THE CONFESSIONS AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HARRY ORCHARD
LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
SAN DIEGO
THE CONFESSIONS AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HARRY ORCHARD
4
HARRY ORCHARD From a picture taken at the Boise Penitentiary in May, 1907.
THE CONFESSIONS
AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
HARRY ORCHARD
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
NEW YORK
THE McCLURE COMPANY V 1 I
V ORCHARD
at the Boise Penitent i*;-
THE CONFESSIONS
AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
HARRY ORCHARD
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGEAPHS
NEW YORK
THE McCLURE COMPANY MCMVII
Copyright, 1907, by The McClure Company
Published, December, 1907
Copyright, 1907, by The S. S. McClure Company
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PACK
I. MY EARLY LIFE IN ONTARIO .... 3
II. UNION RULE IN THE CCEUR D'ALENES . . 16
III. WE BLOW UP THE BUNKER HILL MILL . . 30
IV. I Go TO LIVE IN CRIPPLE CREEK ... 48 V. THE BIG STRIKE OF 1903 55
VI. THE MILITIA COME TO CRIPPLE CREEK . 63
VII. THE EXPLOSION IN THE VINDICATOR MINE . 68
VIII. MY FIRST VISIT TO HEADQUARTERS . . 88
IX. How WE TRIED TO ASSASSINATE GOVERNOR
PEABODY . . . . . . . 110
X. THE SHOOTING OF LYTE GREGORY BEFORE
THE CONVENTION . . ... . 122
XI. How WE BLEW UP THE INDEPENDENCE DEPOT
DURING THE CONVENTION . . . .129
XII. How I WENT TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BLEW
UP FRED BRADLEY 149
XIII. OUR FIRST BOMB FOR GOVERNOR PEABODY,
AND OTHER BOMBS FOR STREET WORK . 167
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XIV. OUR FURTHER PLANS FOR GOVERNOR PEABODY AND How I SET BOMBS FOR JUDGES GOD-
DARD AND GABBERT 181
XV. How I STARTED AFTER GOVERNOR STEUNEN-
BERG 196
XVL THE ASSASSINATION OF GOVERNOR STEUNEN-
BERG 206
XVII. MY EXPERIENCE IN JAIL AND PENITENTIARY 224 XVIII. MY REASON FOR WRITING THIS BOOK . 251
vi
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
HARRY ORCHARD IN 1907 .... Frontispiece
EXECUTIVE BOARD OF THE WESTERN FEDERATION FAPAG° OF MINERS IN 1905 92
JAMES H. PEABODY 118
STEVE ADAMS 150
THE Two STEUNENBERG BOMBS 208
FRANK STETJNENBERG 218
HARRY ORCHARD IN 1906 226
JAMES MCPARLAND . 230
A PERSONAL NOTE OF INTRODUCTION
BY EDWIN S. HINKS,
Dean of St. Michael's Cathedral, Boise, Idaho
IN the month of June, 1906, I first met the au- thor of this autobiography. About six months prior he had made his full confession of crime, which was again given on the witness-stand. He wrote the account of his life, by his own volition, during the last half of the year of 1906, telling me many times that his object was to present a warn- ing to all who might read it against taking the first steps in a path of reckless living that so rapidly ends in ruin.
As I comprehend the transformation of Harry Orchard from reckless criminality to a penitent will- ing to tell the truth, I feel that the world should understand that his change of front was not in the order of religious conversion, then moral percep- tion, leading to confession. No! it seems to me the order was first physical, second moral, and finally religious.
He was wretched behind stone walls, lonely as cut ix
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
off from freedom and old associations; hence he fairly craved the sympathy which he got in the un- burdening of his mind to McParland. He told me that at first he only told a little of the truth, and that several days passed before he divulged in full.
This confession, to my mind, evinces the first real, moral change in the man. He has told me that; though he had never in his life doubted the existence of a God, and positively believed in a future state, still he thought himself to be beyond forgiveness.
He sat from week to week brooding on his lost condition, convinced that a murderer could not be forgiven ; and he had read the Bible which had been sent to him from the East, searching for light when I first met him.
He had attended the Sunday afternoon services at the penitentiary a few times, when he expressed a desire for me to visit him.
Almost immediately he came to the point on which he desired my expression of opinion, based on the words of Scripture: Was he, as a murderer, shut out from hope of God's forgiveness?
I explained to him that neither in the Old Testa- ment nor in the New Testament Scriptures was there a single word to preclude a penitent from an hon- est approach to God, whose forgiveness and par- don are full and free. I have only sorrow, not con- x
A PERSONAL NOTE OF INTRODUCTION
tempt, for those who make distinctions in the Ten Commandments.
I know that " all unrighteousness is sin " with God, and am sure that many persons need to re- adjust their notions who play fast and loose with commandments seven and eight, with the delusive idea that when God gave the ten laws he made mur- der worse than adultery and dishonesty. I believe in the love of a forgiving God, and as the Scrip- ture defines God in this one word, " Love," I firmly believe in that radical change as possible for Or- chard as for the thief on the Cross of Calvary.
I would hardly go to Balzac for theology or doc- trine, but I quote him in the following words : " One thought borne inward, one prayer uplifted, one echo of the Word within us, and our souls are for- ever changed."
I believe in conversion, no matter how it comes, nor to whom. I know it comes, sometimes quickly, at other times slowly, and that a man may be a devil to-day, and next week a man clothed, and in his right mind.
To me the New Testament is the world's greatest classic, and the Central Figure stands there present- ing to us the man dominated by the devil of his own lower self, a companion with hogs, sunken to the lowest level.
xi
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
Then does not Jesus Christ draw the vivid picture of the man " coming to himself," and would the scene be anything at all if it did not portray the open arms of love ready to forgive? Some say that Orchard should never have confessed, that he should have concealed any connection of others with his crime, or crimes. Presuming that he did " come to himself," with a terrific sense of responsibility to his Maker, and with an oath on his lips to tell the " whole truth," what could he do, and what would you do? We must look at this with right focus. What a wonderful tribute to the genuineness of Christianity is discerned in the fact that when the devils " Hogan " and " Orchard " had gone out of Albert E. Horsley, that he believed implicitly in the devotion of that noble, Christian wife whom he had deserted nine years ago in Canada, with a seven- months old baby in her arms.
He counted upon her fidelity and single devotion ; he was banking upon her forgiveness, and he got it. I have seen some of her letters, and have personally met her, and I am sure that nothing but the super- human power of Jesus Christ can account for the calm, sustained spirit in this true, earnest wife, who has suffered so keenly since the truth came to her.
My conclusions as to the honesty and present xii
A PERSONAL NOTE OF INTRODUCTION
truthfulness of Albert E. Horsley are based upon my experience with human beings. I would not know how to make a psychologic test, according to the accepted scientific method, but I was gratified that, when Professor Munsterberg, of Harvard, had spent eight hours with Orchard, using every art known to his deep profession, he pronounced him to be normal, honest, frank, and straightforward.
In conclusion, I would say that any kind of pub- licity is objectionable to me, and that my associa- tion with this matter was not of my seeking, but accidentally came in the line of my duty. I sincerely trust that ere long the crimes of organized capi- tal and organized labor may cease. My deepest in- terest and sympathy lies with the honest wage- earner, possibly in large sense from a fellow-feeling. I know laborers where per diem pay exceeds my own.
I pray for the day when capital and labor shall be fair with one another, and when the men who pay out money shall be able to strike hands in fel- lowship with the American Federation of Labor, and when justice, fairness, and confidence shall take the place of suspicion, doubt, and variance, with the fraternal peace of heaven spreading its white wings above the discord of God's family on earth.
It will never come until Christianity enters into the souls of those who pay out money, as well as xiii
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
into the souls of those who receive it, and the rug- ged manhood of the Carpenter of Nazareth is ac- cepted as the only standard worth considering.
EDWIN S. HINKS,
Dean of St. Michael's Cathedral,
Boise, Idaho.
THE CONFESSIONS AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HARRY ORCHARD
CHAPTER ONE
MY EARLY LIFE IN ONTARIO
I WAS born in Northumberland County, Ontario, Canada, on the 18th of March, 1866. My real name is Albert E. Horsley. My father was born of English parents, and my mother of Irish. I was brought up on a farm and received a common-school education, but as my parents were poor, I had to work as soon as I was old enough. I never advanced farther than the third grade. I was one of a family of eight children, consisting of six daughters and two sons.
While we were poor and had to work for a living, we always had plenty and dressed respectably. The country was prosperous, and poverty was a thing almost unheard of in the country at that time. Most everybody worked there at that time, either for themselves or for some one else, as the chief industry there was farming; and the people were happy and contented. The cost of living there then was much less than it is to-day, and the people dressed and lived much plainer then than now. 3
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
I was brought up to love and fear God and to believe in a hereafter. My parents usually attended church, and I was sent to Sunday-school and church, and always had to observe the Sabbath, as there was no manner of work practised there on the Sabbath except chores about the farms that were necessary to be done. Most of the people in that section of the country belonged to some church and usually attended it on Sunday.
I was next to the oldest of our family, and my brother next to the youngest. We bought a small farm when I was about ten years old, and I and my sisters used to work and help father all we could, as we used to raise garden truck for market. I used to work on the farm summers and go to school win- ters. As soon as I was old enough, I used to work out for some close neighbor, sometimes by the day and sometimes by the month, but my parents always got the benefit of my work until I was past twenty years old. When working away from home, I always looked forward to Sunday, as I would have a chance to go home and spend the Sabbath with my folks, and they always looked for us on that day if we were away from home. It makes me feel sad now when I look back over those happy days and think espe- cially of our dear loving mother and the anxiety she had for our welfare, and the many hard, weary days 4
MY EARLY LIFE IN ONTARIO
she toiled and worked and underwent many priva- tions for us, as a loving mother will do for her fam- ily. We may not have had as nice clothes as some of our neighbors, but they were always clean and neatly mended. I always loved my mother very much and thought I was good to her, but I can look back now and see that I did not love her half as much as she did me, and I might have been much better to her. My dear mother is dead and gone many years ago, and I am glad in my heart on her account that she never lived to see me where I am to-day. My father also died since I left home.
When I was about twenty-one years old, I thought I ought to keep whatever money I earned myself, as my parents were not able to give me any- thing, and they did not object, so I worked away from home all the time then and saved all I earned. I had never been very far away from home and al- ways worked on a farm. When I was twenty-two, I think, I went to Saginaw, Mich., to work in the lumber woods, as wages were much more there.
I had been keeping company with a young lady at home and was engaged to be married. I went back home and went to work for a farmer I had worked for previous to going to Michigan. I had saved up a little money by this time and got married the next summer and went to keeping house a little time after. 5
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
My wife had worked in a cheese factory before we were married and learned how to make cheese, and as that was a great industry there and paid pretty well, we thought we would try to get a fac- tory and try cheese-making. We had no money to buy a factory, but that winter we succeeded in rent- ing one and moved there in the spring. The cheese- making was carried on only during the summer months, about six or seven months. We did not have any money left to start with, but got credit for what we needed and started out pretty well. It was an old factory we rented and pretty well run down, but we worked up a pretty good trade and had some good friends that helped us. Com- petition was keen, and a person had to under- stand the business perfectly to make a success. My wife understood it thoroughly, as she had learned with a man that was very successful, but I knew practically nothing about it. We did our own work at first and got along well, but I soon discovered there were many little tricks in the buying and many ways for the buyer to job the maker.
I will explain briefly how the cheese was mostly sold at that time. There would be a salesman for every factory, and they would meet at the most cen- tral city and had a regular cheese board of trade. The board met every week during the early sum- 6
MY EARLY LIFE IN ONTARIO
mer, and after they had bought the cheese they would send out their inspectors to the factories they bought from. This would sometimes be several days after they had been sold, and often the market fluc- tuated a good deal, and if it happened to fall during the time the inspector was inspecting the cheese, he often culled them and would leave some of them on your hands or would take them at a reduced price. A maker did not like to have it get out that his cheese had been culled. That would give him a bad reputation and hurt his trade. I did not know what to do at first when an inspector culled some of our cheese, but he told me if I would weigh the cheese and knock off a pound or so on a cheese and make out two invoices, give our treasurer the short one and send him the correct one and also a copy of the short one, that he would accept them and no one would be any the wiser. I at first thought there was no harm in this, but I kept it to myself; I do not think I even told my wife.
It takes lots of patience to make cheese, and espe- cially if a person is not particular in taking the milk. The patrons will not all take good care of their milk, and it often comes to the factory tainted with some bad smell, either from the cows eating something or drinking bad water, and it often comes from the milk being kept in some filthy place, and it 7
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
takes a lot of work and time to get this out of the curd, often all day and part of the night; whereas, if you had all good, pure milk you could get through in eight or nine hours ; and I think after I had worked at the cheese-making a while I was not as particu- lar as my wife and often hurried it up to get done early. While we were bound to make a first-class cheese, we also had patrons bound to furnish first- class milk, but we did not have them bound to send any at all if they did not see fit, and as I have stated, competition was very keen, and a good many of the patrons were so situated that they could send their milk to different factories, and if we would send it home and tell them it was not good, they would often do it, and we had to take a chance on lots of milk that we ought not, especially in hot weather.
This throwing in a few pounds of cheese to the buyer by making the short invoices would seem all right, but if you did much of this you would run the average away up, and it would take too much milk to make a pound of cheese. As it takes about ten pounds of milk to make a pound of cheese, we had to keep pretty close to this to compete with other factories, and thus the only way to do this was to weigh the milk short. Still another difficulty con- fronted us, as a great many patrons weighed their milk at home, and if there was too much difference 8
MY EARLY LIFE IN ONTARIO
they would kick, and so the man that did not weigh his milk at home suffered the most. We could usu- ally find this out through the man that hauled the milk. Our salesman and treasurer was on to all this, as he had been in the business a good while, and he said it was all right, and a maker hadn't ought to make up any deficiency at the price he got for mak- ing, and that they did not pay enough anyway. This man was a good friend of mine and helped me in many ways.
They used to most always contract the last two or three months' make about the middle of the sea- son, and often the market would fall, and this worked a great hardship on the maker, as the buyers were more particular. The first year we made cheese they contracted the last three months' make, and the mar- ket fell afterward, and they left several hundred dollars' worth of cheese on our hands, and I sold them to the man I rented the factory from. He failed to pay all for them, and I had to borrow about $400 to make up this, and I never got it from him, as he had sold the factory and was not worth it. I never did get it. We bought the factory after that and stayed there four years.
I just want to relate these circumstances to show the reader where I first fell and began to be dishon- est. This was the first business I had done for myself, 9
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
and I was handling quite a lot of money, and it was quite a change from working for somebody on a farm sixteen or seventeen hours a day for $12 to $15 a month. As long as I stayed home with my wife and worked in the factory, I was all right, but I thought I would keep a team of horses and haul a milk route and haul away the cheese to the depot, and hire a man or girl to work in the factory to help my wife when I was not there. Then I got to buying the whey at the factory and keep- ing hogs there and feeding them, and all this took me away from home more and more all the time, and took me to the city a good deal, where I met a dif- ferent class of people from those I had been used to. I got to drinking some and spending a good deal of money and staying away from home longer than my business required, and I got mixed up in politics some, and to make a long story short, I got to liv- ing beyond my means and going in company that I was not able to keep up my end with. The patrons of our factory noticed this and talked a good deal about it, and I kept living a little faster all the time. My credit was good, and if I wanted money I could go to the bank and borrow it.
My wife did not like my being away from home so much, but she made no serious objection, but looked after things the best she could when I was 10
MY EARLY LIFE IN ONTARIO
not there. For that part, she would do it better than I, because she understood it better and was more particular, and if I had attended to my business and done my work and saved the money, we would have been all right and could have saved some money. But I could not stand prosperity, and kept good horses and rigs, and lived a pretty fast life and did not deal very honestly with the patrons.
Where I made the greatest mistake of my life was in not telling my wife anything about my business transactions, or very little, and I think this was the cause of our first estrangement. I did not keep this from my dear wife because I did not love her, but I knew if she knew about how I was doing the business she would not stand for it, and would wonder what I was doing with the money. If she asked me about something I did not want to tell her, I would either tell her a falsehood or put her off some other way, and I think the truth began to dawn upon her, and she got so she did not ask me anything much about business matters at all. I thought at the time I was only saving her pain. I knew I was doing wrong, but still kept doing more to cover up what I had done, and so it was I kept on. I did not drink to excess, nor did I seem to spend any great amount of money. We made pretty good money through the summer, but nothing in the winter, and as I kept 11
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD two or three horses all the time and had to buy everything, the money got away, and after working there four years and selling the factory for about $400 more than we gave for it, I think I was some in debt yet, although most folks thought we had some money.
The way we came to sell the factory was like this : The patrons began to get dissatisfied, and the treas- urer and salesman advised me to sell, and found a buyer for me, and no doubt it was a good thing for me.
We moved from Cramahe the spring of 1892, and went to make cheese for a company at Wooler near my home. There was not as much money in this as we had been making. We had more work to do in the factory, as there was more milk to handle. I was at home more here, and as we were among my own folks I tried to lead a better life. We had an uncle who was a preacher, and we were close to his church and usually went to church. I had many good Christian friends there that gave me good advice and tried to get me to lead a better life, and I did try, but to no purpose. I only tried to keep my wicked life away from my Christian friends, and I would make some excuse to get away from home as often as pos- sible to the city or away hunting and fishing, any place to get away from home and have a little time, 12
MY EARLY LIFE IN ONTARIO
as we called it. We stayed there three years, but the people did not like the way I lived, as most all the patrons were Christians, and my actions would get out.
