Cripple Creek Strike 1903-1904.
[Labor.] Langdon, Mrs. Emma F. The Cripple Creek Strike 1903-1904. Victor, CO: N.P., [1904].
8vo.; illustrated; green cloth, pictorially stamped in gilt; spine and edges browned; extremities frayed; lower panel silverfished.
First edition; as with most copies, lacking the facsimile poster of the “desecrated flag.” In her prefatory note, Langdon calls herself a “disinterested eye-witness” to the scandalous and violent attempts on the part of Cripple Creek gold mine owners, Governor James Peabody, and the state militia, to quash initiatives to secure eight-hour workday legislation. She dedicates this history “to the Western Federation of Miners and loyal labor organizations of the state of Colorado,” in acknowledgment of their “lawful, law-abiding and manly fight against the lawless, corrupt and un-American methods of those against whom they have a grievance.”
In this excellent early primary source on labor history, the origins of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) in the West, and of the Cripple Creek Strike, Langdon writes of a complete subversion, at every level, of the government’s mandate to represent the people, using the words of news reports and editorials, petitions, and public statements, photographs and political cartoons, as well as her own observations.
Colorado Governor James Peabody, vehemently opposed to the eight-hour standard, wrote that he “would not permit it if it requires the entire power of the state and the nation to prevent it.” When the miners went on strike, he called on the state militia, headed by General Sherman Bell but financially backed by the mine owners. One historian writes that “along with mass arrests and the deportation of union people, he [Bell] arrested a Justice of the Peace, the Chairman of the County Commissioners and the editor and four employees of the Victor Record … for printing union statements. The militia also would later destroy the offices of the Victor Record because of harsh anti-militia indictments.” Peabody declared martial law after three incidents of sabotage, instigated by the mine owners but blamed on the miners:
Lawful assembly was outlawed, guns were ordered returned in (the militia only kept the arms of the union members and supporters while they registered and returned the others), and the Victor Record was ordered censored. Writ of habeas corpus was also suspended, which allowed the military to arrest people who had, according to Peabody, ‘been released by the civil courts on flimsy or whatever pretexts.’ It was a total end to American rights.
Langdon’s book received the unanimous endorsement of the Colorado State Federation of Labor “by 350 delegates representing 50,000 union men and women of the state of Colorado,” at the convention held in January 1904.
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