| THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | THE FACTS |
|---|---|
| (From Washington Post.) Calumet, Mich., Sept. 1.—The copper strike situation took a serious aspect today as a result of the fatal shooting of Margaret Faxakas, aged 15, daughter of a striker, at the North Kearsarge mine, when a picket of strikers and women clashed with deputy sheriffs guarding a mine. | Her name was Margaret Fazekes. She was not the daughter of a striker, and had no connection with the strike. There was no clash with any picket. A Labor Day procession was being held at Kearsarge. It had nothing to do with the strike. A band of armed guards without excuse or occasion attacked the procession and broke it up, firing about 100 shots from their revolvers. This girl was not in the procession. She was walking along the sidewalk, and a bullet from a gunman’s revolver pierced her skull. |
| THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | THE AFFIDAVITS |
| Calumet, Mich., October 22, 1913. To the Associated Press, Chicago, Ill. As a measure of precaution against possible disorder, the troops have kept on the move bodies of strikers who collect while men are going to work in the morning, but this is not construed as interference with any of the rights of the strikers. | For instance, Victor Ozonick swears that on July 31st he was walking quietly along the public road when he was arrested, taken to Houghton and thrust into jail. After a time he was taken into the sheriff’s office and searched. A deputy sheriff struck him in the face with his clenched fist and then kicked him. He was then asked if he was a member of the miners’ union. When he said “yes” he was dragged back to a cell and locked up for twenty-four hours. After that he was released. No warrant was issued for his arrest, no charge was made against him, no proceedings of any kind were had. |
There are sheafs of such affidavits relating the manner in which the armed guards proceeded to obey the orders to “start something.” The results of their efforts to obey their orders was a reign of terror throughout the strike zone. Men, women and children were shot at, beaten, ridden down by armed guards, or pursued along the highways. At the road intersections shacks were erected, from the windows of which the guards could command every house in a village, and the inmates could not stir out of their dwellings except under the watchful eyes of the gunmen and the muzzles of rifles.
| THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | THE AFFIDAVITS |
|---|---|
| (From Chicago Record-Herald.) Calumet, Mich., Dec. 11.—Guerrilla warfare, which raged in the South Range district of the copper miners’ strike zone, was ended today when a force of deputy sheriffs invaded several towns there and made 39 arrests. The only person injured was Timothy Driscoll, a deputy sheriff, who was shot and seriously wounded when he and other officers attempted to force an entrance into a union hall. The trouble this morning centered around the hall of the Western Federation of Miners in the town of South Range. Here Driscoll was shot and several of the arrests made. Henry Oski, a striker, was specifically charged with wounding the officer, and he is said to have implicated by his confession two other members of the union. | A mob composed chiefly of the gentlemen of the Citizens’ Alliance gathered in Houghton and went by special train to South Range. There the mob attacked the hall of the South Range branch of the Western Federation of Miners, broke down the door, smashed all the furniture, seized all the books, papers and records, and destroyed several thousand relief coupons that had been prepared for the miners’ families. Henry Koski, the secretary of the branch, lived over the hall. When the work of destruction had been completed the mob rushed upstairs and began with rifles to beat down the door to Koski’s rooms. He warned the rioters that if they did not desist he would fire. They continued to batter the door, whereupon he fired two shots, one of which passed through the belly of one of the rioters. |
| THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | THE FACTS |
| (From the Washington Post.) Calumet, Michigan, Dec. 26.—Charles H. Moyer, president of the Western Federation of Miners, was put on a train and sent out of the copper strike district tonight. The deportation was the direct result of a refusal of families stricken by the Christmas Eve disaster here to accept relief from a committee, the majority of whose members belonged to the Citizens’ Alliance, an organization combatting the five months’ strike of the federation. At the local federation headquarters Moyer’s departure was called “a kidnapping by the Citizens’ Alliance.” The action was said to have caused no great surprise, as it was said that threats of such a possibility had been received two weeks ago. The relief committee, which had collected $25,000, found itself unable to give away one cent when it started today to deliver the fund. Every bereaved household that was approachedtold the men and women in charge of the distribution that they had been promised adequate aid by the Western Federation of Miners, and nowhere was there any assistance wanted. | A mob broke into the room in Scott’s Hotel, Hancock, occupied by Mr. Moyer and Charles Tanner, general auditor of the Western Federation of Miners, seized them both, beat and kicked them, shot Moyer in the back and dragged them, both wounded, from the hotel into the street. The two prisoners were held so that they could not defend nor protect themselves, and in this position were dragged through the streets and across the bridge to Houghton, being incessantly kicked and beaten. Mr. Moyer was bleeding and weak from a revolver shot, and Mr. Tanner was bleeding from a wound just below his right eye. In this condition they were placed upon a train and under armed guard taken out of the state, being threatened with lynching if they should return. Nobody has been indicted nor arrested for these assaults, although the persons that committed them are perfectly well known in Hancock. But Mr. Moyer has been indicted for conspiracy. |
It might be worth while to summarize Russell’s narrative of the outcome of this last matter. The leader of the mob was an eminent Bostonian, James MacNaughton, vice-president and general manager of “Calumet and Hecla.” When he was accused, the Associated Press took the trouble to send out a dispatch explaining that he could not possibly have been the man, because of an elaborate and complicated alibi—which alibi was later proven to prove nothing. Mr. MacNaughton was never prosecuted in this matter; nor was the Associated Press prosecuted—except by Charles Edward Russell. We may believe the statement in Russell’s letter, that “the Associated Press made a loud squeal on the story!” I would ask: Why did they not prosecute Russell? Why is it that the general manager of the Associated Press makes nothing but a “loud squeal”? Why does he content himself with easy victories before church forums and chambers of commerce banquets? Why does he not come into court and vindicate his honor in an open contest before a jury?
