a euphemism for P's poorest prose: warm excrement flowing from a pathetic puppet's mouth

[Michael Bailey]

here's the crux (imho) without overelaboration (oh really - can i
actually write like that ... probably not ... )

anyway - remember your Thucydides, i think, wasn't it, these dudes had
this little bitty island - i think it started with an M - and the
athenians were like "regardless of any appeal to emotion or morality,
we are going to take you over anyway - because we can.  That's just
the way it is."

well, their empire fell because that proved how they actually sucked, right?

so, Vibe is basically crossing the same Peloponnesian line mentioned
in Emerson and Vineland.  Not to mention Lake and Palmer.

--- for another tradesman-treatment (sort of like the plays in
Midsummer Night's Dream?) -- please see the following link from the
contemporaneous magazine "Bricklayer, Mason and Plasterer" (these
occupational rags are so awesome, i'm sorry but somebody has to say
it!  like wow!  they are the cat's pajamas...i love them!)

http://books.google.com/books?id=AKAsAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA111&dq=rockefeller+statement+on+miner+strike&hl=en&sa=X&ei=R6qUUJDPHoTe8wTnvIGADw&ved=0CD4Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=rockefeller%20statement%20on%20miner%20strike&f=false

dang, i figured out how to copy the segment i want ----

THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY.
Latest reports from the bloody fields of Colorado indicate that at
least one hundred men, women and children have been murdered, and one
hundred more missing as the result of a "Christian gentleman's" desire
for profits.
Never before in the history of this country have the laboring people
been so ruthlessly slaughtered by hired thugs to satisfy the greed of
a single man as during the past two weeks in Colorado. The lengths to
which the hired gunmen went to serve their master may be judged by the
following experiences related by one of the women:
"All day long we lay down there without anything to eat or drink. I
had six children, the oldest eleven, and they all cried. All through
the camp we could hear women shrieking and calling to God and the
Virgin to come and save their children. The firing continued and the
bullets whistled over us hour after hour, and after a while I heard a
woman cursing terribly. Later I heard that she had had her hand shot
off at the wrist when she reached up from her cellar and tried to get
a pail of water to give her children a drink. My children begged me
for water, and finally little William—he was my eldest boy —said he
was going to get them a drink. So he climbed up out of the cellar and
he never came back. I know now that a bullet tore his head all away. I
should have gone for the water myself, but I had to stay with the
babies. «
"Just when it was beginning to get dark the gunmen dashed in among the
tents and set fire to some of them. Our tents were all close together
and the fire spread fast. All the time they kept shooting into the
tents, although they knew our men, with their guns, were all away up
in the hills. I took, my children and ran to a deep arroyo (gully)
where there were about fifty other women and babies. Lots of the
others, though, were afraid to come out of their cellars and they
suffocated under the burning floors and side walls which had been
built up of boards."
Proof has been established by eye witnesses before coroners' juries
that Louis Tikas, leader of the Greeks, was beaten to death with a
revolver, then kicked in the face and finally shot to cover up the
heinous crime; slain women and children were not only thrown into a
huge funeral pyre and burned but living mothers and babes were burned
to death according to the testimony of witnesses who have escaped from
the horrible disaster of Ludlow.
And with all of this John D. Rockefeller calmly announces that he will
never confer with his men; that he will lose every cent in his war by
machine guns and torches on defenseless women and children, and that
his Sunday-School teaching conscience is clear.
Now he declares that the matters in dispute should be settled by the
company officials. Dr. Foster, chairman of the house committee which
investigated the conditions in the coal fields, wired Rockefeller as
follows:
"William Green, secretary-treasurer of the International Mine Workers'
Union, makes a public statement that mine workers will waive any
recognition of the union or unionizing: camps. Are you willing to
enter into negotiations for settlement of the strike on that basis,
and stop the killing of men, women and children? I strongly urge you
to do so, and believe the strike can be ended without recognition of
the union, and all other differences can be amicably settled. In my
judgment, it is your duty to do' so."
To this Rockefeller replied referring Foster to the presidents of the
coal companies as the only persons qualified to deal with the matter.
These officials in answer to Foster's telegrams i did not accept his
suggestion for arbitration, but heaped the blame for present
conditions on the miners.
Strike leaders are hoping that the federal troops in the strike
districts will restore peace. They have always maintained there would
be trouble as long as the State militia, made up of Baldwin-Feltz
assassins and barrel-house ruffians and commanded by willing tools of
the coal corporations, remained in the field.
These militiamen who draw salary from the State and the coal companies
have always assisted the murderous mine guards in their work of
carnage. For six months they robbed and plundered strikers' homes,
insulted their women and children and in every way possible tried to
break the strike while the guards were carrying out their part by
murdering the oppressed miners' leaders. The State government, made up
of corporation lickspittles, has approved of all these outrages.
Secretary of War Garrison has issued an order calling for the
disarming of every one. If this is carried out to the letter, peace
may result, but every mine guard is a deputy sheriff and there is a
question as to whether they will insist on carrying arms as deputy
sheriffs.
The striking coal miners feel that if the mine guards and deputy
sheriffs are disarmed there will be no need of their having guns. But
if these two bodies of assassins are allowed to keep their arms there
is certain to be trouble.
And while all of these negotiations are going on, hundreds of women
and children, their homes and all their effects destroyed, are
huddling in halls in Trinidad grimly waiting to see whether this
horrible war is to be continued and wondering whether they are to be
murdered and cremated as were their brothers and sisters in the Ludlow
massacre.
At San Rafael Heights in Trinidad, many of the men have established a
camp. There they wait on their arms not knowing when the hired
assassins may sweep down on them.
Secretary Green of the Mine Workers says:
"The statement issued by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., of his interview
with Dr. Martin Foster, chairman of the house committee on mines and
mining, as to what transpired between him and Dr. Foster at the
conference in New York is one upon which Dr. Foster will have his own
version. But as to Mr. Rockefeller's declaration upon the matters in
dispute between the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company and the striking
miners, these are absolutely inaccurate. For instance, it is not true
that the company settled, before the strike, the five points which Mr.
Rockefeller mentioned: The eight-hour workday, semi-monthly pay,
check-weighmen, regulation of company stores and increased wages.
Indeed, had these points been conceded at the time stated by Mr.
Rockefeller, the strike would never have been inaugurated.
"Nor is it true, as Mr. Rockefeller says, that the question in
contention is the unionizing of the mines. That has not been, and is
not now, the issue."—Labor Clarion.