When Corporations Ruled Our World!

[Hubert Flottz]

Ludlow Colorado: Compassionate Conservatives in action!

snip

They moved into a cluster of tents, around which National Guard soldiers took positions and at night occasionally fired their rifles into the colony. To protect the children, the miners dug a cave under the largest tent. But on Easter night 1914, company-hired gunmen and some of the National Guard poured oil over the strikers' tents and set them on fire.

As the frantic miners and their families ran for safety in the night, they were machine-gunned. Some escaped, some were wounded and thirteen children and a pregnant woman in the recently dug cave all died-some with gun wounds, some from suffocation.

http://www.geocities.com/ironworkers373/history8.html







http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/childlabor/index.html

http://cass.etsu.edu/ARCHIVES/coal.htm

[soupkitchen]

1. Lest we forget n/t

*

[Hubert Flottz]

2. The Story Of Joe Hill :

Joe Hill's Story
By Ken Verdoia

At sunrise on November 19, 1915 a firing squad took aim in the yard of the Utah State Penitentiary in Salt Lake City and put an end to the life of convicted murderer Joseph Hillstrom.

http://www.pbs.org/joehill/story/index.html

[Hubert Flottz]

3. Company vs Worker WAR in West Virginia!

Life in a company owned world


Snip

In the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, much of the land of West Virginia was taken over by coal companies. Many people sold their land or were forced to sell their land, not knowing what the consequences would be.

The coal companies set up a system that gave them total control of the town and the people. The houses, hospitals, stores and even the churches were company property. To keep the miners and their families even more dependent, the companies created their own form of money, or scrip, which could only be used in the company stores.

The traditionally independent mountaineers soon became trapped in a dead-end, impossible to leave job. Fortunately, the United Mine Workers of America was created in 1897 and unions were introduced to the area.

http://www.as.wvu.edu/engl01/users/students/kmoore/public_html/minewar2.htm

Growing Up on Cabin Creek
An Interview with Arnold Miller
BY MICHAEL KLINE.

snip

Arnold Miller: My daddy was born in Bell County, in Pineville in East Kentucky, and was forced to migrate out of Kentucky to West Virginia at the age of 14, ostensibly for his organizing activity. He was a veteran miner at the age of 14, had five years in the mines. It's not common for people to understand today that years ago they worked children in the mines. I had a group picture I could show you somewhere here in Charleston. Showed about 30 miners, only two of which were adults. It's odious from looking at the picture that children did work in the mines in the early days. They worked them like slaves. They didn't pay them but damn little, and they dogged them around. Mining is far different today than it was then.

http://www.rootsweb.com/~wvcoal/miller.html

[Hubert Flottz]

4. Mother Jones!

Snip

On February 12, 1913, Mother Jones was arrested in Charleston and sent back to Pratt. She recounted in her autobiography:

"The court had sent two lawyers to my bullpen to defend me, but I refused to let them defend me in that military court. I refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the court, to recognize the suspension of the civil courts. My arrest and trial were unconstitutional. I told the judge advocate that this was my position. I refused to enter a plea."

The offenses for which she was tried, according to her own account, included "stealing a cannon from the military, inciting to riot, putting dinimite under a track to blow up a C-O road." State Attorney General Lee recalled a conversation with Jones, in which she stated that her speech at Cabin Creek, made three months prior to the first martial law declaration, was the basis of her conviction. She was sentenced to twenty years in the state penitentiary.

http://www.cr.nps.gov/nhl/DOE_dedesignations/Jones.htm

[Hubert Flottz]

5. Sid Hatfield!

snip

In the early spring of 1920, unorganized coal miners in Mingo County, West Virginia began seeking to join the UMWA. The coal operators became alarmed by the organizing activity and locked out the miners. On May 19, 1920, twelve men were killed at Matewan, West Virginia in a gun fight in which the local police and the people of Matewan faced a group of hoodlums hired by the infamous Baldwin Felts Detective Agency at the behest of the coal operators to unlawfully evict miners from their homes.

In the Matewan battle, Albert Felts, wearing a badge as a "deputy sheriff" of Harlan County, Kentucky, fired the first shot but was killed by Matewan Chief of Police Sid Hatfield. Hatfield had warned the thugs that they had no legal warrants to evict the citizens of Matewan and that he would not permit eviction without proper legal procedures. Felts then attempted to forcibly arrest the Chief of Police. Felts had been one of the chief gunmen used by the coal operators in the Ludlow, Colorado massacre in 1914, in which twenty persons were killed, including twelve women and children who were burned alive in their tents.

