Ludlow Massacre

The Ludlow Massacre was an attack by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_National_Guard" title="Colorado National Guard" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Colorado National Guard</a> and Colorado Fuel & Iron Company camp guards on a tent colony of 1,200 striking <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_miner" title="Coal miner" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">coal miners</a> and their families at<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow,_Colorado" title="Ludlow, Colorado" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Ludlow, Colorado</a> on April 20, 1914.

In 1914, when workers at Colorado mine went on strike, company guards fired machine guns and killed several men. More battling followed, during which 2 women and 11 children were killed and<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller_Jr." title="John D. Rockefeller Jr." class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">John D. Rockefeller Jr.</a>, the chief mine owner, was pilloried for what had happened.

The massacre resulted in the violent deaths of between 19 and 25 people; sources vary but include two women and eleven children, asphyxiated and burned to death under a single tent. The deaths occurred after a daylong fight between militia and camp guards against striking workers. Ludlow was the deadliest single incident in the southern Colorado Coal Strike, lasting from September 1913 through December 1914. The strike was organized by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Mine_Workers_of_America" title="United Mine Workers of America" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">United Mine Workers of America</a> (UMWA) against coal mining companies in Colorado. The three largest companies involved were the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_family" title="Rockefeller family" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Rockefeller family</a>-owned <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Fuel_%26_Iron_Company" title="Colorado Fuel & Iron Company" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Colorado Fuel & Iron Company</a> (CF&I), the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_Fuel_Company" title="Rocky Mountain Fuel Company" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Rocky Mountain Fuel Company</a> (RMF), and the Victor-American Fuel Company (VAF).

In retaliation for Ludlow, the miners armed themselves and attacked dozens of mines over the next ten days, destroying property and engaging in several skirmishes with the Colorado National Guard along a 40-mile front from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinidad,Colorado" title="Trinidad, Colorado" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Trinidad</a> to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walsenburg,Colorado" title="Walsenburg, Colorado" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Walsenburg</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-1" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[1]</a> The entire strike would cost between 69 and 199 lives. Thomas G. Andrews described it as the "deadliest strike in the history of the United States".<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-2" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[2]</a>

The Ludlow Massacre was a watershed moment in American labor relations. Historian <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn" title="Howard Zinn" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Howard Zinn</a> described the Ludlow Massacre as "the culminating act of perhaps the most violent struggle between corporate power and laboring men in American history".<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-3" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[3]</a> Congress responded to public outcry by directing the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Committee_on_Mines_and_Mining" title="United States House Committee on Mines and Mining" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">House Committee on Mines and Mining</a> to investigate the incident.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-4" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[4]</a> Its report, published in 1915, was influential in promoting <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labor_laws_in_the_United_States" title="Child labor laws in the United States" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">child labor laws</a> and an eight-hour work day.

The Ludlow site, 12 miles (19 km) northwest of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinidad,_Colorado" title="Trinidad, Colorado" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Trinidad, Colorado</a>, is now a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_town" title="Ghost town" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">ghost town</a>. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre" title="Massacre" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">massacre</a> site is owned by the UMWA, which erected a granite <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Monument" title="Ludlow Monument" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">monument</a> in memory of the miners and their families who died that day.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-McPhee-5" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[5]</a> The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Tent_Colony_Site" title="Ludlow Tent Colony Site" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Ludlow Tent Colony Site</a> was designated a<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Historic_Landmark" title="National Historic Landmark" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">National Historic Landmark</a> on January 16, 2009, and dedicated on June 28, 2009.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-McPhee-5" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[5]</a> Modern<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archeology" title="Archeology" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">archeological</a> investigation largely supports the strikers' reports of the event.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-nhlnomdraft-6" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[6]</a>

<h2 style="background-image: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border: none; display: inline;">Contents</h2>

[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#" class="internal" id="togglelink" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">hide</a>] </div>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#Background" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">1 Background</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#Strike" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">2 Strike</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#Massacre" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">3 Massacre</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-4" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#Aftermath" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">4 Aftermath</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-5" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#Legacy" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">5 Legacy</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-6" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#Historical_investigation" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">6 Historical investigation</a>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-7" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#Archaeology" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">6.1 Archaeology</a></li>

</ul>

</li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-8" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#Gallery" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">7 Gallery</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-10" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#Notes" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">9 Notes</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-11" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#References" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">10 References</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-12" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#External_links" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">11 External links</a></li>

