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 working-*men
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 &
