The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-02-04
SAYS OPERATORS PAID NO HEED ID
 MINING LAWS
John R. Lawson Declares This One of the Reasons Why Owners Were
 Hostile to Unions

New York. February S.-John R. Law ted Mine Workers of America from the district which includes Colorado, today told the federal commission on industrial relations that the Colorado Fuel and Iron company and other operators had refused to deal with organized labor because they realized that the unions would force them to obey the mining laws, which, he said, they repeatedly had violated.
 Mr. Lawson, who was witness last week, was recalled after Mrs. Mary Petrucci and Mrs. Margaret Dominski, wives of Colorado miners, had told the story of Ludlow. Mrs. Petrucci's three children were smothered to death in a subterranean chamber where they had hidden when the tent colony was burned.
 Lawson said that the only reason the operators had granted the miners any thing was because they had seen the handwriting on the wall, placed there by the unions." The operators realized, he asserted, that the unions not only would force them to obey the statutes, but would prevent them from importing vast numbers of European workers who never had seen a mine before, and then pay ing them what they pleased and working them as long as they pleased.
 Jerome D. Greene, secretary of the Rockefeller foundation, and formerly member of the personal staff of John D. Rockefeller, defended the practices and policies of the Rockefeller foundation and the aims and ideas of it's founders.
 Trouble Economic
 Greene admitted that the foundation could do many things incompatible with the general interests of the public'-such as conducting propaganda against organ ized labor or campaign against com pensation for workmen. But he declared there was not even remote possibility that such things would happen. He said he considered the Colorado troubles to be economic.
 Mrs. Dominski, questioned about living conditions in the Colorado mine regions said prices at the stores of the Colorado Fuel and Iron company were higher than elsewhere and that for this reason min CTS frequently went to nearby towns for their supplies. She asserted that one miner was discharged when caught with supplies purchased outside.
 Mrs Domnski described the alleged shooting at women and children by mili- tia at Ludlow. She said that militiamen had demanded from a leader named
 
 who was not in camp. Shortly after Tykas had so informed them, she said. she heard bomb explode and looking out of her tent, she saw militia men riding toward them.
 "Tykas told us to scatter as the militia had machine guns,'' said the witness. About 50 or SO women and children were standing on the hill when they started to shoot at us. Two of my children hid in well, and I hid in barn with my other child I saw men set fire to the tents.'
 Mrs. Petrucci related her experiences during the alleged attack on the colony. "I took my children into an under ground chamber" she said. "There were three women and eight children in the cellar by the time got there. Ten min utes later the tent caught on fire and then I lost consciousness. The next morn ing somebody dragged me out. When l reached the depot I found out for the first time my children were missing.'