Page:Van Cise exhibits to the Commision on Industrial Relations regarding Colorado coal miner's strike.djvu/13

Rh, still it is a thing prohibited under the rules of civilized warfare. The strikers that day were actually using explosive and poisoned bullets, as many such were recovered.

The explosive bullet contains at its nose a small percussion cap, which, upon striking, explodes a charge within and scatters the bullet in tiny fragments, thus tearing a large and ghastly hole in anything in which it is embedded. Some of the poisoned bullets contain no poison, being a composition of lead and copper instead of steel and nickel, as our bullets are now made. Others are filled with verdigris.

The former ammunition was used for a while shortly after the Civil War, and has been universally known as a poisoned bullet, because it sets up blood poisoning almost instantly wherever it penetrates the human body.

There is little left to tell. The remaining hours of the night were spent by both sides in desultory firing, gradually dying out about midnight. The refugees from the tent colony seem to have betaken themselves in a general easterly and northeasterly direction to the farmhouses on the plains and the cover of the black hills (low hills), 2 or 3 miles to the east, rising from the plains.

These hills swarmed with men all the next day. The tent colony continued to burn; in fact, it burned all of Monday night and Tuesday night. Whether or not some tents remained standing on Tuesday morning, which were then destroyed by men in uniform, as has been stated, we were unable to determine. Such a thing is possible, but not probable, in our judgment.

Around about midnight Monday the soldiers and their allies were withdrawn from the field of battle and given a few hours' sleep. Before the dawn on Tuesday they were all awakened and sent to occupy the commanding positions in all directions at some distance from Ludlow. This was done in expectation of a renewed attack.

It is this circumstance, of which there can be no doubt, that leads us to the belief that there were no soldiers in the vicinity of the tent colony when daylight broke on Tuesday, and that all the tents were destroyed on Monday night.

We find that the dominant feeling among the refugee colonists on Monday night, and before a second thought came to them or was suggested to them, was resentment against the Greeks for starting the battle which was bound to entail the results that it did.

This feeling of resenment against the Greeks prevailed even over their resentment against the soldiers, but the incident was later made a handle to inflame the minds of these deluded men to the acts of slaughter and rapine that followed throughout the State.

It was made the excuse of many bold and defiant utterances and acts of treason against the State by certain union leaders who had the opportunity by their influence and authority to prove themselves really great and good men and worthy citizens. Instead, by all means of exaggeration, incendarism, and treasonable practices, they made of the Battle of Ludlow a means of organizing a real rebellion, with its attendant awful consequences.

We do not presume even to hint where the ultimate responsibility lies in the present strike. It may be that the coal operators or the union are wholly to blame for the conditions that have made such results possible; it may be that both sides are partly at fault.

The conditions having been brought about and being actually existent, whatever the cause, we feel that for their treason and rebellion against organized society, with the horrible consequences of anarchy that followed, certain union leaders must take the responsibility before man and God.

Respectfully submitted.

The following additional recommendations were made by Maj. Boughton: I feel it my duty to add a recommendation to those made by the board of officers. Believing that the outbreak at Ludlow was directly due to the presence near each other of deadly enemies in the persons of strikers, non-union workmen, and mine guards, festering a canker of hate and brutality