</ul>

</div>

<h2 style="background-image: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2px;">Background<span class="mw-editsection mw-editsection-expanded" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; padding-right: 0.25em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; direction: ltr;">[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ludlow_Massacre&action=edit&section=1" title="Edit section: Background" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">edit source</a> | <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ludlow_Massacre&veaction=edit&section=1" title="Edit section: Background" class="mw-editsection-visualeditor" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">editbeta</a>]</h2>

Photo, Ludlow Tent Colony, prior to the Ludlow Massacre. Caption reads: "THE COLORADO TENT COLONY SHOT UP BY THE MILITIA, Ludlow, a canvas community of 900 souls, was riddled with machine guns shooting 400 bullets a minute. Then the tents were burned. The site is private property leased by the miners' union, which has supported the colony seven months."</div>

</div>

Over millions of years, as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountains" title="Rocky Mountains" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Rocky Mountains</a> uplifted, powerful tectonic forces heaved veins of coal close to the surface of the land, leaving significant and relatively accessible reserves. In 1867, these coal deposits caught the attention of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jackson_Palmer" title="William Jackson Palmer" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">William Jackson Palmer</a>, then leading a survey team planning the route of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_Pacific_Railway" title="Kansas Pacific Railway" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Kansas Pacific Railway</a>. The rapid expansion of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_the_United_States" title="Rail transport in the United States" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">rail transport in the United States</a> made coal a highly valued commodity, and it was rapidly commercialized.

At its peak in 1910, the coal mining industry of Colorado employed 15,864 people, accounting for 10 percent of those employed in the state.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-7" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[7]</a> Colorado's coal industry was dominated by a handful of operators. The largest, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Fuel_and_Iron" title="Colorado Fuel and Iron" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Colorado Fuel and Iron</a>, was the largest coal operator in the west, as well as one of the nation's most powerful corporations, at one point employing 7,050 individuals and controlling 71,837 acres (290.71 km2) of coal land.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-8" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[8]</a> CF&I was purchased by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D.Rockefeller" title="John D. Rockefeller" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">John D. Rockefeller</a> in 1902, and nine years later he turned his controlling interest in the company to his son, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D.Rockefeller,_Jr." title="John D. Rockefeller, Jr." style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">John D. Rockefeller, Jr.</a>, who managed the company from his offices at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/26_Broadway" title="26 Broadway" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">26 Broadway</a> in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City" title="New York City" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">New York</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-9" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[9]</a>

Mining was dangerous and difficult work. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_Mining" title="Coal Mining" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Colliers</a> in Colorado were at constant risk for explosion, suffocation, and collapsing mine walls. In 1912, the death rate in Colorado's mines was 7.055 per 1,000 employees, compared to a national rate of 3.15.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-10" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[10]</a> In 1914, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Committee_on_Mines_and_Mining" title="United States House Committee on Mines and Mining" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">United States House Committee on Mines and Mining</a> reported that "Colorado has good mining laws and such that ought to afford protection to the miners as to safety in the mine if they were enforced, yet in this State the percentage of fatalities is larger than any other, showing there is undoubtedly something wrong in reference to the management of its coal mines."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-Martelle_2008.2C_p.19-11" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[11]</a> Miners were generally paid according to tonnage of coal produced, while so-called "dead work", such as shoring up unstable roofs, was often unpaid.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-Martelle_2008.2C_p.19-11" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[11]</a> According to historian Thomas G. Andrews, the tonnage system drove many poor and ambitious colliers to gamble with their lives by neglecting precautions and taking on risk, with consequences that were often fatal.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-12" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[12]</a> Between 1884 and 1912, mining accidents claimed the lives of more than 1,700 Coloradans.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-13" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[13]</a> In 1913 alone, "104 men would die in Colorado’s mines, and 6 in the mine workings on the surface, in accidents that widowed 51 and left 108 children fatherless."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-14" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[14]</a>

