nd mine, which was then having no trouble with its
employees, to shut down. By this order four hundred and seventy-five men
were thrown out of employment. In these various ways the mobs organized
by the mine owners were allowed to obliterate the Government and abolish
republican institutions, under the immediate protection of their leased
military forces.

At Telluride, also, the military overpowered the civil authorities. When
Judge Theron Stevens came there to hold the regular session of court he
was met by soldiers and a mob of three hundred persons. Seeing that it
was impossible for the civil authorities to exercise any power, he
decided to adjourn the court until the next term, declaring: "The
demonstration at the depot last night upon the arrival of the train
could only have been planned and executed for the purpose of showing the
contempt of the militia and a certain portion of this community for the
civil authority of the State and the civil authority of this district. I
had always been led to suppose from such research as I have been able to
make that in a republic like ours the people were supreme; that the
people had expressed their will in a constitution which was enacted for
the government of all in authority in this State. That constitution
provides that the military shall always be in strict subordination to
the civil authorities."[39]

While this terrorism of the powerful was in full sway in Colorado, the
entire world was being told through the newspapers of the infamous
crimes being committed daily by the Western Federation of Miners.
Countless newspaper stories were sent out telling in detail of mines
blown up, of trains wrecked, of men murdered through agents of this
federation of toilers engaged day in and day out at a dangerous
occupation in the bowels of the earth. Not loafers, idlers, or
drunkards, but men with calloused hands and bent backs. Stories were
sent around the world of these laborers being arraigned in court charged
with the most infamous and dastardly crimes. Yet hardly once has it been
reported in the press of the world that in "every trial that has been
held in the State of Colorado during the present strike where the
membership has been charged with almost every perfidy in the catalogue
of crime, a jury has brought in a verdict of acquittal."[40] On the
other hand, a multitude of murders, wrecks, and dynamite explosions
have been brought to the door of the detectives employed by th