Sid Hatfield, a hero to West Virginia miners, was himself killed in August of 1921 in Welch, West Virginia by C. E. Lively, a Baldwin Felts gunman. Hatfield's murder was in all likelihood a set-up. He was arrested on July 28 on an allegation that he had shot up the town of Mohawk more than a year before. He was taken from his home town of Matewan to McDowell County, West Virginia, a stronghold of anti-UMWA coal operators. As he entered the court house with Ed Chambers, who had been called as a witness, both were shot down in front of their wives by Lively and two other gunmen. No charges were brought against Lively or the other murderers.

http://www.umwa.org/history/matewan.shtml

[Hubert Flottz]

6. Labor History Timeline for 1806-1986

Most citizens of the United States take for granted labor laws which protect them, unaware that over the course of this country's history, workers have fought and often died for these protections.

http://www.gounionnow.com/laborhistory_timeline.htm

Bush Inc Wants To Tear All This Down And Take Us Back To The Dark Ages In American Labor!

[opihimoimoi]

7. Only 40 some odd years ago my old company made me and the gang I led

to work with water proofing material without telling us it contained coaltar. 2 of my men went to the hospital and the rest of us went home early with blisters and skin irritation. We found later they didn't want to pay us the double time under our union contract.

The dirty tricks continue till today man. The sneaky pete corporations of this nation and the things they do in the name of profits are horrifing. They even send the dangerous operations over seas to where the environmental laws are lax if not non existant. Bhophal India comes to mind.

In the name of profits Agent Orange was sprayed over Nam. My good buddy Maj Edward Spinario, Spec Forces, came home to die a horrible death, a victim of AO. Them fuckers knew it was bad but in the name of profits, so it was done.

Capitalism gone amok is what the Pub game is all about. They are CLAP, the cheap labor asshole Pubs.

[Hubert Flottz]

9. Now Poor Little Bush is a victim of the Evil Corporatists too! *sniff*

Bush wants to be the slavemaster not the Resident! He'll cry if we don't let him! Say Bye-Bye to your overtime pay! Say Bye Bye To a safe workplace! Say Bye Bye to a decent way of life! Say Bye Bye to a better world for YOUR kids!

Come we go look for Mother Jones's Balls!

[union_maid]

8. Woody Guthrie's Ludlow Massacre

It was early springtime when the strike was on,
They drove us miners out of doors,
Out from the houses that the Company owned,
We moved into tents up at old Ludlow.
I was worried bad about my children,
Soldiers guarding the railroad bridge,
Every once in a while a bullet would fly,
Kick up gravel under my feet.

We were so afraid you would kill our children,
We dug us a cave that was seven foot deep,
Carried our young ones and pregnant women
Down inside the cave to sleep.

That very night your soldiers waited,
Until all us miners were asleep,
You snuck around our little tent town,
Soaked our tents with your kerosene.

You struck a match and in the blaze that started,
You pulled the triggers of your gatling guns,
I made a run for the children but the fire wall stopped me.
Thirteen children died from your guns.

I carried my blanket to a wire fence corner,
Watched the fire till the blaze died down,
I helped some people drag their belongings,
While your bullets killed us all around.

I never will forget the look on the faces
Of the men and women that awful day,
When we stood around to preach their funerals,
And lay the corpses of the dead away.
We told the Colorado Governor to call the President,
Tell him to call off his National Guard,
But the National Guard belonged to the Governor,
So he didn't try so very hard.

Our women from Trinidad they hauled some potatoes,
Up to Walsenburg in a little cart,
They sold their potatoes and brought some guns back,
And they put a gun in every hand.

The state soldiers jumped us in a wire fence corners,
They did not know we had these guns,
And the Red-neck Miners mowed down these troopers,
You should have seen those poor boys run.

We took some cement and walled that cave up,
Where you killed these thirteen children inside,
I said, "God bless the Mine Workers' Union,"
And then I hung my head and cried.

[Hubert Flottz]

10. Welcome to DU Union Maid, we need all the help we can get!

Thanks for the great song!

[Hubert Flottz]

11. Kick::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

:kick: Bush Out Now!