Colliers had little opportunity to air their grievances. Many colliers resided in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town" title="Company town" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">company towns</a>, in which all land, real estate, and amenities were owned by the mine operator, and which were expressly designed to inculcate loyalty and squelch dissent.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-15" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[15]</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_capitalism" title="Welfare capitalism" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Welfare Capitalists</a> believed that anger and unrest among the workers could be placated by raising colliers' standard of living, while subsuming it under company management. Company towns indeed brought tangible improvements to the lives of many colliers and their families, including larger houses, better medical care, and broader access to education.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-16" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[16]</a>However, ownership of the towns provided companies considerable control over all aspects of workers' lives, and this power was not always used to augment public welfare. Historian <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_S._Foner" title="Philip S. Foner" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Philip S. Foner</a> has described company towns as "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism" title="Feudalism" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">feudal</a> domain[s], with the company acting as lord and master. ... The 'law' consisted of the company rules. Curfews were imposed. Company guards - brutal thugs armed with machine guns and rifles loaded with soft-point bullets - would not admit any 'suspicious' stranger into the camp and would not permit any miner to leave." Furthermore, miners who raised the ire of the company were liable to find themselves and their families summarily evicted from their homes.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-17" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[17]</a>

Frustrated by working conditions which they felt were unsafe and unjust, colliers increasingly turned to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_union" title="Trade union" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">unionism</a>. Nationwide, organized mines boasted 40 percent fewer fatalities than nonunion mines.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-18" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[18]</a> Colorado miners had repeatedly attempted to unionize since the state's first strike in 1883. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Federation_of_Miners" title="Western Federation of Miners" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Western Federation of Miners</a> organized primarily hard rock miners in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_mining" title="Gold mining" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">gold</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_mining" title="Silver mining" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">silver</a> camps during the 1890s. Beginning in 1900, the UMWA began organizing coal miners in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_states" title="Western states" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">western states</a>, including southern Colorado. The UMWA decided to focus on the CF&I because of the company's harsh management tactics under the conservative and distant Rockefellers and other investors. To break or prevent strikes, the coal companies hired <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_breaker" title="Strike breaker" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">strike breakers</a>, mainly from Mexico and southern and eastern Europe. CF&I's management mixed immigrants of different nationalities in the mines, a practice which discouraged communication that might lead to organization.

Colorado National Guard soldiers entering the strike zone.</div>

</div>

</td><td class="mbox-text" style=" border: none; padding: 0.25em 0.5em; width: 304.79998779296875px;">This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help <a class="external text" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ludlow_Massacre&action=edit" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url("data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB/IkeGOrxXhqB+uA9Bfcm0lAZuh+YIeAD+cAqSz4kCMUAAAAASUVORK5CYII="); padding-right: 13px; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-top: 0px !important; padding-bottom: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important;">improve this article</a> by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Introduction_to_referencing/1" title="Help:Introduction to referencing/1" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none !important; padding: 0px !important;">adding citations to reliable sources</a>. Unsourced material may be <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Citation_needed" title="Template:Citation needed" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none !important; padding: 0px !important;">challenged</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability#Burden_of_evidence" title="Wikipedia:Verifiability" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none !important; padding: 0px !important;">removed</a>. (April 2011)</td></tr></tbody></table>

Despite attempts to suppress union activity, secret organizing by the UMWA continued in the years leading up to 1913. Eventually, the union presented a list of seven demands on behalf of the miners:

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Recognition of the union as bargaining agent</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">An increase in tonnage rates (equivalent to a 10% wage increase)</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Enforcement of the eight-hour work day law</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Payment for "dead work" (laying track, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Timbering&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Timbering (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">timbering</a>, handling impurities, etc.)</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Weight-checkmen elected by the workers (to keep company weightmen honest)</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">The right to use any store, and choose their <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boarding_house" title="Boarding house" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">boarding houses</a> and doctors</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Strict enforcement of Colorado's laws (such as mine safety rules, abolition of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrip" title="Scrip" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">scrip</a>), and an end to the company guard system</li>

</li></ol>

The major coal companies rejected the demands and in September 1913, the UMWA called a strike. Those who went on strike were promptly evicted from their company homes, and they moved to tent villages prepared by the UMWA. The tents were built on wood platforms and furnished with cast iron stoves on land leased by the union in preparation for a strike.

When leasing the sites, the union had strategically selected locations near the mouths of canyons that led to the coal camps, for the purpose of monitoring traffic and harassing replacement workers.[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed" title="Wikipedia:Citation needed" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">citation needed</a>] Confrontations between striking miners and working miners, referred to as "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_action#Strikebreakers" title="Strike action" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">scabs</a>" by the union, sometimes resulted in deaths. The company hired the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin%E2%80%93Felts_Detective_Agency" title="Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency</a> to protect the new workers and harass the strikers.

