Masked members of the ‘Citizens Alliance’, a terrorist outfit of reactionary Babbits and businessmen created in nearly every city with a strike, goes door to door in Telluride forcing union workers from the town during the Western Federation of Miners struggle there.

‘Climax Reached in Colorado’ from American Labor Union Journal. Vol. 2 No. 25. March 24, 1904.

Union Men Dragged from Homes at Dead of Night a Driven from Town at Point of Gun–Citizens’ Alliance Thugs Threaten to Add Murder to Their Many Other Infamies.

MEMBERS OF THE WORKING CLASS.

Sixty-five union men and their sympathizers at Telluride, Colo., have been attacked in their homes at dead of night by an armed band of Citizens’ Alliance thugs. Their doors were broken in, their families shot at and terrorized, while the luckless strikers were dragged from their beds and in several instances beaten over the head with guns, were forced out into the freezing cold of a mountain winter’s night, loaded on a train, hauled out many miles from home and dumped like cattle, with a warning ringing in their ears that death would be their portion if they dared to return.

This appears to be the climax. Every right which the American people call theirs has been violated, but up to this point the bread masters have attempted to cloak their infamy under a mantle of seeming regularity, but now disguise and subterfuge has been thrown to the winds and the wage master stands forth in his true colors, the brutal, bestial creature that he is, stopping at nothing, not even murder, in his efforts to subdue and throttle the working class.

Words fail in attempting to picture the industrial hell which the mine managers have made of the Centennial state. Every workingman who has a spark of manhood must boil with anger at the indignities heaped upon his class.

Every union man must feel the humiliation and shame which these Colorado hell hounds have hurled upon us as members of organized labor and yet through it all, during the making of the blackest pages in the modern history of the class struggle, the president of the American Federation of Labor has maintained a shrieking silence. Neither by spoken or written word has Samuel Gompers shown that his interests were any more concerned with the working class than are the interests of the stock jobbers of Wall Street. WHY THIS SILENCE? Is it because the Western Federation of Miners no longer pay their per capita tax to him and that his interest in unionism is measured by what he can get out of it or is it because he has entered into an alliance with the mine owners to crush the Western unions? What is the price of his alliance?

Regardless of his attitude, the working class everywhere are standing together in this common struggle, but Samuel Gompers has by his actions justified every doubt of his integrity that has been expressed. Is it not time that unions affiliated with the A.F. of L.; unions that have responded so nobly to Colorado’s call for help were smoking Gompers out? If his interests are with the working class, make him say so if his interests are with the capitalist class, then make him admit it. Smoke the fakir out.

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One of the most astounding crimes in the annals of western labor troubles was committed at Telluride, Colo., on March 15, when a squad of Citizens’ Alliance, which is chiefly made up of the gambler and maque element, armed themselves with Winchesters and revolvers and invaded the homes of sixty-five or seventy union men, breaking down the doors and in some instances dragging men from their beds brutally beating them and finally herding them in a lot until a train was ready to take them out of the city. They were driven to the depot by an armed mob and threatened with pain of death if they ever dared to return. Among the number who were driven out of the city are A.H. Floaten, national committeeman of the Socialist party and also manager of the largest store in the city; Jerry Barnes, G.M. Riddell, Secretary Forbes of the Miners’ Union, Anton Matte, Harry Mauke and Newton. Newspaper men were warned to their homes. The leaders of the Citizens’ Alliance mob were: Buckley Wells of the Smuggler-Union and captain of the militia which has been disbanded; Jack Herron, manager of the Tom Boy mine; Charles Chase, manager of the Liberty Bell mine; J.H. Shockley, manager of the U.S. and B.C. mine, Cooper Anderson, manager of the Nellie mine, and an attorney named Watkins. The first cause for this action on the part of these capitalistic thugs is to be found in the strike which they have been unable to break, but there is another cause and one which enlisted the sympathy and support of the maque element against the miners. It is pointedly stated by a Colorado paper as follows:

“Since the strike was declared last September there has been no open gambling in Telluride. Immediately after the miners walked out some of the officers and leaders of the union swore out warrants against the proprietors of saloons in which gambling was conducted. The proprietors closed their gambling tables and they have been idle since.

