May 1, 1914
ROCKEFELLERS ATTACKED IN SPEECHES
Magnates Threatened With Bodily Harm In Event of Refusal to Arbitrate Colorado Coal Crisis.
HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR INDUSTRIAL WAR
Sinclair and Others Who Go to Tombs Find Successors In Picket “Mourning.”
New.York, April 30.—Threats of violence were made against
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., today "by demonstrators' against what was
declared to be his policy in the Colorado strike. One woman attempted to invade
his offices and when she was prevented she withdrew with imprecations on her
lips, repeating in a speech outside threats she had made within the building of
personal harm that would come to him if he persisted in declining to consent to
arbitration in the Colorado crisis.
While Upton Sinclair, Miss Elizabeth Freeman, an English
militant suffragette, and Mrs. ?Donic? Lietner, pioneers in the free silence
league movement were being sent today to the Tombs prison for picketing
yesterday, other picketers wearing crepe on their sleeves began packing the
sidewalk in front of 26 Broadway, where Mr. Rockefeller has his offices. The
march was kept up all day and meetings were held in Bowling Green at which
speakers reiterated charges that he was responsible for conditions in the
Ludlow district.
Tonight Mr. Rockefeller issued a statement characterizing as
“infamous” any allusion to conditions in Colorado as “Rockefeller’s war.” The
conflicts in Colorado were not between mine owners and strikers, he assorted,
but between the strikers and the state troops. The statement contained no
reference to the “free silence” protest in this city.
Sinclair, Miss Freeman and Mrs. Lietner went to jail in
preference to paying each a three dollar fine imposed after they were convicted
of disorderly conduct. They said they would go on a hunger strike.
While Sinclair and others were having a two-hour hearing in
court, Marie Ganz of the I.W.W. was making fruitless effort to see Mr.
Rockefeller. When attendants barred her from his office she directed threats
against Mr. Rockefeller and walking out into Bowling Green park, mounted a pile
of lumber and made a verbal attack on him. If he failed to accept arbitration
with the government she cried to a throng of several thousand persons, he would
be forced to arbitrate with the working people.
The crowd surged in close, shouted and threw sand. Someone
hurled a paving block in the direction of Alexander Berkman, anarchist, who
also was making a speech. The speakers escorted by the police finally ran to a
subway entrance and escaped. One man was arrested and fined on complaint of
Reba Edelson, an I.W.W. speaker, who was recently released from jail after a
brief hunger strike. Upton Sinclair’s wife was in front of 26 Broadway among
the picketers one of whom wore a ribbon with the text, “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”
Mr. Rockefeller’s statement, issued tonight, quoted the
lieutenant governor of Colorado in an effort to show that the strikers
themselves started the trouble by killing a non-union man.
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