I had some good friends that managed to keep the factory for me three years, but at the end of that time I lost it, and a friend of mine put up the money to buy a factory at Hilton, and I was to manage it and pay him back. That winter I started to build another factory a few miles from the one we bought, and this kept me away from home a good deal that winter. I stopped in a town called Brighton near where I was building the new factory. This was the beginning of my downfall. I boarded there with a man and became infatuated with his wife and she with me.
I finished this factory and moved there about the opening of the cheese-making season. There was a dear little girl born to us this spring, and thus my dear wife was no longer able to look after the cheese- making as she had formerly done, and I had to de- pend altogether on hired help. I rented a nice house in town shortly after our dear little girl was born, and lived there. I was away from home most all the time now, and when I was not at the factory I was down-town. Our once happy home had lost all at- tractions for me now, and my dear wife would often 13
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
complain and plead with me to stay at home, or at least to come home early. To make a long story short, I lived away beyond my means and was some in debt, and my credit was not so good, and as I neg- lected to look after the making of the cheese and depended all on hired help, they did not turn out any too good, and my chief prop was not able to look after this as she had formerly done.
But I managed all right until we had to settle up in the fall of 1896, and this woman and I had planned to run away together, and I had to have money to do this. I was all right at Hilton ; but at Brighton I had overdrawn my account several hun- dred dollars and was still in debt, and to cover up some other misrepresentations on the books, I burned the factory I had built and got the insur- ance. I had taken from $500 to $600 worth of cheese from the storehouse at Brighton and sold it and kept the money. The factory was insured in my name and the cheese in the name of the company. In the fire everything was destroyed, and the account books of the company were de- stroyed, with the record of my debt in them. I paid up my debts with the insurance money, and had about $400 left, and I left there a month or so afterward, and this woman followed me a short time later and met me in Detroit, Mich., and we 14
MY EARLY LIFE IN ONTARIO
went to Nelson, British Columbia. We stayed there and at Pilot Bay, about twenty miles away from there, for three months or so, and I found out that she had written home and her folks knew where she was, and I bought her a ticket, and she went home, and I left there and went to Spokane, Wash. I did not hear from her after that, only in an in- direct way. I wrote to a friend of mine about six months afterward. He told me she was living with her husband again and everything was all fixed up. He also told me my wife had written to him and wanted to know if he knew where I was. He said she said some pretty hard things and said he thought it would not be best for me to come back there. I had no notion of going back, and did not let him know where I was.
I was a very miserable man and began to see the great mistake I had made, but did not know how to repair it. I thought my wife would never forgive me, and I made up my mind to begin life over again and forget the past, but alas, that was not so easy to do, but I thought that was all there was left for me to do, and I started in to do it.
15
CHAPTER TWO
WHEN I had been in Spokane a few weeks I had only $50 left, and I saw that I would have to go to work. One day I noticed a card in the window of an employment agency. It was for a man to drive a milk wagon in the Coeur d'Alene mining country for a firm of the name of Markwell Brothers. I wrote them first and then went over there the next week and got the place. This was in April, 1897.
The Markwell Brothers had a milk ranch about two miles west of Wallace — the principal town there — a place of about two thousand people. Above this the valley that all the towns were located in split, and one branch of the Coeur d'Alene River went up to Mullan on the right, and one branch on the left, that they called Canon Creek, went up to Gem and Burke. There were big lead and silver mines at all these places but Wallace, which was a kind of market- place for the district ; and down below it about ten 16
UNION RULE IN THE CCEUR D'ALENES
miles there was another big mining-camp called Wardner. Gem, Burke, and Mullan each had from seven to nine hundred people living in them, and there were probably fifteen hundred in Wardner. My work was to deliver milk at Burke, the town up at the end of Canon Creek.
The country seemed to me at first a kind of gloomy place to live in, especially Canon Creek and Burke. In the first place the canon was very narrow, and the mountains on both sides were very high and steep. They went up at an angle of maybe forty per cent, and they were about a thousand feet high, so that the days in there were very short. In the summer-time the sun would go down at about four o'clock, and in the winter there wasn't more than five hours of sunlight. Of course you would see the sun on the sides of the mountains long before it came up and after it went down; but I mean real sunlight. There was very little wind there, it was so deep and narrow; and in the winter-time, when it snowed, you would notice the snow came straight down, and not on a slant as it naturally does in other places.
The first impression you got of Burke was that
it never stopped. It was going day and night and
Sunday. The mines worked all the time, and it was
the same with the saloons and such places. They
17
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
used to say that the only way you could tell it was Sunday in Burke was that you had a chicken dinner then.
The canon was only about one hundred and fifty feet wide at the bottom, so it was hard work to squeeze in the town. There was only one street, and the two railroad companies' tracks ran up through the middle of that to the Tiger-Poorman mill. The stores sat on the south side, and had to be built out over the creek, which they had to run through a flume. On the north side they had to cut away the hills to set the buildings in. There were maybe a dozen stores, barber shops, etc., but more saloons than anything else. There were six of these, and they had all kinds of gambling lay-outs in the back rooms — such as roulette, faro, and black-jack and stud poker. Beyond the stores there came the mill, and then the sporting-houses. There were about ten of these, with a dance hall in the center, and then came the residence section, without any break. The school-house was only about a hundred feet away from the red-light district, so that the children could hear the women singing and cursing down there. There wasn't any church in the town, nor any library or theater.
As I had been brought up and lived all my life in a farming country this place struck me at first 18
UNION RULE IN THE CCEUR D'ALENES
as pretty peculiar. But of course when you get to living in a place you get used to it.
Almost the first thing that Fred Markwell asked me when I applied for the job with him was if I had ever had any trouble with labor-unions. I told him no, and I didn't know anything about unions at that time. Then he warned me whatever I might see or hear about their going not to criticize them. He said they had driven his father out of business be- cause he talked against them.
I soon found out that nobody could live in the district, and especially Canon Creek, and do any- thing or say anything against the unions. There were two unions there. The men who worked above ground in the mines belonged to the Knights of Labor, and all the miners belonged to the Western Federation of Miners. This last union they said really started from this section, and this was the one that ran the district. They had all the mining towns but Wardner under their control, and if any man opposed them they " ran him down the canon."
The way they did this would seem peculiar to a stranger who was not acquainted with the country. There was a miners' union in every town, and each union had a gang of men who ran the non-union men out of the district. Every miner who would not join the union was warned to get out, and if he 19
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
didn't, he was " run down the canon " ; that is, this gang of men, with masks and Winchesters, would go up to his room some night and take him down on the railroad track and march him out of the canon. When they got him out, they warned him if he came back again they would kill him. They generally marched them out in front of them with guns. Sometimes it was claimed they put a halter on their necks and led them out. Several men who wouldn't leave were killed.
The unions were so strong that they weren't sat- isfied with only driving out the " scabs," but they did the same thing with bosses or superintendents they did not like. For instance, there was the case of Mr. Whitney, who was foreman of the Frisco mill. They sent a letter to him and told him to leave the camp or he would suffer the consequences; but he did not leave. Awhile after this a gang of masked men with Winchesters went to Mr. Whitney's room in Gem one night a little before midnight and started to drive him down the canon.
I talked with a woman who saw them taking him out. They came marching down the street at Gem under the bright electric lights, and when people began sticking their heads out of the windows, she said these men with guns told them to go back in again or they would shoot them. They took Whit- 20
UNION RULE IN THE CCEUR D'ALENES
ney down the railroad, and as he was a young man and rather spirited, he tried to get away from them down a little way below Gem. There were some box- cars down there, and he thought if he could run back of these in the dark he could escape. But they shot him in the hip and left him there, and somebody else got him and took him down to the hospital at Wallace, and he died there a few days afterward when they were operating on him. Mr. Whitney's rela- tives were wealthy people, and they and the State offered $17,000 reward for the men who shot him; but nothing ever came of it, and nobody was ever arrested, though a great many people must have known who did it. Nobody in Canon Creek ever dared to testify about a thing like this. They knew if they did they would be killed themselves.
It might seem a strange thing about that coun- try that nobody was ever punished for assaults or murder like this. But after you were acquainted there it was easy to see why this was. The fact was that all the peace officers — the sheriff and constables and deputies of the peace — were elected by the unions and were in with them. The miners made up their minds whom they were going to nominate and vote for, and when they did this, they voted almost solid for their men. The peace officers, of course, always sided with the unions. And whenever a non- 21
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
union man got into the camp and got beaten up and they took him before the justices of the peace, they would fine him or send him to jail. George A. Pettibone was justice of the peace at Gem back in 1892, and used to tell how he did this.
In fact, it was difficult to convict anybody who had friends in the canon of anything, even murder. It was strange how little account they took of mur- der in that country. I think for one thing the peo- ple got used to seeing men killed in the mines. They would get blown up in blasting, so that they had to be gathered up in a sack or basket, or sometimes they would get badly hurt. The men who were killed would be taken down to Wallace and buried, and the men who were hurt would be put onto a push- car on the railroad and slid down to the Wallace hospital. When they saw them being carried out, the miners would say, " It was too bad," and then everything would go on as if nothing had hap- pened. All this seemed to make human life cheap, and, of course, almost everybody had a six-shooter, although they didn't always carry them, and there was more or less shooting. I remember there were two murders besides Whitney that I knew of while I was there. One man was acquitted, and the other one was given a year in jail.
I worked steadily on my milk route and saved
UNION RULE IN THE CGEUR D'ALENES
some money during 1897, and that fall I bought a sixteenth interest in the Hercules mine near Burke — the mine that has made Ed Boyce, the former president of the Western Federation of Miners, and his wife so wealthy. They are said to be worth nearly $1,000,000 now, and my share, if I had kept it, would be worth over $500,000. It was only a pros- pect then, and I paid $500 for my share, a part down and the rest with a note, which I was to pay off in instalments.
I became tired of my milk route, and I gave it up on Christmas, 1897. Then I went to Burke and bought a wood and coal business there. I had to borrow $150 to do this. The business was a good one, and I would have made a big living out of it, if I had attended to it, but I soon got into bad habits. There didn't seem to be much else to do for amusement. A single man board- ing in that country would have a small room, gen- erally without a stove, which was very cold in the winter, and very close and hot in the summer. So everybody went into the saloons, where it was com- fortable. I have often thought that these million- aires who were giving libraries and such things might do a good thing if they would give a little to the mining-camps just to give the men some place to go to. It was the same with me as with hundreds
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
of others. I got started going into saloons, and finally I got to gambling.
I lost so much money at this that it kept me con- tinually broke, and in the spring of 1898 I had to sell my interest in the Hercules mine in order to pay my debts. Dan Cordonia bought it of me for about $700.
In the summer of 1898 I had to take in a partner. This was a Scotchman named James McAlpin. We were in partnership until about March, 1899. I stopped gambling and tried to straighten up. But I used up so much money paying off my old debts that when we made a settlement I found I had over- drawn my account several hundred dollars, and finally I offered to sell my share of the business to McAlpin for $100 in cash. He accepted this offer, and in this way I went out of business for myself.
The last of March, 1899, I got a job through Lewis Strow, a shift boss I knew well, as a " mucker " — that is, a shoveler — in the Tiger-Poor- man mine at Burke. I had to join the miners' union right away, and then for the first time I became acquainted with the workings of this union.
When I first came to the Creur d'Alenes I thought — as everybody outside seems to think about the Fed- eration of Miners — that the whole union was respon- sible for the outrages that were committed there.
UNION RULE IN THE CCEUR D'ALENES
But that is a mistake, as a great part of the men knew no more about it than I did, and I did not know anything then. This is the case everywhere, as I have found since. The miners get the credit for all the leaders do. I can count the men who were really responsible for the troubles at Burke on the fingers of my hands, and the membership of that union must have been over four hundred.
It was common talk almost from the first in the Coeur d'Alenes that there was an " inner circle " which ran the district. There were unions at Gem, Burke, Mullan, and Wardner. All these sent dele- gates to a central union — that is, a board that was supposed to govern the whole district. But the " inner circle " was supposed to be a few men that were really back of the central union, and planned all the rough work, as they did later in the Federa- tion. George Pettibone was one of these when he was there in 1892, and later Ed Boyce and L. J. Simp- kins and Marion W. Moor, who later were in the " inner circle " of the Federation. I have no doubt they got this idea for the Federation from the Coeur d'Alenes, for the Federation started just after the first fight there, and a good many of the men in the Federation " inner circle " came from there.
Ed Boyce, who was president of the Federation for a long while in its early years, had more to do 25
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
with getting it started than any other man. He be- gan the " Boyce policy " soon after he was elected ; that is, he advised that every union man should arm himself with a rifle, because they all might have to go out and fight the capitalists before long; and that nobody in the union should join the militia. The leaders of the different unions took this up, and I have heard it advised in unions time and time again by the officers that every union man should buy a good rifle and plenty of ammunition, for the time was coming when they would need it. And no- body would join the militia. It was considered a " scab " organization run by the mine owners.
When the leaders would give this radical talk, there would always be a number who would get up and applaud very loud. A great many of these radi- cal fellows were what we called " ten-day men " — that is, the men who only worked part time and lay around the saloons the rest. A good many of these men were regular saloon "bums." The conservative men, who worked hard and had homes, did not like this policy. I have often heard them talk against it privately. But these men did not attend the meetings the way the radical ones did, and generally they could not express their thoughts very well in public ; and if they started to talk against such an idea, they would hardly get on their feet before the radi- 26
UNION RULE IN THE CCEUR D'ALENES
cal element would begin to holler " Sit down," or " Put him out," and they would get rattled and stop talking. Then nobody else would dare get up and support them after seeing what happened.
But it is true that after a while even the conserva- tive ones got to thinking that what the leaders said was probably all right. In a town like Burke you heard nothing else and had no chance to. You couldn't even read anything else. I remember the unions boycotted the Spokane Spokesman, and they passed a rule so that you had to pay $5 fine to the union if you were caught reading it. We were all anxious to, too, especially when the Spanish War was on, as this was the only daily newspaper which came into the district the same day it was printed. Now anybody gets to feeling the same way when he hears nothing about the labor question ex- cept from people wh.o talk about the millionaire mine owners, and how pretty soon we will all get to be like the cheap laborers of Europe, and peons, and how we must defend the unions by arms if necessary, because that is the only defense we have. It was just one thing they talked, and that was war.
When you look back at it all, the trouble did start
in a kind of war— that is, the fight of July 11, 1892,
when the miners blew up the Gem mill and drove
out the " scabs," and hired deputies, and the United
27
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
States troops came in and put the miners in the " bull pen." They always celebrated the anniver- sary of the day every year at the union cemetery at Wallace, around the graves of the miners who were killed then. This celebration really took the place of the Fourth of July in that country. The mines would all close, and the union men would go down on special trains to Wallace and march out to the cemetery. A stranger might expect some sol- emn memorial service; but if they did they would be much mistaken; for there was only talk of the most radical kind by Boyce or speakers like him. They would start by reminding the miners how cruelly and cowardly their brothers had been mur- dered. Then they would go on to say that they, too, did not know how soon such a death might come to them, if they did not prepare themselves to resist it; and the only way to prepare was to get a good gun and plenty of ammunition and be ready to fight, and not wait until the other fellow shot you down as they had your brother.
A great many of the men really did arm them- selves— with rifles when they could. I think there was quite a number of guns left over from the fight of 1892, and I know there were some shipped in. George Pettibone has told me that he sent in rifles from Denver in 1899 for the union men. He sent 28
UNION RULE IN THE CCEUR D'ALENES
a hundred of them in piano boxes, and ten thousand rounds of ammunition, and addressed it to Jim Young, who was sheriff at that time, and was in deep with the unions. Then in 1898, the guns which be- longed to the militia, that had disbanded at Mul- lan, were stolen one night by masked men. The union denied having done this, but a good many of the guns showed up in the hands of union men when we made our raid on the Bunker Hill and Sullivan mill in Wardner, on April 29, 1899. All these guns which the union men used were cached in places known to the union leaders, so that when the time came to use them they could be dug up and given to the men.
29
CHAPTER THREE
WE BLOW UP THE BUNKER HILL MILL
ON the morning of April 29, 1899, I got up at six o'clock, as usual, expecting to go to work in the mine. As I was going to the place where I took breakfast I was told that there would be no work at any of the mines that day, and that there was going to be a meeting at the Miners' Union Hall at seven o'clock, and that every one must attend. The first notice that anybody had of the meeting was that morning. I think the central union did not dare to give it out before, because if they had, a great many of the conservative men would have left town before they took part in what they did that day.
After breakfast I went over to the hall, and it was crowded, and in a few minutes Paul Corcoran, the secretary of the Burke union, called the meet- ing to order and began to explain the object of holding the meeting at that unusual time. He told the men that the central union had held a meeting the night before at Gem, and had decided that the 30
WE BLOW UP THE BUNKER HILL MILL
unions should go to Wardner on that day and blow up the Bunker Hill-Sullivan mine, and I think he said hang the superintendent. I am not sure whether he spoke openly of the latter, but I know that it was generally discussed in the crowd. He told about the trouble the miners' union had always had with this mine, and said that the union men at Wardner were breaking away from the union and going to work there, and that scabs who had been driven out of the camp from time to time were coming back there. So the central union had decided the only thing to do was to go down and blow up the mill and end the strike once and for all. Then he explained to us about the plans for taking posses- sion of the Northern Pacific train and going down to Wardner that morning.
While he was doing this, Mike Devy, the presi- dent of the union, came in very angry and wanted to know why he had not been notified of the meet- ing, and what it was all about. When Corcoran had explained it to him, he talked strong against it. After he had done this a good many of the conserva- tive men backed him up. Corcoran answered that they had nothing to fear. He said the governor would not do anything, because they owned him, as the district had voted solid for him. The only thing to be afraid of was the Federal Government, and that 31
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
the only thing that could make it do anything was to interfere with the United States mail, and they had plans so as not to interfere with that.
