Ludlow Massacre

Hellraisers Journal: Will Colorado Taxpayers Finally Revolt Against Continued Persecution of Miners?

There are no limits to which powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
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Friday March 31, 1916
From the United Mine Workers Journal: The High Cost of "Colorado Justice"

Hellraisers Journal: Persecution of Colorado Miners Continued by Coal Owned State Government

There are no limits to which powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
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Thursday March 30, 1916
From the United Mine Workers Journal: A Day in a Trial of Colorado Miners

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones & John D Jr Plan: Give Life of Boy Murderer for Life of Ludlow Boy

Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.
-Mother Jones

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Saturday February 12, 1916
From The Day Book: A Life for a Life?

A story now being published in newspapers across the nation recently received some attention from the Chicago Day Book:

Day Book, Mother Jones, JDR Jr, Young Slayer, Feb 10, 1916.png
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Hellraisers Journal: Not a Crime to Murder a Union Organizer under Colorado's "Justice" System

Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.
-Mother Jones

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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.jpg
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.

Hellraisers Journal: Gunthug Walter Belk Acquitted of Murder of UMWA Organizer Gerald Lippiatt

Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.
-Mother Jones

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Saturday February 5, 1916
From the United Mine Workers Journal: Imported Gunthug Walter Belk Acquitted

From the Journal of February 3rd:

Justice Ravished
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Gerald Lippiatt.jpg
Organizer Gerald Lippiatt, Center
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In our last issue, commenting on the action of the miners' convention in pledging moral and financial support to the miners whom the men in power in the State of Colorado are attempting to condemn to felons' cells for daring to resist the oppression of the economic masters and their henchmen, their hired armies, we remarked that the counties of that State where the coal mines are located "were not ruled, but terrorized."

In the last week we have had further proof of the truth of that statement.

Walter Belk, imported from West Virginia to Colorado and there employed because of his reputation as a mankiller who could be depended upon to use his ready gun any time in the service of those who would pay him his price, was acquitted, on the instruction of the judge on the bench to the jury, of the charge of killing Gerald Lippiatt, union organizer, on the streets of Trinidad just before the opening of the strike in Southern Colorado in the fall of 1913.

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks: "Thank God I have lived to be a grandmother in agitation."

Thank God I have lived to be a grandmother in agitation!
I hope I will live to be
a great-grand mother in agitation!
-Mother Jones

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Monday January 31, 1916
Indianapolis, Indiana - Mother Jones Addresses Convention of United Mine Workers, Part I

Yesterday Hellraisers reported on the speech delivered by Mother Jones during Saturday's afternoon session of the United Mine Workers Convention, now in session in Indianapolis. Today we are pleased to present part one of her speech; we will offer part two in tomorrow's edition of Hellraisers.

Mother Jones Speaks to United Mine Workers Convention, Part I
January 29, 1916, in Indianapolis, Indiana
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Mother Jones UMWJ, Jan 21, 1915.png

ELEVENTH DAY-AFTERNOON SESSION The convention was called to order at 1:30 p.m., Saturday, January 29th, Secretary Green in the chair......

Secretary Green—.....President White will not be here for a little while and, with your permission, we will pause for just a few minutes in our regular order to hear from Mother Jones. She is planning to leave soon and wants to say something to the boys before she leaves.

Mother Jones—Boys, I have looked over this convention from the platform, and I want to give expression to the feeling that in this gathering are men of the most highly developed brains this country can produce. You have come from the picks, but you are developing, and I want to say to you to keep on.

Now I want to call your attention to a few things. Away back in the old Roman age, two hundred years after the world’s greatest agitator was murdered by the ruling class, there arose in Carthage a tremendous agitation among the oppressed, the exploited, those who had borne the burden for ages. The Romans began to be disturbed and thought they would go down to Carthage and capture those who were responsible for the agitation. They went down. All they captured in those days they retained as slaves or sold into slavery. Among the group that was captured was one youth. The Roman judge asked, “Who are you?” The youth said, “I am a member of the human family.” “Why do you agitate?” asked the judge. “Because I belong to that class that has been crushed, robbed, murdered and maligned in all the ages, and I want to break the chains of my class.”

Hellraisers Journal: Walsh Report Vindicated by Rebuke from Philanthropists’ Organ, The Survey

Let the voice of the people be heard.
Albert Parsons

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Sunday January 9, 1916
From The Labor World: Rebuke of Walsh Report by The Survey Taken as Vindication

Roosevelt NJ meeting with Mother Jones, Jan 1915.png
Mother Jones meets with women and children after Roosevelt Massacre

Apparently, the professional philanthropists do-gooders of The Survey are concerned that the employing class has not been given a fair shake by the Manly Report, prepared as a summary of the findings of the Commission on Industrial Relations. This report has been signed by all three of Labor's representatives on the Commission as well as by its Chairman, Frank P. Walsh, to his everlasting credit.

One might consider that impartiality is no longer called for after hours and hours of testimony from plain-spoken working men and women who described the daily despair of working long hours at starvation wages. Not to mention the horrific testimony which followed upon the Ludlow Massacre, the Roosevelt Massacre, and the shooting down of working people in strikes too numerous to mention here. Nevertheless, The Survey, through the pen of John A. Fitch, rebukes the Manly Report as sounding too much like "an extended editorial in the labor press."

Perhaps Mr. Fitch is concerned that the employing class with its company controlled governors who control the state militias, the county sheriffs who deputized the company gunthugs, and the major newspapers, owned and operated by the employers for the employers, have not adequately represented the interests of the class which rules America.

The concerns of the professional philanthropists are duly noted
in the January 8th edition of The Labor World:

Hellraisers Journal: From the Appeal to Reason: Socialists from Three Nations Ask to End War

I have no country to fight for;
my country is the earth;
I am a citizen of the world.
Eugene Victor Debs

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Tuesday December 28, 1915
From the Appeal to Reason: Socialist Legislators from Three Nations Seek to End the War

From the Christmas Day edition of the Appeal comes the news that Socialists from the legislative bodies of Great Britain, Germany, and the United States have asked for an end to the war now raging in Europe:

Socialists Ask to End War in Parliament of Three Nations
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Great Britain

Philip Snowden, House of Commons 1906-1924.png

On December 8, 1915, Philip Snowden, Socialist member of House of Commons, called upon the British Prime Minister for a statement as to the possibility of ending the war. This was Asquith's reply made in Parliament:

If proposals of a serious character for a general peace are put forward by the enemy governments either directly or through a neutral power they will be discussed by the allied governments.

Asquith thinks it is a sign of weakness for his country to begin peace negotiations. If that view is taken by all seriously and adhered to nothing but death of all the soldiers at the front could possibly end the war. Somebody must begin. Why not Great Britain?

Hellraisers Journal: The Rockefeller Plan, Built Upon the Ashes of the Women and Children of Ludlow

I stand facing the far east
sounding the voices of the babes of Ludlow.
-Mother Jones

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No one listened. No one cared. The tickers in the offices of 26 Broadway sounded louder than the
sobs of women and children. Men in the steam heated luxury of Broadway offices could not
feel the stinging cold of Colorado hillsides where families lived in tents.
Then came Ludlow and the nation heard.
Little children roasted alive make a front page story.
Dying by inches of starvation and exposure does not.
-Mother Jones

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Monday December 20, 1915
From The Labor World: The Inside Story of How Rockefeller Won the Miners' Vote for a Company Union

CO Justice, Detail, Masses, Nov 1914.png
The Rockefeller Industrial Representation Plan-Established Upon the Ashes of Ludlow

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