Labors Greatest Conflicts. [Inscribed, Signed, and Annotated Copy]

With Langdon’s handwritten re-assessment of socialist labor leader “Big Bill” Haywood added to the text

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Inscribed presentation copy of a memoir of the Colorado labor wars of 1903–1904 and the forming of the United Mine Works of America union. Author Emma F. Langdon (1874–?), herself a leader in the local Typographical Union and a socialist organizer, gives special attention to the murder trial of William D. “Big Bill” Haywood (1869–1928), a Socialist Party executive and founder of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

In inscribing this copy of the book in September 1917 (the book itself was published in 1908), Langdon took the opportunity to annotate the chapter heading for “The Haywood Trial” with a terse re-assessment of Haywood who had been acquitted of murder. She writes here:

Have changed my mind regarding Mr. Haywood—after being released he proved unworthy the fight made for him—E.F.L. authoress.

Haywood had become too radical, using direct action rather than politics to further the union cause. Just four days after inscribing the book and within months of the U.S. entering the First World War, the U.S. government began cracking down on the IWW. Haywood was subsequently arrested, tried, and convicted for espionage. Out on bail, he fled the country to Russia and never returned. After his death, some of his ashes were buried in the walls of the Kremlin.

Langdon’s book covers numerous western labor strikes and includes much on the Western Federation of Miners. Strikes memorialized include the Cripple Creek gold mine strikes of 1894 and 1903 and strikes in Leadville, Telluride, etc. Includes an outline history of her own union, the Typographical Union.

This copy presented by Langdon to Mrs. Louise Clair Boyd, possibly the Secretary of the Colorado State Trained Nurses’ Association. An interesting Colorado association with an intriguing comment on “Big Bill” Haywood by one of his union and Socialist Party collaborators.

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