Chapter XXVI: A Governor and His Lie

The crux of the struggle in Denver during these critical months was the State militia. This militia had been called out and sent to the strike-field because of violence deliberately and systematically committed by the armed thugs of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency. There were one or two thousand of these thugs in the field, and they had beaten up the strikers and their wives, and turned machine-guns upon their tent-colonies. The militia had come, supposedly to restore law and order, but the militia authorities had proceeded to recruit new companies from among these detectives and thugs. This was systematically denied by the newspapers, not merely in Colorado, but all over the country; later on, however, the State legislature forced the production of the roster of the militia, and it appeared that of one single company, newly recruited, one hundred and nineteen members out of one hundred and twenty-two had been employes of the strike-breaking agencies, and had continued on the pay-rolls of the coal-companies while serving in the State militia! They had been armed by the State, clothed in the uniform of the State, covered by the flag of the State—and turned loose to commit the very crimes they were supposed to be preventing! The culmination of this perversion of government had been the Ludlow Massacre, which drove the miners to frenzy. There had been a miniature revolution in Colorado; armed workingmen had taken possession of the coal-country, and the helpless State government had appealed to the Federal authorities to send in Federal troops.

The Federal troops had come, and the miners had loyally obeyed them. From the hour that the first regulars appeared, no shot was fired in the whole region. The Federal authorities preserved law and order, and meantime the State legislature was called to deal with the situation. This State legislature was composed of hand-picked machine politicians, and all its orders were given from the offices of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company. Senator Van Tilborg, machine-leader, personally declared to me his opinion that all the State needed was “three hundred men who could shoot straight and quick.” The State authorities meant to find these three hundred men; they passed a bill appropriating a million dollars for military purposes, and another bill providing for the disarming of all people in the State who were not in the service of the corporations.

The strike at this time had continued for seven months, and the strikers were in their tent-colonies, sullenly awaiting developments. The program of the corporations was to strengthen the State militia, then have it take charge and maintain itself by machine-guns. The attitude of the general public to this proposition may be gathered from the mass-meeting in the State capitol, where one or two thousand people raised their hands and pledged themselves that they would never permit the prostituted militia to go back to the mines.

So stood the situation on Saturday, May 16, 1914, the day the State legislature was scheduled to adjourn. President Wilson, who had sent in the Federal troops reluctantly, was waiting in Washington to see what measures the State authorities would take to put an end to the prevailing civil war. By Saturday morning he had come to realize that no adequate measures were being taken, and he sent from Washington a telegram to Governor Ammons of Colorado:

Am disturbed to hear of the probability of the adjournment of your
legislature, and feel bound to remind you that my constitutional
obligations with regard to the maintenance of order in Colorado are
not to be indefinitely continued by the inaction of the State
legislature. The Federal forces are there only until the State of
Colorado has time and opportunity to resume complete sovereignty and
control in the matter. I cannot conceive that the State is willing to
forego her sovereignty, or to throw herself entirely upon the
government of the United States, and I am quite clear that she has no
constitutional right to do so when it is within the power of her
legislature to take effective action.

And now begins a story of political crookedness, the like of which had never come under my personal observation. I had been in Denver four days, and had opportunity to meet a score of people who knew the situation intimately, and who were able to put me on the “inside.” So I can invite you into the Governor’s private office at eleven o’clock on Saturday morning, when the above telegram from President Wilson arrived. First, let me describe this Governor, as I wrote about him in the “Denver Express”:

I went yesterday afternoon to see your Governor. I wish to be very
careful what I say of him. He is apparently a kindly man; in
intellectual caliber fitted for the duties of a Sunday-School
superintendent in a small village. He is one of the most pitiful
figures it has ever been my fate to encounter. He pleaded with me that
he was a ranchman, a workingman, that he was ignorant about such
matters as mines. When I pointed out to him that, according to
government figures, there were twelve times as many miners killed and
injured by accidents in the southern Colorado fields as elsewhere, his
only answer was that he had heard some vague statement to the effect
that conditions were different in other places. He pleaded tearfully
that he had brought upon himself the hatred of everyone, he admitted
that he was utterly bewildered, and had no idea what to do in this
crisis. His every word made evident his utter ignorance of the
economic forces which have produced this frightful situation. He cried
out for some solution; yet, every time that I sought to suggest a
solution, and to pin him down to a “yes” or a “no” upon a certain
course of action, he lost control of himself and cried out that I was
trying to make him “express an opinion.” He, the Governor of the
State, had no business to have opinions about such a dispute!

