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Victor
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The
Cripple Creek
Strike:
a History of
Industrial Wars
in Colorado,
1903-4-5
By Emma Florence Langdon
pages 487 to 498
KIDNAPPING CASE BEFORE CONGRESS.
Individually and as an organization the Socialists were untiring in their effort in behalf of the imprisoned men, giving their wrongs the widest possible publicity. Eugene V. Debs, that tireless worker in the interest of humanity, who has given the best days of his past life to the working class and is now the most eloquent man on an American platform, endeavored to have the facts in the case brought before Congress in an official report. He secured the consent of some of the senators to the presentation of the matter and wired the Western Federation of Miners for a statement of the case.
John H. Murphy, general attorney for the Federation, formulated the petition which completely covered the case from the affidavit made by Prosecuting Attorney Van Duyn, of Canyon County, Idaho, February 12, 1906, to the Supreme Court decision, going into the details of every illegal act. The petition asked that Congress investigate the extraordinary violation of the laws of the United States and the conspiracy fostered under the guise of law.
It was a worthy document and should have a place in these pages but space forbids.
The petition was introduced March 2, 1907, by Senator Carmack of Tennesee. Debs felt that the foundation was laid for a Congressional investigation and expressed the hope that the next session would order the same, bringing the truth before a section of the public that had not been reached.
EUGENE V. DEBS.
There could be no more fitting place to note the service of this gifted man Debs, not alone to the imprisoned men, that was but an incident in the life of this knight-errant of humanity. All who come after him will be his debtors. From the great strike of the American Railway Union, in 1894, to the present, his voice and pen have been devoted to the oppressed. Perhaps his work in behalf of the imprisoned men was his greatest service. The love he felt for them as men gave a fiercer glow to his impassioned denunciations of oppression, his fervent appeal in behalf of men threatened with martyrdom. In special editions of the Appeal to Reason exceeding three million copies he pleaded their cause with unsurpassed eloquence, from a hundred platforms he declared: ''Their only crime is loyalty to the working class," then lifted his audience to a hero's level as he thundered: "If they hang Moyer and Haywood I will make them hang me." His daring was the highest discretion. In the light of his intrepid courage men walked bravely when they might have faltered. Well he knew prison doors would fly open before an aroused working class, but if capitalism should press on, seek their blood careless of impending fate, well he knew the shadow of the scaffold he climbed would fall across its grave. In one glad, supreme moment, he would have sealed the devotion of a life.
More than any other man capitalism fears Eugene V. Debs; more fully than any other he holds the hearts of the toilers. Their dumb agony finds speech through his lips. Their bowed and broken bodies grow tall and fair in his presence. The dreams of the ages flower in the love of that lofty soul.
James Whitcomb Riley spoke in music for thousands when he said: "God was feeling mighty good when he made 'Gene Debs."
MOTHER JONES.
"Happy he
With such a mother! faith in womankind
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
Comes easy to him, and though he trip and fall,
He shall not blind his soul with clay."—Tennyson.
Among the Socialists two names stand out like mountains above the plain—"Mother" Jones and Eugene V. Debs. What Holy memories cluster around the woman Re-Christened Mother in the hearts of the workers of the new world. It speaks of a service to humanity, devotion to a cause, love of individuals that can be measured only by the Infinite. Her heart is as warm as in life's springtime and her sympathies as wide as the needs of her children, notwithstanding her seventy years.
For forty years "Mother" Jones has stood in the vanguard. Her labors have covered a continent and reached every class of workers. Lavishly she has given herself, when she has given all she has yet more to give. Her speech is a summons to action. Patience with wrong is a crime. How grandly she drove that truth home throughout the imprisonment of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone for she can ''touch the hearts of men as the stormgod touches the ocean's keys."
No sorrow of humanity is alien to her. She is the incarnation of the proletarian spirit. Those who have heard her before a throng, the avenging spirit of justice, kindling dead hearts in the glow of her own, grim, relentless, implacable, as she drew the indictment of capitalism in words that roused like a bugle's call, would scarcely recognize the woman that knelt above Virginia mine workers, murdered by corporation thugs, and bathed their faces with her tears, yet it was but the expression of the Universal Mother heart. Naught but a great cause could give strength for such tasks.