They took a vote after a while. They did this by dividing the men on either side of the hall and count- ing them, and it was very close. If it had been taken in the usual way, by raising hands, I don't think it would have been carried. A great many of the conservative men were bitter against it, and said it was a shame; yet, after they voted to go, there was not anybody who wanted to stay at home. Everybody went right out of the hall and began to get ready. We were all supposed to get a piece of white cotton and tie it around our arm, as this was the mark of the Burke union, and each one was also supposed to get some sort of a mask.
It is a peculiar thing to say, but when they were once started nobody seemed to think anything seri- ous was to be done. It was more like going on an excursion. I do not even remember myself which way I voted in the hall. When the Northern Pacific train left Wallace that morning at eight o'clock, all the telegraph wires had been cut, and when it left Burke, five or six masked men with rifles boarded the en- gine and directed the trainmen to put on extra cars. Paul Corcoran was in charge of the men who did this. The train was made up of box-cars and flat- 32
WE BLOW UP THE BUNKER HILL MILL
cars, one or two passenger-cars and a baggage-car. The men got on board here, and we started down the canon. I was in one of the passenger-coaches. The train stopped at the Frisco Magazine, a mile from Gem, and about forty or fifty boxes of dyna- mite, each one of which weighed fifty pounds, were loaded in one of the box-cars, and the train then went down to Gem and stopped in front of the miners' union hall. A number of Burke men got off the train and went into the hall, where some new rifles and ammunition were distributed to them. Then they thought we would not have enough dy- namite, and they brought the train up again to the magazine, and put on forty or fifty more boxes. Then we ran back to Gem and stopped at the union hall again, and the men from Gem got on the train and we ran down to Wallace. The union men from Mullan had walked down to Wallace, which is about ten miles, and they got on the train there. We lost some time at Wallace, and then switched over on to the Oregon Railroad & Navigation track and ran on down to Wardner. They had no permission to run this train over another railroad's track, but the men in the engine compelled the engineer to do this.
The train was crowded, men sitting on top of the box-cars and crowding inside of them. While they 33
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
were going down from Gem a good many of the men put on masks, and still more after we left Wal- lace, but a great many of them did not mask at all. At Wallace Jim Young, the sheriff, and Tom Heney, former sheriff and then a deputy sheriff, got on the train at Wallace, and though I did not hear them, I was told they were advising the men on the way down to Wardner how best to do the work and not get into trouble over it. The sheriff got off in front of the crowd at Wardner and demanded that the mob should disperse and go home. Everybody knew this was a bluff, and that he really would make no attempt whatever to stop them, and they were laughing and joking about it.
When we reached the Wardner depot, where the Bunker Hill mill was, the men all jumped out of the train and got ready to attack the mill. W. F. Davis, who was a leader in the Gem union, had charge of them. The mill was about a half mile from the depot, and we got ready to attack it. Everybody supposed it was full of armed guards or militia, and Davis and the other leaders planned the attack on it. In fact Paul Corcoran had told us in the meeting that morning that there would be perhaps as many as four hundred militia at the mine, but he said we could easily whip them. The way they attacked this mill was foolish. They sent twelve men 34
WE BLOW UP THE BUNKER HILL MILL
with rifles up on the side hill to the south of the mill to fire at it and draw the fire of the guards, if there were any. Then they formed the men in line. All the unions were marked in a particular way, a piece of cotton cloth on their arms or in their buttonholes, etc. Davis and the other men started lining them up ; the men with Winchesters went first. They called out each union in turn for this ; the Burke union first — " All men from Burke with long guns this way," and so on. There must have been about four hundred men with long guns. Then they lined up the men with revolvers after them. I sup- pose there were twelve hundred men in the crowd. Then they marched them right straight up to the mill, two by two. If there had been anybody in the mill they could have killed half a dozen at a time, shooting down through the line.
I didn't get into the line myself, as I waited at the depot restaurant to get something to eat. I had only a small revolver anyway and wouldn't have been any particular use. Pretty soon I heard them let loose shooting, and some of the fellows that were there with me said, " They've started at it," and we all ran out. It seems that Davis and the other men had sent the twelve men round above the mill with- out telling all of the crowd, and these men had be- gun shooting at the mill, and the crowd, thinking 35
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
they were scabs, began shooting at them. It was a queer thing to see the crowd break up and run and get behind cover when nobody had shot at them at all. The twelve men stood about three hundred yards away from the crowd, and about half the crowd began shooting at them. I could see, from where I stood at the depot, the stones and dirt fly- ing up all around them; but although there were probably two hundred people firing at them, they only hit one man named Smith. They shot him through the body, and he died right off. All he said was " I'm hurt," and fell over on his face, and the other fellows held up their hands, and the leaders told the crowd who they were, and they stopped firing.
The crowd caught a young Scotchman named John Cheyne, who was a watchman at the mill, and another man, and they told them that there was no- body in the mill. So they got ready and began to take the powder up and put it in under the mill to blow it up. About eighty or ninety of us who were at the depot, each took one of the fifty-pound boxes of the dynamite and carried it on our shoulders down to the mill. I remember even then I didn't un- derstand who those fellows on the hill were, and I said to Gus Peterson, who was carrying a box of dynamite beside me, " What do they let those scabs 36
WE BLOW UP THE BUNKER HILL MILL
stay there for? They will be shooting at us and blow- ing up this dynamite before we know it." Then we left the dynamite down there and I stayed around near the mill.
While we were doing this the crowd that had cap- tured the two men shot Cheyne. I didn't see this, but as I heard it, somebody told them to hike and get out of the country, and they started to run away, and then somebody else began to holler, " Scab, scab ! " and a lot of the fellows somewhere else hol- lered, " Where, where, where? " and began shooting at them. One of these men shot Cheyne in the hip, and grazed the lip of Rogers, the other man. Rogers ran and got away, and a woman came out and helped Cheyne and kept the men from killing him, but he died a day or two later in the hospital.
All this time the men were putting the powder into the mill, with Davis in charge. There was about forty-five hundred pounds of this, and they planned it all out, where would be the best place to put it. There was a charge on top, underneath the ore bin, where the ore comes into the mill, then there was another charge down under the tables in the middle, and then at the bottom, in the boiler room, there was the charge like what they call a lifter in a mine. Then when they got these all set they fired them with fuses so that the top would go first and the 37
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
middle next, and the bottom one last, so this would finish the job from the ground up.
When they got the powder in the mill, they wanted volunteers to set off the fuses, and, though I was only a new hand in the mines, I was near by at the time, and I said I would set off one of them. So I went down in the boiler-room with another man, and after a while Davis came and put his head down through a trap-door, and called out to us to light our fuses, and we lighted them, and ran out of the building. We tried to go up a stairway first, but the door was locked, so we had to hurry and get out of a window, and run across a switch track, where some freight- cars were standing. Then the powder exploded and the building was blown all to pieces.
They also set fire to a big company boarding- house and the house of the superintendent and some others about the mill. I looked into the superin- tendent's house just before they set it going, and it was furnished up fine. They had thrown kerosene all over the inside and had set it off.
The men began to shout and shoot off their rifles after the mill blew up. A little while later we got on the train and started back to Wallace. I sat on the outside of a box-car. The men were all feeling pretty happy and still kept shooting their rifles. There was a big flume up the hill that carried the water to the 38
WE BLOW UP THE BUNKER HILL MILL Bunker Hill concentrator, and they would shoot into this so as to see the water squirt out where the balls broke through into the wooden flume.
By and by there was the whistle of a locomotive down below, and the leaders stopped our train and made everybody stop firing. They said there might be troops on that train coming in from Spokane, and anyway they would very likely need the car- tridges if there was going to be any fight. This was about the only thing I heard that day about any- body coming in to trouble us. As I said, it was more like going on an excursion than anything else, and nobody seemed to be afraid of the consequences. We stopped at Wallace on the way back, but I don't remember much about that except that some of the men were drunk, though I think they had closed up the saloons before we got there. That evening I went back home and went to bed as usual without think- ing much about it.
I worked in the mine three or four days after this. There were all kinds of stories, and finally we knew the Federal troops were coming in. The men began to get out of town, most of them going over the trail to Thompson Falls, Mont.
I went down in the mine to work the morning the troops came, but I saw so few left that I had no heart to stay, so I quit and got my time. I could 39
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
not get my pay that day, so I went up on the hill on the north side of the town, as most of the snow was off there, and it was warm. There were a good many up there in the same fix I was.
About three or four o'clock the train came creep- ing up the canon loaded with Federal troops. We had made arrangements with a business man to give us a signal from his house, if it was safe for us to come down. But we got no signal, and we could see for ourselves what they were doing. They were rounding up men like a bunch of cattle, and loading them into box-cars. We sent two men down after it got dark to find out what we could. The town was all picketed with soldiers, but they managed to reach some of the houses, and learned from the women that they had arrested every man in the place, busi- ness men and all, even to the postmaster.
About fifteen or twenty of us slept in a miner's cabin that night, and part of us made up our minds we would leave the next morning for Thompson Falls. In the morning they all backed out, except Pat Dennison and myself, so he and I started about five o'clock. It was forty miles over there, and the snow was still deep. We made good headway for three or four hours, and then the sun had thawed the snow so that we would sink away down into it. But we were going down hill then, as we had crossed 40
WE BLOW UP THE BUNKER HILL MILL
the summit, and after we got down a ways the snow was all gone. We got to Thompson Falls about ten o'clock that night. We left the next morning on the three o'clock train for Missoula, Mont. When we arrived there, we found others there we knew, but we soon had to scatter from there, and we found out we had left Thompson Falls just in time, as they had sent soldiers over there to head any off that came across the range from the Coeur d'Alenes, and they did arrest some there. The soldiers that had been sent to Missoula had scab deputies with them that knew nearly everybody from that coun- try, and we left there and went up the Bitter Root Valley, and stopped there with a friend of some of the boys that were with us. There were about ten or twelve of us. We stayed there a few days, and one of the boys and myself went on up the valley about ten miles farther, as I knew a man up there who drove the milk wagon for Markwell Brothers before I took it and was running a farm there. We got him to go over to the Coeur d'Alenes, as he was acquainted there, and get our trunks and collect what money we had coming, and we worked in his place while he was gone. He told us how things were over there; that they had several hundred in the bull-pen, and were still looking for others.
We left there after he came back, and returned 41
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
where we left the other boys, and later came to Mis- soula, where we stayed a few days, as the soldiers had all left, and from there we went to Butte, Mont. This was the headquarters of the Western Fed- eration of Miners, and we found hundreds of the miners there from the Coeur d'Alenes. I was taken sick going from Missoula to Butte, was sick sev- eral days after arriving there, and did not feel well all the time I was there.
I went up to the Western Federation of Miners headquarters and got a withdrawal card, so I could go into another union any time. The president, Ed Boyce, told us he wanted us all to come back to the Coeur d'Alenes as soon as the soldiers left, by all means. He said the trouble would soon blow over. I stayed in Butte about a month, and the trouble in the Coeur d'Alenes looked as though it had hardly started. They had about a thousand in the bull-pen, and about five thousand Federal troops scattered over the district, and had patrols day and night. The bull-pen was at Wardner, and they took them there from other parts of the district.
They were starting up the mines again, and had inaugurated a card system and an employment office, and all men looking for work at the mines had to go to this employment office and get a permit before they could get a job at the mines. The mine owners 42
WE BLOW UP THE BUNKER HILL MILL
of the Standard and Mammoth mines sent two rep- resentatives to Butte to hire 600 men and offered to pay the same scale of wages that had previ- ously been paid up the canon, which was the union scale. They also wanted the Butte union to get them these men, and they would pay their fares over there and guarantee them all work. They wanted them to all have union cards and be in good standing. I was in the union hall at Butte the night this was brought before the union, and they would not have anything to do with it. They thought perhaps there might be some trick in it to get them in trouble through the permit system they had put in force in the Coeur d'Alenes, as they required every one taking out one of these permits to renounce all allegiance to the Western Federation of Miners, and make an affi- davit to that effect. Some wanted them to do that and to go, but others did not like it, as they thought there might be some catch in it. These men that came to hire them said there was no catch, but they would rather have union miners, as they had been instructed to come to Butte first, and they knew that practically all the miners in Butte belonged to the union. They said if they could not get them there they were instructed to go to Joplin, Mo., which was a non-union camp. As the Butte union would have nothing to do with the proposition, they 43
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD left for Joplin, and the next I heard from there they were sending men from there by the car-load.
I left Butte and went to Salt Lake City, stayed there a few days, and went out to Bingham, Utah, and went to work in the mines. I met a good many men that I knew from the Coeur d'Alenes, most of them going under an assumed name, for if it became known that a man was from the Coeur d'Alenes, he would have a hard time to get a job, as the Mine Owners' Association had sent out a black-list of the men that had worked in the Coeur d'Alenes the time the Bunker Hill mill was blown up and left there afterward. One of the mine superintendents that I knew in Bingham told me if it was known a man was from the Coeur d'Alenes he would have a hard time to get a job in any of the mining-camps. That was the chief reason for men changing their names. Some, no doubt, were afraid of being taken back, but it was soon known that the authorities were not looking for any one.
I worked in Bingham until the Fourth of July, and went from there to Salt Lake to spend the Fourth, as it is only twenty-four miles. There was no miners' union at Bingham at that time. I went out to the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canon to work for some contractors that were sinking a shaft there, worked a couple of months, and then got in
WE BLOW UP THE BUNKER HILL MILL
on the contract. I worked there until Christmas, and then went back to Bingham and worked that winter. I worked in and around Salt Lake City until the next fall, and then went to San Francisco. I went up to Lake County, California, stayed that winter, took a trip from there to Los Angeles, and then went back to Salt Lake City. I drove a milk wagon there the next summer for the Keystone Dairy, went to Arizona the next winter, and worked in a mine there until about March, when I returned to Salt Lake City. I then went to Nevada and worked in the mines a short time at State line, then came back to Salt Lake again and took a short trip up into southern Idaho with a party to look at some prospects, but only stayed a short time.
During all this time I did not save any money, though I worked nearly all the time and always got the highest wages, and contracted some and made good money. I made many good resolutions, and often saved up a few hundred dollars and thought I would get into some little business for myself. When I would get away from town, as I often did, in some out-of-the-way place, I would save my money and make good resolutions ; but how soon I would forget them when I would strike town and see a faro game running, or a game of poker; my money would burn my pocket. There were many other at- 45
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
tractions, and money always soon got away. I al- ways bought plenty of good clothes and lived well.
I will now relate the results of the Coeur d'Alene strike. There was martial law there for the best part of a year. I think there was only one tried, that was Paul Corcoran, secretary of the Burke union. He was sent to the penitentiary for seventeen years, and was pardoned in about that many months by a new governor.
The fact is clear that the head officials of the Western Federation of Miners did not have the best interests of the union men in the Coeur d'Alenes at heart. They surely must have known they could not forcibly take possession of a railroad train, and twelve or fifteen armed men run that train twenty miles and take dynamite from a magazine and de- stroy a quarter of a million dollars' worth of prop- erty in broad daylight in a civilized country like this, and nothing be done about it. This was one of the best organized districts, with the exception of Wardner, that there was in the country. Mullen, (Jem, and Burke, and all the mines close to these towns paid the union scale of wages and recognized the union, and all the secretary had to do to stop anybody from working that did not belong to the union was to tell the foreman at the mine, and if he went to work they would fire him; but there was 46
WE BLOW UP THE BUNKER HILL MILL
hardly anybody that attempted to go to work if he did not belong to the union. If he did not have the money to join, the secretary would take an order from him, and the company would hold the money for him and pay him pay-day. To be brief, they had everything they asked except at this one mine at Wardner, and they took this course to make them come to terms, and thus for revenge on this one mine they disrupted the best organized camps in the country; for they could not be more thoroughly organized. This strike broke up every union in the district for a good while. They have some unions organized there again now, but there is only one mine in the district, the Hercules, where a union man dare say he is a union man or attend a meeting, and hardly any of the old miners ever got work there again, except at the Hercules mine, and the man- ager of this mine was mixed up in this strike.
47
CHAPTER FOUR
I GO TO UVE IN CRIPPLE CREEK
ABOUT the middle of July, 1902, I left Salt Lake City with Arthur Dulan for Cripple Creek, Col. On arriving in the district I stopped at Victor first. I only stayed there a few days, and then went over to Independence, and Mr. Dulan introduced me to Johnnie Neville, who ran a saloon. He was an old miner, and got hurt by a man falling on him in a stope, and so had to stop work, and went into the saloon business. Mr. Neville was a liberal and good-hearted fellow. He and I got to be quite good friends, and I boarded with him quite a while.
I will give a little account of the Cripple Creek district and its surroundings. This was then the greatest gold-producing camp in the world. It is about one hundred miles from Denver, and about thirty miles from Colorado Springs. It has three different railroads running to it, one from Flor- ence and two from Colorado Springs. The altitude is about ten thousand feet above sea level. The cli- 48
I GO TO LIVE IN CRIPPLE CREEK
mate is mild, and there is very little snow in winter. The country is not rough like most mining-camps. It is a long way to bed-rock — in some places nearly a hundred feet — so it is a pretty hard place to prospect. I think the district has a population of about thirty thousand.
