THE
MEMORIAL |
"Mining
today is an affair of mathematics, of finance, of the latest in engineering
skill. Cautious men behind polished desks in San Francisco figure out in
advance the amount of metal to a cubic yard, the number of yards washed a day,
the cost of each operation." Merle Colby,
1941
"A thundering rush of rock roared
through the bowels of the Smuggler-Union Mine, spewing dust into the nearby
stopes and drifts. No one screamed. Before the dust settled, shift boss R. M.
"Bob" Wright plunged into the stope, discovering the body of E. J. Oakland, his
head pulverized by a mass of rock. Life had been snuffed out instantaneously
and the men who dug out the body whispered a prayer, the prayer their comrade
had no chance to utter. His wife collapsed in horror and grief when they
brought Oakland's mutilated body down to Telluride
"
[From the book, The
Corpse on Boomerang Road: Telluride's War on Labor 1899-1908,
Western Reflections
Publishing 2004]
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Mining long has been a dangerous profession. Historically,
numerous miners died from accidents, explosions, or mine-related illnesses
before the age of forty. Men working in the bowels of the earth lived a life of
risk, where dark and damp and poor ventilation and the threat of cave-ins were
daily companions. Often all they had for illumination was a candle, or wick
lantern, that attached to their hats, or was set into the rocks with a
spike-like holder. It was no wonder many died from "picking missed shot" - a
term that meant they hit powder that had earlier failed to explode and went
unnoticed. Later, carbide lights gave them more visibility until the advent of
electrical lighting. Even mines that used electric light were still too dim for
men working with dynamite, and the electric lighting was only in the main
tunnels and galleries, not in the stopes where the men were working.
Electricity itself was a risk, as many mines didn't use insulated wires for
either lights or trams or ore cars. Bare wires electrocuted numerous men.
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Most mines were damp
or dripping wet, with pumps constantly needed to remove the water in order for
the men to work. To provide adequate ventilation, air pumps were also in use.
If either failed, drowning and suffocation threatened. The air was constantly
full of rock dust from blasting and power drills, and mine operators never
thought to provide protection against this dust that caused permanent damage to
miners' lungs, damage that invariably led to lung disease and
death. |
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Large mines had deep
shafts, and in order to go down to work in the lower stopes, miners rode skips
or lifts into the belly of the workings. A skip usually consisted of a platform
and cage that was raised and lowered on cables via a hoisting engine. This
equipment sometimes failed, plunging the men several hundred feet to their
deaths. If the skip wasn't working the men had to climb manways which were
vertical ladders bolted to the walls of the shafts. These ladders could be
hundreds of feet high, damp and slippery, and a risky mode of exit for a man
who was exhausted from a 12-hour day.
Most miners worked
twelve-hour shifts, despite the difficult and always fatiguing labor.
Management rarely thought shorter hours would save lives. Two twelve-hour
shifts seemed reasonable and economical to mine operators, who more often than
not required the miners to board at the mine. A twelve-hour shift allowed
boarding houses to use one bed per every two miners, since one could sleep
while the other was working. Boarding house meals were generally the bare
minimum, and the miners were charged for them, whether they liked the food or
not.
Management not only made
miners pay for their bed and board, but they made them pay for their equipment,
the candles they used, the dynamite, and even for sharpening tools that
belonged to the company. Many a miner could wind up at the end of the month
having little left of his paycheck after all the supplies, room and board were
deducted. Some miners bought their supplies at town stores where the cost was
less. Yet all too often mine operators forced their employees to board at the
mine and gave them no choice to purchase supplies elsewhere because they paid
them in scrip. Employees hated scrip, since it wasn't money but certificates
redeemable only at the company's store. "Owing your soul to the company store"
was not a fanciful line. It happened indeed.
Although many mine owners
knew that treating employees with fairness and respect was good business, too
often profit was the only objective. Some truly believed the most important
thing to come out of the mine was the miner; while others believed the most
important thing was the ore. The attitude of John F. Geisel, a foreman at the
Terrible Mine in Ouray County in 1887, typified the latter. Geisel allegedly
took no interest in recovering the body of a miner killed while working.
"What's the difference?" he told an employee. "Men are cheaper than timber."
If miners were crippled in
accidents, they were let go. Many were fired if they asked for better wages or
safer working conditions or even for better meals. Some companies blacklisted
such "trouble-makers," discriminating against what they termed "disloyal"
workers. Some managers refused to hire men unless they had a certified
employment card "proving" the miner was not involved in "radical" activity. Was
it "radical" to want a living wage, freedom to board where one wished, an end
to child labor, safe working conditions, and the right to equal opportunity?
Yoked to long hours, wages halved by boarding and equipment fees paid to the
company, dismal or non-existent medical care, and no compensation to his family
should he meet with accident or death, the miner's hope for a better future was
in solidarity, a brotherhood of skilled men who could stand shoulder to
shoulder across the West. Out of this hope the Western Federation of Miners was
born.
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The Western Federation of
Miners (WFM) organized in 1893 to give miners protection against powerful
owners who could force them into starvation or run them out of town or even
have them illegally incarcerated whenever they demanded fair wages or safe
working conditions or an end to child labor. The WFM also organized for
advancement of the mining profession, standardization of safety codes, and the
universal eight-hour day. The preamble to the WFM constitution began:
"We hold that all men
are created to be free and should have equal access and opportunity to the
enjoyment of all benefits to be derived from their exertions in dealing with
the natural resources of the earth, and that free access and equal opportunity
thereto are absolutely necessary to man's existence and the upward progress of
the human race...it is highly fitting and proper that the men who are engaged
in the hazardous and unhealthy occupation of mining, milling, smelting, and the
reduction of ores should receive a just compensation for their
labors..."