It is no accident, of course, that a man of this type comes to be governor of a State like Colorado. The corporations deliberately select such men because they wish to be let alone, and they prefer men who are too weak to interfere with them, even if they wish to interfere. So now at eleven o’clock on Saturday morning this poor pitiful Governor sends for his advisors—the leaders of the hand-picked machine majority in the State legislature. What is to be done? If the President’s telegram is sent to the legislature, it may refuse to adjourn, and insist upon considering the President’s demand. Therefore, at all hazards, the telegram must be suppressed. Also, it must be sent to the coal-operators in the city, in order that they may consult and tell the Governor what reply to make to the President. All the newspaper men in Denver knew the names of the two men who took the message about to the operators. It was considered by the operators for three or four hours, and a reply drafted and sent; and meantime desperate efforts were made by the machine leaders to obtain the adjournment of the legislature. The reply drafted by the operators and sent by the Governor was as follows:

Hon. Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, Washington:

I regret exceedingly that you have been misinformed. The legislature
has just passed an act, which I have approved, providing for a bond
issue of one million dollars for the purpose of paying the
indebtedness which has been incurred and which may be incurred in
suppressing insurrection and defending the State. As soon as these
bonds can be issued, these funds will be available and this State can
and will control the situation. This is the only constitutional method
of raising funds in immediate future. In addition to this act the
legislature has enacted a law permitting the Governor to dose saloons
in time of disorder, and also a law prohibiting the carrying and
disposition of firearms in time of disorder. Moreover, a committee on
mediation on the present strike has been provided for and appointed.

Now the heart of our story is this last sentence in the Governor’s telegram: this “committee on mediation on the present strike.” If such a committee had been appointed, the legislature might fairly claim to have done its best to settle the strife. But _had_ such a committee been appointed? It had _not_. The coal-operators, confused by the President’s sudden action, had caused their poor Governor to telegraph the President a lie; and now all their agencies of repression were brought to bear to keep the truth, not merely from the President, but from the whole country.

First of all, it must be kept from the State legislature itself! A senator tried to have the President’s telegram and the Governor’s answer read in the senate, but by parliamentary juggling this was prevented. All debate was forbidden; but a Democratic woman senator, Helen Ring Robinson, succeeded in getting in a few words of protest, under the guise of an “explanation” of her vote. Senator Robinson read the last sentence of the Governor’s answer: “Moreover a committee on mediation on the present strike has been provided for and appointed.” Said Senator Robinson: “I know of no such committee which has been appointed by this assembly.”

Lieutenant-Governor Fitzgarald replied that the resolution providing for the “strike investigating committee” provided for mediation.

“But,” protested Senator Robinson, “I can’t find a sentence in that resolution that mentions ‘mediation.’ I can’t see a word on ‘mediation’ in the resolutions.”

“Whereupon” (I am quoting the account from the “Rocky Mountain News” of May 17th), “Senator A. N. Parrish, conservative Republican, objected that the motion was not debatable. Further discussion was shut off, the motion to read the President’s telegram was laid on the table, and the senate adjourned.”

Now on that critical Saturday evening it happened that I was a guest at the home of the late Chief Justice Steele of Colorado, and there I met Senator Robinson. She asked me if I could not do something to make this matter clear to the country. Could I, for example, find out if the Associated Press had gotten the point straight? With the Senator sitting by my side I called the Associated Press on the ’phone and spoke with Mr. A. C. Rowsey, its night editor in charge in Denver. I told Mr. Rowsey that I was in consultation with an opposition Senator, and that my attention had been called to this point, which I endeavored to explain.

