explosion, when popular feeling was at fever heat, the Mine Owners, instead of oflfering an immense reward for the capture of the assassin, and instituting a vigorous search, played mob law politics and seized the civil government; forced Sheriff Robertson to resign on pain of being hanged, and substituted in his place a member of the Mine Owners' Association; compelled
114 The Pinkerton Labor Spy.
every official connected with the civil government of Teller County to quit his office in favor of some member of their association — is it not like a well planned coup d'etat?
And is it not more significant still, that in a few months after these events, the Mine Owners' Association bent every energy to elect C. C. Hamlin, their secretary, as district attorney of Teller County, and succeeded in electing him to that important position?
Why did the mine owners take such extraordinary measures to subvert a county administration, when the great majority of the people of the Cripple Creek district and of the State of Colorado were staggered at the horrible death which met fifteen men at the station at Independence?
Was this a time for the millionaire mine owners to think of politics, while the bodies of the victims were still warm? Was this a time for the mine and smelter magnates to impede the judicial machinery of Teller County, when tiie blood of innocent men cried out from the earth to the high heavens? Yet in just such a black hour as this did the mine owners, with the help of the State militia, accomplish their political coup d'etat? And in just such a time of suffering and distress as this did the Mine Owners' Association take advantage of widows' cries and orphans' tears, to incite the mobs of militia and civilians against the members of the miners' union.