Cripple Creek is the largest town, and Victor next, and there are several other smaller towns. Goldfield, Independence, Altman, and Midway are on Bull Hill. Then Elkton and Anaconda lie between Victor and Cripple Creek, and Cameron lies on the north side, at the foot of Bull Hill. There is an electric-car system all over the district, and you can ride from Cripple Creek to Victor for ten cents, and the cars run every half-hour. The steam roads also run suburban trains, so you can ride practically all over the district. It is more like living in a city than a mining-camp. They have a fine opera-house at Victor, and also one at Cripple Creek, and nearly all the good plays come there. There are good hotels. There are no company boarding-houses or stores. All work at the mines is eight hours. The wages run from $3 to $4 per day, and without an exception this is the finest mining-camp to work at that there is in the country, if not in the world. I think they employ about six thousand miners. There are hardly any foreigners there, and no Chinamen at all. 49
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
Mr. Neville introduced me to some of the mine managers, and I got a job in a few days in the Trachyte mine. I had learned to mine pretty well by this time, and ran a machine drill. I worked at the Trachyte about four months, and then had a little trouble with the engineer and quit. I got a job right away at the Hull City mine. I worked in the Hull City altogether three or four months. Then I went over to the Vindicator No. 1 with Mr. War- ren, the contractor I was working for at the Hull City. I worked for them till the strike in August, 1903.
When I was working here at the Vindicator I got to " high grading." Most of the miners were look- ing for high-grade ore or " glommings " — " some- thing good for the vest pocket," they called it. The other ore they called " company ore." 'Most all the paying mines there had more or less " high grade " in bunches. Some places in the ore chutes you would find sylvanite that was almost pure gold. There was plenty of ore that would run $2 or $3 a pound. There were two of us working alone in the stope when I started. We would put high-grade screenings be- tween our underclothes and pants legs, down where they were tucked into our shoes. I remember once of carrying out a little over fifty pounds stored away in my clothes. My partner said to me, if I fell down, 50
I GO TO LIVE IN CRIPPLE CREEK
I would not be able to get up again. Still, altogether, I did not get so much as many did. In all I must have made not to exceed $500 " high-grading " while I was in Cripple Creek.
I believe there have been hundreds of thousands of dollars taken out of these mines this way. I know of one man that it was said made about $20,000 in two years, and smaller amounts are accredited to others. There was a superintendent at Independence that some of the miners have told me they stood in with, and had to divide up with. He was a gambling fiend, and used to lose twice as much as his salary was every month gambling. There were plenty of assayers that made a business of buying stolen ore. There were four assay shops in the little town of Independence, and besides the pro- ducing mines had their own assayers. These outside assayers were mostly all there to buy high-grade ore from the miners. The miner would steal it from the mine, and when he took it to the assayer to sell it, the assayer would steal about half of it from the miner, and the miner could not say anything, and the assayer knew this. The only thing he could do was to take it to another assayer, but I never found any difference. They were all alike, and had an understanding with each other, and they would all give about the same returns. They would buy any- 51
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
thing that would run fifty cents or over a pound, and some would buy a lower grade. There were sev- eral of these assay offices blown up in Cripple Creek — once, I think, seven in one night. This was laid to the mine owners, and no doubt they had it done, thinking this would scare the assayers out, and the miners would have no place to sell the ore and would not steal it. The mine owners used to watch pretty close, and in some mines made the miners change their clothes down to their underclothes at the mines, but there was always some way to get " high grade " out.
I worked around the mines on Bull Hill about a year before the strike, spending my money as fast as I earned it. I worked pretty steadily and got good wages — $4 per day of eight hours most of the time, and the " high grade " on the side. Still I was a very unhappy man, and seemingly had no mind of my own and no purpose in life, and often wished I was dead, and often thought to end my mis- erable existence. I tried to be cheerful, and think perhaps I made a good showing on the outside, but if any human mortal could have read my inner thoughts as God can, they would have had a dif- ferent story to tell.
I often drank to stop and deaden my thoughts, for sometimes my past life would rise up before me 52
I GO TO LIVE IN CRIPPLE CREEK
as fresh as though it was but a day ago, and, try as hard as I could, I could not get it out of my mind. I would think of my dear wife and little girl, and wonder if they were still living and how they were getting along. At such times I would go to the saloon and drink to drown the sorrow, as I thought I must forget that they were anything to me. I often thought I would take a trip back there and disguise myself and see what had become of them, but I never got started. I used to go out in company some, but never enjoyed myself.
I met a lady in Cripple Creek and kept company with her a short time that spring, and asked her to marry me, and she consented. She was a widow and was keeping house; her husband was killed in the mines there a few years before. Her name was Ida Toney. I saved up a little money, and we were mar- ried. I think this was in June. I did not mean any- thing wrong to her, and thought the past dead to me, and thought if I had some place I could call home I would be more contented. I was going under an assumed name, and it was about seven years since I had heard from home. I had never met any one I knew, and as I had changed a great deal during that time, I did not think any one would recognize me.
This was a good, true little woman, and while I 53
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
might not have loved her as a man ought to love the woman he is going to make his wife, still I loved her as much as I could love any one, and thought enough of her to be good to her, and intended to take care of her well. I had worked about two months after we were married when the strike was called in August, 1903. In that short time after we were married, I had saved up a little money and bought some furniture, and had it almost paid for, and fixed up the house some. Mrs. Toney owned the house herself.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE BIG STRIKE OP 1903
I HAD never taken any particular interest in unions up to this time. I had never worked anywhere, since leaving Burke, Idaho, where there was a miners' union till I came to Cripple Creek. W. F. Davis and W. B. Easterly had come to me when I first went to work in the district, and asked me to join the Altaian union. I knew Davis from the Cceur d'Alenes. He was the man that had command of the union men when we blew up the Bunker Hill and Sullivan mill. He was president of the Altman union now, and Easterly was secretary. So after I had a pay-day I went up and joined this union. Still, I never took much interest in it till the strike.
The Cripple Creek district was considered a union district, notwithstanding there were a good many men working there that did not belong to the union, and part of the mines ran on the open-shop prin- ciple. The big mines on Bull Hill all recognized the unions, and this end practically controlled the unions 55
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
of the district. There were eight unions in the dis- trict— one miners' union at Victor, one at Cripple Creek, one at Anaconda, and one at Altman; one engineers' union at Victor, one at Cripple Creek, and one at Independence; and a mill- and smelter- men's union at Victor. These unions each selected one or two delegates, and the delegates composed the district union.
The Victor union was the largest and most con- servative. The men belonging to the Free Coinage union at Altman, where I was a member, used to often be called " the Bull Hill dynamiters." This was only the third largest miners' union in the district, but they had always had very radical leaders. Dan Mc- Ginley had been a former leader. He had been looked up to as a great man, and although dead they used to keep his memory alive by having his picture hanging in the union hall.
The Cripple Creek district was so large that the unions could not control it the same as they did the Coeur d'Alenes, and non-union men were pretty safe in big towns like Victor and Cripple Creek, but the Free Coinage union had the vicinity of Bull Hill well under their control, the same as in the Coeur d'Alenes, and there was hardly a man both working and living on Bull Hill that did not belong to some of the unions. There had been a great many men 56
THE BIG STRIKE OF 1903
beaten up and run away from there because they did not join the unions, or pay their dues, or be- cause they were suspected of being spies. The Free Coinage miners' union kept a " timber gang," as they called them, to do this work. Easterly, who was ex-secretary, and Sherman Parker, who was sec- retary when the strike came, had helped to do this kind of work before they became officers of the union. Steve Adams, Billy Aikman, " Slim " Camp- bell, H. H. McKinney, Billy Gaffney, and Ed Min- ster and others were in the gang. These men hardly ever worked and always seemed to have plenty of money, and Steve Adams has since told me they were ready for any old thing, from running men out of the district to killing them, as long as they got the money.
This strike in August, 1903, was called because the Standard mill in Colorado City discriminated against union men, and the miners at Cripple Creek were called out in order to cut off the ore supply from the Standard mill and force a settlement. The Telluride mill was also closed at Colorado City. The Portland mine was the only big mine that was not called out, as it had its own mills and granted the union's demand. There were a few smaller mines working, but only a few. One strike against the mills was called in February, and some of the miners went 57
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
out for a short time in March. Then there was a settlement for a while, but in July the mill-men were called out again, because it was claimed Mr. Mac- Neill, the manager of the Standard mill, was not keeping his agreement; and on August 10th the Cripple Creek miners went out again.
I knew this whole thing had been arranged at the Western Federation of Miners' convention at Den- ver in May and June of 1903. And while I do not think the convention acted on it officially, the leaders on the executive board and some of the local leaders in Colorado agreed to make Colorado a " slaughter ground," as W. F. Davis later expressed it to me — that is, to call out all the miners, mill-men, and smelter-men in Colorado, and force all the manage- ments to give them all an eight-hour day and a recognition of the union. Most places in the mines and mills of Colorado had the eight-hour day — though the smelter-men and the Leadville miners and perhaps some others did not. But there were many conditions which the Federation leaders did not like, and they meant to change them at this time. Hay- wood and Moyer and others of the labor leaders have told me that they took advantage of the legis- lature failing to pass an eight-hour bill after the State had voted for it the year before by such a large majority, to make all the mines, mills, and smelters, 58
THE BIG STRIKE OF 1903 where unions were organized, recognize the unions and pay the union's scale of wages all over Colorado. At the same convention, they passed a resolution allowing the head officers of the union to call a strike if they thought best to, when they wanted to sup- port another strike.
Mr. Moyer and Mr. Haywood have always denied that they had anything to do with calling this Crip- ple Creek strike, because this resolution did not take effect for six months, until after it was indorsed by the local unions. They claimed that the district union of Cripple Creek called the strike there. This is true, they did call the strike, but they were acting on advice, and you might say orders, from Moyer and Haywood. The district union in Cripple Creek was mostly composed of men that were controlled by Moyer and Haywood, and it appointed three men on the committee to see about calling the strike, and they approved of it. Sherman Parker and W. F. Davis of the Altman union were on this, and Charles Kennison of Cripple Creek, all radical men ; and the Victor union, that was the largest miners' union in the district, and was conservative, had no repre- sentative at all, while the most radical one and the next to the smallest, at Altman, had two. If this sympathetic strike had been left to a referendum vote of the miners of the district, it never would 59
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD have passed, and the men who favored this strike knew this. I never will think it is wise to call out four or five thousand men to enforce the demands of a hundred and fifty or two hundred. And I know that many quit against their will when the order came.
Some will ask, " What did they quit for? — they did not have to." There are several reasons why men quit against their will. In the first place, the unions were in the great majority, and had most of the local peace officers on their side. Men had been run out of the district and beaten up because they would not join the union, and they could not expect much protection from the local authorities, and again men did not like to be called " scabs " and to have their names, and in many instances their photographs, sent to every miners' union in the country, for miners travel around a good deal. The secretaries of the unions post up these names in the union halls, and also the photographs, if they have them. There is 'most always some one in every camp that knows these men, and many men have disappeared in mysterious ways, and others have been killed in various ways while working in the mines. These are always reported as accidents, and some of them no doubt are, but I know of some that were not, and have been told by reliable sources that many are not, 60
THE BIG STRIKE OF 1903 and I know there are many ways to get away with a man working in the mines and make it appear an accident. So, after taking all these things into consideration, one can readily understand why men quit work and go on a strike when ordered to do so by their officers.
As I have said, it was the intention of the Fed- eration leaders to call the miners out all over the State, and tie up the mines, mills, reduction works, and smelters. They called out the smelter-men at the Globe and Grant smelter works at Denver. They also tried to call out all the miners in the San Juan district, as they were well organized there, but most of the miners in this district had agreements with the mine operators and would not break them. How- ever, at Telluride they found a way around this. Most of the men went on strike for an eight-hour day for a few mill-men there, although many of the mill-men did not quit themselves, but were forced to by the closing of the mines. The Smuggler-Union miners did not strike, but they got the cooks and waiters at their boarding-houses to leave, and this gave the miners an excuse to quit, as they would not board where there were non-union cooks and waiters. Telluride was the only camp in the San Juan district where they succeeded in getting the unionists to quit work. I think they had from ten 61
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
to twelve hundred men in the miners' union at Tel- luride.
C. H. Moyer, president of the Western Federa- tion, tried to get the miners out at Ouray, but they finally decided not to come out, after he had got them once to vote to do so. At Silverton the largest union in the district absolutely refused to come out. Most of the coal-miners in Colorado went on strike, too, about this time.
But, as I have stated, in Cripple Creek the men practically all quit work when ordered to do so, and there was a strike committee appointed, and there was a circular sent out from headquarters to all kinds of unions throughout the country soliciting money for a fund which they called the " eight-hour fund." And they also sent men all over the country soliciting aid for the strikers. They got up great public sympathy because the legislatures refused to pass the eight-hour bill, as they should have done when the people of the State voted so strong for it. But, as I have explained, the big strike at Cripple Creek had nothing to do with the eight-hour law, and this was the case at Telluride, so far as the miners themselves were concerned.
CHAPTER SIX
THE MILITIA COME TO CRIPPLE CREEK
AT first, after the strike was called at Cripple Creek, things went on pretty orderly for two or three weeks. The sheriff was a union man be- fore he was elected, and the union men expected him to protect them. There were some non-union men brought in, and some of them were deputized, and the union men were after the sheriff to make him arrest the non-union men for carrying concealed weapons, and the mine operators were after him to disarm the union men. 'Most every one went armed, and there were several arrested on each side. If a non-union man was brought up before a justice of the peace that was a union sympathizer, he would be fined the limit, and if a union man was brought before a non-union sympathizer, he would be fined the limit. The justices were nearly all either union men or sympathizers, and they would let the union men go as light as possible, but the non-union justices did the same for their men. The mine opera- tors were after the sheriff to call upon Governor
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
Peabody for the militia, and the union men were after him not to, but to deputize all the men he wanted, and they would furnish them, and he was between two fires. There had been no depredations committed this time, and the strike committee as- sured the sheriff there would be none.
The last of the month there was a non-union man brought before a justice of the peace in Anaconda, named Hawkins, for carrying concealed weapons, and he was let off with a light fine or none at all, I have forgotten which. A few days afterward this justice was over at Altman one afternoon, and Ed Minster and " Slim " Campbell, of the Altman " tim- ber gang," slugged and beat him up some, and this was the real beginning of hostilities. Right after this there was an old non-union carpenter named Stewart taken out of his house at Independence at night, beaten up and shot and left for dead. This was done by the Altman " timber gang." The strike committee and union leaders were always advising the rank and file of the unions publicly to be quiet and not commit any acts of violence, but secretly they were having these things done. I did not know that then, of course. The mine operators appealed to the sheriff to call on the governor for troops, but he said he would not, as he said he was able to handle the situation.
64
THE MILITIA COME TO CRIPPLE CREEK So the Mayor of Victor and some of the leading citizens of Victor and Cripple Creek petitioned the governor for troops, and he sent a committee to investigate, and the troops followed the next day. This was on September 4th, I think. The troops were in charge of Sherman Bell, adjutant-general of Colorado. I think there were between a thousand and twelve hundred of the State militia. They did not declare martial law at first, but the troops acted with the civil authorities.
I just want to say a word in regard to the State militia, and especially when they are mustered in on short notice. Every place I have seen them, there has always been a low, hobo element among them, and while there is, no doubt, plenty of good men, this low rowdy element always take advantage of their position and commit many disgraceful things, and the whole body are blamed for them. It is not my purpose to wrongfully criticize either party, but I want to give the facts as they occurred. There were several deputies there, working with the militia, that were men who had just recently been paroled or pardoned from the State penitentiary, and had come almost direct to Cripple Creek and been deputized. Some of these men were well known in the district, and had been sent to the penitentiary from there, and they were considered all-round bad 65
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
men, and showed no signs of reform. When I saw some of these miltia and ex-convicts going around to men's houses searching for firearms — sometimes at night after men had retired ; and I knew some of them had no respect for the privacy of the wives and families — it made me angry. This, of course, did not happen much, but it happened enough to create a very bitter feeling.
In this strike, as in most others, the real issue at stake was soon lost sight of. Especially if the militia is called upon, a strike soon narrows down to a personal enmity between the militia and the non- union men on one side, and the union men on the other. As frictions arise, as they surely will, most of the strikers forget the real cause of the strike, and although a man at first might not have been in sympathy with the strike, and might have known it was wrong, as he sees the non-union men being shipped in and herded by the militia like cattle, he forgets all about this, and he hates these men and hates the militia, and they become more and more bitter toward each other. The union men call the militia " scabs " and " scab herders," and the militia call the union men anarchists and dynamiters, and the breach widens as the strike proceeds, and it is more like two hostile armies — only the strikers know they cannot fight in the open. After they are prod- 66
THE MILITIA COME TO CRIPPLE CREEK
ded around with a rifle and bayonet a while, they begin to think up some way to get even, and men will do things at such times, and feel justified in, that they would not think of at ordinary times.
When the militia first arrived in the Cripple Creek district, they were divided into three camps — one near Anaconda, one between Victor and Goldfield, and the other on Bull Hill between Independence and Altman. There had been no disturbance there since Stewart had been beaten up and shot, and there wasn't much for the militia to do that way at first. Their first work was to guard the mines, as fast as they got non-union men to start them up. During August there were union pickets armed with six- shooters around the mines, but there were no union pickets placed at the mines after the militia arrived. The militia patrolled the district day and night with cavalry, and there were guards stationed at all the non-union mines.
67
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE EXPLOSION IN THE VINDICATOR MINE
I THOUGHT at first I would not have anything to do with the strike, and I had taken no part in it up to the time the militia came. I had been " high-grading," and had a little money saved up, and had not asked for any relief from the union. A few days after the militia arrived, Johnnie Neville and myself went to Denver, and went from there over to Routt County hunting, and were gone about a month.
There had nothing unusual occurred then. But soon after we left, the militia made several arrests of men active in the union — most of them from the Bull Hill end of the district. Some of these men, whose names I remember, were Sherman Parker, W. F. Davis, W. B. Easterly, H. H. McKinney, Tom Foster, Paddy Mulaney, " Slim " Campbell, and Vic- tor Poole. The militia established a " bull-pen " at Goldfield. This was nothing like the " bull-pen " in the Co3ur d'Alenes. It was a small affair. I do not think they ever had had more than twenty arrested
EXPLOSION IN THE VINDICATOR MINE
at once up to that time. They used a small jail at first, and afterward they built a special house. This was not over twelve by twenty feet, I should say.
