always causes suffering. But still in ustredku these bad conditions prevailing in joy Stanka Ludlowskych strike Majner.
Thus lived these poor Majner. But со happened? Armed with the enemy was in hiding. With no warnings fired. For whom? Ajhfa! For small innocent little children who were so much fun innocently provided to us by the Savior say that theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Has never been so hideous murders committed, excepting murder little children in Bethlehem, when King Herod tried to kill the Savior of the world.
King Herod was a bad man. In nom devil reigned. But aeprave was bad and cruel just can not be compared with Herod Colorado, in which everyone had certi reign when slaughtering small little children.
Colorado bet is already gone, but jejze important events can not be forgotten. United robotnietvo will always celebrate the memory of heroes Ludlowskych, and at their head continues to osvobodeniu working class.
Brethren, remember the Ludlowski Majner died for your freedom. Freedom is precious jewel zaco so far hundreds of thousands of European people sacrificed their lives.
On the anniversary of the death of our zasnulych brothers who sacrificed their lives for freedom Industriale, prehlasme saying the famous patriot this country, Patrick Henry, who in boldness free muza said, "Give us liberty or death."
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Song of Mary Petrucci at Ludlow - Tom Breiding
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