"Mother" is the worker's refuge and inspiration. "Mother" is the cry when overawed by corporation hirelings they yet seek to join hands in a common struggle and "Mother" again is the cry when the troops, re-inforced by hunger, are beating them into the earth; often she has changed defeat into victory, but always her best gift is the transfused courage of her own unconquerable soul. Words are weak here. Her work is her eulogy. Let no granite shaft rest on her, but let the flowers tell the sweetness of her life and prattling children, wrested from mine and mill and given back to childhood's joy sing her praise.
McPARLAND TALKS.
"But still his tongue ran on, the less
Of weight it bore, with greater ease;
And with its everlasing clack,
Set all men's ears upon the rack." —Butler.
May 7, Detective McParland, the Pinkerton on whose "evidence" the prosecution hoped to dispose of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone had another attack and forgot "Silence is Golden." Evidently this man of Mollie Maguire fame has never made a special effort to uphold the teaching:
"The man who to the highest rung goes easiest and best
Is he who always gives his tongue vast quantities of rest."
At any rate he gave out the statement for publication that he had procured absolute evidence against Haywood that he and his associates were responsible as principals for all the crimes in the Colorado mining strikes. The "inner circle," as the officials of the Federation were called, were, according to McParland, to be exposed, and atrocious and diabolical murders fixed upon the men who managed the affairs of the miner's organization. Among the felonies McParland declared Haywood, Moyer and Pettibone to be directly connected with were the following:
April 29, 1899.—The blowing up of the Bunker Hill and Sullivan mine at Wardner, Idaho.
December 27, 1901.—Murder of Martin Gleason, manager of the Wild Horse mine at Cripple Creek, Colorado. Gleason was thrown down an abandoned mine shaft.
January 23, 1901.—Murder of J. W. Barney, non-union shift boss, Smuggler-Union mine, Telluride, Colorado. Barney was attacked in a livery stable, dragged out and never seen again.
March 2, 1901.—Murder of Wesley J. Smith, non-union shift boss, Smuggler-Union, Telluride, Colorado.
November 19, 1901.—Murder of Arthur Collins, manager of Smuggler-Union mine, Telluride, Colorado. Collins was killed by a bullet fired through a window.
July 5, 1903.—Dynamiting of Colorado Springs Electric Company's power house.
September 1, 1903.—Non-union carpenter named Stewart, beaten to death at Cripple Creek.
November 21, 1903.—Murder of Superintendent McCormick and Foreman Beck in the Vindicator mine, Cripple Creek, Colorado.
June 6, 1904.—Assassination of fourteen men at Independence railway station.
December 30.—Assassination of Former Governor Steunenberg at Caldwell, Idaho.
This is the list of crimes McParland said he had absolute "evidence" to prove the three men guilty of, beyond all question of doubt, when the time arrived for trial.
WIVES ATTEND TRIAL.
At the time the trial was opened Mrs. Chas. H. Moyer was seriously ill in a hospital, in Boise, Idaho. She had gone to Idaho soon after the kidnapping to be near her husband. The little woman made a brave fight to keep her spirits up, but knowing the confinement of her husband would have a tendency to completely undermine his health there was a continual gnawing dread at her heart that the extended confinement would prove fatal.
Mrs. William D. Haywood, accompanied by her nurse reached Boise the latter part of April, to be present at the trial. This little wife has been confined to the house or an invalid chair for eight years, but when spoken to of the cases from the first day after their kidnapping until the final outcome of the trial— her pale but bright face would light up with a glorious smile of pride and she would proudly say the prosecution could not convict any of the men and that they would be acquitted with laurels fit to adorn a martyr—her confidence in her husband's innocence never wavered. She had placed her faith in the labor movement and believed the workers of the land would help restore to her her husband. This brave little woman had taken the trip from Denver to Boise at the risk of her life. Her two daughters accompanied her—the youngest a mere baby of ten summers whose eyes had opened wide as she innocently asked the question that rang over this country from the Atlantic to the Pacific: "Will they hang my Papa?"
The meeting of this loving family that had been cruely separated for fourteen months was pathetic to say the least. The corporations can always call in the assistance of the courts to issue injunctions against strikers when they are afraid of losing a fight, but in cases like the Idaho tragedy there are no injunctions against the blow that strikes the wife's heart—no injunction to prevent her loneliness or. to restrain her tears.
After Pettibone was taken from his place of business so unceremoniously, his wife went regular every morning and opened his store and remained there all day looking after his business interests. Neither Mrs. Moyer or Mrs. Pettibone had a family, so it was much less trouble for the two ladies to be near their husbands than Mrs. Haywood who was an invalid and had the responsibility of two daughters.