We thought perhaps the strike would be settled by the time we came back from hunting, but we found out when we came out from the hills that it was far from settled, and was getting worse all the time. If I had not been married there, I would not have gone back, but I went back about the middle of October.
While we had been gone, the civil courts and the militia officers had been fighting over the union leaders they had in the "bull-pen." The judge of the district court had issued habeas corpus papers to compel the militia officers to bring these men into court and show cause for holding them. The officers were satisfied they ought to hold these men, but they knew they could not prove anything against them and did not want to take them into court. But they were finally brought into court, and the judge ordered them released or turned over to the civil authorities. The officers refused at first to do this, and the union leaders wanted the judge to have the sheriff enforce his order, and the sheriff to deputize enough men and arm them to carry it out. This would have meant much bloodshed, as it would not have been much trouble to get men to fight the militia, and the miners
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
had a good many arms and plenty of ammunition. But the lawyers advised the judge not to do this.
Now, nothing could have happened to suit the head officers of the union any better than this, un- less it would have been for the judge to direct the sheriff to enforce his order. This looked to the pub- lic like persecution, and as if these militia officers wanted to hold these men in the " bull-pen " just because they were union men and leaders. But finally the governor ordered the union men released, and there was no more trouble then.
After this first clash between the civil officers and the militia, things went along pretty quiet for a time. The militia released the men, and after that they and the civil officers worked more in harmony. I did not take any active part. I attended the union meetings and felt more in sympathy with them, as I, like 'most every one else, thought they were per- secuting these men because they were active union men, and I hated the militia more than I did the non-union men. But I hated them all, and felt more bitter against them all the time. Some of the militia were camped at first not more than a hundred yards from our house. There were some kids among them that did not look to be more than fifteen years old. They would be peddling ham and anything else they had to the saloons for whisky, and the better ac- 70
EXPLOSION IN THE VINDICATOR MINE
quainted they got with the people, the more officious they got. I am speaking of these things to show the reader how such bitter feelings get worked up between men at such times. There were some of the militia that lived, or had lived, in the district, and they sometimes had some old score to settle with the union men, as none of the union belonged to the militia.
During the quiet time I went to " high-grading " again in the Vindicator mine. This was a little risky, as the shaft we had to go down was only about a hundred feet from the shaft house, where some of the militia were camped ; but as this shaft had no shaft house over it, we could get out of sight pretty quick. This " high-grading " was no easy job, as we had to climb down an old man-way 900 feet, where the ladders were out in some places, and then go through old stopes and drifts 2,000 or 3,000 feet, dig out our load, and pack it back. This would take us nearly all night. We would pack all the way from forty to eighty pounds. Sometimes this would not be very high grade ; we got from fifty cents to a dollar a pound for it. When it got below that, we quit.
During our trip into this mine, we discovered they had stored about a car-load of dynamite in a cross- cut on the eighth level of the mine. I met Davis, the 71
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
president of the Altman union, right after that, and, more as a joke than anything else, I said there was a car-load of powder down in the mine, and if they wanted to do anything, they could go down and blow that up. But he seemed to take it seriously, and talked about how we could do it. A few days afterward they started this mine up, as they were starting the mines as fast as they could get men. The strike leaders would report to the unions every week that the mines had only a few men, and would soon have to settle with the unions, but it was very evident that, while the mine owners might not be getting first-class men, they were getting all the men they wanted, and that they had no intention of yielding to the demands of the union.
Davis came to me a few days afterward and wanted to know if I would go down and set that powder off when the shift was at work. He said he would get "Slim" Campbell to go with me, and give me $200. After he had talked a while, he said he would have to go and get this money at Federa- tion headquarters, and it might take him three or four days after we did the job, but he would be sure to get it. He said we would have to do something to scare these " scabs " away, and scare our men and keep them in line, or the strike was lost.
Now, when Davis talked this way to me, it was 72
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the first time I ever knew that the head officers of the Federation were responsible for the many dep- redations that had been laid to the Western Fed- eration of Miners. I did always believe that these crimes were caused by union men, as the victim was invariably some one opposed to the union, but I always supposed some hot-headed union man did these things of his own accord, and 'most all of the union men believed this, for if it had been known the strike leaders were responsible for any such violence, the union would not have tolerated it for a minute. But after Davis proposed to me to blow up the Vindicator mine, and said he would have to go to Denver to get the money for me, I then began to real- ize that the head officers must be behind these things. Now, only looking at one side of the question, and having no money — as the little I did have I depos- ited in the First National Bank of Victor, and that institution had failed and left me without a cent — the resentful feeling I had against these " scabs," who were taking our places, together with the offer of money, influenced me. I told Davis I would go down and set off the dynamite, but I would rather go alone than with " Slim " Campbell. He said if I would he would give me $200. Of course, if we set this car-load of powder off, it would blow out the whole mine and kill everybody in it. 73
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I afterward thought I would go and ask Joe Schultz, who had been down there " high-grading " with me, and see what he thought about it. He also knew the powder was there, as we had gotten two fifty-pound boxes of it, and carried it up and sold it to some leasers we knew. After I told him about it and about the money, he said he thought we would be justified in doing it. He was a quiet, conservative fellow, but this strike had made him feel just as I did. So we got our things ready, and went down in the mine, and waited until we thought the night- shift had gone up to lunch at twelve o'clock. We had to go by the station on the shaft in the eighth level to go where the powder was. We went out pretty close to the station, and waited about ten minutes, and thought sure they had all gone up, and we knew we had to hurry, as they took only a half -hour for lunch.
We started out to the station, which was all lighted up with electric lights, and as we got close to it there was a eager there, who said, " Hurry up, boys, this is the last cage." He thought we were some of the miners at work, and had been late getting out. This so surprised us that we began to back up in the dark, as we were not masked and he might know us. But he got his light and began to follow us, and as we had our light out, we could not go very fast 74
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in the dark, and we had to make him go back. We took a couple of shots at him, as we both had six- shooters. We did not hurt him, but he went back in a hurry, and we knew we had to get out of the mine as quick as possible, and we did not bother to look for the powder. We told, or at least I told, Davis afterward it was not there. I told him we went on across to where it was after we shot at this fellow, and they had moved it — which proved to be true, as we found out afterward they had moved it up into the magazine the first day they began work. We knew nothing about this when I told Davis, but I wanted to make out how brave we were, and they, of course, believed us, after they learned it had been moved.
But, to tell the truth about myself, I was pretty badly scared, and I think my partner was in the same fix. We had to go up a hundred feet to the stope, and then go a couple of thousand feet or so through a drift, and then go down through another old stope on the timbers, and crawl on our stomachs in some places through a narrow passage we had dug out when we were " high-grading," and climb about nine hundred feet up an old, wet man-way, where the ladders were out in some places. The militia were camped out over a hundred feet from where we came up, and the place was well lighted up with electric 75
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lights. We came up as fast as we possibly could, and made good headway, as we knew the way well and were used to climbing out of there with a load, but still it took us about half an hour. My partner wanted me to tell them, if we were caught, that we were down counting how many machines there were running; but I told him he could do as he pleased, I was going to shoot my way out and take a chance if the shaft was guarded, as we expected it would be. I knew this was our best chance to get out, for if we waited until the next day, and we were missed, they would surely guard every possible place, al- though there were a dozen or more places we could get out. Although they had a half-hour to set guards, there were no guards at this shaft, and we came out unnoticed. After we got away so we were out of danger, the world never looked quite so large to me before, and surely kind Providence was with us, for they had every other entrance guarded, and kept them all guarded for some days, thinking we were still somewhere in the mine. I reported our experi- ence to Davis and Parker the next day.
This caused no little excitement at the mine, as the eager reported it, and none of the men would go down to work again, but all went home, and they had the sheriff and some of his men over there and kept the soldiers down in the mines for guards. After 76
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the excitement subsided a little, the officials reported they believed the eager was lying and just made up his report, and they fired him. Whether the officials believed this or not, I do not know, or whether they just told it so the men would not be afraid to work in the mine, for a good many were quitting. But it soon died out, and many believed it was only a story gotten up by the mine operators to keep the soldiers there.
I went to Davis after this and wanted him to let me have $35. I wanted this to pay some taxes for my wife (Mrs. Toney), on some mining property she had in South Park. He said first he would see if he could get it, but he said no more about it. I then asked Sherman Parker, the secretary of the Altman union, about it, and he said he was going to Denver in a short time to get some money from the Federation headquarters, as he had to pay some others for some work they were on. He said he supposed he would have a hard time to make them dig up, as nothing had been done. He spoke of the failure they had made in blowing up the pow- der plant at Colorado Springs, and he said all the attempts they had made to pull off something had failed, and luck seemed to be against them. He said he hated to ask headquarters for more money until we pulled off something. He said if we could 77
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have killed that fellow we shot at in the mine we could easily have gotten all the money we wanted, so I said nothing more at that time. Parker and Davis talked to me again about blowing up the Vin- dicator or the Findley mine, and wondered if we could not get some kind of a trap by the shaft, so when the cage came down with the " scabs " it would set off a bomb. But I thought this was not a good idea, for if the cage was to set it off, they might run the cage down empty — for they often did this — and so we would not get anybody. Parker came to me and told me he would give me $500 if I would fix some- thing in either mine to kill some of them so as to scare the rest and make them quit, and keep our men from going back to work, and scare outside men from com- ing in there to work. I thought this looked easy. I knew I could go down after the shift went off at night and set this, if they did not have guards in the mine.
I got Easterly, who knew all about these things, and we went up in an old vacant building, and shot a six-shooter into some giant caps to see if this would set them off, and it did. So we conceived the idea of fastening a six-shooter on the timber of the shaft at the station, and fastening a wire to the trigger of the six-shooter and to the guard rail, so that when they raised the guard rail it would pull 78
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the trigger; we would have the powder under this buried in the dirt, and a box of giant caps right close to the muzzle of the gun. These guard rails are always raised by the men as they get out of the cage, and then lowered again to prevent any one or anything from falling into the shaft. Easterly did not go with me, because none of these active labor leaders did anything themselves, if they could help it. They always managed to be in some con- spicuous place when anything was likely to happen. I went to Schultz, who had been with me when we started to blow up the powder, and asked him if he wanted to try it again. He said no, he did not care to take another chance when there was nothing in it if it failed, and besides he was working then for some leasers. I told him I did not think I wanted anything to do with it either. I said this so he would not think I did it if it happened. I told Parker he did not want to go, and he spoke of Billy Aikman, and said he was not afraid of a little blood either. I knew this man, and asked him if he wanted to help do a little job, and he said yes, he did. I think Parker had spoken to him in the mean time. So I went and rustled some powder from Joe Craig, Mrs. Toney's brother, who was a leaser, and he thawed it out for me. I thought we ought to have a man to stay at the mouth of the shaft, or a little down in it, while 79
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we went down and set this. So I got Billy Gaffney, and also got some more powder from him, and we went to his house, which was not far from the shaft, and got everything ready.
When the shift went off, about 2.30 in the morn- ing, we took about fifty pounds of dynamite, and went down the shaft of the Vindicator mine, and across in a drift to the main shaft No. 1. We were on the fourth level then, and we climbed down the main shaft to the sixth level, and we looked around and thought this was the seventh level. I had not worked on the seventh level of this mine, and had been off there only a time or so, and it looked to me like the seventh level. We hurried to set this as I have described, and I used my own six-shooter. Then we got out as soon as we could. This was not the same way we usually came in, but Aikman said this was the best way, and besides we thought they might be guarding our former passage or have closed it up, as it came from another property. When we came to the surface, we could not find our watcher, and we suspicioned there was something wrong, but we could not hear or see anything, and we came out unmolested. We found Gaffney later, and he said he got to coughing, and thought he had better leave. We had some turpentine which we poured along in our tracks after we started away from the mine, 80
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so they couldn't follow us with dogs, and got home all right.
Davis came to my house the next morning before I was up and wanted to know if we had set the bomb. I told him we had, and he said there was no excite- ment about the mine. I got up about noon and went down to the house of Billy Aikman, and he had heard nothing, so we thought it must be another failure, and we watched around the mine to see if we could find out anything, but we could not see anything unusual, nor did we hear anything for a week.
During the time that elapsed between our setting the bomb and the explosion, I tried again to get some money from Davis and Parker, and the latter told me he was going to Denver in a day or two, and he would try to get some from the Federation head- quarters, but he also told me they were trying to pull something off, and if it came off it would be no trouble for him to get money. He told me they had made an attempt a night or two before to ditch the Florence and Cripple Creek train that left Mid- way for Cripple Creek at 2.30 A. M. He said their tools broke, and they had to leave the job partly finished, and that H. H. McKinney, one of the men that had made the attempt, had walked along by the place that day, and there were two men standing looking at what they had done. Parker told me they 81
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were going to work at a different place, on one of the high banks between Victor and Cripple Creek. This early morning train carried the night-shifts of non-union miners that lived on Cripple Creek and worked on Bull Hill to and from their work. Most all of these non-union men that worked there then lived in Cripple Creek or Victor, because it was safer there for them than anywhere else.
There were a good many union men working in the Portland mine. The reader will remember that this mine was not affected at this time by the strike, and there were five or six hundred men working there, and all supposed to be union men. Some thirty or forty of these union men that were working on the night-shift lived in Cripple Creek and rode on this night train, and if they ditched this train they would be likely to kill the union men also. But a few days before they were going to ditch this train, they made arrangements for a car with the electric road, and the union miners of the Portland were supposed to ride on the electric car. Whether this arrangement was made to protect them and keep them off the steam train they were going to wreck, I do not know, as none of them ever told me and I never asked them, but I supposed that was what it was for.
When Parker told me this, we were in the union
00
c
EXPLOSION IN THE VINDICATOR MINE hall at Victor. He told me how they intended to work the job, and said he had gotten the men some good tools in place of the ones they had broken, so he thought it would be a go all right this time, and he said, " If it comes off to-night, there will be martial law here to-morrow."
After he told me this, I felt somewhat jealous and angry. I hate to write this, but I cannot tell any- thing but the truth, and I must not try to favor myself. Yes, I was jealous to think they would go and get some one else to do an easy job like that, after I had taken such chances down in the mine, and right under the very noses of the soldiers. This looked like an easy thing to me beside what they wanted me to do, and I was angry because, after I had gone through all the worst part and taken all the chances, they should go and get some one else to do an easy job like that, and would not give me a pleasant look, or at least would not give me a few dollars. I had used my own six-shooter and rustled fifty pounds of powder, and they knew I did not have a cent. I felt pretty sore, and made up my mind right there to go to Cripple Creek and notify the railroad authorities and block their game, and quit the out- fit and expose them. I also meant to tell them about putting that trap in the Vindicator mine, for I felt sure they had found it by that time. But when we 83
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started to go home from Victor that night, it was snowing pretty hard, and Parker said they would not be able to pull that off to-night, and he said, " It's more hard luck, everything seems to be against us." I felt sure they would not attempt it, as they could be easily tracked in the snow, and so I did not go to Cripple Creek that night, because I thought the next day would do just as well.
The next afternoon I went to Cripple Creek. I knew one of the conductors on that road, and I talked to him on the way over and asked him who the proper authorities would be to go to, and, in fact, I told him there might be some plot to wreck the train. He said, " They did try to do something last night, did they not? " And I said I did not know but I thought not. He said he thought they did, but he told me to go to D. C. Scott, who was their secret-service agent, and I think he introduced me to Scott. Scott's office was over the depot at Cripple Creek.
I talked with Mr. Scott and told him all the de- tails I knew, and when I had told him everything, he said he believed me. He said he was one of the two men standing by the rail when McKinney went by, and he also told me that McKinney was now under arrest, and they were looking for his partner. He also told me they had made a second attempt the 84
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night before, and had taken the outside rail clear out; this was over between Elkton and Victor. I was surprised at this, for that was the first time I knew they had made the attempt, as I thought the snow would hinder them; but they figured on get- ting to Victor, and they could not track them in the city, as the snow would all be tracked up there. I told him I would not tell him how I knew this, at this time, at least; I told him I just happened to find it out by accident through a friend of mine. He thanked me and wanted me to come over and see him again, and I told him I would, and I intended to tell them more and quit the gang.
I will have to say that this was not from any re- morse of conscience I had. I would to God I could say it was, but I cannot, for I had no conscience, or, if any, it was seared so with sin it would not act. No, I was prompted to do this from purely a selfish and jealous standpoint, although much good might have come out of it. I would have no doubt exposed those two men as soon as I had been assured of pro- tection, if it had not been for the following incident :
I went home that night and told Mr. Scott I would come back over and see him again in a day or so, but a day or two after, I think about noon, as I was going to Victor, I heard that the Vindica- tor mine was blown up and a lot of men killed. I 85
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went on to Victor, and in a little while word came that Charlie McCormic and "Mel" Beck, the su- perintendent and shift boss, were killed and the station on the sixth level was wrecked. Then we soon figured how the trap had been there for so long and not set off. I have before told you we intended to put this on the seventh level and thought we had until now, as we knew they were not working above the seventh level, but we made the mistake and got this on the sixth level instead of the seventh, and it happened no one got off the cage on this particular level during the time since we had set this bomb. But it seemed the superintendent and shift boss were going in on the sixth level to see about starting up some work, and they were the first to raise the guard rail, and both got killed and blown to pieces right there.