Baldwin–Felts had a reputation for aggressive <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_breaking" title="Strike breaking" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">strike breaking</a>. Agents shone searchlights on the tent villages at night and fired bullets into the tents at random, occasionally killing and maiming people. They used an improvised <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armored_car(military)" title="Armored car (military)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">armored car</a>, mounted with a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1895_Colt-Browning_machine_gun" title="M1895 Colt-Browning machine gun" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">machine gun</a> the union called the "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ludlow_Death_Car.jpg" title="File:Ludlow Death Car.jpg" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Death Special</a>" to patrol the camp's perimeters. The steel-covered car was built in the CF&I plant in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pueblo,Colorado" title="Pueblo, Colorado" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Pueblo, Colorado</a> from the chassis of a large <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touring_car" title="Touring car" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">touring sedan</a>. Frequent <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sniper" title="Sniper" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">sniper</a> attacks on the tent colonies drove the miners to dig pits beneath the tents where they and their families could be better protected.

As strike-related violence mounted, Colorado governor <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elias_M.Ammons" title="Elias M. Ammons" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Elias M. Ammons</a> called in the Colorado National Guard on October 28. At first, the Guard's appearance calmed the situation, but the sympathies of Guard leaders lay with company management. Guard Adjutant-General <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Chase(doctor_and_soldier)" title="John Chase (doctor and soldier)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">John Chase</a>, who had served during the violent <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cripple_Creek,Colorado#History" title="Cripple Creek, Colorado" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Cripple Creek</a> strike 10 years earlier, imposed a harsh regime. On March 10, 1914, the body of a replacement worker was found on the railroad tracks near <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Forbes,Colorado&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Forbes, Colorado (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Forbes, Colorado</a>. The National Guard said that the man had been murdered by the strikers. In retaliation, Chase ordered the Forbes tent colony destroyed. The attack was launched while the inhabitants were attending a funeral of infants who had died a few days earlier. The attack was witnessed by photographer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lou_Dold&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Lou Dold (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Lou Dold</a>, whose images of the destruction appear often in accounts of the strike.

The strikers persevered until the spring of 1914. By then, the state had run out of money to maintain the Guard, and was forced to recall them. The governor and the mining companies, fearing a breakdown in order, left two Guard units in southern Colorado and allowed the coal companies to finance a residual militia consisting largely of CF&I camp guards in National Guard uniforms.

<h2 style="background-image: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2px;">Massacre<span class="mw-editsection mw-editsection-expanded" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; padding-right: 0.25em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; direction: ltr;">[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ludlow_Massacre&action=edit&section=3" title="Edit section: Massacre" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">edit source</a> | <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ludlow_Massacre&veaction=edit&section=3" title="Edit section: Massacre" class="mw-editsection-visualeditor" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">editbeta</a>]</h2>

<table style="line-height: 19.2px; float: right; margin: 1em; width: 15em; border: 1px solid rgb(160, 160, 160); padding: 10px; background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245);"><tbody><tr style=" text-align: center;"><td>Victims</td></tr><tr style=""><td>1. John Bartolotti, 45</td></tr><tr style=""><td>2. Charlie Costa, 31</td></tr><tr style=""><td>3. Fedelina Costa, 27</td></tr><tr style=""><td>4. Lucy Costa, 4</td></tr><tr style=""><td>5. Onofrio Costa, 6</td></tr><tr style=""><td>6. James Fyler, 43</td></tr><tr style=""><td>7. Cloriva Pedregon, 4</td></tr><tr style=""><td>8. Rodgerlo Pedregon, 6</td></tr><tr style=""><td>9. Frank Petrucci, 4 mo.</td></tr><tr style=""><td>10. Joe Petrucci, 4</td></tr><tr style=""><td>11. Lucy Petrucci, 2</td></tr><tr style=""><td>12. Frank Rubino, 23</td></tr><tr style=""><td>13. William Snyder Jr., 11</td></tr><tr style=""><td>14. Louis Tikas, 30</td></tr><tr style=""><td>15. George Ullman, 56</td></tr><tr style=""><td>16. Elvira Valdez, 3 mo.</td></tr><tr style=""><td>17. Eulala Valdez, 8</td></tr><tr style=""><td>18. Mary Valdez, 7</td></tr><tr style=""><td>19. Patria Valdez, 37</td></tr></tbody></table>

On the morning of April 20, the day after Easter was celebrated by the many Greek immigrants at Ludlow, three Guardsmen appeared at the camp ordering the release of a man they claimed was being held against his will. This request prompted the camp leader, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Tikas" title="Louis Tikas" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Louis Tikas</a>, to meet with a local militia commander at the train station in Ludlow village, a half mile (0.8 km) from the colony. While this meeting was progressing, two companies of militia installed a machine gun on a ridge near the camp and took a position along a rail route about half a mile south of Ludlow. Anticipating trouble, Tikas ran back to the camp. The miners, fearing for the safety of their families, set out to flank the militia positions. A gunfight soon broke out.