It requires nothing less than heroism for women to take up such a fight and keep a smiling face under the conditions these three little wives did and the men were blessed, indeed, in not having women of the clinging vine type—who were not mentally capable of understanding the cause of the inconvenience of having innocent husbands in jail indefinitely without trial.
The families of the three men were in Boise at the opening of the trial, also Haywood's gray-haired mother.
PRISONER'S TREATMENT IN JAIL.
To the query from friends as to how the men were treated in prison, the answer was always: "All right, we have no complaint, no men were ever treated better under the circumstances —the sheriff and his men have been fine to us—we have absolutely no complaint."
Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone were caged in steel at night, but their days were spent in a large room with steel-barred door and window. For two hours each day they exercised on the lawn under guard. A sheriff, and three or four deputies, tall, lithe, clear-eyed chaps, men of the West, were the alternating guards. When they were on the lawn it was difficult for strangers to distinguish prisoners from officials. Pettibone tells with glee of a farmer who mistook one of his guards for him and descanted on his ferocity and depravity. In an interview with the sheriff he said: '' They are good prisoners.''
After the families went to Boise they were permitted to spend a part of the day with the prisoners on the lawn under guard or in the large room. While their surroundings could have been worse it is doubtful if many would envy the prisoners their long confinement in Idaho.
The Haywood Trial
"In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger:
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood."-Shakespeare.
AT last the day for trial arrived. It was a measuring of the forces. The prosecution had centered its fight on Haywood. Moyer, a man of medium stature, thoughtful, reserved, taking council of all, keeping his own, devoted to his organization, inflexible in a question of right, wholly averse to the limelight. A man whose strength was only realized by his closest associates, underestimated by many of his friends and all his foes, had only been arrested to give the color of conspiracy to the case. The prosecution admitted that the case against him was the weakest of the three.
Pettibone has not been introduced to the reader in the foregoing pages of this history, while the other two, Moyer and Haywood, on account of their prominent positions in the Western Federation of Miners, have been constantly before the reader— especially President Moyer who was made a special target during the thick of the fight on account of his unfaltering loyalty. An organizer usually feels the venom of the opponents of his organization—so as such President Moyer was persecuted in every way that could be hatched in the polluted brain of hirelings of organized capital.
Pettibone was not actively connected with the Colorado labor troubles but was engaged in business in Denver. To know George Pettibone is to be his friend, jolly and philosophical. He has a droll way of expressing himself and a marked native wit. Having this happy disposition he made the best of his prolonged imprisonment and made as much fun for the others as possible. For amusement during the days when the three were together in Idaho, he took up pyrography and often sent out souvenirs to his many friends in Colorado. Just at the beginning of the Haywood trial he exhibited some of his work to press representatives and friends saying jokingly: "Mr. Darrow tells me these will be worth a great deal of money after I'm hung but I am not saving any of them." In the same interview he said:
"This day cell of ours is really the home of the Western Federation of Miners, for it was here, back in 1892, after the first trouble up in the Coeur d'Alenes, that the Federation was first proposed and discussed. You will remember that they arrested a lot of our men in 1892 and held us until the Supreme Court decided in 1893 that we were illegally in custody. While we lay here in this cell we planned the Federation. This is indeed a historic place for the old Federation. People who have not been in the Coeur d'Alenes and underground there know nothing of the frightful conditions that prevailed. We were wretchedly housed and miserably fed. A company store supplied everything at outrageous prices, a company doctor was supposed to look after us, and we were paid in scrip, if there was anything coming to us when the company got through. I've seen a company surgeon refuse to go to the home of a dying miner. Now what are men to do? Is there anything too mean to do to men who grind down their laborers under such circumstances?"
Organized labor has no stauncher friend than George A. Pettibone—that is why he occupied quarters without a permit to go and come as he desired—in a prison cell in Idaho. Corporations appreciate too well the power of such men and both fear and hate them.
President Moyer in a personal conversation with the writer, in discussing the labor movement in general, the Idaho trial in particular, characterized Pettibone as "the biggest man in the United States."
Haywood was on trial. It was for Haywood's blood that capitalism lusted. Big, magnetic, whole-souled "Bill" Haywood, terse, forceful, frank to impulsiveness, a stranger to fear, he was the idol of the crowd, the incarnation of evil to the Mine Owner's Association. Through him they hoped to discredit labor organizations, in his death to disrupt and destroy the Federation.
