Tuesday April 4, 1916
News from El Paso, Texas: Don MacGregor Killed While Reporting from Mexico

Don MacGregor, labor reporter and hero of the Battle of Walsenburg, has been killed in Mexico. MacGregor left Colorado for Mexico sometime after the end of the Colorado Coalfield War and had been reporting from the state of Chihuahua under the pen name, David Bruce. (See yesterday's edition of Hellraisers.) News from the scene of battle is incomplete, but these are the reports that we have received thus far:

From the Oregon Sunday Journal of April 2, 1916:

FIVE ARE MASSACRED BY VILLA TROOPS
IN MEXICO, SAYS REPORT
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El Paso, Texas, April 1.-(U. P.)-The massacre of three Americans, a British citizen and a German was charged to Villa tonight by Americans arriving from Chihuahua City.

An America named Locke, who escaped the Villistas and fled to Cusihuiriachi, telegraphed the report to Chihuahua City, He was authority for the statement that the dead Americans are Benjamin Snell, Lee Lindsley and Dr. A. T. Steel, physician for mining companies in the Guerrero district.

Henry Acklin and Frank Woods, Americans known to have been in the vicinity of Minaca and Guerrero, are missing and have not been accounted for since the reported murders.

Newspaperman Killed.

The Englishman was said to be Donald Macgregor, alias David Bruce, a newspaperman, known in Colorado, which state he fled to Chihuahua City following his indictment for participation in the battle of Walsenburg during the Colorado coal strike.

Herman Blankenburg, a mine foreman of German descent, was also reported to have been killed by the Villistas. Reports of the murders have been heard on the border since yesterday. While not officially confirmed they have come from several different sources.

Dr. Steel, Bruce and Blankenburg were murdered at Minaca, according to these reports. Snell and Woods were caught by Villa when he defeated the Carranza garrison at Guerrero and looted the town. All the murders are said to have occurred last Monday.

Were Stripped and Shot.

The Americans and other foreigners were stripped of clothing and shot after being subjected to cruelties, according to unconfirmed reports.

That the rumors of the massacre have reached Brigadier General Pershing was indicated by a censored dispatch from his headquarters stating that three American civilians were reported killed by a small Villista band at Minaca. This made no mention of the other foreigners said to have been killed.

Colonel Dodd probably heard the reports, too, and is believed to have taken up Villa's trail at Minaca. However, rumors of Villa being captured and reports that he had escaped emphasized the lack of official news here tonight from the vanguard of the American expedition scouring the mountains around Guerrero....

MacGregor an Adventurer.

Denver, Colo., April 1.-(U. P.)-Donald MacGregor, the David Bruce reported to have been murdered by Villistas in Mexico, worked on American newspapers from coast to coast and also wrote for magazines and syndicates. He was once on the staff of the San Francisco Chronicle.

If Villa killed MacGregor, he lost a friend, as MacGregor was supposed to know the bandit leader well from several interviews obtained in the last two years the newspaper man spent in Mexico.

MacGregor was 28 years old. Although he came to America while young, he has never been naturalized. His wealthy parents and sisters and brothers live in Scotland.

MacGregor was under indictment of murder for leading the coal strikers in the "Battle of Walsenburg" against the militia. He gave up newspaper work and threw his lot in with the miners. He was of daring disposition and may have been in Guerrero for news of Villa and the American expedition.

-----

[Photograph added.]

From the Chicago Day Book of April 3, 1916:

(Note: While the Hellraisers Journal does not like to practice censorship, we must draw the line at republishing the demeaning word which The Day Book, sadly, saw fit to use to describe the Villistas suspected of killing MacGregor. We will point out that MacGregor was in Mexico supporting the struggle of the Mexican people in their fight against despotism. MacGregor also fought alongside the many Mexican miners who stood with the U. M. W. of A. during the Colorado Coalfield War, including Pedro Valdez who lost his wife and four little children in the Ludlow Massacre.)

IF [ the Villistas] GOT MACGREGOR
LABOR'S LOST A GOOD FRIEND

Death of Donald MacGregor, former city editor of The Day Book and also known as a leader in the revolt of Colorado miners against the Rockefeller iron hand in that state, is reported from El Paso, Texas.

Friends of MacGregor here do not take the report as final. They say they want more details. The news is based on a story brought to Chihuahua by J. H. Locke, an American citizen who was in Minaca during a Villa raid. Locke's story was told to Americans in Chihuahua who escaped from that city and arrived Saturday in El Paso.

Villa captured a string of towns of which Minaca was one. Here, the story goes, Villa announced a policy of killing every "gringo," and in line with this three Americans, a German and an Englishman, were put to death. MacGregor was a Scotchman, known as a British subject. His newspaper letters were signed as by David Bruce.

