You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
Tuesday August 31, 1915
From the Chicago Day Book: West Report on Colorado Strike Accuses Rockefellers
Killing of women and children at Ludlow, prostitution of Colorado's government to the will of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co., "anarchism stripped of every pretense of idealism," "anarchism for profits and revenge."
These are charged against John D. Rockefeller and his son, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in the report by George P. West made public by the U. S. industrial relations commission.
Thus begins the reporting of
The Day Book on the report of George P. West which has recently been made public by the Commission on Industrial Relations. Below the fold, our readers will find the reporting of the
Day Book on the West Report which lays out for all to see just what the Rockefellers knew about the Colorado strike situation and when they knew it.
From The Day Book of August 28, 1915:
FEDERAL BOARD ACCUSES ROCKEFELLERS-
"ANARCHISM STRIPPED OF IDEALISM"
Killing of women and children at Ludlow, prostitution of Colorado's government to the will of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co., "anarchism stripped of every pretense of idealism," "anarchism for profits and revenge."
These are charged against John D. Rockefeller and his son, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in the report by George P. West made public by the U. S. industrial relations commission.
West says the evils of the system of which Rockefeller is a part would go on tomorrow if the Rockefellers died today. But the operations of this system cannot be explained so people know how it works unless the personal acts of the Rockefellers and their personal red-handed record in Colorado is told in detail with names, dates and personal crimination.
The whole bloody Colorado business is worth notice in Chicago, where the Rockefellers control through Rockefeller Foundation ownership $1,109,250 collateral trust certificates and $315,540 of common stock and $1,212,856 of preferred stock of the Chicago City & Connecting Rys., besides $485,000 first mortgage bonds of Chicago Railways Co., $95,000 of H. H. Kohlsaat Co., not to mention the International Paper Co. and the Santa Fe, Burlington, Milwaukee, B. & O. and many other railway and industrial corporations.
Says the report:
Lamont M Bowers
`````
Mr. Rockefeller's responsibility has a significance beyond even the sinister results of his policy in Colorado. The perversion of and contempt for government, the disregard of public welfare and the defiance of public opinion during the Colorado strike must be considered as only one manifestation of the autocratic and anti-social spirit of a man whose enormous wealth gives him infinite opportunity to act in similar fashion in broader fields. Mr. Rockefeller writes to Supt Bowers: "You are fighting a good fight, which is not only in the interests of your own company, but of the other companies of Colorado and of the business interests of the entire country."
Letters from the president and chairman of the executive board of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co. to Mr. Rockefeller's office in New York show that these officers fully realized the gravity of the situation before the strike and also they believed a strike could have been averted by the mere granting of a conference. Yet their refusal to even meet the representatives of the union had from the beginning the warm approval of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
Jesse Welborn
`````
Back of Supt Bowers and Pres. Welborn in determining and mainlining the operators' policies stood John D. Rockefeller, Jr., whose enthusiastic approval and indorsement of these policies gave incalculable moral and material support to both his own subordinates and to the executive officials of other companies. Mr. Bowers' letters alone should have been sufficient to convince Mr. Rockefeller that the writer was irritable, arbitrary and obstinate to an exceptional degree; that he was a survival of the dark age of theory and practice regarding industrial relations; that he was ignorant of the characters and records of the men he opposed; and that, finally, his attitude toward the government of the state and nation was contemptuous, hostile and defiant
Nor could Mr. Rockefeller be acquitted even had Mr. Bowers concealed these qualities in his correspondence with 26 Broadway. From the day, seven days before the strike began, when he avoided an interview sought by a mediator of the federal government (Ethelbert Stewart) Mr. Rockefeller refuser to enter upon any independent investigation to determine for himself the true situation in Colorado before he threw all the enormous power of his personal support behind the men who had set themselves to the task of crushing the revolt of 8,000 miners.
Extracts from many letters between Rockefeller and his Colorado men are submitted to show that Rockefeller knew of the hiring of gunmen, the clothing of the gunmen in militia uniforms and he approved the violent anti-labor game carried on in Colorado. The report goes on:
But Mr. Rockefeller's part in Colorado was not confined to these letters of praise and indorsement which so heartened and sustained the Colorado operator. Prior to the massacre at Ludlow on April 20 the letters proved sufficient for his purpose. But the storm of popular wrath that rose after Ludlow demanded more active participation. It was then Mr. Rockefeller initiated the nation-wide publicity campaign by which he hoped to convince the country that the strikers and not his company's mine-guard militiamen were responsible for the deaths of thirteen women and children at Ludlow, and that the strike itself, instead of a struggle for freedom, was a revolt by bloodthirsty and anarchistic foreigners, led by men who obtained huge incomes from organized agitation.
Early in the summer of 1914 began that remarkable publicity campaign by which Mr. Rockefeller flooded the nation with bulletin after bulletin, defending the coal operators and denouncing the strikers and their leaders. These bulletins contained false and deceptive statements.
Salaries paid to officials of the United Mine Workers in Colorado for year ending November, 1913, were conspicuously displayed as salaries for the nine weeks ending that month.
Ivy Lee
`````
This gross slander was mailed to thousands of congressmen, editors, ministers, school teachers and public officials whose names appeared on the carefully prepared mailing lists of Ivy L. Lee, publicity agent in the service of Mr. Rockefeller. No correction was made until it had been exposed by this commission in December, 1914.
Preparation and distribution of these bulletins was carried on with the greatest secrecy as to the authorship of Mr. Lee and as to his employment by Mr. Rockefeller.
When this commission demanded the name of the writers of the bulletins of Mr. Welborn he refused to answer until he had consulted his attorney. Even then he refrained from revealing the fact that the publicity campaign had been initiated and paid for by Mr. Rockefeller.
Has the Colorado strike opened the eyes of Mr. Rockefeller to need for radical concessions and changes in Colorado? Evidence justifying an affirmative answer is lacking.
After showing how Rockefeller knew at every step of the employment and shipment of strikebreakers and gunmen, it is stated:
The history of strikes shows that workmen on strike feel they have a property interest in their jobs and that other workmen who take their places and thus aid their employers to defeat the strike are fit subjects for abuse, ridicule and violence. It is only by ostracising and intimidating strikebreakers that organized workmen can hope to discourage the practice and thereby win a struggle for higher wages or for industrial democracy.
Society, if it wishes to prevent violence in industrial disputes, has only two courses open: To prohibit strikes, and in so doing establish involuntary servitude; or to prohibit the importation of strikebreakers at least until the employers consent to meet officials of the strikers' union.
[Photograph added.]
~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCE
The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Aug 28, 1915
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/...
IMAGES
The Masses, JDR Jr Caught Red-Handed,
by John Sloan, July 1914
http://dlib.nyu.edu/...
John D. Rockefeller Sr
with son, John D Jr, 1915
http://www.loc.gov/...
Lamont M Bowers
https://books.google.com/...
Jesse Welborn of
Colorado Fuel and Iron Company
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Ivy L Lee
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
See also:
Report on the Colorado Strike
George P. West
Washington, DC, 1915
(Also source for image of cover.)
https://archive.org/...
`````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
Dear Readers of Hellraisers,
Vacation is over, and it's back to the salt mines for yours truly beginning tomorrow.
Thanks to everyone who hung in there with Hellraisers all during the month of August!
Solidarity,
JayRaye
`````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````
I Hate the Capitalist System-Barbara Dane
I hate the company bosses,
I'll tell you the reason why:
They cause me so much suffering
And my dearest friends to die.
-Sarah Ogan Gunning
``````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````