The class war is hardcore, comrades.

‘Colorado Prison Revolt Ends as Leaders Suicide’ from the Daily Worker. Vol. 7 No. 181. October 5, 1929.

Death Preferred to Life Under Vicious Regime-Kill Prison Hangman-Seven Guards and Six Prisoners Dead.

CANON CITY, Colo., Oct. 4. The mutiny of prisoners, goaded to desperation by the bestial regime existing in the overcrowded penitentiary here, ended today with seven guards and six prisoners dead, and the penitentiary buildings a mass of ruins as a result of fire and the all night battle between prisoners inside one of the cell blocks and the guards, militia and recruits from the town and countryside who swarmed to the scene when the outbreak occurred yesterday noon.

Regime Worse Than Death.

The vicious prison regime, the frightful punishment meted out because of the slightest infraction of the strict rules, the brutality of the guards and the garbage that was dished out as food caused the outbreak.

The outbreak occurred suddenly and the prisoners instantly seized the prison arsenal and held several of the despised guards as hostages, hoping to use them as shields in a wholesale prison delivery. Word to Warden Francis Crawford that if the main gate were opened all the guards would be released unharmed. Otherwise the guards would be killed. Crawford, like all state officials, knew that prison guards are a species of vermin that can be recruited from the dives of any city and refused to comply with the demands of the prisoners.

Militia Attacks Prison.

The state militia of Colorado, recruited from the middle class and sons of the rich for use of the Rockefeller controlled Colorado Fuel and Iron outfit against strikers, kept up a continuous fire from rifles, machine guns and light artillery. The prisoners replied with valleys from the cell block. Finally one guard was killed and his body thrown outside the walls. During the all-night siege four others met the same fate.

The mutinous prisoners showed remarkable courage and daring in face of the overwhelming armed forces that surrounded them. When dawn broke over the battered walls, a message was sent out that the six leaders of the revolt would never be taken alive.

Prisoners Commit Suicide.

The final act of the revolting prisoners was one of utter desperation as the leaders of the revolt realized that their ammunition would soon be exhausted and that they would be tortured to death at the hands of the surviving guards and the warden and deputy wardens. Dan Daniels, who had been hounded to prison by police on a number of occasions and who, when a mere youth, had first been sent to prison, was the organizer and leader of the revolt. Just as an armored tank drew up to the prison gate for the purpose of opening fire upon all the prisoners, five of the leaders lined up in a row and Danels was charged with the gruesome task of shooting them one at a time. When he had cheated the state of the opportunity of murdering the five leaders, he turned his gun upon himself, dying instantly.

Daniels and the five other prisoners wanted to protect the 200 or more victims of “law and order” who were through the long battle in the cell block and so took full responsibility for the revolt in a note sent out just before they died.

Kill Prison Hangman.

The most despised of all the guards and the oldest guard in point of service. J. J. Elies, the prison hangman, was the first to be killed. Five other guards were set free from time to time in order to carry messages to the warden offering terms of peace, but each time the offer was rejected.

Three buildings were ruined, and will have to be replaced at a cost of more than $300,000, and extensive repairs will be necessary.

Meanwhile the surviving prisoners, some 1,200 in number, will be billeted in tents inside the battered walls and under state militia guard until the danger of another outbreak is considered past.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924. National and City (New York and environs) editions exist.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v06-n181-NY-oct-05-1929-DW-LOC.pdf