The organization sought to
"secure compensation fully commensurate with the dangers of" the mining
profession, to end the use of scrip as payment and end the dictation of
employers as to where employees were to spend their earnings; to "strive to
procure...the use of any and all suitable, efficient appliances for the
preservation of life...and to labor for the enactment of suitable laws...to
provide for the education of our children and to prohibit the employment of all
children until they have reached at least the age of 16 years...to prevent by
law any mine owner, mining company, or corporation...from employing detectives
or armed forces, and to provide that only lawfully elected or appointed
officers...shall act in any capacity in the enforcement of the law... to use
all honorable means to maintain and promote friendly relations between
ourselves and our employers and endeavor, by arbitration and conciliation or
other pacific means, to settle any difficulties which may arise between us, and
thus strive to make contention and strikes unnecessary [emphasis
added]." [From, The Corpse on Boomerang Road, 2004]
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The Telluride WFM Local 63
was charted 3 August 1896 as the "Sixteen to One" Telluride Miners' Union.
Since many of the mine operators in the Telluride district ran a relatively
decent operation with standard wages of three dollars per day, Local 63 had few
members and little interest in demanding better working conditions until 1901.
The new manager of the expanding Smuggler-Union Mining Company, Arthur L.
Collins, abruptly changed the wage this company paid, introducing the old
"Cornish system". This meant men were paid for only the amount of a vein they
mined. Consequently miners wound up with less than half of the standard wage,
some only a mere sixty-seven cents per day.
Local 63 demanded a return
to standard, living wages, but the company refused. Union men were fired. This
only created a rift and an urgency, swelling the ranks of the union under the
new leadership of a passionate and determined young man, Vincent St. John. Most
of the company's workforce joined the union. Still management refused to pay a
living wage or to allow men to board off company premises. After several failed
attempts to make Collins listen to reason, a strike was called, and the men
walked out. The company's production was crippled. Something that should have
been reasonably and simply resolved became a nightmare that erupted in riot,
ending with three dead and several wounded. Finally Collins saw his
stubbornness was only destroying the town and creating death and enemies where
none had existed. He signed a contract with the union.
A few years later the
millmen of this same mining company demanded an eight-hour day, but once again
the company refused. The men walked out. Mine manager and part-owner, Bulkeley
Wells, hired gunmen to harass the pickets, brought in strikebreakers from out
of state, and demanded the use of the Colorado National Guard for his own
purposes. Union leaders were arrested; union miners were forced from their
homes, driven from town, and threatened with death should they return. Even a
local newsman, Charles Sumner, who dared to question the illegal use of the
militia and the courts, was forcibly removed from the town and told not to
return.
The strike of 1903-04 was
a nightmare, a travesty of justice that reverberated across the country. Mine
owners and operators took control of the courts, the civil authorities, and
used the militia to destroy the union. Colorado Governor James Peabody refused
to listen to reason, refused to send in arbitrators, refused to listen to the
wounded miners and their supporters that hammered at his door for assistance.
Anti-labor editors condemned the WFM and Local 63 as butchers, dynamiters,
anarchists, and assassins. Rational editors demanded justice for the miners.
Senators cried out for an investigation. The WFM appealed to the President. But
still the nightmare continued, until no "undesirable citizens" were left in the
district. Wells personally visited the remaining families, wives, and
supporters of the deported men and politely ordered them to leave town, for, he
claimed, he could not protect them, if a citizens' committee came for them with
a rope. |
Under Bulkeley Wells,
Telluride fell into the darkness of discrimination and antipathy, and this
undercurrent clung to her petticoats for decades. As a mining town she
declined, Wells' sins sinking into the mist of her lost glory. Miners gave her
life, gave her exuberance, but the "leading citizens" drove out the men and
women who believed in an end to child labor, who worked hard and faced even
death to bring safety in the workplace, to give everyone the eight-hour day and
a living wage, to lift the worker from the muck and restore his/her dignity.
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Many still hold the
view that the union miners were devious and violent in Telluride, and they
continue to perpetuate this propaganda with essays or paintings, such as John
Boak's,"The Ouray Miners
Invade Telluride." According to Boak, this hostile red painting with its
sharp jarring angles claims to be representative of history. Boak notes,
"During the strike at the Smuggler mine, Ouray miners would get off work,
fill their packs with sticks of Hercules dynamite, climb thirteen thousand foot
Imogene pass in the dark, descend into the Tomboy basin, and proceed on over to
the Smuggler. There they would fling dynamite at the management men protecting
the mine."
Such "history" never
happened.
It is time the ugly shadows crawl into the now silent mines
and are left there until the mountains are no more. It is time Telluride once
again embraces her heritage of mining in the light of truth. It is time
Telluride honors and celebrates The Miner who gave her life. Please join us in
that celebration.
"The miners lost because they had only the constitution. The
other side had bayonets. In the end, bayonets always win."
Mother Jones (1830-1930), U.S. labor advocate, remarking on the
failed Colorado miners' strike while addressing a 1915 mass meeting in New York
City. [From: The Autobiography of Mother
Jones, 1925].
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Copyright by TMM 2005 [Much of this material has been taken
from the book, The Corpse on Boomerang Road: Telluride's War on Labor
1899-1908, Western Reflections Publishing, 2004. No part of this material
may be used without permission of TMM] |
"Let the fire of truth light our
way" |