Mr. Rowsey laughed good-naturedly at my effort to enlighten his great institution. He informed me that they had trained men up at the capitol watching every point of the procedure, and that they had got the story quite correct. I endeavored to make the precise point about the phrase “mediation”; but not having any copy of the proceedings before me, and being really unable to believe that Senator Robinson could be correct in attributing such an open falsehood to the Governor of the State, I permitted Mr. Rowsey to back me down, and hung up the receiver feeling that I had made a fool of myself.

But later that evening I went to the office of the “Rocky Mountain News,” where I was able to see a copy of the official record in the case, the House Journal of the proceedings of May 15, 1914. The measure was contained on pages 7, 8, and 9, and on page 47 there was an amendment. I read the bill and amendment, line by line, and I did not find in it the word “mediation.” The measure provided as follows:

Resolved, That a joint committee of six members, three selected by the
senate and three by the house, said members to be selected by the body
of each house shall be appointed and directed to confer and advise
with the Governor and other executive officers of the State to the end
that the legislative department may render all assistance in its power
to the executive department in the enforcement of law and the
maintenance of order, and to consider ways and means of restoring and
maintaining peace and good order throughout the State; and to
investigate and make report at the next session of the legislature
upon the following matters and subjects:

The bill then goes on to outline an elaborate series of matters for investigation—whether the coal companies have obeyed the laws; what wages they have paid; the terms of the mining leases; the employment of gunmen; what efforts have been made to settle the strike, etc. The amendment provides for further inquiry into the names of strike leaders, their nationality, etc., and the causes of violence. These subjects were, of course, enough to occupy a committee for many months. There was nowhere in the bill anything suggested about settling the present strike. On the contrary, the express task of the committee was said to be “to generally investigate all matters connected with said strike; that remedial legislation may be enacted _at the next General Assembly_ which will tend to prevent _a recurrence of insurrection and public disorder_.”

Now, do not think that I am juggling words over the question of the precise meaning of the above bill. The distinction between the bill which had actually been passed, and the bill which the Governor told President Wilson had been passed, was vital and fundamental. Here was a desperate struggle, the class-war in literal truth, involving the two greatest forces in modern society. The whole State was torn apart over it, and if anybody were going to “mediate” and “settle” it, the whole State wished to know it, and must have known it. At the time that this investigation bill was passed, it was an investigation bill and nothing else, and this was understood by everyone who had anything to do with it. The measure was regarded as of so little importance that the “Rocky Mountain News” of the day after its passage did not even refer to it. It was one more “committee to investigate,” and the State was sick of such. By actual count there had been more than _sixty_ such committees appointed already—one of them a committee from Congress, which had taken testimony filling ten volumes! It was perfectly understood by everyone that the purpose of this new legislative committee was to collect a lot of facts prejudicial to the strikers. Its members were all machine politicians of the very worst type. The idea of such a committee attempting to “mediate,” or to “settle the strike,” would have been regarded as a joke by the whole State; but no one had any such idea. It was not until Governor Ammons and his advisors found themselves “in a hole,” that they hit upon the scheme of calling this a “committee on mediation.”

Also, let us get clear the purpose of this trickery. The purpose was to keep the President of the United States from intervening to force a compromise, as he was threatening to do. The legislature was to be adjourned, and the President was to find himself in a position where he would have to keep the Federal troops in the field and do the work of repression which the prostituted State militia of Colorado could no longer do. Such was the plan—and I might add that it was carried out completely.

Next morning, by consulting with other members of the legislature, and with several lawyers in Denver, I made quite certain of the facts. Also I made certain that the Associated Press had sent out no hint of these facts. The Associated Press had sent merely the President’s telegram and the Governor’s answer. Presumably, therefore, the President had swallowed the Governor’s lie. Beyond question the country had swallowed it. It seemed to me that here was an occasion for an honest man to make his voice heard; so I sent a telegram to President Wilson, as follows:

President Woodrow Wilson, Washington, D. C.:

As one in position to observe from inside the events in this capital,
I respectfully call your attention to the lack of fairness of Governor
Ammons in withholding your telegram from the legislature for four
hours while efforts were made to adjourn. All newspaper men know that
during that time your telegram was in the hands of all coal-operators
in this city, and they know the men who took it to them. Furthermore,
they know that Governor Ammons’ telegram to you contains a falsehood.
The word “mediation” did not appear in the measure referred to, which
provides for investigation only. There has been a ten-volume
investigation already. Governor Ammons declared to me personally that
he means to return the militia to the strike-fields. Twenty
independent investigators, reporters, lawyers, relief-workers assure
me result will be civil war on a scale never before known in American
labor dispute. Miners by thousands pledged to die rather than submit
to more government by gunmen.

