Debs spits fire over the brutal killing of 21 striking miners in Pennsylvania on September 10, 1897. Known as the Lattimer of Hazleton Massacre, by the local sheriff and his posse took the lives of mainly Polish, Slovak, and Lithuanian immigrants. Those that died were Michael Cheslock, Sebastian Bozestoski, John Chobonshi, Adalbert Czaja, John Futa, John Gastack, Antonio Grazke, Frank Kodel, Andrew Kollick, Andre Nikzkowuski, Rulof Rekenits, John Ruski, John Sheka, John Tranke, John Turnasdich, Stephen Urich, Andrew Varicku, Andrew Yerkman, Stanley Zagorski, Adam Zamoski, Andrew Zeminski, and John Zernovick.

‘Massacred Miners’ by Eugene V. Debs from The Railway Times. Vol. 4 No. 21. September 16, 1897.

Terre Haute, Ind., Sept. 11.

Now that he realized the enormity of his crime and the popular indignation it has aroused Sheriff Martin is beginning to explain how he and his deputies came to fire upon a body of peaceable and defenseless miners on the road leading to Lattimer and committing wholesale murder.

The Sheriff’s explanation simply does not explain, and such of it as would furnish a shadow of a justification is proven to be false. Instead of preserving the peace and upholding the law the Sheriff and his murderous deputies provoked disorder and then deliberately shot down the victims of their conspiracy.

Were I not unalterably opposed to capital punishment I would say that the Sheriff and his deputy assassins should be lynched. Each of them is guilty of murder in the first degree, and as they totally defied the law they were sworn to uphold in striking down their victims, they have forfeited all rights to protection under the law.

Robbed for Years.

The men who have been shot down in cold blood are Pennsylvania miners. For years they have been robbed in countless ways by the combines and companies which employed them, and now that they have been reduced to famine and rags they are murdered in the public highway, as if they were so many rabid dogs.

I have been among them and know by personal observation all about their wretched condition. Even now, I can see the marching miners pursuing their endless journey. They are hungry and the hot sands blister their shoeless feet. Their hovel habitations are the abodes of despair. Wives and half-naked children are in the grasp of starvation.

If by some magic the American people could look upon the scenes in some of the Pennsylvania mining regions, the bloody incident at Hazleton would precipitate a revolution.

The responsibility does not rest entirely with the Sheriff and his deputies, as they are but tools in the hands of the real murderers, for whom we must look higher. As a general rule, the public functionaries in the mining regions are spineless and subservient creatures of companies. They issue proclamations, read riot acts, and commit murder when ordered to do so by their masters.

Men Were Peaceable.

The miners who were murdered yesterday in the name of law and order were perfectly peaceable. They were quietly walking on the highway, when the assassin authorities stopped and bullied and attacked them.

Suppose a man of wealth, a coal operator, were stopped and killed under the same circumstances. The whole country would be arounds in an instant and the newspapers, supported by the Christian clergy, would demand in thunder tones that all the powers of the government be invoked to crush out the whole body of workingmen.

Wholesale murder has been committed at the behest of corporate capital by the public authorities in the name of law and order. No amount of jugglery or sophistication can obscure the indictment.

Is this an attack on government, or is it government?

Is it an assault on “Old Glory,” as they declared when the Pullman strike was on, or is it what the old flag now symbolizes?

Governor Hastings has ordered out the troops. Is it for the purpose of shooting the murderers or murdering more miners?

The crime is so revolting that it is difficult to keep within the bounds of moderate statement.

Text for Ministers.

The 20 or more bloody graves of these murdered workingmen loom up before us. What a text for the Christian ministry!

Will they raise their voices in a solemn protest as if the strikers were the murderers instead of the victims of the authorities?

When I think of these hard-worked, half-starved coal miners lying in the dirt of the highway, the blood coming from their ragged bodies, and then think of the hovels in which wives and children are awaiting their return my heart melts in compassion and my whole being revolts against the satanic crime.

It is worthy of remark that the massacre occurred in a state that boasts of a majority of 280,000 in favor of protection of American labor.

Government by injunction is bearing fruit. We will soon have government by murder.

The Pennsylvania horror is a blot upon the state, a disgrace to the Republic, and a blistering reproach to our civilization. It is sufficient to shock all Christendom, and it is to be hoped that the American people will wake up.

The Social Democrat was the paper of Eugene Debs’ pioneering industrial union, the American Railway Union. Begun in 1894 as the Railway Times, in July of 1897 it was renamed The Social Democrat. First published in Terre Haute and then Chicago, the paper was produced weekly.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/social-democrat-us/970916-socialdemocrat-v4n21.pdf