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.

     “Has the Church done anything to try to help these people,
     or to bring about peace?” we asked.  “I consider it the most
     useless thing in the world to attempt it,” she replied.

The investigating committee of Congress came to the scene, and several clergymen of the Protestant Church appeared and bore testimony to the outrages which were being committed against the strikers; but of all the Catholic priests in the district not one appeared—­not one!  Several Protestant clergymen testified that they had been driven from the coal-camps—­not because they favored the unions, but because the companies objected to having their workers educated at all; but no one ever heard of the Catholic Church having trouble with the operators.  To make sure on this point I wrote to a former clergyman of Trinidad who watched the whole strike, and is now a first lieutenant in the First New Mexico Infantry.  He answered: 

The Catholic Church seemed to get along with the companies very cordially.  The Church was permitted in all the camps.  The impression was abroad that this was due to favoritism.  I honor what good the Church does, but I know of no instance, during the Colorado coal-strike or at any other time or place, when the Catholic Church has taken any special interest in the cause of the laboring men.  Many Catholics, especially the men, quit the church during the coal-strike.

#The Unholy Alliance#