Emma Florence Langdon was born in Tennessee in 1875. She moved to the gold mining district of Cripple Creek, Colorado

Cripple Creek, Colorado

The City of Cripple Creek is a Statutory City that is the county seat of Teller County, Colorado, United States. Cripple Creek is a former gold mining camp located southwest of Colorado Springs near the base of Pikes Peak. The Cripple Creek Historic District, which received National Historic...

 in 1903. She was an apprentice linotype operator who wrote that "women's place should be in the home and not in public life." In spite of such sentiments, she played a very visible role during some very turbulent times. She and her husband were working at the Victor

Victor, Colorado

Victor is a Statutory City in Teller County, Colorado, United States. The population was 445 at the 2000 census.Victor is in the heart of Colorado's gold country, home to two of the major gold mines in the Cripple Creek mining district...

 Daily Record, a pro-union newspaper, during a 1903-04 strike of miners in the Cripple Creek gold fields that erupted into the Colorado Labor Wars

Colorado Labor Wars

Colorado's most significant battles between labor and capital occurred primarily between miners and mine operators. In these battles the state government, with one clear exception, always took the side of the mine operators....

. Along with many other union sympathizers, Langdon was forced to leave in 1904, and moved to Denver

Denver, Colorado

The City and County of Denver is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Denver is a consolidated city-county, located in the South Platte River Valley on the western edge of the High Plains just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains...

.

History

Republican governor of Colorado James Peabody

James Hamilton Peabody

James Hamilton Peabody was the 13th and 15th Governor of Colorado, and is noted for his public service in Cañon City.-Family background:...

 had sent the national guard

Colorado National Guard

The Colorado Department of Military and Veterans Affairs is a state agency of the Government of Colorado. It supervises both the Colorado National Guard , and non-military state safety agencies.The Department consists of the Department of Military Affairs, and the Division of Veterans' Affairs, and...

 into Cripple Creek to suppress the strike. The Daily Record erroneously charged that one of the soldiers was an ex-convict. Its staff was imprisoned by the national guard in a bullpen before a retraction could be published. While Victor Daily Record editor George Kyner and four printers were in the bullpen, Emma Langdon, a linotype operator married to one of the imprisoned printers, sneaked into the Daily Record office and barricaded herself inside. She printed the next edition of the paper, and then delivered it to the prisoners in the bullpen.

Langdon was the only linotype operator in Victor who was overlooked by the national guard. She received a telephone message at midnight about the raid, and rushed to the office, barred the doors, and printed a four-page edition of the morning paper, with the headline across the top — Somewhat Disfigured but Still in the Ring. The next morning Emma Langdon arrived at the bullpen with an armload of papers intended for the prisoners. She was stopped by the guards. She recorded in her 1908 book, Labors' Greatest Conflicts, that the national guard officers were,

...discussing with glee the "great victory in suppressing the paper." Their laughter was soon changed to oaths when they were dramatically presented the papers that were intended for the imprisoned printers.

The Associated Press picked up the story of the apprentice printer who could not be intimidated.

The Daily Record did not miss an issue as a result of the arrests. The printers were held for twenty-four hours, charged with criminal libel, and then were released on bond. When the cases went to court, all charges were dismissed.

For defying the militia and producing an issue of the union paper by herself, Langdon was presented with an engraved gold medal at the Western Federation of Miners

Western Federation of Miners

The Western Federation of Miners was a radical labor union that gained a reputation for militancy in the mines of the western United States and British Columbia. Its efforts to organize both hard rock miners and smelter workers brought it into sharp conflicts – and often pitched battles...

 convention in 1904, and was made an honorary member of the union. Although the designation was somewhat overused in the period, Langdon was frequently referred to as Labor's Joan of Arc.

Affiliations

Langdon was secretary of the Victor Women's Auxiliary, vice-president of the Victor Trades Assembly, a member of the Typographical Union in Victor, and later of TU Local No. 49 in Denver. She became chair of the Typographical Union executive board.

She attended the 1905 founding convention

First Convention of the Industrial Workers of the World

When Bill Haywood used a board to gavel to order the first convention of the Industrial Workers of the World , he announced, "this is the Continental Congress of the working class...

 of the Industrial Workers of the World

Industrial Workers of the World

The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...

 in Chicago, where she was elected assistant secretary under general secretary-treasurer William Trautmann

William Trautmann

William Ernst Trautmann was founding General-Secretary of the U.S. Industrial Workers of the World and one of six people who initially laid plans for the organization in 1904.He was born to German parents in New Zealand in 1869 and raised in Europe...

.

Emma Langdon became a publicist for the Western Federation of Miners, and was also with the organization when it changed its name to the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers. She was also an organizer for the Socialist Party.

Books authored

• • Multiple editions were printed (e.g., 1903–1904, and 1905). The book is considered one of the "100 BEST BOOKS ON COLORADO" as compiled by Thomas J. Noel
    Thomas Noel (historian)
    Thomas Jacob Noel, often introduced in media interviews as Dr. Colorado, is an American historian specializing in the history of the Rocky Mountain West, and especially of the state of Colorado...
    
     (“Dr. Colorado”), Professor of History and Director of Colorado Studies and Public History, University of Colorado–Denver. John Calderwood
    John Calderwood
    John Calderwood was born in Kilmarnock, East Ayrshire, Scotland. Little is known about his parentage or life. He went to work in the local coal mines at the age of nine while attending public night school....
    
     contributed a chapter which is regarded as a rare first-person account of the Cripple Creek miners' strike of 1894
    Cripple Creek miners' strike of 1894
    The Cripple Creek miners' strike of 1894 was a five-month strike by the Western Federation of Miners in Cripple Creek, Colorado, USA. It resulted in a victory for the union and was followed in 1903 by the Colorado Labor Wars...
    
    . The first edition of the book is itself quite rare, many copies having been destroyed in the "riot."