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Saturday May 29, 1915
From the Appeal to Reason: P. H. Skinner Covers the Grilling of John D Rockefeller Jr.
[Continued from above.]
From Perjuring to Murder.
The Death Special, built in a C. F. & I. plant.
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E. S. Gaddis, head of John D.'s Colorado social welfare trap, through three mortal hours recited horror after horror that rested upon the doorstep of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Co.-from subornation of perjury, all the slimy way through renting shacks for prostitution and gambling, to murder of the most ferocious and cold-blooded description.
Yes, dear reader, these things were all established by unimpeachable testimony, in an impartial investigation, before the industrial relations commission, fought tooth and toe-nail by the most skillful law-sharks that Standard Oil money could buy, here in the capital of the nation, within biscuit-toss of the Riggs National Bank and the treasury and the white-house and all the other strongholds of privilege. These and more-so many that twenty pages like this you are reading would not contain it all, and every word pointing unerringly to John D.'s Fuel and Iron Co. as one of the most conscienceless and appalling criminals of all history.
Excoriates the Money Changers.
Listen to the "roughneck sky-pilot" arraigning the methods of the exploiters as John D. Rockefeller, Jr., enters the crowded gold room of the Shoreham hotel, where the meetings are held, surrounded by his bodyguard of lawyers, publicity agents and general utility men. "These officials of Colorado," the dominie was saying, "are anarchists. They are no more responsible to any authority for their acts than are so many crazy men. And they were put there by the C. F. I. Whoever is responsible for the hiring of these gunmen, whether Rockefeller or whoever it may be, is guilty of treason, and should be executed for the crime."
These are the words that greeted the man whose conscience acquits him of wrong doing in Colorado. And McCorkle is so well thought of that the Standard Oil Co., with all its lawless power, is afraid to evict him from its own property-for fear that his fellow townsmen would go on strike in protest-as indeed they would. And a strike just now would be inconvenient.
McCorkle told, while the millionaire stared in simulated indifference, how the coffers of the Sunday school superintendent were filled by excessive rentals charged for saloons-kept open in defiance of the Colorado law passed at the last election by a 12,000 majority referendum vote; how raffling was carried on in the company stores in evasion of the law; how the workers were compelled to buy lottery tickets, in many cases depriving their families of the necessities of life, by threat of losing their jobs and footing it for many miles through the Colorado hills for another, if by any chance another were to be obtained.
And John D. got the profits-and evaded the responsibility. The minister described these brothels and gambling hells on the Colorado Fuel and Iron Co. property as "chambers of horrors beyond description."
Horrible Lack of Sanitation.
Company Shacks
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He told of the unbelievably unsanitary conditions that would shock a community of African Bushmen; how cesspools, reeking with filth, were allowed to overflow and spread their putrid liquors along the main street of the town, breeding typhoid fever, so that many victims, men, women and children, were added to the Ludlow achievement. He told how the men, "ignorant foreigners" and American born free and independent citizens, had attempted to organize that these conditions might be remedied, by the simple process of forcing obedience to the law-law that was absolutely disregarded by the anarchists in office by virtue of Rockefeller money.
Speaking of an investigation committee, upon whose report the intelligent American public depends for information on Colorado conditions, Mr. Wellborn, President to the C. F. I., who was doing the "investigating," told the preacher to "fix it up so as not to give a bad idea of conditions." Although the saloons and "dives" (gambling hells) are not run in the name of the C. F. I., yet, says the preacher, the traveling auditor of that philanthropic company invoices the stock and liquors in them. It is understood that Mr. Rockefeller intends soon to preach a sermon before his Bible class on the blessings of temperance.
"Uplift Work Is Satanic."
"All this uplift work is satanic," the preacher was told at one time by L. M. Bowers, Vice President of the C. F. I., when McCorkle had tried to get a nurse for a miner's wife who was dangerously ill. "The company expects you to keep the Greek and Italian workers down. That is what you are here for." McCorkle didn't think so, and "we cannot permit him to stay where he is," wrote Bowers to A. R. Ford, the "man higher up" in preacherdom, although the congregation or the Presbytery is supposedly the power that can remove a preacher. The calm assumption that the rules of the church and the desire of the congregation could be overridden came from many years' experience in such matters. But McCorkle is a fighter and a Socialist and he is there yet. "I shall stay," he told the commission, "until they throw me out bodily."