UPTON SINCLAIR.

I took this telegram on Sunday evening to the editor of the “Rocky Mountain News.” He said, “It is a splendid telegram; it covers the case.” I said, “Will you publish it?” He answered, “I will.” I said, “Will the Associated Press get it from the News?” He answered, “It will.” It might be well to finish this part of the matter by stating that on the next evening I had a conversation with Mr. Rowsey, in charge of the Associated Press, as follows: “Did you get my telegram from the ‘News’?” “We did.” “You did not send it out, I believe?” “We did not.”

The “Rocky Mountain News” had been for many years a hide-bound corporation newspaper, but at this moment the owner of the paper had, so I was told, some kind of a personal quarrel with the coal operators. At any rate, he had placed in charge a young Chicago newspaper man, Wm. L. Chenery, with orders to publish the truth. That the “News” was not favoring me personally will be clearly seen from the fact that on Tuesday morning it published a ferocious attack upon me by Gov. Ammons, and refused to publish a word of what I offered in reply. Nevertheless, on Monday morning the “News” published a two-column editorial headed: “To the Patriots of Colorado.” Says the “News”: “Not one word about mediation is contained in the entire resolution. The committee is given no power to mediate. They may investigate, examine and report, and that is all.” And elsewhere the editorial says: “A committee on mediation has not been provided for; and none has been appointed. Think of the inutterable weakness of such conduct! Think of its stupidity!”

Such was the voice of unprejudiced opinion in the city of Denver on the subject of the Governor’s telegram. And what did the country hear about the controversy? Not a word! The Associated Press had all facts. It came to the “News” office and got everything the “News” had; and it sent out not one word! On the contrary, the Associated Press did its best to persuade the country that the President was pleased with Ammons’ reply. It sent out the following:

Washington, May 16.—President Wilson expressed satisfaction with the
situation after he received Governor Ammons’ reply late tonight. It
was said by officials in close touch with the President that Wilson
was greatly pleased with what had been done after he had been informed
by Governor Ammons of the work of the Colorado legislature, and that
he hoped the State would assume control of the situation in the near
future so the Federal troops might be withdrawn.

That this was an Associated Press invention, made to help out the poor Governor, was made clear the next morning by the “News,” whose own correspondent wired the following:

Washington, May 17.—At the White House it was stated that nothing had
been given out which would justify the statement printed in some of
the morning papers that the President is entirely satisfied with the
telegram received yesterday from Governor Ammons.

I was by this time thoroughly wrought up over the situation, determined that the country should somehow hear the truth. I besieged the offices of the Denver newspapers; as a result the “Denver Post,” on Monday afternoon, published on its front page, with a heading in large red letters, an interview with Governor Ammons, in which that worthy denounced me as an “itinerant investigator,” also as a “prevaricator.” The Governor’s defense on the point at issue was this:

In regard to Sinclair’s declaration that the word “mediation” did not
appear in the resolution appointing a committee to investigate the
strike, Ammons explained:

“Probably that particular word does not occur, but a reading of the
resolution will show that it gives the legislative committee power ‘to
assist in settling the strike.’ If that isn’t mediation I’d like to
know the true meaning of the word.”

I felt pretty sick when I read that interview; I thought the Governor must “have” me for sure! With sinking heart I went and procured a copy of the House Journal, to see if I could possibly have overlooked such a phrase as “to assist in settling the strike.” I read over line by line the three pages of the bill, and the one page of amendment; and, behold, there was no such phrase: “to assist in settling the strike.” There was nothing in any way remotely suggesting it! On the contrary, there was the explicit statement of the purposes of the committee “_to generally investigate all matters connected with said strike; that remedial legislation may be enacted_ AT THE NEXT GENERAL ASSEMBLY _which will tend to prevent_ A RECURRENCE OF INSURRECTION AND PUBLIC DISORDER.”

