these. As winter came on the sufferings of the tent dwellers were acute.

The principal mining company involved was the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, a possession of the Oil Group. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., is the active spirit in this company. When he was on the stand before the House Committee this occurred:

The Chairman

- Let me tell you this and see what you think about it. In some of the camps out there, it is so testified to - and I think some

in which your company is interested a town is incorporated, and all the property there is owned by your company, with a sign up, "Private Property." These incorporated mining towns elect a mayor, who is usually the mine superintendent or some one connected with the mine. They conduct the business of the town, levying a poll tax of $1.50 on the miners, and with the saloon licenses are able to conduct the town and pay the expenses. Have you ever looked into that to find out whether or not that is a fact?

Mr. Rockefeller No; I have no knowledge of that. I should think it would be quite necessary and proper that when a company bought a mine it should buy property in the vicinity of the mine to provide for the workers who must inevitably be there to work the mine. I should think that that was a wise policy, to buy lands in the vicinity

The Chairman All around the mine?

Mr. Rockefeller So as to concentrate conveniently the residences of the employes.

The Chairman And then these people living in this town the miners, those who work for the companies are compelled to rent your property? Mr. Rockefeller-You say "compelled The Chairman - Yes, compelled," if they work for your company.

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Mr. Rockefeller - They are not compelled to work for the company.

A committee was appointed by the governor of Colorado to investigate charges made against the conduct of the state militia in the strike, and the committee unanimously agreed that Lieut. E. K. Linderfelt, who was in charge of the militia quartered near Ludlow, was doing all in his power to provoke the strikers to violence. It seemed to the committee that he was especially anxious to get Louis Tikas into trouble. Once he arrested him for some trivial offense and held him without lodging a charge against him. The report reads:

We have reason to believe that it is his (Linderfelt's) deliberate purpose to provoke the strikers to bloodshed. Every decent member of the militia who knows Louis Tikas will testify that he is an admirable man for the place he fills; that he is fair, and that he will assist the militia in every proper way in policing the neighborhood, yet it is this man whom Linderfelt tries to provoke in order that some other members of the colony will be aroused out of sympathy, and it is this man whom Linderfelt is reported to have threatened to kill on the slightest provocation."

It was not long before the majority of the gunmen were wearing militia uniforms. The state ran so far in debt that the militia had to be withdrawn. The ranks of the strikers remained unbroken. Something had to be done to break the strike. Gunmen therefore were organized as militia, in total violation of the law of the state. Troop A was organized by Lieutenant Linderfelt. Ninety per cent. of its members were furnished by the coal company.

Company B was composed of gunmen and mine guards under the command of Major Hamrock. None of the company had a permanent occupation sufficiently important to warrant his return to Denver when the general order for the recall of the militia was issued.

Between the gunmen and the miners incessant war was waged. The miners secured arms and took to the hills, whither they were followed by the gunmen. Not a day passed without at least a skirmish, and often there were long fought battles. One lasted for fourteen hours. How many were killed in these fierce struggles will never be known, but certainly the casualties were not light on either side. All day long one could hear the cracking of the rifles in the hills and see the gunmen deploying as they sought to attack or ambush a party of

miners. It has been asserted, and probably with reason, that more men were killed or wounded in Colorado in these months than fell in battle on the American side in the entire Spanish-American war.

The culmination of many scenes of horror was at Ludlow, one of the tent colonies that had been established when the miners were dispossessed. The place lay in a hollow surrounded with hills. The militia-gunmen were wont to lie in the hills and fire down upon the tents. To get out of range the inmates had dug under the floors of the tents holes and pits into which they crawled when they heard the rifles of the gunmen opening fire.

On this particular day the men of the camp had gone to the hills to fight and scarcely anyone was left about the tents except women and children. What happened next I shall not attempt to tell in my own words but in those of an eye witness in no way connected with either side and therefore impartial and trustworthy.

He is a young electrical engineer named Godfrey Irwin, who happened to be on the spot. This is his testimony:

"On the day of the Ludlow battle a chum and myself left the house of the Rev. J. O. Ferris, the Episcopal minister with whom I boarded in Trini

dad, for a long tramp through the hills. We walked fourteen miles, intending to take the Colorado & Southern Railroad back to Trinidad from Ludlow station.

"We were going down a trail on the mountain side above the tent city at Ludlow when my chum pulled my sleeve and at the same instant we heard shooting. The militia were coming out of Hastings Canyon and firing as they came. We lay

The

flat behind a rock and after a few minutes I raised my hat aloft on a stick. Instantly bullets came in our direction. One penetrated my hat. militiamen must have been watching the hillside through glasses and thought my old hạt betrayed the whereabouts of a sharpshooter of the miners.

"Then came the killing of Louis Tikas, the Greek leader of the strikers. We saw the militiamen parley outside the tent city and a few minutes later, Tikas came out to meet them. We watched them talking. Suddenly an officer raised his rifle, gripping the barrel, and felled Tikas with the butt.

Tikas fell face downward. As he lay there we saw the militiamen fall back. Then they aimed their rifles and deliberately fired them into the unconscious man's body. It was the first murder I had ever seen, for it was a murder and nothing less. Then the miners ran about in the tent colony and women and children scuttled for safety in the pits which afterward trapped them.

"We watched from our rock shelter while the militia dragged up their machine guns and poured a murderous fire into the arroya from a height by Water Tank Hill above the Ludlow depot. Then came the firing of the tents.

'I am positive that by no possible chance could they have been set ablaze accidentally. The