Now, when I heard this I was very sorry that I had told Scott what I had, for I thought I had to stand pat then, and I was afraid to see Scott for fear he would suspect me of knowing more than I told him, and I was afraid I would act nervous if he sent for me, which I felt sure he would, and I was nervous at first when I heard these men were killed. I had no thought of killing them ; I thought it would kill a cage-load of non-union men, as the men always went down first going on shift. I knew both McCor-
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mick and Beck, and they were good fellows, and good men to work for. As I expected, Mr. Scott sent me a letter to come over to Cripple Creek, he wanted to see me right away. I felt nervous and was afraid to go for fear he would notice it. This was the first of anything like that I had been mixed up in, and I was afraid it would haunt me, and I rather wished I had not done it at first. I saw them when they took the bodies to the coroner. But I saw Davis and Parker, and they braced me up and said it was all right.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
MY FIRST VISIT TO HEADQUABTEUS
THE Vindicator explosion happened on a Sat- urday, when we were all over to Victor. Davis and I went home, and I intended to stay there that night. But after supper Davis came to my house and wanted me to go over to Victor with him to the union meeting. Davis was on the strike com- mittee, and was going over to make the weekly re- port the committee had to give every union about how the strike was going. I told him I had better not go, and that it would be better for me not to be seen with him, as they might mistrust me. He said there was no good of being afraid. He said to look at Parker; that he was liable to be lynched for the explosion. And that was right ; I knew they were talking about it. Anyway, I got ready, and we went to the meeting. After the meeting Parker and Davis and I walked home together as far as the lower end of Independence, and I told them I was not going to be seen any more with them. I told Parker and Davis they ought to give me some money, so if I had 88
MY FIRST VISIT TO HEADQUARTERS
to hike out I could. I told them they were likely to be arrested, and I would not have a cent if I wanted to go away. Parker told me he would give me some the next day. He said it would be no trouble to get money now from headquarters. So we parted, and I went up through Independence and on home.
On Monday, the second day after, D. C. Scott, the railroad detective, sent for me to come to Crip- ple Creek, and, as much as I dreaded going, I thought it best to go and play innocent and put on a bold front. So I braced up the best I could and went over, and Scott said K. C. Sterling, the mine owners' detective, wanted to see me. Mr. Sterling came down to Scott's office, and I talked to him an hour or so, and he wanted to know if I knew any- thing about the Vindicator explosion, or if I mis- trusted any one. I told him I did not know a thing about it, and that I did not mistrust any one. I fur- ther said that I thought it must be an accident. Sterling wanted me to tell him who told me about the attempt to wreck the train, but I told him I would not.
They kept sending for me every little while after the Vindicator explosion, and I wished many times I had never said anything to them. But I knew I had to play the string through now, and I always went over when they sent for me. Mr. Scott had
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
given me $20 in money, and wanted me to go to work for them and they would pay me $100 a month. I told them I was a union man at heart, and did not like to double-cross those men, and I did not believe they were responsible for this Vindicator outrage. But I said I would tell them anything of importance I found out on the quiet. Of course, I never intended to tell them the truth.
There was a lot of wrangling about these men they had arrested. The militia held some of them, and some were in the county jail. Those that the militia held had no charges placed against them, and the civil courts would issue writs of habeas cor- pus, and the militia would take them into court, and when they were released would hold them; but, finally, they were all released but six of them — Parker, Davis, and Kennison, the members of the strike committee, and Steve Adams, Foster, and Mc- Kinney.
I kept pretty quiet all this time, but I was rather uneasy, for it was reported that McKinney had made a confession and had implicated Parker and others, and, in fact, Scott told me he had. I knew McKin- ney, but had never had anything to do with him, but I was afraid Parker might have told him who set the bomb in the Vindicator. I had tried to get into jail to see Parker and Davis, but the sheriff 90
MY FIRST VISIT TO HEADQUARTERS would not let me in, and I asked Mr. Scott if he would arrange for me to get in and see the boys. He asked me what I wanted to see them for, and I told him I just wanted to say hello and give them a bottle of whisky and some cigars. So he telephoned up to the sheriff, and I went up, and he let me in ; but I could not get a chance to ask Parker or Davis anything about McKinney, because a guard was with us all the time.
I found out from Scott that Easterly had been to Denver and Pueblo, and that Frank Hangs, one of the Federation attorneys, had been in and seen McKinney and got him to make a statement. They also had a detective in to see him, and Scott wanted me to go to Denver with him and see Billy Easterly, and find out, if I could, what they got out of Mc- Kinney. This just suited me, as I thought Easterly knew Moyer and Haywood, the president and secre- tary of the Federation, and could get me some money from them. Mr. Scott got me transportation, and gave me some money to pay my expenses, and we went to Denver the next afternoon. We were not to be seen together, and we did not stop at the same hotel.
I went up to the Federation headquarters the next morning, and introduced myself, as I only knew them by sight. They said they knew me by reputa- 91
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tion, as Easterly had told them about me. I asked tHem where Easterly was, and they told me he was in Pueblo, but would be back in a day or two. They wanted me to wait until he came back, and told me if I wanted any money they would give me some. I told them I had a little, and Moyer gave me $20. We did not go into any details about what had hap- pened in Cripple Creek, but only spoke of it in a general way at that time.
I went and met Mr. Scott over at his hotel, and reported to him that Easterly was in Pueblo, but they expected him back in a day or so, and he said we would wait for him. I forgot what I told him they said to me ; I made up something and told him, and I cannot remember a falsehood like I can the truth. However, Mr. Scott had to go home before Easterly came back, and he wanted me to stay until he came, and I think he gave me some more money. In all, I got not to exceed $40 from Scott, and I never got any money at all from Sterling.
Easterly came in a day or two, and we were there a few days longer together, and Moyer, Haywood, Easterly, and myself discussed the strike and the chances of the boys who were in jail. Haywood and Moyer said that was a fine job we did at the Vin- dicator. Haywood said we got two good ones, and they were the kind to get, and said a few like them
MY FIRST VISIT TO HEADQUARTERS
and we would have everything our own way. He said they would rather have one of the bosses than a car-load of " scabs," for when you took away the cause you had it all. They wanted me to stay in Denver a few days and enjoy myself, and to go back and tear something loose. They said we could not get too fierce to suit them, and Haywood said he would like to have some of the tin soldiers made an example of, as none of them had been hurt. He said we could get all the money we wanted if we would keep up the night-work. They asked me how much money I wanted, and said not to take too much, as I could get more any time I needed it. I told them I wanted $300 when I went home, and in a day or so afterward Haywood gave me the $300, and I went back. He told me to be careful and not to make any show of the money. So I left them and returned to the district.
I had never said anything to the men that went with me at the Vindicator about getting any money, or at least any amount. I think I told Billy Aikman, the man that went down in the mine with me, that we would make them put up a piece of money for the job. When I got back I gave him $50, and in a few days I gave him $25 more, and in all I think I gave him $100 or more. I did not tell him how much I got or where I got it. I used to give Billy 93
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Gaffney, the fellow we left at the mouth of the shaft, a dollar or two once in a while. I was afraid to give him any money to speak of, as he was drunk all the time when he had the price. He did not know I got any money at all. I gave most of this money to my wife to keep.
After I got back from Denver I went over to Cripple Creek and saw Mr. Scott, and told him I could not get much out of Easterly. I told him Easterly told me about seeing Mrs. McKinney at Pueblo, and some other stuff I made up. I have for- gotten just what I did tell him, but I did not tell him the truth, and after that he did not bother me much more. The fact was, Easterly was sent down to see McKinney and his wife, to brace him up and get him to go back on his confession.
I did not try to do anything for a while. Then, some time in January, I got some roofing-pitch and melted it, and took a dozen sticks of giant-powder, and tied them up in some burlap, and wound them tight with twine, and put them in a bucket, and ran this melted pitch around it, and let it get cold, and hacked it up a little, so it looked like a chunk of coal. I made a black-powder fuse and filled it full of giant-caps and bored a hole into the powder, and put this fuse in it and sealed it over so it would not be noticed. I made a couple of these — Owney Barnes 94
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helped me do this — and I got a man to throw one of them into the coal-bunkers of the Vindicator mine. This was an old man named Dempsey. He was an old-timer, and the soldiers did not pay any attention to him, but let him go in and out as he pleased. But Billy Aikman said he was all right; he was a thor- oughbred; and that he was one of the men that shot the deputies in 1894. So Billy Aikman gave him one of these bombs, and he promised to throw it into the coal-bunkers. I don't know personally what he did do, except he called me up later that night over the telephone, when I was in Aikman's saloon, and said he had delivered those goods. He was drunk at the time, and I shut him off quick for fear he would get to talking, and I felt sore at Aikman for getting that sort of a man to do the job.
A short time after this all the men in the jail were released on bail of from $15,000 to $20,000 each, and we dared not do anything then on their account. I should say all but McKinney ; he was not released then.
Foster, Parker, and Davis went on trial together. Davis was released soon after the opening for lack of sufficient evidence, but Parker's and Foster's trials went on jointly. Foster was charged with the first attempt to wreck the train near Anaconda. McKin- ney was a witness against them, he having turned 95
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state's evidence, and he swore that he and Foster had been hired by Parker to wreck the train, and they had made the attempt, but failed on account of breaking their tools. The prosecution had these tools, as McKinney and his wife had told them where they had been thrown, down an old shaft and into an outhouse at Foster's home.
The defense that they put up was an alibi. I don't know how many people — I think a dozen or so — swore Foster was in a saloon in Altman all the night in question, and that he was carried home drunk about seven or eight o'clock in the morning. Now, there is no doubt Foster was drunk this morning we speak of, and some of his friends had to help him home from this saloon; but there is no doubt, either, that he wasn't in the saloon all night, but came in there after they had tried to wreck the train, and they made up a fake alibi for him. I know this because I helped to make it. While I was not a wit- ness myself, I helped to get the witnesses, and we would take them up to Frank Hangs's office in Crip- ple Creek. He and Mr. Hawkins were Parker's and Foster's attorneys. These witnesses were told what they were wanted to swear to before we took them up there, and Mr. Hangs and Mr. Hawkins went over their testimony. There were women that were told what to swear to.
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That alibi was made out of whole cloth, and they made it stick, as they usually have for twelve or fif- teen years. I was to be a witness once in a case of this kind, but I didn't have to, because the case was dismissed against the man. I have often heard the union leaders laugh and tell how easy it was to get out of such things, and, as the judges in these camps are usually elected by the miners, they favor them all they can, and it is seldom that a man charged with an offense connected with the union — such as beating up a man or even murder — is ever convicted. I have often talked with Haywood about these things, and he has told me the more they ar- rested the union leaders — as long as they could clear them in the courts — the better it suited them, as this would make the public and the rank and file of the unions believe it was persecution. And the system was to get men to swear to whatever best fitted the case.
Now, after they had failed to wreck the train and Foster got drunk, McKinney reported this to Parker, and Parker suggested another man to help him, or McKinney did — I have forgotten which. Anyway, this was a man called Beckman, who was really a detective in the employ of the mine opera- tors, and he had been in the " bull-pen " with Parker, McKinney, and others when they were first thrown 97
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in there. This man Beckman was a German, and had joined the Federation at Murray, Utah, and had his card, and after coming to Cripple Creek he went into the Victor union. Parker called him a fool Dutchman, but he had the wool pulled over their eyes all right, and they thought he was an anarchist. I guess he proposed some of these outrages to them ; anyway, he got into their confidence, and his wife belonged to the ladies' auxiliary. So McKinney and Beckman made it up to make the second attempt, and I know Parker got McKinney a spike-puller and wrench, because he told me so after the trial.
McKinney told his story at the trial, and Beck- man told all his connection with the thing, and also some things Parker had told him and sug- gested to him, and also of Parker's giving him money to leave the district just after this, and prom- ising him more. But McKinney had sworn to two statements, the one just the opposite to the other. When he was first arrested, they took him to Canon City and kept him at the penitentiary awhile, and then took him to Pueblo and kept him in jail there. During this time they did not let any one see him, and he made a confession to Scott and Sterling, and told them all, and connected Parker, Foster, and Beckman. But afterward Frank Hangs and a de- tective in the employ of James Burns, manager of 98
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the Portland mine, got into jail to see McKinney, and induced him to deny what he had told Scott and Sterling, and Hangs dictated another statement re- futing the former confession, and he swore to that also. The reason they took Mr. Burns's detective in was that Mr. Burns had the only big mine that was open to union men, and the Federation leaders had to convince Mr. Burns that McKinney was lying and that the union did not try to wreck the train. When the trials came up, McKinney swore on the witness-stand that his first confession was right, and that the statement Hangs had dictated and he had sworn to was false.
But I have told you the methods used, and that both men and women swore that black was white and white was black, and the lawyers for the defense made it seem plain that it was a detective's job from start to finish*. They killed McKinney's evidence to a certain extent by his having sworn to two state- ments, and they brought such strong evidence that Foster had not been connected with the first attempt, and the last one looked so much like a detective's job, that the jury was out only about twenty min- utes, and brought in a verdict of not guilty, and all the men that had charges against them were dis- missed.
I used to go in every day and listen to this trial,
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
and Mr. Moyer was there, too, and I got to know him a good deal better, and I learned more about the way he felt about the strike. Now, there are a great many people who will claim that Moyer and Hay wood just started this strike so they could get to handle a lot of money and take out some of it for themselves, and that they stirred up all this trouble to do that. But I do not think so myself. I know that both Moyer and Haywood were talking to the rank and file of the union to be quiet and not commit any outrages when the strike began, and I know Haywood was mad at that time because Ed Minster and " Slim " Campbell got loose and beat up Hawkins and Stewart, and gave the mine owners a chance to call in the militia. And it is only reason- able to believe this, because the mine owners wanted to get in the militia. They couldn't get non-union men to come in and work for them any other way, for if the militia did not come in, all the union men had to do was to sit there and wait, because not many of the non-union men would dare to go to work in the mines while they were there — for it was known all over the United States what the unions would do to " scabs " in these mining-camps. But after the militia came in the non-union men got to work, and then the only way to get them out of the district was to commit secret outrages; and as 100
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time went on and the strike kept going against them, they kept growing stronger and stronger, until they didn't care whom they killed.
Mr. Moyer was a good deal worried during the McKinney trial, and particularly once when Mc- Kinney was giving his testimony, and told about Parker telling him about a fluid that would burn like fire when thrown upon or against anybody or anything. Mr. Moyer said he expected every minute to hear his name brought into it then, but for some reason the lawyers for the prosecution did not ask McKinney anything about this ; and, of course, we told our lawyers not to ask anything, and it was only referred to slightly in the direct examination. But Moyer was very much provoked at Parker for talking and telling so much to people he did not know, and said he did not know but we ought to put him out of the way. I had asked Parker before if he had told McKinney anything about my being connected with the Vindicator explosion. He said he had not, and I was pretty sure he had not, as Scott and Sterling had told me before they knew nothing about who caused it.
Now, I did not want to do any of this busi- ness with Davis and Parker, myself, after this. And I knew, besides, that they used to hire men to com- mit these outrages, and keep about half the money 101
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they collected from headquarters and not give it over to the men that did the job. Steve Adams has told me since they did this with him. So I told Mr. Moyer that whatever I did after this would be with him and Haywood, and he said he would not have anything more to do with Parker in that line himself. So after that I did business with headquarters direct. Moyer had given me $150 while he was at Cripple Creek.
Some little time before this trial there had been a convention called to meet in Denver by the State Federation of Labor. They sent out a call to every branch of the labor-unions. The real object of this was a political move, although it was not so stated at the time. I was elected one of the delegates from the Altman union to this convention, and I think nearly every branch of labor in the State was repre- sented. We met in Denver and talked over our griev- ances, especially those of the Western Federation of Miners and the United Mine Workers, the latter being coal-miners, who were also on strike. The two miners' organizations were by far the largest, and they reminded the other organizations very forcibly that it was their interest to support the miners. But the real object of the convention was to raise money for a campaign fund, and to support the strikers, and form organizations all over the State to take 102
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in every branch of labor, and levy assessments on the members, so much a week or month, and get so well organized that we would be strong enough to say to one of the political parties, " If you don't recognize us and let us name the head of the ticket, we will run an independent ticket."
I was elected on the Ways and Means Committee, and there were men chosen to organize these clubs in every town and district in the State. We were requested to attend a meeting one night during this convention over at Western Federation headquar- ters. Mostly all that were there were Western Fed- eration men, I think about twenty. It was discussed there which would be the best policy, to try to unite with one of the old political parties or run an inde- pendent ticket. The Repubh'can Party seemed im- possible and the Democratic was the only possible party. Some thought the latter would give us recog- nition if we got well organized, and others thought we could elect an independent labor ticket. Mr. Hay- wood said he did not think it would be advisable to run an independent ticket, but that it would be bet- ter to fuse with the Democratic Party. John M. O'Neill, the editor of the Miners' Magazine, thought the same, and said if we ran an independent ticket it would be sure to elect Governor Peabody again. Mr. Moyer said if we did not run an independent ticket 103
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
he would vote the Socialist ticket, as he did not be- lieve there was much difference between the Demo- cratic and Republican parties, as they were both against organized labor. But there was not any talk to speak of for the support of the Socialist ticket. The meeting was pretty evenly divided when a vote was taken, and we thought the best thing to do was to go ahead and get organized, and not let it be known at present that this was purely a political move, or at least not give it out in the convention this way, as many would object to the assessment if they knew it was going to be used for a political purpose. The convention broke up harmonious, and all these committees went to work, and most of the unions levied an assessment on their members of from twenty-five cents to a dollar a month.
After the meeting we had at the Western Federa- tion headquarters, during this convention, I met George A. Pettibone. This was the first time I had met him to know him, although I knew of him. I talked freely to him and he did to me, and he told me about the Grecian fire Moyer told me about, and some other things, and wanted me to come over to his store the next day, and said he would show me something that would beat a revolver for setting off a bomb. Moyer said yes, I had better go over and see the " devil," as he called him. He used to call 104
MY FIRST VISIT TO HEADQUARTERS
Pettibone this because he was always making ex- periments with chemicals, and Moyer said he was never so happy as when he was doing something of that kind.