The fighting raged for the entire day. The militia was reinforced by non-uniformed mine guards later in the afternoon. At dusk, a passing freight train stopped on the tracks in front of the Guards' machine gun placements, allowing many of the miners and their families to escape to an outcrop of hills to the east called the "Black Hills." By 7:00 p.m., the camp was in flames, and the militia descended on it and began to search and loot the camp. Louis Tikas had remained in the camp the entire day and was still there when the fire started. Tikas and two other men were captured by the militia. Tikas and Lt. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Linderfelt" title="Karl Linderfelt" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Karl Linderfelt</a>, commander of one of two Guard companies, had confronted each other several times in the previous months. While two militiamen held Tikas, Linderfelt broke a rifle butt over his head. Tikas and the other two captured miners were later found shot dead. Tikas had been shot in the back.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-19" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[19]</a>Their bodies lay along the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_and_Southern_Railway" title="Colorado and Southern Railway" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Colorado and Southern Railway</a> tracks for three days in full view of passing trains. The militia officers refused to allow them to be moved until a local of a railway union demanded the bodies be taken away for burial.

During the battle, four women and eleven children had been hiding in a pit beneath one tent, where they were trapped when the tent above them was set on fire. Two of the women and all of the children suffocated. These deaths became a rallying cry for the UMWA, who called the incident the "Ludlow Massacre."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-20" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[20]</a>

In addition to the fire victims, Louis Tikas and the other men who were shot to death, three company guards and one militiaman were killed in the day's fighting.

<h2 style="background-image: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2px;">Aftermath<span class="mw-editsection mw-editsection-expanded" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; padding-right: 0.25em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; direction: ltr;">[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ludlow_Massacre&action=edit&section=4" title="Edit section: Aftermath" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">edit source</a> | <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ludlow_Massacre&veaction=edit&section=4" title="Edit section: Aftermath" class="mw-editsection-visualeditor" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">editbeta</a>]</h2>

In response to the Ludlow massacre, the leaders of organized labor in Colorado issued a call to arms, urging union members to acquire "all the arms and ammunition legally available," and a large-scale guerrilla war ensued, lasting ten days. In <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinidad,_Colorado" title="Trinidad, Colorado" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Trinidad, Colorado</a>, UMWA officials openly distributed arms and ammunition to strikers at union headquarters. 700 to 1,000 strikers "attacked mine after mine, driving off or killing the guards and setting fire to the buildings." At least fifty people, including those at Ludlow, were killed in ten days of fighting against mine guards and hundreds of militia reinforcements rushed back into the strike zone. The fighting ended only when US President <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson" title="Woodrow Wilson" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Woodrow Wilson</a> sent in Federal troops.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-21" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[21]</a> The troops, who reported directly to Washington, DC, disarmed both sides, displacing and often arresting the militia in the process.

The conflict, called the Colorado Coalfield War, was the most violent labor conflict in US history; the reported death toll ranged from 69 in the Colorado government report to 199 in an investigation ordered by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D.Rockefeller,Jr." title="John D. Rockefeller, Jr." style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">John D. Rockefeller, Jr.</a>

The UMWA finally ran out of money, and called off the strike on December 10, 1914.

In the end, the strikers failed to obtain their demands, the union did not obtain recognition, and many striking workers were replaced by new workers. Over 400 strikers were arrested, 332 of whom were indicted for murder. Only one man, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Lawson" title="John R. Lawson" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">John R. Lawson</a>, leader of the strike, was convicted of murder, and that verdict was eventually overturned by the Colorado Supreme Court. Twenty-two National Guardsmen, including 10 officers, were court martialed. All were acquitted, except Lt. Linderfelt, who was found guilty of assault for his attack on Louis Tikas. However, he was given only a light reprimand.