CHAPTER LVIII
“POISONED AT THE SOURCE”
I have been privileged to examine a mass of material, some three or four million printed and typewritten words, the evidence collected for the defense of Max Eastman and Art Young, when they were indicted for criminal libel in November, 1913, at the instance of the Associated Press. These three or four million printed and typewritten words enable us to enter the offices of the Associated Press, and to watch its work hour by hour. They enable us to study the process whereby the public opinion of America is “poisoned at the source.”
Three hundred miles from our national capital, in the lonely mountains of West Virginia, exists an empire of coal, governed in all respects as Russia was governed in the days of the Tsardom. I take up two printed volumes of testimony given before the investigating committee of the United States Senate, a total of 2,114 closely printed pages; I turn these pages at random, and pick out a few heads that will give you glimpses of how things are managed by the coal barons of West Virginia: “Check weighmen guaranteed by law, but not allowed to the miners.” “Men paid in scrip which they could not cash.” “Men discharged and put out of their houses, as fast as they talked unionism.” “Mail burned by store manager.” “Law of West Virginia relieves coal owners from liability for injuries in the mine, no matter how they occur.” “Independent store-keeper refused his goods at the express office which was on company grounds.” “Men not allowed to approach postoffice on company property.” “Provost Marshal imprisoned nine men without trial.” “No mine guard has ever been tried for participating in any battle.” “Machine-guns and guards turned on peaceful crowd coming from meeting.”
In “King Coal” I have portrayed the conditions in Colorado. In West Virginia conditions were in all respects the same, and for the same reason. When the sixteen months’ strike in West Virginia had been smashed, the same mine guards, with the same rifles and machine-guns, were shipped to Colorado, and under the direction of the same Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency they smashed the fourteen months’ strike in Colorado. And both in West Virginia and Colorado the same Associated Press was made use of to send to the country the same misrepresentations and suppressions of truth.
In the “Independent” for May 15, 1913, after the West Virginia strike had lasted more than a year, there appeared an article by Mrs. Fremont Older, describing the farcical military trial of some union officials at Paint Creek Junction. Mrs. Older, the only impartial person who was able to get into this court-room, made the statement: “The Provost Marshal was not only the ruling officer of Paint Creek Junction; he was the Associated Press correspondent. He had the divine gift for creating darkness.” In the next issue of the “Independent” appeared a letter from the assistant general manager of the Associated Press, declaring: “The Provost Marshal was not the Associated Press correspondent, and never had been.”
Nevertheless, this rumor would not down, and in the “Masses” for July, 1913, appeared a cartoon: “Poisoned at the Source,” representing the president of the Associated Press engaged in pouring the contents of a bottle labeled “Lies” into a reservoir labeled “Public Opinion.” Accompanying the cartoon was an editorial, one sentence of which read: “The representative of the Associated Press was an officer in that military tribunal that hounded the Paint Creek miners into the penitentiary in violation of their constitutional liberties.” The answer of the Associated Press to this was the indictment for criminal libel of Max Eastman and Art Young. The “Masses,” presumably by advice of counsel, did not discuss the case, and continued to maintain silence, even after the case was dropped. The facts are here made public for the first time—possibly because in preparing this book I have not taken the trouble to consult counsel. Here are certain facts which the public should have; and if I have to hand them to the public through the bars of a jail, it will not be the first time that has happened in history.