death when these militiamen and guards set fire to
the tents in which they made their homes.

And now, what is the position of education in such camps? The Rev.
James McDonald, a Methodist preacher, testified that the school
building was dilapidated and unfit. One year there were four teachers,
the next three, and the next only two. The teacher of the primary
grade had a hundred and twenty children en-rolled, ninety per cent of
whom could not speak a word of English.

Every little bench was seated with two or three. It was
over-crowded entirely, and she could hardly get walking room
around there.

And as to the political use made of this deliberately cultivated
ignorance, former United States Senator Patterson testified that the
companies controlled all elections and all nominations:

Election returns from the two or three counties in which the
large companies operate show that in the precincts in which
the mining camps are located the returns are nearly
unanimous in favor of the men or measures approved by the
companies, regardless of party.

And now comes the all-important question. What of the Catholic Church
and these evils? The majority of these mine-slaves are Catholics, it
is this Church which is charged with their protection. There are
priests in every town, and in nearly every camp. And do we find them
lifting their voices in behalf of the miners, protesting against the
starving and torturing of thirty or forty thousand human beings? Do we
find Catholic papers printing accounts of the Ludlow massacre? Do we
find Catholic journalists on the scene reporting it, Catholic lawyers
defending the strikers, Catholic novelists writing books about their
troubles? We do not!

Through the long agony of the fourteen months strike, I know of just
one Catholic priest, Father Le Fevre, who had a word to say for the
strikers. One of the first stories I heard when I reached the
strike-field was of a priest who had preached on the text that
"Idleness is the root of all evil," and had been reported as a "scab"
and made to shut up. "Who made him?" I asked, naively, thinking of
his, church superiors. My informant, a union miner, laughed. "#We#
made him!" he said.

I talked with another priest who was prudently saving souls and could
not be interested in questions of worldly greed. Max Eastman,
reporting the strike in the "Masses", tells of an interview with a
Catholic sister.