So I went over, and Pettibone showed me how to mix chloride of potash and sugar together, and set it on fire with sulphuric acid, and this would set off giant-caps. He also told me about this " hell- fire," as he called it. This is made up of the follow- ing mixture : Stick phosphorus, bisulphid of carbon, benzine, alcohol, and spirits of turpentine. After this is mixed together properly, when thrown on anything with force so as to break the bottle, it will immediately be a flame of fire. I don't think they knew about this very long before this time, and Haywood told me they got the receipt out of a little book he had that was gotten out by an Irish chemist who was an anarchist. You can mix this so that it will be a longer or shorter time in taking fire.
This " hell-fire " has to be handled with care when being mixed. If it gets on your clothes or hands it will burn, and it seems to go right through cloth. Pettibone told me about getting it on his shoes, and when he began to scrub them on the floor of his cellar it started to burn all over. He told about how Marion Moor, who was on the executive board, went out on the prairie with him to learn how to mix it, 105
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and got some of it on his coat. They soaked the coat in water and thought that would put it out, but when it got dry a little it began to burn again, and they had to soak it in water again, and even then it began to smoke before they got it home.
Mr. Moyer told me while I was in Denver this time that things had been pretty quiet for a while, and that we had got to get busy up in the district and tear something loose, as there was no money coming in to the Federation. I asked him if that made any difference, and he said it did, and that as soon as things got quiet up there the money be- gan to drop off, and as soon as something was pulled off so they got some advertising, the money picked up again. And he said they had to have money to carry on the strike. I have thought that many of these horrible depredations were committed for that purpose, as well as to terrorize the mine owners and non-union men and make them afraid of their lives. I do not mean that Moyer and Haywood figured this out before the strike, but that it grew on them and they found it out while the strike was going on.
They wanted me to take a lot of this " hell-fire " up to the Cripple Creek district with me, and throw it through the car-windows at night when they were full of non-union men, and throw it down the shafts and set them on fire. So Pettibone got me enough 106
MY FIRST VISIT TO HEADQUARTERS
material to mix several gallons of it, and I took it home with me. He would not buy this all together, but sent different men to buy it, for fear the people would mistrust and wonder what he was going to do with it, as a chemist would be likely to know what this would do when mixed. You have to have bottles with glass stoppers to keep it in, as it would burn cork. I took this home with me, and Pettibone came up in a day or so to show me how to mix it. We did not mix any, but he told me how, and we hunted up Steve Adams, and he said he knew how to mix it. I took the materials out and buried them back of my house, as they smelled very bad in the house.
Haywood gave me $110 this time when I came away from Denver. I gave Billy Aikman $50 of this. But before I used any of this " hell-fire," Moyer came up to the district and told me I had better not use any of it, as they might have an idea where it came from and what it was by what McKinney had said, and so I did not try to use it.
I went to work and appointed committees in my part of the district, and started to organize these labor political clubs, and we got them pretty well organized. About this time, or a little before, the militia got busy and issued an order for every one that had firearms to turn them over to the militia officers, and they would give a receipt for the same 107
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
and return them after the strike was over. I don't know how many were turned over. They published in the papers that there was a great number, but I think this was only a bluff. I never heard of any one that gave up his firearms, but they began to search houses again for them, and this made people very indignant.
There were a good many of the old miners in the district then, and we all were feeling pretty ugly. After the union miners had been deported from Tel- luride we organized in Cripple Creek, and especially on Bull Hill, and planned so we wouldn't be taken by surprise. We were going to blow a whistle on one of the mines for a signal, so we would not be taken by surprise. We were well armed, and the unions had quite a number of rifles shipped in. The Altman union got about forty rifles up from the Telluride union at the beginning of the strike, and a lot more from Denver. In all there must have been not less than a hundred of these anyway, mostly thirty-thirty and thirty-forty Winchesters. They distributed these arms among the men who didn't have any of their own. I know I got a rifle and a six-shooter. And there was a password, where you would say " Gold," and the answer would be " Field." And if they had tried to run the union men out at that time, there would have been more trouble than 108
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there was when they did run them out. This was not until some months after, and at a time when most of the union leaders were out of the district attend- ing the Federation convention at Denver.
Mojer was in Victor about this time, and the militia made an attempt to arrest him, but he was secreted away at night. I did not attempt to do any- thing, as I did not want anything to do with Parker, and he said if we did anything and did not tell him there would be trouble.
109
CHAPTER NINE
HOW WE TRIED TO ASSASSINATE GOVERNOR PEABODY
ABOUT this time a mob and the militia ran some more of the union men out of Telluride, Col., in the night, and forbade them to re- turn on pain of death. Moyer sent for me to come to Denver, so I got ready and went. I met Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone at Federation headquar- ters, and they wanted me to go down to the San Juan district with Moyer. They had two pump shot-guns, sawed off so they would go in our grips when they were taken down, and plenty of shells loaded with buck-shot. The reason for this was some one had told Moyer or sent him word if they caught him they would use him as they had the United Mine Workers' officers. Some of the latter had been taken off a train and beaten up and nearly killed. They laid this to the deputies the mine operators had employed.
The next night Moyer and I started for Mon- trose, where they had sent John Murphy, the Fed- eration attorney, to get an injunction from Judge 110
WE TRIED TO ASSASSINATE PEABODY
Stevens against the militia and citizens of Telluride to compel them to let the union miners return to their homes peaceably and not to interfere with them. We had three six-shooters, and two shot-guns in our grips, which we left unfastened in the seats in front of us, and we sat near the middle of the car ; but no one troubled us. We arrived at Montrose and met Mr. Murphy, and he had the injunction all ready. We went on to Ouray, where most of the men were that had been deported, and the next day Moyer sent a telegram to Governor Peabody in- forming him of the injunction, and wanted to know if these men would have the protection of the militia if they returned peaceably to their homes, and he got an answer that all law-abiding citizens would be protected. Moyer said when he sent his telegram to the governor, that he had promised himself that he would never ask him for anything again, and he hated to do it, but this would be the last time. Moyer sent a few men back on the train the next morning, but they were met at a station some distance from Telluride, and forced off the train by militia and armed men, and threatened with death if they at- tempted to come into town. Sherman Bell, the ad- jutant-general, had arrived in Telluride, and martial law was declared, and Bell disregarded the order of the court in regard to the injunction. Ill
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
After these men were sent back from Telluride, Mr. Moyer was angrier than ever, and he began to advise the men that they could not expect any pro- tection from the State, and the only way was to take the law in their own hands, and go back to Telluride in a body and clean out the town. There were some methods discussed as to the best way to proceed. The first thing that we thought necessary was to get concentrated at the most convenient place, and get what arms and ammunition and other material we would need. We also spoke of filling beer-kegs with dynamite, and attaching a time-fuse, and roll- ing them down the mountainside into Telluride, as the town was in a canon with high mountains on either side. Another plan spoken of by Mbyer was to poison the reservoir where they got their water for Telluride with cyanide of potassium. This is easy to get around the mills where they use the cyanide process, and of course it is deadly poison and kills any one taking the least particle of it in- stantly. But Moyer only started to carry out the first of these plans when he was arrested.
After Bell disregarded the injunction, Moyer sent over to Silverton, which is thirty miles from Ouray, for Frank Schmelzer, the president of the San Juan district union. He wanted to confer with him about what to do with these men who were deported, as 112
WE TRIED TO ASSASSINATE PEABODY
there were about a hundred of them stopping at the hotel at Ouray, and paying about $1 a day there, and he said the Federation could not afford that. Mr. Schmelzer came over the next day, and they talked the situation over. There were some more of these deported men over at Silverton. The final outcome of the conference was that they decided to lease one or more of the idle mines up at Red Moun- tain. This is about half-way between Ouray and Sil- verton on the divide, and not far from Telluride, I think less than twenty miles. Another man came down from Red Mountain with Schmelzer; his name was Tom Taylor. He had a partner at Red Moun- tain, and he said there were some large boarding- and lodging-houses there, and he thought there would be no trouble in renting them, as almost every- thing was silver mines around there and they were closed down on account of the low price of silver. The object of getting this out-of-the-way place was to have some place to concentrate the men and keep them together, and this place was just where they wanted them, and the lease was all a bluff. The real object was to send these men up there and arm them all, get a car or two of provisions, and send all the outlaws they could get hold of up there, too.
They were going to try to get Vincent St. John to go up there and drill these men and be their 113
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
leader, as they all knew him, and it was said they would do anything he told them or follow him any place. These men were mostly all foreigners — Aus- trians, Finns, and Italians. They thought if they could get enough men up here in this out-of-the- way place, and have them well armed, and keep them there until the snow got settled in the spring so they could walk on it, some night they could march them over the hill to Telluride and clean out the town. This was the plan, but it was not told except to a very few, and they were well satisfied with it. If we had had another day these arrangements would have been finished, and perhaps we would have been away from there.
But the morning that we might have finished up and left later in the day, before we got up, the sheriff rapped at the door and wanted to see Moyer. I was sleeping with Moyer, and we got up and dressed, and when we went out the sheriff arrested him. He said they had wired him from Telluride to hold Moyer, and that the sheriff from San Miguel County was on his way with a warrant. Moyer wired his attorneys at Denver and wanted to know if the sheriff at Ouray had any right to hold him without a warrant. I think they told him he had; anyway, he did hold him, and about noon the sheriff and two deputies arrived and took him to Telluride.
WE TRIED TO ASSASSINATE PEABODY Moyer had given me some papers and his six-shooter before the sheriff from Telluride arrived, and ths Ouray sheriff did not search him or lock him up, but let him stay in his office. The charge they ar~ rested him on was desecration of the American flag. The Federation had sent out by the thousands posters imitating the American flag, with advertis- ing on them. They only arrested Moyer on this as an excuse. They took him to Telluride, and he was released on bail, but the militia rearrested him right away.
I left Ouray that night and went to Silverton with Schmelzer to escape arrest, and Moyer telephoned me from Telluride in a day or so, and wanted me to fetch his things and meet him at Durango, but be- fore we got through talking they cut us off. He was telephoning me just after he was let out on bonds, and while he was talking they cut off the connection, and the militia arrested him right afterward and held him for over three months. That was the last I saw of him for nearly a year.
I stayed at Silverton a few days, and then went back to Denver and reported to Haywood. The lawyers from Denver had gone to Telluride in the mean time, but they could not get Moyer out, as the militia held him under military necessity. A few days after he was arrested, Sheriff Rutan of Telluride 115
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came to Denver to arrest Haywood on the same charge, but Haywood blocked his plans by getting a friend in Denver to swear out a warrant on the same charge, and a justice in Denver that was friendly to him put him in the custody of the deputy sheriff, who stayed with him all the time ; and he had his case continued from time to time.
Pettibone and Haywood decided we ought to teach them a lesson for sending Rutan up there, and Pet- tibone and I were laying for Rutan the evening he went to take the train in Denver for home. We waited in an alley off Seventeenth Street, just before you got to the depot, and Pettibone was going to hit him with some brass knuckles, and we were going to drag him into the alley and finish him. But he had seven men with him on his way to the depot, and we couldn't get him.
Haywood and Pettibone were pretty warm under the collar about this time. They said they could not get any justice in the courts, that Peabody was hold- ing Moyer down there under martial kw, and that he had no right to, and the only way they knew of to get any justice was to take the law into their own hands and put Peabody out of business. So they decided then they wanted me to get away with the governor. Pettibone told me where he lived, and they wanted me to take a look around his residence and 116
WE TRIED TO ASSASSINATE PEABODY
see what the chances would be to get away with him. I took a look around there, and told him I thought a man could lay alongside a stone fence in a vacant lot that was on one side of his house, and shoot him with buck-shot when he came home at night. I went and sat around the capitol building and read until I saw him, so I would know him and learn his habits, and I told Haywood I thought he could be gotten all right, but that I ought to have some one to help me. It is better to have two men on a job of this kind, so that one can watch, and of course two men could hold up the police better than one, if you had to. Besides, you get half crazy thinking of a job of this kind, when one man is alone.
Haywood said Steve Adams was the best man he knew of to go in a job of that kind, only he said he was so well known. But we thought if he came down there in the city, and did not go around in the daytime much, he might not be known. So I left there and went back to Cripple Creek, where Steve lived. I had never had anything to do with him at this time, and was only slightly acquainted with him. I went and saw him, and told him what they wanted, and he said he was ready for any old thing.
I made arrangements with Adams to come to Den- ver in a few days, and I went right back to Denver, and told Haywood and Pettibone that Adams would 117
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
be there soon. I kept a watch around the governor's place, and learned all I could about his habits, and learned he usually came home in a hack quite late at night. Adams came down to Denver in a few days, and Haywood gave him money to get some new clothes and fix himself up some, and we got rooms out of the main part of the city a little, and each got a sawed-off shot-gun from Pettibone, and kept a lookout for the governor. We had a place fixed in Pettibone's lot back of the house to hide our shot- guns after we had shot the governor, if we got a chance, as Pettibone lived only a short distance from the governor and there was a dark street we could take part of the way to get there, and Pettibone was to take the guns and clean them up and put them away.
We worked on this for some time, and never hap- pened to catch the governor coming home at night, and we conceived the idea of planting a bomb under the edge of the sidewalk, and stretching a fine wire across some vacant lots that were there, and hiding it in the grass, and setting it off by pulling the cork out of a bottle filled with acid. When the acid touched the giant-caps it would explode the bomb. We expected to pull this wire when Governor Pea- body came along there in the morning on his way to the State-house. It was his habit to walk from his 118
JAMES H. PEABODY
Ex-Governor of Colorado, whom Orchard repeatedly attempted to assassinate.
WE TRIED TO ASSASSINATE PEABODY residence to the State-house every morning between nine and ten o'clock. Adams went up to a little min- ing-camp not far from Denver to a friend he knew, and that knew about some of these outrages, and got about fifty pounds of powder and brought it back in a grip. He took it over to Pettibone's store, made a box and put the powder into it, and fixed a lid so we could bury it and leave a wire out of the ground a little, so we could attach another wire to it.
About the time we got this ready, and were going to bury it under the sidewalk some dark night, the executive board of the Western Federation of Min- ers met to make arrangements for the annual con- vention. It was now some time in May. The board were gathered in Denver and were going over the books, as the custom is, just before the convention, and Haywood stopped us from using a bomb at this time, as he thought it might be laid to some of the executive board.
We had seen Mr. Peabody coming home late at night in a hack, and one night we had our pump shot-guns all ready, and waited across the street opposite in a yard under some trees, and when we saw his carriage coming, we got out on the street, and as the carriage slowed up we followed up behind it, and were only about thirty or forty feet behind 119
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD
it when they got out. We had our guns leveled at them to shoot as soon as we saw the governor. We had watched so we could tell him, and it was also quite light there. But there were only three women got out, and the carriage began to turn round, and we put our guns down quick and got on the side- walk and started down the street. The carriage driver let his horses walk and kept looking at us, and the women kept watching us too, and stood on the porch as far as we could see them. We took the first cross street and got out of sight as quickly as possible. We noticed the next day in the papers that the governor had gone out to Fort Logan with some military men and did not return till the next day.
However, Haywood said he had been studying up, and had come to the conclusion that Dave Moffat was behind the whole thing, and that Governor Pea- body was often closeted with him in Moffat's private office, and he said Mr. Moffat had been mixed up in the Leadville strike some years ago, and he wanted us to leave off Peabody and see if we could not get Moffat. We went to watching Mr. Moffat's habits, but we could not get much track of him. We knew where his residence was, but we could never see him coming or going from it, and we worked along on this for some time without ever being able to see 120
WE TRIED TO ASSASSINATE PEABODY
Mr. Moffat around his house. Haywood would tell us when he was in the city, as he did his banking at Mr. Moffat's bank, and was there every day, and while he said he hardly ever saw Mr. Moffat, he could always tell when he was there, as he always kept a guard at the door of his private office. Hay- wood furnished us with money all this time.
121
CHAPTER TEN
THE SHOOTING OP LYTE GREGORY BEFORE THE CONVENTION
THE executive board had met and were having a pretty stormy time, and James Murphy from Butte would not sign the emergency bill — that is, for the expenditures out of the emergency fund. During one of their sessions it was reported by Foster Milburn, a Federation man from Idaho Springs, that Lyte Gregory — who had been a de- tective in the Idaho Springs labor troubles, and had been a deputy and a leader of the deputies in a strike down in the Southern coal-fields, several depredations being laid at his door — was in the city, and that Milburn met him the morning he arrived in Denver. Milburn told Pettibone about him, and Pettibone went over to the Federation headquarters, where the executive board was in session, and told them about Gregory, and they said there ought to be something done with him. That afternoon Petti- bone saw Adams, and wanted him to go out with him that night, and take Gregory and mutilate him,
THE SHOOTING OF LYTE GREGORY
as they claimed he had helped do that to an old man down in the coal-fields. And a little later they saw me and told me about it, and wanted to know if I would go along, and we fixed up to go.
We three — Pettibone, Adams, and myself — all went over on Curtis Street, where Gregory, Milburn, and another man were in the back part of a saloon talking, and we went in and got a drink, and saw them, so we would know them. Then we came out and stood across the street in front of the St. James Hotel, where we could see them when they came out. Milburn understood what we were going to do, and stayed with them to find out where they were going, and while we stood there watching for them, Petti- bone made an excuse to go some place, and said he would be back in a few minutes. But while he was gone they all three came out, and Gregory and this other man took a street-car. Adams and I took the same car, and followed them when they got off. They went down to a saloon on Santa Fe, near Tenth Street South, and Milburn came out on the next car. He had been up to see some men in the Granite Block, where a good many men we knew were, so he could establish an alibi. The man that came with Gregory was also from Idaho Springs, and ran a poker game in the saloon they went to. After Mil- burn came he told us all about this. Gregory and 123
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some others sat down in the main saloon and went to playing cards, and we thought we would give up our former plan and kill him outright.
