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Sunday February 6, 1916
From the United Mine Workers Journal: John M. O'Neil on Colorado Justice

From the Journal of February 3rd:

The Triumph of Law and Order"
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IT WAS NO CRIME TO KILL AN ORGANIZER.
(By John M. O'Neil.)
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Gerald Lippiatt (Center), Union Organizer & Martyr
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Nearly all the daily journals of the State of Colorado have frequently attempted to defend the fair name of the State and have declared that it was only the pen of the muck-raker that has traduced the reputation of a commonwealth whose people believed in the majesty of the law. The "kept press" has howled with indignation when men, permeated with the spirit of justice, have raised their voice in denunciation of wrong garbed in the veneer of law and order.

The men who have voiced their protest against law being daggered to death and who have dared to demand that human rights should be held sacred, have been branded as demagogues, and their assault upon the official conduct of men whose oath of office bound them to respect and revere the constitutional rights of citizenship, has been stamped as an appeal to the "mob." The man who has had the courage of his convictions and dared to express those convictions which reflected upon the integrity of men in public life in whose custody was placed the authority to uphold the law and deal out justice, has been pilloried by the subsidized pens of journalistic prostitutes, and the mortgaged Demosthenes on the rostrum with Judas money in his pocket, has felt called upon to pauperize the English language to find words to defend the rape upon law and the miscarriage of justice that have made the very name of Colorado a synonym for Corruption.

Since the beginning of the coal strike in Colorado the functions of state government have been debauched to maintain the insulting arrogance of purse-proud plutocracy, and the common man wearing the livery of labor who even murmured or whispered his opposition to the rule of greed, backed and supported by official authority, has been stoned with the epithets of "dynamiter," "anarchist" and "red-neck," and the sewers of slander have been searched for filth and slime to daub the name and reputation of him or her who scorned to trample dignity under foot to pay a tribute to the moral leprosy that infects the executive, legislative and judicial departments of government of the State of Colorado. It is true that there are in the official life of Colorado some men who have made herculean efforts to redeem the State from the domination of corporate piracy and unblushing depravity, but these men have been in a hopeless minority and their efforts have been met with the mocking laughs and the derisive sneers of anarchists in broadcloth, whose presence in a brothel would necessitate its fumigation.

Last week Walter Belk, who was charged with the murder of Gerald Lippiatt, was brought before the bar of a district court in Trinidad. More than two years had elapsed since Lippiatt was shot down on the streets of Trinidad, and Belk, though charged with murder, enjoyed his liberty under a bond that was furnished by that element in California who "whipped a little cowboy governor into line [Gov. Ammons, Democrat];" who put the uniform of the soldier upon the imported thug and who hatched the hellish conspiracy that wrote in blood and tears the tragedy at Ludlow.

Lippiatt was murdered before the strike was declared in the coal fields of Southern Colorado and more than two years were permitted to wing their flight into the past ere the man charged with his murder was brought before the bar of so-called justice.

What was the result? Walter Belk was acquitted and the jury was practically commanded to bring in a verdict which would give a professional gunman a clean bill of health.

Colorado Justice
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Who was Lippiatt? The murdered man was an organizer for the United Mine Workers of America, and because he preached the gospel of unionism to the slaves who delved in the bowels of the earth, he was a criminal according to the ethics of greed, and no law was outraged when a salaried gunman of detective agency pulled the trigger and sent a bullet on its mission of death. Lippiatt was an "undesirable citizen," (to use the language of Roosevelt) and before the high priests of "law and order," he had been condemned as a "dynamiter," "anarchist" and "red-neck" ere he was murdered. The licensed agent of a strike-breaking detective agency, under the code of "law and order," as interpreted in America's "Siberia," Lippiatt had no right to live. He preached the gospel that was at variance with the philosophy of such benevolent despots as L. M. Bowers, Osgood, Wellborn and that sanctified apostle of Christ, whose office is at 26 Broadway, New York [John D. Jr].

Lippiatt spoke of human rights and against that economic slavery that leaves the shadow of despair in the hovels of poverty and shrouds in the midnight blackness of a starless night, the hopes of toiling humanity. He was a plebeian, whose finger rested upon the pulse of labor and he knew the heartbeats of the convicts of the mines, and because he applied in the fraternal language of brotherhood for "slaves" to come together and be "men," and resist the greed of exploiters gone mad for dividends, he was marked for slaughter, and his tragic end on the streets of Trinidad has been registered on the roster of labor as another red-handed crime, that can be laid at the door of that aggregation, who, in the name of "law and order," gives its sanction and approval to the crime of murder, when such crime, removes the man whose tongue or pen assaults the citadel of Privilege.

Walter Belk has been acquitted, but his acquittal does not remove from his brow the brand of Cain. As the years roll on that bear Walter Belk closer to the portals of a world beyond the grave, he will see more vividly the murdered man as his prostrate form lay upon the street and in his solitary meditations, when the world is wrapped in sleep, he will again hear the report of his pistol and he will again see the blood oozing from the bullet wounds of Gerald Lippiatt, and in that hour he will regret that he lived by the sword.

Law is a corpse in Colorado and the goddess of justice has become a hag, but men who are looking into the future can see the dawn of a coming day when human rights will be more sacred than dividends, and when that day comes the brutal monster, known as Greed, will be found lifeless-strangled to death-by the sovereign strength of an emancipated people.

[Photographs and paragraph break added.]

SOURCE
The United Mine Workers Journal, Volume 25
-Executive Board of the United Mine Workers of America
Nov 11, 1915 to May 25, 1916
https://books.google.com/books?id=NQpQAAAAYAAJ
UMWJ Feb 3, 1916
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=NQpQAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcove...
O'Neil on Colorado Justice
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=NQpQAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcove...

IMAGE
Gerald Lippiatt, in center with mustache
http://www.scottmartelle.com/blog.htm?post=923748
Colorado Justice by K R Chamberlain for The Masses of November 1914.
http://dlib.nyu.edu/themasses/books/masses044/12-13
John M O'Neil
(Note ELF has O'Neil's name wrong here.)
http://www.rebelgraphics.org/wfmhall/langdon16.html

See also:

"Hellraisers Journal: Gunthug Walter Belk Acquitted of Murder of UMWA Organizer Gerald Lippiatt"
http://caucus99percent.com/content/hellraisers-journal-gunthug-walter-be...

Note: John M O'Neil was the long-time editor of the Miners Magazine, official organ of the Western Federation of Miners. For more on O'Neil google: "John M O'Neil" + editor. Especially helpful to use the the book-search feature.

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The Red Flag - Socialist Victory Choir