Rev. Cook pastored the local church in Trinidad, Colorado. He was one of the few pastors in Trinidad who tried to provide Christian burials to the deceased victims of the Ludlow Massacre. Cook died in 1938.

<h2 style="background-image: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2px;">Legacy<span class="mw-editsection mw-editsection-expanded" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; padding-right: 0.25em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; direction: ltr;">[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ludlow_Massacre&action=edit&section=5" title="Edit section: Legacy" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">edit source</a> | <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ludlow_Massacre&veaction=edit&section=5" title="Edit section: Legacy" class="mw-editsection-visualeditor" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">editbeta</a>]</h2>

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Monument" title="Ludlow Monument" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Ludlow Monument</a> was erected by the United Mine Workers of America.</div>

</div>

Although the UMWA failed to win recognition by the company, the strike had a lasting impact both on conditions at the Colorado mines and on labor relations nationally. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. engaged labor relations experts and future Canadian Prime Minister <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W.L.Mackenzie_King" title="W. L. Mackenzie King" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">W. L. Mackenzie King</a> to help him develop reforms for the mines and towns, which included paved roads and recreational facilities, as well as worker representation on committees dealing with<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_conditions" title="Working conditions" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">working conditions</a>, safety, health, and recreation. There was to be no discrimination against workers who had belonged to unions, and the establishment of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_union" title="Company union" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">company union</a>. The Rockefeller plan was accepted by the miners in a vote.

Over time, Ludlow has assumed "a striking centrality in the interpretation of the nation’s history developed by several of the most important left-leaning thinkers of the twentieth century."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-22" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[22]</a> Historian <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn" title="Howard Zinn" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Howard Zinn</a> wrote his master's thesis and several book chapters on Ludlow. Former Senator and Democratic presidential nominee <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_McGovern" title="George McGovern" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">George McGovern</a> wrote his doctoral dissertation on the subject, later published in book form as The Great Coalfield War.

A United States <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_on_Industrial_Relations" title="Commission on Industrial Relations" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Commission on Industrial Relations</a> (CIR), headed by labor lawyer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_P._Walsh" title="Frank P. Walsh" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Frank Walsh</a>, conducted hearings in Washington, collecting information and taking <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testimony" title="Testimony" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">testimony</a> from all the principals, including John D. Rockefeller, Sr., who testified that, even after knowing that guards in his pay had committed atrocities against the strikers, he "would have taken no action" to prevent his hirelings from attacking them.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-23" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[23]</a> The commission's report suggested many reforms sought by the unions, and provided support for bills establishing a national <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day" title="Eight-hour day" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">eight-hour work day</a> and a ban on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labor" title="Child labor" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">child labor</a>.

The UMWA eventually bought the site of the Ludlow tent colony in 1916. Two years later, they erected the Ludlow Monument to commemorate those who had died during the strike. The monument was damaged in May 2003 by unknown vandals. The repaired monument was unveiled on June 5, 2005, with slightly altered faces on the statues.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-24" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[24]</a> On January 16, 2009, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Tent_Colony_Site" title="Ludlow Tent Colony Site" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Ludlow Tent Colony Site</a> was declared a U.S. National Historic Landmark. The citation describes the Ludlow Massacre as "a pivotal event in American history" and notes that its site is the first of its kind to be investigated by archeologists.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-25" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[25]</a>

Several popular songs have been written and recorded about the events at Ludlow. Among them is "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre(song)" title="Ludlow Massacre (song)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Ludlow Massacre</a>" by American folk singer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_Guthrie" title="Woody Guthrie" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Woody Guthrie</a>, and "The Monument (Lest We Forget)" by Irish musician <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Irvine(musician)" title="Andy Irvine (musician)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Andy Irvine</a>.

The novel <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Coal(book)" title="King Coal (book)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">King Coal</a> by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair" title="Upton Sinclair" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Upton Sinclair</a> is loosely based on the origin and aftermath of the Ludlow Massacre. American writer and Colorado Poet Laureate<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Mason(writer)" title="David Mason (writer)" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">David Mason</a> wrote what he calls a verse-novel, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/811251.LUDLOW" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url("data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB/IkeGOrxXhqB+uA9Bfcm0lAZuh+YIeAD+cAqSz4kCMUAAAAASUVORK5CYII="); padding-right: 13px; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">Ludlow</a>, that was inspired by this labour dispute. Composer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lori_Laitman" title="Lori Laitman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Lori Laitman</a> is composing an opera "Ludlow," in conjunction with Mason. The University of Colorado's New Opera Works presented Act I of the opera in June, 2012, directed by Beth Greenberg. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon" title="Thomas Pynchon" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Thomas Pynchon</a>'s 2006 novel, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_the_Day" title="Against the Day" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Against the Day</a>, contains a chapter on the massacre.