But little they knew of the cause of labor unions or the strength and capacity of the men whose labor opens nature's treasure vaults and pours into the channels of commerce the golden streams that turn the wheels of a world's industry. The strength of the granite hills is in their sinewy arms, the knowledge of dateless centuries in their brains, the vision of sunlit futures in their eyes—the irresistible forces of modern civilization driving them on. They know the world with the intimate knowledge that comes from doing things, their hands have taught them great lessons. They know the rough way over which Labor has borne humanity to the heights of civilization. They have the key to the world's progress and get more meaning out of their newspapers than spoiled darlings are able to get from great libraries. The world's constructive thoughts is in the ranks of labor. They know that history repeats itself in but one thing, and that is that tyrants reach the scaffold, Bastiles fall, oppressive systems die, man ever marches on to higher ground. They realize that industry has knit the bonds of a world's brotherhood that knows not the red boundary of nations, that stops not at the shore. They would gladly die that the ages' hope might live.
The day has long since gone by, if indeed it ever existed, when an individual was indispensable to a cause. A great cause develops great theories in its champions, their strength is evidence of its virility. The forces of the universe are behind the social needs of the race. The wisdom lof all the past belongs to those who have grasped the processes of civilization and are able to read its history. This was the vantage ground occupied by the defense and their myriads of supporters that made them more than a match for the combined forces of capital and government. Their thought had swept the past and forecast the future. They knew the forces that wrote history when men groped in the dark for the goal. They did not make that force, they did not enact the law of economic determinism, they did not decree the class struggle—they discovered them, knowing them, they are masters of them. They did not place employer and employee in conflict, they found them so—in the cause of evolution the master had become an employer, the slave a wage-worker, when the struggle breaks out in open revolt—the strike—Fear and Hate make earth a hell for all.
The worker's goal is always right, the means to reach it often wrong.
The trial was a judicial combat between the Mine Owner's Association standing for organized capital everywhere, directing the forces of the state and Federal government on the one side and the Western Federation of Miners on the other, supported by labor organizations, the Socialist party practically directing the campaign in their behalf.
Organization is the measure of social progress, from the clan and tribe, to the state, the nation, the world organization of capital and labor. Self-interest, which is another name for self-preservation, is the main spring of human action. Economic combination proceeds among those who have common purposes to effect, who get their living in the same way. Naturally, organization was most perfect among those who got their living from the labor of others, could give all their thought to the advancement of their economic interests. Since labor produces all wealth, pays its own wages, makes improvements and dividends, all the gains of capital are at the expense of labor. The capitalist brought a large measure of intelligence to the direction of industry while actively engaged in the management of affairs, but with the advent of the great corporation—the trust—the management was turned over to hired men—he no longer performed a social service, he drew dividends, his appetite grew by what it fed on, the exploitation of labor proceeded at a more rapid rate, men were worn out at forty-five. Experience wakens men to a consciousness of the facts of life and time teaches them to utilize their knowledge. The combination of dollars compels the organization of men. But dollars control the law. The law gives the owner of property the right to control it. Through his organization the worker seeks to exercise a joint control, regulate hours, wages, conditions—this could come only with joint ownership. He uses the strike to enforce his demand but as he is only paid a living wage when employed he soon becomes hungry, the militia is used against him, the injunction is brought into action and men are bull penned. The strike is lost. He struck at the wrong place. lie asked too little. The power of the state was used against him, it must be used for him before he can succeed —that can come only through the aid of the workers, organized and unorganized. Unity of action can only be attained through understanding of the goal. The labor movement economic and political rests on the education of the worker.
Private ownership of the machine and the gifts of nature stand between the worker and an abundant life. The present rulers, owners of the earth have taken what they wanted by legal technicalities, by economic might, by the sword. The worker would not travel the old blood-stained path, he must find a new way. By what right? By the right of common heritage of the earth, creator and user of the machinery of industry. By what means? By the organization of a political party whose goal shall be the control of government and when in control, change through legal enactment the title to the productive wealth of the country.
No other movement has had a base of knowledge that grasps the universe and analyzes its processes from star dust to worlds and systems of worlds, from the amoeba to man, from the cavedweller to Marx and Darwin, from the flint ax to the steam engine and the wireless telegraph. The future is to be shaped by the conscious action of society. Man no longer the victim of blind forces is their master. He would organize the world's knowledge to explore the unknown and widen his empire over nature, organize forces of production to supply the wants of producers, would eliminate prostitution, fear of want and dig up war by the roots.