“When martial law was revoked last week the gamblers lost no time in throwing faro banks and roulette wheels wide open. The union men declared gambling would not be permitted to be reopened and there was a church element also bitterly opposed to a resumption. Since the games reopened, union men have been gathering evidence. Names and evidence were submitted to the deputy district attorney, and it is understood sixty informations were to have been filed against the gamblers.

“The proprietors of the saloons in which gambling is conducted and a number of the gamblers are members of the Citizens’ Alliance. The mine managers are said to be also in favor of gambling, as it has a tendency to keep the men here. After coming down from the mines on pay day and remaining a day or two the men do not have enough money left to get away and must go back to work in the mines.

“The alliance meeting lasted about one hour and was over shortly after 9 o’clock. The members came up from the opera house and walked hastily home. In a few minutes they were noticed returning and congregating in front of the First National bank. While at home they had armed themselves with Winchester shotguns and from one to three revolvers, and a number of them changed their attire, donning corduroy suits, high boots and slouch hats, pulling the latter close down over their forehead. When interrogated none of them knew anything, nor had heard anything.

“At 10 o’clock all members of the alliance to take part in the proceeding had assembled in front of the bank building. The body of men moved up the street to the alley at the telephone office, following it to the Victoria house, the small buildings along the way being thoroughly searched.

“In front of the hotel an alliance member, who is a bartender and holding a commission as deputy sheriff, suggested that former City Attorney Kiniken and A.H. Floaten be taken. Mayor R.N. Rogers, who was following, protested earnestly against this, but the crowd paid no attention to his remarks, and the mayor went home.

“The mob here separated into three bodies for the purpose of ransacking at the same time different districts inhabited by union men and sympathizers.

“The heavy tread of many men walking on the street and the character of conversation indulged in struck terror to the hearts of women and children. If any man not a Citizens’ Alliance member was encountered on the street he was ordered to go home at once, and the commands were given in such a manner that it was obeyed without question. The houses of ill-fame and little cribs on Pacific Avenue were searched from cellar to garret. But little resistance was offered anywhere, for it would have been useless.

A.H. Floaten, president of the Peoples Supply company, and who is a Socialist and largely responsible for a continuance of the strike, failed to open the front door of his home promptly, when three or four alliance members broke in the heavy glass panel and burst the lock from its fastenings. Floaten, who was sitting by the range in his stocking feet, asked the invaders what they meant by breaking in his door, and one replied: Why in h-ll didn’t you open it? Floaten asked to see their warrants, and the reply was, We don’t need any warrant for you, and took hold of him. He resisted, and they struck him over the head, starting the blood to flowing. He was then jerked out of his house and marched up the alley in his stocking feet. It was cold and the ground was frozen.

“The home of Tony Langeri, who was deported by the militia, was also invaded. Mrs. Langeri and her two children were in bed and badly frightened. She says the men entering her house wore masks, Langeri had not returned to Telluride and was not found.

“Several shots were fired at the home of W.A. Schiller, in East Telluride. Schiller bluffed the alliance men by threatening to shoot through the doors at them, until finally he escaped through the back door. The next morning he walked up and down Main Street with a shotgun on his shoulder and a butcher knife in his pocket defiant. A few moments after the shooting at Schiller’s, Mrs. Langeri claims to have been shot at while going there to see if any one had been hurt.

“Later they were loaded on a special train, saluted with several threatening volleys and told that death awaited them if they dared to return. The train carried them to Ridgeway, where they were ordered from the cars and told to shift for themselves. They suffered greatly from the cold. During the eleven-mile walk to Ouray a number almost dropped from exhaustion. What course will be pursued by the Western Federation of Miners has not yet been decided on, or, at least, not made public.”

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/040324-alujournal-v2n25.pdf