It was now about ten o'clock at night. I went out to our room two or three miles away, and left the rest watching him. We were going to shoot him through the window of the saloon as he sat at the table. I got a sawed-off shot-gun, and brought it back in pieces under my coat. But when I got back with the gun, they had moved into a little room in the back part of the saloon, and we could not see them, though we could hear them from the street through a window. But this window had the blinds so closely drawn that we could not see them. I went in once and bought a bottle of beer, to see if I could see where they were, but the door was closed, and I could see nothing, and we concluded to wait until Gregory came out.
A little after twelve o'clock he came out and started up the street alone, and we three followed him. We had to cross the street to get on the same side he was on. In doing this we ran into some wires stretched on the outside of the sidewalk to protect the lawns, and when we stumbled into these we at- tracted his attention, and he started to reach for his gun and back up toward the fence. When he did this, I shot him three times in quick succession be-
THE SHOOTING OF LYTE GREGORY
fore he fell, and then ran down the alley, as we were just opposite it. We separated as soon as we got out of the alley. I discharged another shell acciden- tally, before we got out of the alley, in taking the shells out of the gun. All the shooting, including this, took place within a minute or so, and we saw no one and no one seemed to be following us.
I took the gun down and put it under my coat, and we made our way to Pettibone's house — that is, Adams and I. Milburn went by himself. We left the shot-gun at Pettibone's in the place that had been previously arranged while we were working on the governor, and we went on to our room on Downing Avenue. Adams and I put some turpentine on our shoes, so they couldn't follow us with dogs. They did try to follow us the next day with some blood- hounds they got from Pueblo, but they went just the opposite direction from the way we went.
The next morning the papers had the account of the murder in them. We did not go down-town until the afternoon, and then went to the Granite Block to Jack Simpkins's and Kirwan's room, they both being members of the executive board. This was Sunday and the board was not in session. Haywood and Pettibone came up there a little while later, and Haywood, Pettibone, Simpkins, Adams, and myself talked over the murder, and they told us that we 125
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did a fine job. Hay wood said he had run across Arm- strong, the sheriff and chief of police in Denver, and he said Armstrong said that whoever " bumped off " Gregory had done a good job, and that his men would not look very much for any one. Haywood said the detectives had had Milburn over and had questioned him, but did not arrest him, though they told him they wanted to see him again. He said Mil- burn was a cool, level-headed fellow, and that he had given an account of where he went after leaving Gregory at the saloon on Curtis Street, and they had gone and seen these parties that he was with, and they had told the same story. I don't know, but I think this had been previously arranged. They had Milburn up a time or two afterward and questioned him, but did not arrest him. There was a lot of news- paper talk about this, but that was all; there was never any one arrested for it.
Haywood told me some time afterward that some of the members of the executive board were up at the office the next morning after this happened, and Simpkins took the paper with an account of this murder in and handed it to Murphy, and that Mur- phy looked at the head-lines, and put the paper behind him and would not read it. I don't know whether it was before or after this — but I think it was after — that they handed Murphy the emergency 126
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bill and told him to sign his name the first one. I think at first he refused, and Haywood told him that he (Murphy) would sign it, and say that he liked it. This was the bill that Murphy had refused to sign, but Haywood told me that he signed it and they had no more trouble with him; Haywood said if he had not signed it he would not have left the room alive, and he said he guessed he thought of Gregory.
A short time after this Adams got on a drunk, and some of his friends sent him back to Cripple Creek. Then the annual Federation convention met. I attended this most of the time, and they had a pretty stormy session. Many of the delegates were dissatisfied with the strikes that had been called and the large amount of money that had been spent — nearly half a million dollars — and they were talking of electing new officers. James Murphy, the repre- sentative on the executive board from Butte, had been down to Telluride and had seen Moyer in the " bull-pen " there, and it was said that Moyer had made some deal with Butte and was going to turn Haywood down, and it was thought there was going to be a split and some of the districts would with- draw from the Federation.
Moyer always seemed to be jealous of Haywood, and he had some reason to be, as Haywood always seemed to run the office. And when Moyer was in 127
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jail at Telluride their relations became more strained than ever. Moyer used to send what letters or other business he had connected with the Federation to his wife, and had her get Copley of the executive board to attend to them. This made Haywood pretty angry. It was also reported that Moyer had shown the military officers at Telluride great respect. This also made Haywood angry, and when Murphy went down to see Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone thought there was some job being worked up by Moyer and Murphy to oust Haywood ; and Pettibone and Hay- wood thought Moyer was weakening, and we talked of putting him out of the way. After Moyer got out, he explained that the reason he was so friendly to the militia officers was that he was sick and thought they would use him better. But he and Haywood were not very good friends afterward. Moyer was in jail over three months, and when he came back to the office again after he was released from the " bull-pen," Haywood and he just spoke to each other, as if he had only been out a day.
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
HOW WE BLEW UP THE INDEPENDENCE DEPOT DURING THE CONVENTION
THEN W. F. Davis, Parker, and Pettibone wanted me to go to Cripple Creek and pull off something, and stir up the delegates, so they would quit this quarreling, and be united, and finish up their business and go home. The different factions were having their little meetings nights. During this wrangle Pettibone, Davis, and Parker said I had better go to Cripple Creek and blow up something, as that would not only unite the conven- tion, but if it happened when all the union leaders were out of the district, they would not know who to lay it to. I told them it would not be much trouble to blow up the Independence depot. We had talked of this before. The idea was to get the night shifts of non-union miners that got on the 2.30 train there every morning. They said that would be all right. Hay wood said he did not want me to get mixed up in a job like that, and wanted me to get some one else to do it, as he said he had some heavier 129
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work for me to do. He said as I had never had my name mixed up with the Federation, and they had never suspected me, I could do this work better than some one that had been written up in the papers in connection with some of this work. I told him I would not get mixed up; that I would get some one else to do it, or I would set it off with an alarm-clock.
Pettibone was doorkeeper at the convention hall, and Parker, Davis, Pettibone, and myself were talking this over, and they wanted me to go up to the district that afternoon. The convention had just assembled after lunch, and Haywood came in while we were talk- ing, and we asked him about it, and he said no doubt it would be a good thing, and that anything went with him. He gave me some money, and told me to be sure and not get mixed up myself.
I bought an alarm-clock and went to Cripple Creek that afternoon.
I went and asked Billy Aikman if he wanted to help do a little job. He told me he did not see how he could get away, as he had bought a half-interest in a saloon at Independence and was tending bar nights, and he thought he might be missed if he wasn't there. I did not tell him what we were going to do. Then I went and told Adams they wanted a little job done, and he said all right, he was ready for any old thing, or words to that effect. I told Billy Easterly what 130
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we were going to do, and he said all right, if we wanted any help he would help us. I went and saw Floyd Miller, where he was working on a lease, and asked him if he would get me a hundred pounds of powder and two boxes of giant-caps. He said he would, and I gave him the money to get them.
I got Adams and went over that night after the powder, where Miller said he would leave it, but it was not there. Adams and I went over to see Miller the next day, and Miller said they did not deliver it, but that he had ordered it and thought it would be up sure that day. We went over that night, and car- ried it over to Independence, and hid it in an old cellar in the back of a cabin that Adams had a key to. I think this was on Thursday evening, and we intended to use the powder on Saturday night.
A good while before this, Johnnie Neville and my- self had planned to go out on a camping and hunting trip, and as his saloon had not paid him since the strike, he said he would close it up, and I said to him that he had better burn it up. So he got the sa- loon insured after this, and we took out some of the liquor and buried it in a dump. So when I went to Cripple Creek to get Steve Adams to go after Gov- ernor Peabody, we set the saloon on fire. I took five bottles of the Grecian fire and poured it round in the upper rooms of the saloon, and shut the doors and 131
CONFESSIONS OF HARRY ORCHARD went away. I got these bottles in the dump by Eas- terly's cabin. He told me where they were when I saw him in Denver. The saloon was all in flames a short time later, and no one could get near it, and it burned up completely.
Now, after Adams and I had fixed up everything to blow up the depot, I thought it would be a good plan to go off with Johnnie Neville on this camping trip. I figured it would be a good thing for me to go away from there in the daytime with him, and then come back at night on horseback and do the job; and as Neville had a good reputation and was well thought of, I took advantage of the saloon fire and thought he dare not go back on me. Neville wanted to go with me, and we looked around for a team and wagon, as we intended to drive through the country. We bought a team and wagon from Joe Adams, Steve's brother. We got all ready and intended to leave on Saturday, and I intended to come back on horseback Saturday night and blow up the depot and ride back to where we camped.
But Friday evening Billy Easterly came to my house and told me Parker was up from Denver and wanted to see me. I went down to Parker's house in Independence, and he told me the convention had ap- pointed a committee to come up and investigate the strike, and to see the mine operators' representative
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and get both sides of the story. The Hay wood faction did not want this committee appointed, and after it was appointed Parker said they did not want them to come up alone, and they decided to have him come with them. I told them we were all ready, and intended to finish the job Saturday night, but he wanted us to wait until they got away. He said they would hang him if anything like that happened when he was there, but he said if it was going to make any particular difference to go ahead, and he would take his chances, and would rather like to catch this committee up there, so they would get a touch of high life. I told him we would wait until they left, so Parker and this com- mittee went and had a conference with the secretary of the mine operators, and the committee were favor- able to some kind of a settlement.
Now, Haywood and the strike committee and some, if not all, of the executive board did not want this committee to make any settlement or interfere with the strike, and Haywood said they had spent too much money to let them settle with any one else, and that when they wanted to settle they would have to come to them. Malcolm Gillis from Butte was on this com- mittee, one man from Wyoming, and one from British Columbia. The Haywood faction were sore at Gillis, and said he was chairman of the Republican State Central Committee of Montana and stood in with 133
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the mine operators. The fact was that Gillis was a bright and, I think, reasonable man, and they were afraid he would open the way for settlement, and they would have no hand in it, and lose the glory.
After the conference with the secretary of the mine operators, the committee made some further inquiry about the district, and visited the union at Victor Saturday evening, and left Sunday for Denver. Sun- day evening, Neville and I and his little boy Charlie left Independence with a team and wagon, and drove down the road toward Colorado Springs a few miles — I think six or eight miles — and camped for the night. I told Neville I intended to go back and do a little work that night. I told him I would make some excuse before Charlie, and if anything happened that I was ever mistrusted, I was supposed to be there all night with them. I had gotten a saddle from Tom Foster before I left, and had made arrangements with Adams to meet me where we left the dynamite.
A little after dark, I saddled one of the horses and rode back within a mile of the depot, and tied my horse in some bushes, and walked the rest of the way to the cabin, and found Adams already there. This was about ten o'clock. He had a candle, and we stayed in there about an hour, making a little wooden wind- lass to set off the dynamite with. We fastened two little vials on the cross-piece of this with a strip of
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leather, so when you pulled on the windlass these bot- tles would turn over and spill sulphuric acid on the giant-caps we had put in the powder.
About eleven o'clock, when 'most everybody around there had gone to bed, we took the two fifty-pound boxes of powder with us and went over to the depot. This depot had been closed for some time, and they kept no operator there, though the train stopped there for people to get on and off. The depot was built on a side-hill, with a long platform in front of it. We walked under this platform, and I crawled under where the plank came right close to the ground. I dug away a little place in there, and buried the two boxes of dynamite in the ground close up to the planks, put in the giant-caps and set up the wind- lass on one of the boxes, and filled the two little bot- tles with sulphuric acid from another bottle I had it in. This was ticklish business, as it was very dark in there, and I had to fill these little bottles without see- ing them; and though I kept a pasteboard over the giant-caps and the dynamite while I was filling this, yet a drop of the acid would have set the whole thing off. We had a mixture of sugar and potash on the caps, too, that the acid would set fire to immediately.
Then we stretched a wire out from the windlass about two hundred feet on to a spur track, and tied a chair-rung to the end of it. We went back to an 135
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old ore-house beside the spur track, and waited. It had been dark and lowery that night, but about two o'clock it began to lighten up. We were a good deal put out by this, as there was a small moon and it got quite light. The train we were waiting for came in every evening about 2.30, and it generally was on the dot. We heard the men come on the platform talking, and finally we heard the train. Then we got down to the end of our wire and took hold of the chair-rung, and when the train was within about a hundred feet of the depot, we each had a hold of one end of this chair-rung which the wire was attached to, and pulled it and kept right on going. We intended to take the wire with us, but forgot that part, as the rocks and debris were falling around us pretty thick, although neither of us got hurt. I do not know how many men were on the platform at the time, but I think there were thirteen killed outright and some others were maimed and crippled for life.
We ran as fast as we could, and soon got up on the railroad and followed it around nearly to the old Victor mine on the north side of Bull Hill, and then separated. Adams went on around to Midway, where he lived, and I went down to where I left my horse, on the Colorado Springs road, and rode back to our camp as fast as possible, and got there just at daybreak. 136
WE BLOW UP INDEPENDENCE DEPOT Mr. Neville and Charlie were awake, and I crawled up in the wagon and went to sleep for a while, or at least tried to sleep.
Mr. Neville asked me what we had blown up. I told him nothing at first, or put him off with some evasive answer. He said there were two reports and they shook the ground there. He then asked me if it was the Find- lay mine ; I told him I was not there, and this was rea- sonable enough for him to believe, for the explosion was at 2.30 and it was only a few minutes after three when I got to the camp. But it was all down grade and my horse was cold standing so long — for it was a cold night for that time of year, with a frost — and I ran him most of the way at full speed, only slacking a couple of times close to two houses, so they would not hear the horse running.
We got our breakfast and started on down the road toward Colorado Springs about eight o'clock. We did not meet or see any one who said anything to us until about four o'clock in the afternoon, when we got close to Colorado Springs, and a man asked us if we were from Cripple Creek. We told him we were, and he asked when we left, and we told him the day before, and he began to tell us about the explosion, and said there were sixty men killed and several hurt, and the depot was blown to atoms, and some of the people living close by were thrown from 137
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their beds. This startled Mr. Neville and Charlie, as Neville's house was only about a hundred yards from the depot, and I had to tell him I knew his folks were not hurt. I did not let Charlie hear me tell his father this, but I told him I was not more than a hundred feet from it when the explosion occurred, and this somewhat pacified him. When we got to Colorado Springs we got some later papers and found that the first reports were exaggerated and that none of the people living around the depot were seriously hurt, and we bought some things in the city that we needed, and went on about four miles beyond the Springs and camped that night. The next morning I walked back a ways until I reached a street-car line, and went into the city and got the morning papers and came back. We found in the paper where a piece of plank had gone through the roof of Mr. Neville's house, and a sliver had struck Mrs. Neville on the breast while she was in bed, but had not seriously hurt her. This re- lieved me a whole lot, for I realized my position if any of his family had been hurt.
We started on again, and drove a few miles beyond Palmer Lake, and camped the next night, and the next afternoon we reached the suburbs of Denver and got a little barn to put our horses and wagon in. It was only a little way from the end of the street-car line, and after we put our horses up, we took the car 138
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and went into the city. We got there a little before dark.
I left Mr. Neville and started to go to Jack Simp- kins's room in the Granite Block. I met Simpkins on the street, and we went up to this room together, and Kirwan was there, and a little later Haywood and Pettibone came in, and while we were talking Steve Adams came in. Kirwan did not take any part in the conversation; I think he left the room soon after Simpkins and I came up. They were all greatly pleased with the job, and they said it was the only thing that ever saved the Federation from being split up. They said every delegate there wanted to get through as soon as possible, and there was no more kicking and no more new candidates for office, as no one wanted the offices, but wanted to get away as soon as possible for fear something would fall. They told us everything was on fire up in the district, or words to that effect, and they had declared martial law and had established a " bull-pen," and were deporting men, but still they did not think anything of this. They were well pleased to think they had all been elected again, except one member of the board, and they did not want him. They said the dogs had fol- lowed my trail several miles down the canon, but Haywood said he did not think they were on to any- thing. Adams had stayed home and the next day went 139
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over to Cripple Creek, and his friends advised him to leave the district, and Monday night after dark he started to walk to South Park, and he caught the train there and came in to Denver. He did not leave any too soon, for that night or the next day, I have forgotten which, there was a mob of about a hundred men came to his house, and if they had found him there is no doubt but they would have lynched him, as he had the name of being a dyna- miter.
Haywood and the others asked us what we intended to do, and I told him I was going up through Wy- oming on a prospecting and pleasure trip. He asked us how much money we wanted, and said it would be better for us not to take it all now or all we expected. Adams told him he wanted $200 now, and he said he was going to send for his wife, and I don't think he said what he intended to do — if he knew. I told Haywood I wanted $300 anyway then. Next day I got the $300 from Pettibone, and Mr. Neville and I bought a tent and some other things we needed, and I think after we were there three or four days we got our team and started for Cheyenne, Wyo. I think we were four or five days going to Cheyenne. We put our horses up there and intended to let them rest a day or so.
We went to Pat Moran's saloon, as he was an old 140
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friend of Pettibone's, and he told me he was all right and to go to see him if we stopped at Cheyenne. The first night we got in Cheyenne we were at his saloon, and he handed us a paper with our names and good description of us, stating we were wanted in connection with the Independence explosion. I showed it to Johnnie, and he wanted to go and put a piece in the paper telling them where we were, if they wanted us. I told him to wait a while and we would