Mar. 11, 2006 - 19:59 MST

HISTORICAL RERUN

Tom Noel, called Dr. Colorado is a writer and professor who has published many articles dealing with Colorado history. His column in the Rocky Mountain News today interests me because it gives some of the nitty gritty of the "old" days here. Herewith in full:

LABOR LEADER HAYWOOD PAID DEARLY FOR BELIEFS

"Watching "national security" override America's promises of civil liberties is not new. A century ago, Colorado's most prominent labor leader disappeared."

"William Dudley Haywod was the best-known official of the Western Federation of Miners, which organized a majority of Colorado's mine, mill and smelter workers. Haywood led the WFM's 1903 strike for a maximum eight-hour day, minimum wage of $3 a day and safer working conditions."

"Big Bill," as he was called by friend and foe alike, stood 6 feet tall, weighed 220 pounds and wore a black patch after losing an eye in a fight. In the mines and up in the saloons and union halls, he fought for working people. If you didn't agree that Colorado workers were exploited by a grossly overpaid management, Big Bill would educate you."

"Such behavior of course, wasn't tolerated for long. A knock came on the door of his Denver home shortly before midnight Feb. 17, 1906. A deputy sheriff without a warrant arrested Haywood and locked him in the county jail. Early that morning, he was taken to the Oxford Hotel, shackled and dragged to Union Station to be shoved aboard a special train."

"Pinkerton Detective Agency reports at the Denver Public Library's Western History Department reveal that Haywood's arrest had been planned by the agency's private detectives, Colorado Gov. Jesse F. McDonald and Idaho Gov Frank R. Gooding."

"Haywood was railroaded into the Idaho State Penitentiary and charged with the murder of Idaho Gov. Frank Steunenberg. Harry Orchard had set the bomb that killed Steunenberg at his home, but officials charged Haywood with instigating the murder.

"Clarence Darrow, America's foremost defense attorney, represented Haywood at what newspapers called "the trial of the century." While in the Idaho pen, Haywood ran as a socialist candidate for governor of Colorado, capturing 16,015 votes."

"After a jury of Idaho farmers found Haywood not guilty, he returned to Denver, where officials turned off the electric-light-bulb "Welcome" sign on the arch at Union Station. Nevertheless, hundreds of supporters greeted the exonerated labor leader, welcoming him back to Denver, where he lived until 1917. Meanwhile, the governor fo Colorado and the Colorado National Guard crushed the Western Federation of Miners."

"Frustrated, Haywood chaired a 1905 meeting in Chicago, along with such notable rabble-rousers as Mary Harris "Mother" Jones. They formed "one big union" for all workers, the Industrial Workers of the World (or Wobblies). Haywood continued to speak out, write about and demonstraate on behalf of the working class until World War One."

"When that war broke out, the IWW condemned it as a capitalists' war in which the working class would do the dying to enridch war profiteers. For these views, Haywood and other Wobblies were thrown into jail. Sentenced to a $10,000 fine and 20 years imprisonment, Haywood appealed to the U.W. Supreme Court, his attorneys weren't optimistic."

"Big Bill was in the Cook County Jail in Chicago when news arrived that the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution had succeeded. He and other IWW members broke into cheers and sang from the IWW's Little Red Songbook."

"After years of frustration, struggle and dreams of a workers revolution, it had finally happened in Russia. Haywood posted a $30,000 bond and fled the U.S., sailing out of New York harbor on March 31, 1921. The long-persecuted, often jailed labor leader saluted, as he put it "the old hag with her uplifted torch," telling her, "Goodbye, you've had your back turned on me too long. I am now going to the land of freedom."

"Big Bill never came home to Colorado. He died in Moscow, where some of his ashes were placed in the walls of the Kremlin, in Red Square, next to Lenin's Tomb."

"The Autobiography of Big Bill Haywood published in 1929, the year after his death, is probably the only Colorado history book endorsed by the Communist Party."

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Big Bill left Denver just four years before I was born. Makes me realize why Mom and Dad kept their organizing of the CTU undercover for so long, NLRB helped their cause too.

Wonder what Big Bill would have thought if he could have seen what was to become of Russia on into the years ?

Labor and labor organizers has always been given short shrift. Companies and political office holders and their arms of the law have had a habit of doing skullduggery against working folks seems to me. I have a book on the Columbine Massacre, one on The Pullman Strike and the "Teamsters" by Steven Brill that pretty well backs up what I have said. Then I have read much about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire as well as other labor problems in our country.

I guess the corporations and big business have about solved the problem -- Maquiladora factories in Mexico are doing work we once did here, our border in the south seems to be wide open, the drafta from NAFTA blows hard, then the white collar work is going to India for one and manufacturing going to China and other Asian countries.

Seems like the only ones not too scared to organize are the cleaners, janitors and people of that type who are finally waking up and demanding fair treatment.

Minimum Wage legislation appears to be dead in the water, but living costs keep going up. Medicare honked up too. Perhaps we ARE The Vanishing Americans. Janitors are not needed for empty buildings, and the corporations keep making big money from foreign workers.

Of course the plaint is heard from the Money-bags, "You have caused us to price ourselves out of the market." Riiiiight, so they outsource the jobs in any way they can and continue to rake in the profits. Anybody wonder why Saturn was built in Springhill, Tennessee ? ? ? ? I don't. For years manufacturing was sent to our South, until Southerners began to organize too.

I don't know, it is simple to me, a worker is worthy of his hire and deserves every penny of it. I know that unskilled jobs would pay probably just enough to enable a person to live in a one room apartment and eat the simplest of foods and wear economical clothes and etc., yet sometimes two people working can't afford to live any better than that - - - - that is, if they are still working.

Yes, I believe skill and knowledge should demand premium pay, and the responsibility of a CEO is worth a bunch, but some of the take by the "uppers" is totally ridiculous.

I wonder, seems that we are doomed to repeat the past in labor matters and do a sort of HISTORICAL RERUN . . . . . . . . .