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Monday February 26, 1906
The Appeal to Reason on the "Kidnappers' Special"

This week's edition of the Appeal features an article which describes the special train, the "Kidnappers' Special," which spirited Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone away from Denver and over the state line to Boise, Idaho:

Officers of Western Federation Kidnapped.
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Under the Thin Disguise of the Law, President Moyer and
Secretary Haywood of Colorado Are Taken to Idaho-
Another Chapter in the Colorado Labor War.
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Special Telegram to the Appeal to Reason.

Pueblo, Colo., Feb. 20.-Saturday night in Denver, between the hours of nine o'clock and midnight, a set of Pinkerton detectives, armed with a requisition from the Governor of Idaho, which requisition was honored by Gov. McDonald, of Colorado, on Saturday morning, arrested Chas. P. Moyer, President of the Western Federation of Miners; Wm D. Haywood, Secretary, and G. A. Pettibone, a business man of Denver, on the charge of conspiracy in the assassination of Steunenberg, who was governor of Idaho at the time of the big strike in that state.

The Colorado governor honored the requisition before the men were arrested, which is in direct violation of the law. As soon as the men were arrested they were hustled to the county jail and held for four hours, then placed on board of a special train on the Union Pacific bound for Idaho. The Idaho detectives were reinforced by a squad of Colorado militia in charge of Adjt.-Gen. Buckley [Bulkeley] Wells and Col. W. D. Strickland of Gov. McDonald's Staff. Both are ex-convicts of most unsavory reputations in Colorado. This guard left the state with the manacled prisoners. The accused men were not permitted to send word to their families of friends, nor to communicate with their lawyers. They were literally kidnapped by the officials. The most prominent men in Colorado denounce this as a most unheard of outrage on law and order.

Buckley Wells gained notoriety last year by his horrible and cowardly treatment of A. H. Floaten in Telluride. He is a prominent mine owner of Colorado. No sane person in the state believes Moyer and Haywood had any hand in the murder of Steunenberg. But that they are in a perilous position and subject to mob violence and perjured evidence is certain. Colorado is a second Russia and no person is safe who opposes the rule of the capitalist.

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THE "ALLEGED CONFESSION."
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The press reports speak of the confession of Orchard, as "an alleged confession." There is not the slightest doubt in the world that the confession like the others worked up in Colorado troubles, is a fake from start to finish. The men who have arrested Moyer and Haywood have shady reputations. Several of them most active in the troubles of two years ago are now in the penitentiary for crimes varying form murder to robbery.

The Kansas City Journal gives the following additional facts of the arrest:

Boise, Ida., Feb. 19.-Charles E. [H.] Moyer, president of the Western Federation of Miners, William D. Haywood, secretary of the same organization and C. [G.] A. Pettibone, a former member of the executive board of the Federation, who were arrested in Denver Saturday night charged with complicity in the assassination of Frank Steunenberg, former governor of Idaho, arrived at Boise, Ida., this morning in custody of a strong guard of Idaho and Colorado officers. The special train of engine, combination car and Pullman coach, which left Denver at 6 o'clock Sunday morning, arrived here at 9:15. The necessary changes of locomotives en route were made at suburban sidings, and the train took water at obscure tanks, so that no stops were made in cities or large towns.

The officers in charge of the prisoners were Adjutant General Buckley Wells, of Colorado. Colonel D. W. Strikland, of the governor's staff, Melldrum, Watson and Fisher, operatives of a detective agency, and James Mills, deputy warden of the Idaho penitentiary.

The prisoners were taken directly to the Idaho penitentiary, and no interview with any member of the party was permitted.

Vincent St. John, president of the miners' union at Burke. Ida., who was arrested yesterday, probably will be brought here tomorrow.

Officers have gone to Haines, Ore., to search for a man named Simpkins, who is supposed to be in that vicinity.

It is persistently reported that Orchard, the prisoner arrested soon after the assassination at Caldwell, has made statements which will be used against the other prisoners now under arrest, and one of two others whom the officers are seeking.

[Photograph added.]

SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-Feb 24, 1906
https://www.newspapers.com/image/66993670/

IMAGE
Bulkeley Wells, Colorado National Guard, Telluride Mine Manager
http://darrow.law.umn.edu/photo.php?pid=890

See also:

The Pinkerton Labor Spy
-by Morris Friedman, 1907
(For more on the deportation from Telluride of A. H. Floaten
by Bulkeley Wells during Strike of 1903-04.)
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=6rQBAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcove...

The Cripple Creek Strike
-by Emma Florence Langdon
Denver, 1904-05
http://www.rebelgraphics.org/wfmhall/langdon00.html
Appendix, April 1908
(Coverage of Haywood-Moyer-Pettibone Case)
http://www.rebelgraphics.org/wfmhall/langdon29.html#dedication

The Darrow Collection, Haywood Trial
http://darrow.law.umn.edu/trials.php?tid=3

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