The Governor had lied again!

So then I wrote the Governor a letter. I said:

You have relied upon the fact that the man in the street has not
access to the volume of the House Journal, and will accept your
statements upon their face. This, of course, puts me at a cruel
disadvantage, for you are a prominent official and I am only an
“itinerant investigator.” But I propose, if possible, to compel you to
face this issue. I will name two friends as a committee to represent
me to settle this question at issue. I request you to name two
friends. I request you to point out to them in the measure in question
the word “mediation” or the phrase “to assist in settling the strike.”
Your two friends will then bring it to my two friends, who, seeing the
phrase in print in the House Journal, will be obliged to admit that I
am wrong. You have objected to my presence in the state, upon the
ground that I am meddling in the affairs of the people of Colorado.
Very well, sir, I hereby offer you a simple way to rid the state of my
presence. I hereby agree that if your two friends can point out to my
two friends the word or phrase in question, I will quit the borders of
your State within twenty-four hours and never return to it. Upon your
acceptance of this proposition, I shall name my two friends.

This letter was mailed to the Governor on Monday night; also copies were mailed to the newspapers. At ten o’clock Tuesday morning, while dictating my article for the “Appeal to Reason,” I called up Mr. F. G. Bonfils, editor in charge and one of the owners of the “Denver Post.” The following conversation occurred:

“Good morning, Mr. Bonfils; this is Upton Sinclair. Did you receive the copy of the letter which I mailed to Governor Ammons last night?”

“I did.”

“May I ask if you intend to publish it?”

“I do not.”

“May I ask what is your reason for refusing?”

“The reason is that things have been stirred up enough, we think. The people in this city want peace.”

“Does it seem to you that this is fair journalism?”

“Now, listen, my boy, don’t try to argue with me; you have had plenty of room to spread your ideas in our paper.”

“You are entirely mistaken, Mr. Bonfils. You have not reported a single speech that I made in this town. You did not even print my telegram to President Wilson. But you print the Governor’s answer to it.”

“Well, now, we don’t want to stir up this question any further. We think this State is very much in need of peace. We are not looking for trouble. If we printed your answer to the Governor, we should have to print the Governor’s answer to you. And so it would go on indefinitely, and we don’t want people calling each other names in our paper.”

“If that is the case, why did you print the Governor’s attack upon me?”

“Now, listen, kid, don’t get excited.”

“I was never less excited in my life, Mr. Bonfils. I am simply asking politely for an explanation.”

“Well, now, we don’t care to argue this question with you.”

“You have called me a liar in your paper, and refuse me an opportunity to defend myself? Is that correct?”

“Yes; it’s correct.”

“Well, then I simply wish to tell you this one further thing. I am at present in a stenographer’s office dictating an account of this conversation for a publication which has a circulation of five hundred thousand——”

“I don’t care if it has a circulation of five hundred million.”

“Then you are willing for this conversation to be reported as expressing the attitude of the ‘Post’?”

“Say, Bill, we have been attacked so often by fellows like you, and we have got so prosperous on it, that we don’t care anything about it.”

“Very well, then; good morning.”

The above conversation was recorded in the following way. The stenographer sat by my side at the telephone, and took down every word that I said. Immediately afterwards this was read off to me, and I filled in Mr. Bonfils’ answers. As it happens that I have a good memory for words, I can state that the above is for practical purposes a stenographic record of the conversation. And later on I went out and bought an early edition of the “Post,” and found the man had “carried over” the Governor’s attack, a reprint from the day before! And then, walking down the street, I came to the building of the “Post,” and looked up and saw—oh, masterpiece of humor!—an inscription graven all the way across the stone front of the building:

JUSTICE, WHEN EXPELLED FROM OTHER HABITATIONS, MAKE THIS THY
DWELLING-PLACE.