Page:Van Cise exhibits to the Commision on Industrial Relations regarding Colorado coal miner's strike.djvu/3

Rh of the pit, as would have been the case had they attempted to rush out when the tent above caught fire.

11. We find that the colony was looted by participants and spectators in the battle. About 15,000 rounds of ammunition were taken from the tent marked "Headquarters of John Lawson."

12. All women and children have been accounted for. Every possible pit or cellar has been examined, and no bodies remained in the colony.

13. Only one person was killed or wounded in the colony itself by gunshot. Frank Snyder, a 12-year-old boy, was shot in the head. His father stated that evening that this boy had gone outside the tent and was shot in the forehead while facing the arroyo from which the strikers' fire came.

14. The colony was not swept with the machine guns. This is proved by the fact that the chicken houses, outhouses, tent frames, and posts still standing in the colony exhibit no bullet holes. While the buildings and fences along the railroad track are riddled with bullet holes made by machine guns trained on the steel bridge and pump house.

15. The soldiers were lawfully and dutifully bearing arms. It was lawful for them to possess the machine gun and to bring it up the hill. The strikers, on the other hand, were acting unlawfully in securing and using their arms and ammunition. No attack upon the colony had ever been made or intended by the soldiers, and the explanation that arms and ammunition were kept in the colony for defense is untenable.

16. We find that in apparent anticipation of a preparation for the battle at Ludlow, rifle pits were prepared by the strikers on the south side of their colony along the county road and close to the tents and along the west side of the colony.

These rifle pits show conclusively the careful and deliberate preparation of the strikers for battle, and their location along the front and side of the colony nearest to the military camp was such that when used they could not be defended against without firing into the colony. Such care had the strikers themselves for their women and children that these pits were located where any return of the fire from them would be drawn directly into the colony itself.

We make the following recommendations:

A. Feeling that this board of officers was not constituted to determine possible guilt or innocence, we recommend that a general court-martial be appointed to try all officers and enlisted men participating in the treatment and killing of prisoners and the burning and looting of the tent colony.

B. We recommend that the general and governor urge upon the legislature the establishment of a permanent State constabulary for police duty in disturbed regions of the State, whereby the young men of our volunteer National Guard may be relieved from engaging in riot duty with a people numbering among them ferocious foreigners whose savagery in fight we found exemplified in the killing of Maj. Lester while under red cross protection, and the maiming and mutilation of Privates Martin, Hockersmith, and Chavez.

C. We strongly recommend the general and governor to urge the State and Federal Governments to proceed at once to the apprehension and punishment of all persons engaged as instigators or participants in the treasons, murders, arsons, and other acts of outlawry in this State since the battle of Ludlow.

To a proper understanding of the late deplorable happenings around Ludlow, some preliminary considerations are necessary. It is impossible to estimate those events justly without some general knowledge of the country, the inhabitants of the tent colony and personnel of their neighbors in the military camp and adjacent villages.

A crude conception of general directions in the Ludlow vicinity may be had by imagining a gigantic capital K. The vertical line of such letter would represent the Colorado & Southern Railroad running north and south. At the upper or southern end of this line is what has been called, for want of other name, Water Tank Hill, a low, gently sloping mesa commanding the territory to the south, east, and north. At the lower or northern end of the line is a steel railroad bridge crossing a deep arroyo which runs through the whole country in a general east and west direction.

The arms of the K, except that, to be accurate, the lower one should be horizontal, represent roads which at the extremities of the arms enter the two canyons of Delagua and Berwind. Up these canyons lie the largest and richest coal mines of the State, and about the mines are clustered the workmen's villages of Delagua, Hastings, Berwind, Tabasco, Tollerburg, and others. It will thus be seen that the point at which the two arms converge and meet the