Floyd Gibbons for the Tribune, Wallace Smith for the American and Kent Hunter for the Examiner are now in Mexico. All were friends of MacGregor and further details of the reported death are expected though it may be weeks before definite word comes.

John A. Malloy, clerk in the election commissioner's office, was MacGregor's closet chum while he was in Chicago. Malloy said today:

Whatever has happened to MacGregor in Mexico can be blamed straight on the Rockefeller government of Colorado. MacGregor left the United States because of an indictment for murder voted against him secretly by a grand jury in Trinidad. With a Rockefeller governor and a Rockefeller judge and prosecuting attorney, MacGregor knew he would stand about as fat a chance of acquittal as John Lawson. He didn't want the kind of a frame-up with a life sentence such as was handed Lawson.

There was romance around MacGregor. When he quit newspaper work in Chicago three years ago, he went to Colorado for his health. He was living in a shack in the mountains when word came of the Ludlow massacre where drunken militiamen and gunmen shot and burned women and children. He went to Walsenberg [Walsenburg] and led 80 miners with rifles in making a stand against the militia. On the day in May, 1914, when the Mexican killing of 17 Americans came off at Vera Cruz, that story was overshadowed by the news of bloody civil war near Walsenberg where MacGregor was in command of 80 miners. If Mac is dead the labor movement has lost one of its best fighters.

-----

[Photographs added.]

Mothers and daughters were crucified at Ludlow on the cross of human liberty. Their crucifixion was effected by the operators' paid gunmen...These dead will go down in history as the hero victims of the burnt offering laid on the altar of [the] Great God Greed.

[-Denver Express on the Ludlow Massacre.]

SOURCES

Oregon Sunday Journal
(Portland, Oregon)
-Apr 2, 1916
https://www.newspapers.com/image/79309385/
https://www.newspapers.com/image/79309400/

The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Apr 3, 1916
https://www.newspapers.com/image/77819500/

IMAGES
Pancho Villa, Ojinaga, by JD Wheelan, Jan 1914
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancho_Villa
Armed Miners of Colorado Coalfield War
(Used here to represent miners who fought in the Battle of Walsenburg.)
http://www.du.edu/ludlow/gallery5.html
"Crucified" from Denver Express
http://john-adcock.blogspot.com/2012/06/rogues-gallery-socialist-cartoon...

See also:

Hellraisers Journal: Bleeding Mexico, Uncensored, by David Bruce for International Socialist Review -by JayRaye
http://caucus99percent.com/content/hellraisers-journal-bleeding-mexico-u...

Hellraisers Journal: Battle of the Hogback, Don MacGregor Lays Down His Pen and Picks Up a Gun -by JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/4/29/1295507/-Hellraisers-Journal-Bat...

Hellraisers Journal: Men don't scare easy when they fight to keep other men from burning their homes -by JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/07/1297378/-Hellraisers-Journal-Me...

WE NEVER FORGET April 20, 1914 The Ludlow Massacre -by JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/4/20/1083217/-WE-NEVER-FORGET-April-2...

Pancho Villa Expedition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancho_Villa#Pancho_Villa_Expedition

For more on Don MacGregor at The Day Book:
From Freedom from Advertising by Duane C. S. Stoltzfus:
https://books.google.com/books?id=SaoPVqY3vXUC&pg=PA89&dq=advocacy+journ...

Conditions in the Coal Mines of Colorado: Hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on mines and mining, House of Representatives, Sixty-third Congress, second session, pursuant to H. res. 387, a resolution authorizing and directing the Committee on Mines and Mining to make an investigation of conditions in the coal mines of Colorado
-United States. Congress. House. Committee on Mines and Mining
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1914
Vol. 1, p.1-1477
https://books.google.com/books?id=ILgAAAAAYAAJ
Testimony of Donald MacGregor before U.S. House Subcommittee
February 19, 1914 at Trinidad, Colorado
Morning Session
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=ILgAAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcove...
Afternoon Session-Recalled
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=ILgAAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcove...

We're Coming Colorado
(Colorado Strike Song)
Lyrics by Frank Hayes, 1913
http://www.folkarchive.de/werecomi.html

We will win the fight today, boys,
We'll win the fight today,
Shouting the battle cry of union;
We will rally from the coal mines,
We'll battle to the end,
Shouting the battle cry of union.

CHORUS:
The union forever, hurrah, boys, hurrah!
Down with the Baldwins, up with the law;
For we're coming, Colorado, we're coming all the way,
Shouting the battle cry of union.

We have fought them here for years, boys,
We'll fight them in the end,
Shouting the battle cry of union.
We have fought them in the North,
Now we'll fight them in the South,
Shouting the battle cry of union.

We are fighting for our rights, boys,
We are fighting for our homes,
Shouting the battle cry of union;
Men have died to win the struggle;
They've died to set us free,
Shouting the battle cry of union.