That there are many, many towns in the C. F. I. district in a similar condition, all with preachers, and that only two have dared to protest gives us a sinister line on the monopoly that the iron company holds in religion as well as in the saloons, brothels and gambling dens.
Rockefeller Takes the Stand.
John D Rockefeller Jr
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Then the Bible-student-financier took the stand. He gave his name and occupation, omitting, doubtless by oversight, any reference to the saloon business. Chairman Walsh asked a question or two, which the pious one answered. Then, "Mr. Chairman," he said, "I have prepared a paper which I prefer to read before answering any further questions." "But I prefer to ask the questions first," said the chairman. Then dispute continued a few moments, ending in victory for the millionaire. He read his paper, in which he proved to all his followers that he was entitled to the profits, but was in no way responsible for the lawlessness of the coal company.
Then began the questions again, and the twisting and the turnings. Chairman Walsh referred to the evidence of Mr. McCorkle, showing that one of the jurors who condemned John R. Lawson was a certain W. W. Wilson, who had a monopoly to sell goods in all the company stores. "Do you think that a fair trial was possible under such circumstances?" thundered Walsh. "This man was beholden to your company for his livelihood." "It is not proved that this W. W. Wilson who was on the jury is the man who held the monopoly," answered the oil prince.
An Artful Dodger.
"But if it is true that this agent was on the jury that condemned this poor workingman to the tortures of a life in the penitentiary, leaving his wife and children to starve-if it is true, will you make the same effort to secure him a new and fair trial that you did to protect the strike breakers in their alleged desire to work for starvation wages?" But no power on earth could pin that champion dodger down to a definite statement on any subject under the sun, except that he was entitled to the profits, and exempt from responsibility. "I do not know," "I cannot recall," or "that is a matter for Mr. Welborn to decide," were the answers to nine-tenths of Mr. Walsh's questions.
As an example of the carefulness with which the investigation was conducted, the commission wired to Denver to make sure whether the W. W. Wilson referred to by Mr. McCorkle was the Wilson who sat on the jury that condemned Lawson to a life in the penitentiary. In the Friday morning session: "This," said Walsh, holding a telegram under the millionaire's nose, "is the reply to our telegram of yesterday to the attorney general of Colorado-the one you have so much confidence in." It was to the effect that the Wilson who sat on the Lawson jury was the one who held the concession from the C. F. I. "What are you going to do?" roared Walsh, leaning over the table and shaking his finger within six inches of John's white, perspiring face. "Are you going to see that he gets a fair trial?"
Rockefeller tried more of his evasive tactics. "What are you going to do?" thundered Walsh again. "Mr. Rockefeller. I have asked you this question. I require a direct answer. What are you going to do to help this poor man who has been condemned to worse than death by an unfair trial? Will you use every effort to secure a fair trial for him?" Mr. Rockefeller felt that he had no power to interfere. Whatever is done to save Lawson from the clutches of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company must be done by the APPEAL. There is no other hope for him.
"Poison Ivy" Lee.
Ivy Lee
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The commission showed that Rockefeller had recommended to Ivy Lee (Poison Ivy Lee, as the "sky-pilot" called him) an article from the Popular Science Monthly by Prof. John J. Stevenson, as the "best, clearest, soundest and most forcible article on Labor and Capital" and recommended that it be sent out over the country as a part of the C. F. I. educational campaign.
Walsh read passage after passage from this article, with which John D. did not have the nerve to agree. Statements that the death of 700,000 little ones by starvation was a blessing to the community; that F. H. Harriman is of more lasting service to the nation than 1,000,000 unskilled laborers; that slave-like obedience prevails in the labor unions; that union men are peons to the unions; that the principles of union men are no better than those of the India thugs, who practiced robbery and murder; that the sympathy of the legal authorities are always with the workers-to all these John D. replied, "I endorsed the article as a whole, not the various parts of it." Yet these passages are the meat of the article that the Sunday school superintendent would have sent broadcast over the country.
Photographs and paragraph breaks added.]
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