that any one should think the mild disturbance at Lawrence, Mass., really serious. It was at most like a scrimmage among ladies. But Colorado, he said, "was the real thing, that was a man's fight." Amidst the ranklings at Lawrence, a citizen cried out, "What have we done that a pack of ignorant foreigners should hold us by the throat?"
The first fact in the "man's fight" from Cœur d'Alene in 1894, to Cripple Creek in 1903–4 is that "foreigners" neither led it nor were very conspicuous in it. It was as "American" as the Republican Party. This "Western Federation" began in Butte, Montana, in the spring of 1893. In section 2 of its Constitution are these lines:
"The objects of this organization shall be to unite the various persons working in and around the mines, mills, and smelters into one central body, to practice those virtues that adorn society, and remind man of his duty to his fellow man, the elevation of his position, and the maintenance of the rights of the workers."
In a statement signed by the President, Charles Moyer, and by the Secretary-Treasurer, William D. Haywood, we read:
"Previous to an applicant being initiated to membership in the Western Federation of Miners or taking the obligation, the following assurance is made:
"This body exacts no pledge or obligation which in any way conflicts with the duty you owe to your God, your country, or your fellow-man."
These verbal pieties staged for the public ear, are not really worse than some of the appeals to the "dignity of the law," to "true Americanism," to "the
