Consequential in so many ways, the 1903-4 strike of the Western Federation of Miners brought forward a whole generation of working class militants whose impact would be felt for decades. Here, the W.F.M leadership declares ‘No Surrender.’

‘We Know No Surrender: Address of the Western Federation of Miners’ from American Labor Union Journal. Vol. 2 No. 11. December 17, 1903.

An address has been issued by the executive board of the Western Federation of Miners as follows:

Denver, Colo., Dec. 5, 1903.

To the Officers and Members of Organized Labor:

Greeting-We have reviewed the industrial situation in Colorado. We realize that the great conflict that is now being waged against the Western Federation of Miners in this state is a battle to the finish. The Mine Owners’ Association, backed by the financial strength of the American Smelting and Refining Company, supported by the groveling sympathy of commercial interests that have solved themselves into Citizens’ Alliances, have openly declared that the organization which the miners of the west have built upon the bedrock of justice shall be torn from its foundation and shattered into fragments.

The will of the people that demanded of a legislative body the passage of an eight-hour law has been overthrown. Forty thousand of a majority of the citizens of the state failed to arrest corruption and debauchery that made the sworn servants of the people forget their honor and sacrifice their fidelity to the people, to serve the interests of corporate masters. The price of treason was paid and the eight hour law became a corpse, strangled to death and consigned to the morgue, by the legislative assassins who repudiated pledges and trampled under foot the greatest issue in the election campaign of 1902

Eight-Hour Law Defeat.

When the miners, who had waged a peaceable battle for years to place upon the statute books of the state an eight-hour law, discovered that the men in whom they had placed their political confidence had ignored the mandate of the constitutional amendment, then was it that hope fled, and the Western Federation of Miners, as well as all the other departments of organized labor in the state, realized that corporation infamy and legislative rascality must be met with the power of unflinching unionism.

Since the Western Federation of Miners has unfurled its flag upon the Industrial battlefield in Colorado, to establish an eight-hour law and uphold the voice of the people as expressed at the ballot box, the Republican party, with its truckling governor and brainless adjutant-general, has resorted to all the machinery of legalized violence to suppress the voice of labor and fasten the shackles of corporate serfdom upon the callous hands of the toiling thousands. The Republican party of Colorado has assaulted the citadel of civil law with bristling bayonets, and the liberty of citizenship has been immolated upon the altar of military might, in order that cold-blooded monopoly might rule supreme. The Republican party, by its mute silence, sanctions the wrongs that have been perpetrated by a corporation owned state administration, and tacitly defends the unprovoked and brutal persecution that has blackened and disgraced the history of the state since an unscrupulous and conscienceless Peabody dishonored the executive chair of the commonwealth with his diabolical and polluted presence, We earnestly appeal to the labor manhood of the state of Colorado to register a protest in the next state election that will bury Republicanism so deep in the grave of oblivion that all the eloquence of modern Ciceros will not be able to call from the tomb the prostituted party whose lingering semblance of honor was befouled by corporation boodle.

Goldfield Bullpen.

Under the present political administration of the state the military bullpen has been made a bastile, where the independence of citizenship is mocked by the exultant jeers of a military rabble recruited from the slum and riff raff of hoodlum humanity. In the Cripple Creek district the membership of our organization has been held without warrant or process of law and persecuted by a military vengeance that has been fed and inflamed by the official anarchists who tower above law and the constitution. The ball and chain, the relics of barbarism and the dark ages, now fetter the limbs of our membership In Telluride, because their proud spirits rebelled against bowing in dishonorable submission to the czarism of the exterminators of organized labor.

The Western Federation of Miners has at all times been ready and willing to go more than half way in meeting the mine operators of the state, and use every honorable effort to bring to a close this conflict, that has left scars upon the welfare and prosperity of every citizen of the state.

The difference in Telluride between employer and employe would have been settled upon an amicable basis were it not for the mercenary hyenas who have fought unionism for years and who in exchange for their enmity have felt the loss of commercial patronage.

To the members of the Cripple Creek district, to the brave men of our organization in Telluride, who have suffered insult, humiliation and imprisonment, to the soldiers of our dauntless army in Arizona, California, Nevada and in every other locality within the jurisdiction of our organization, where our membership are fighting a battle against corporate despotism and for the uplifting of humanity to a higher plane of civilization, the executive board of the Western Federation of Miners, now in session assembled, pledges the moral and financial support of the organization, to the end that justice may be crowned with laurels of victory, and that haughty, insolent greed under bayonet protection shall fall prostrate and lifeless before the never-surrender struggle which demands that manhood shall be liberated from the thralldom of merciless, incorporated brigandage.

The Coal Strike.

To the coal miners of the state, who have joined in the battle cry for eight hours and more humane conditions, whose loyalty to unionism has been warned by the thrilling eloquence of a “Mother” Jones, whom a uniformed ruffian threatened with the “com pen,” we pledge the deathless fraternity of our organization, realizing that in their victory we can join in the chorus that will commemorate the triumph of organized labor in the Centennial state. We pledge the membership of our organization, that injustice and wrong shall be fought with every legal weapon in our armory, and if unionism must wear the crown of martyrdom and die at the stake through relentless persecution, then the present generation can quote the heroic expressed by Paul Kruger, that the price that will be paid for our annihilation will stagger humanity.

The recruiting offices that have been opened by authority of the governor and the adjutant general of the state have merely been employment agencies, to furnish strike breakers to enable the Mine Owners’ Association to resume operations, but this fiendish scheme has been a costly failure, and now the governor of the state has declared martial law in Teller county, notwithstanding the fact that such a declaration is an open and brazen violation of the constitution, which the governor is sworn to uphold. Notwithstanding the fact that there is no insurrection or invasion, notwithstanding the fact that the civil authorities have at no time been shorn of their power except by military lawlessness, Colorado’s standard bearer of rotten Republicanism has at last crowned all the Infamy of his shameless career of official perfidy by proclaiming martial law because the Mine Owners Association, with all the armed power of the state, reinforced by ex-convicts and gun thugs, have failed to break the strike. The executive board can find no words sufficiently strong to denounce this act in the most brutal drama of coercion that makes a Russian Siberia a paradise when compared to Colorado.

We know no surrender, and justice will arise from the staggering blows administered by a soulless executive, and the future will record the political revenge of an oppressed people, who are awakening from their lethargy to smite unbridled tyranny a blow that will end in its eternal death.

CHARLES MOYER, President. J. C. WILLIAMS. Vice-President. WM. D. HAYWOOD, Secretary-Treasurer. J.T. LEWIS. L.J. SIMPKINS. JAMES P. MURPHY D.C. COPLEY, JAMES KIRWIN, J.A. BAKER.

American Labor Union Journal was the official paper of the ALU, formed by the Western Federation of Miners and a direct predecessor to the I.W.W. Published every Thursday in Butte, Montana beginning in October, 1902 before moving to Chicago in early 1904. The ALU supported the new Socialist Party of America for its first years, but withdrew by 1904 as the union and paper grew more syndicalist with “No Politics in the Union” appearing on its masthead and going to a monthly. In early 1905, the Journal was renamed Voice of Labor, folding into the Industrial Workers of the World later that year. The Journal covered the Western Federation of Miners and the United Brotherhood of Railway Employees, as well as the powerful labor movement in Butte.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/american-labor-union-journal/031217-alujournal-v2n11.pdf