Scattered thoughts on Colorado coal strikes, guns, and my query re a labor song

I've been doing a little mulling on the Colorado gun rights recall vote of yesterday that retired two gun control legislators.  In my brief post this morning, I made it clear that generally anti-gun Boulder, for example, is not representative of that Western state.  I could have added, and do so now, that heavily right-wing Phoenix metro is not representative of Arizona by a long shot.

Colorado's historic labor wars featured plenty of guns.  As far as the worker/strikers were concerned, firearms were mainly for self-defense.  Gunmen -- company, militia, U.S. troops -- used firearms, of course, aggressively and widely to protect corporate interests.  Bill Haywood's Book: The Autobiography of William D Haywood (1929 and subsequent editions), a great first hand account of a turbulent and most productive life, covers the early metal mining struggles quite well.  I once had a copy of Louis Adamic's 1931 classic, Dynamite:  The Story of Class Violence in America.  It's an essentially pro-labor work with interesting photos.  One shows a very ethnically mixed group of coal strikers displaying their firearms in the wake of the Ludlow Massacre of coal miners and families in 1914.  A favorite rifle in the scene is the 1895 Winchester lever action.  That's a very favorite model of mine to this day.  (If I recall correctly, I gave my copy of the Adamic book to a university student of mine who was especially interested in labor history.  I've given away a lot of books to students and sometimes others over many years indeed.  But it's been awhile since I've had any regular students -- and our Idaho home is presently overflowing with books.)

A few days ago, I received a note from an old friend from Arizona State University days.  We had, at ASU, especially in 1959-60, a small but very good group of independent radicals -- and we certainly were constructively busy in that rather arid Tempe and Phoenix atmosphere.  One in our group was Marty H., excellent with a guitar, and much with labor music.  He used to play and sing a Colorado labor song which had this stanza:

I went walking down to Walsenburg one day -
and on my way I met some state guys.
One of those state guys pulled his gun - 
and I pulled mine -
and Goddamn did those state guys run.

This could easily have been based in the Ludlow strike/massacre -- again, 1914 -- (mostly UMWA), or it could have been drawn from the very widespread (mostly IWW) 1927 coal strike (which saw the Columbine Massacre).  (I have something on that struggle in the Encyclopedia of the American Left  http://www.hunterbear.org/embree.htm )

In my large collection of Western radical labor stuff, I have about ten IWW red songbooks spanning several decades to 1956.  The "walking down to Walsenburg" song isn't in any of them.

So, does anyone know something about the song?  Marty passed away many years ago.

Solidarity,

Hunter Bear

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq / 
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO

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