The last survivor of the Ludlow Massacre, Mary Benich-McCleary, died of a stroke at the age of 94 on June 28, 2007. She was 18 months old when the massacre occurred. McCleary's parents and her two brothers narrowly escaped death when the conductor of the train that brought the militia to the tent colony stopped the train to shield the family and others trying to flee, but Mary had been left behind. A 16-year-old boy heard her screams, gathered her up into his coat and then ran into the woods. Mary and the boy were found several days later, still hiding. McCleary's daughter said family members didn't speak of the massacre.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-26" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[26]</a>

<h2 style="background-image: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2px;">Historical investigation<span class="mw-editsection mw-editsection-expanded" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; padding-right: 0.25em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; direction: ltr;">[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ludlow_Massacre&action=edit&section=6" title="Edit section: Historical investigation" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">edit source</a> | <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ludlow_Massacre&veaction=edit&section=6" title="Edit section: Historical investigation" class="mw-editsection-visualeditor" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">editbeta</a>]</h2>

<h3 style="background-image: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 19.2px;">Archaeology<span class="mw-editsection mw-editsection-expanded" style="user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; padding-right: 0.25em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; direction: ltr;">[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ludlow_Massacre&action=edit&section=7" title="Edit section: Archaeology" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">edit source</a> | <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ludlow_Massacre&veaction=edit&section=7" title="Edit section: Archaeology" class="mw-editsection-visualeditor" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">editbeta</a>]</h3>

In 1996, the 1913–1914 Colorado Coalfield War Project began under the leadership of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall_H._McGuire" title="Randall H. McGuire" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Randall H. McGuire</a> of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binghamton_University" title="Binghamton University" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Binghamton University</a>, Dean Saitta of<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver_University" title="Denver University" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Denver University</a> and Philip Duke of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Lewis_College" title="Fort Lewis College" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Fort Lewis College</a>, who later formed the Ludlow Collective.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre#cite_note-McGuire_189-27" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[27]</a>
===Books
<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/01/19/there-was-blood">https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/01/19/there-was-blood</a>January 19, 2009 IssueThere Was BloodThe Ludlow massacre revisited.By Caleb Crain
January 11, 2009Armed miners at the military headquarters of the United Mine Workers in Trinidad Colorado the month of the Ludlow massacre.]In the spring of 1914, members of the Colorado National Guard machine-gunned and set fire to tents in Ludlow, Colorado, where striking miners were living with their families. Five miners, two miners’ wives, and twelve children died, most of them by suffocation while hiding in a cellar under a burning tent. The miners fought back, and, all told, more than seventy-five people were killed in the course of the dispute, roughly as many on the mine owners’ side as on the strikers’. In his new book, “Killing for Coal” (Harvard; $29.95), Thomas G. Andrews calls it the deadliest labor struggle in American history.
The earliest histories of the massacre were sponsored by unions, and historians since have followed their lead in seeing it as an episode in the long conflict between capital and labor. “The Bloodstained Lesson” was the title of the final chapter of George S. McGovern’s solid and thoughtful account, co-written with Leonard F. Guttridge and released in 1972, during McGovern’s Presidential campaign. In 1982, Zeese Papanikolas memorialized the story of Louis Tikas, a Greek-American union leader killed at Ludlow, in a rhapsodic telling intended as a corrective to the tendency of biographies to focus on public figures. In 2007, in a lively journalistic account, “Blood Passion” (Rutgers; $19.95), Scott Martelle called the strikers “freedom fighters” and said that they “helped crumble an egregious system of political corruption.”
Andrews’s innovation is to wonder whether “energy systems” might provide a better explanation than ideology. He therefore takes a long view of the story—so long that he goes back to the Cretaceous to explain the formation of coal. Andrews’s account—less moral and more mineral than the standard one—runs something like this: Ancient sun-energy is stored beneath the earth. Because industrial capitalism wants it, the force exerted to draw it out of the ground is high, and, because there is an abundance of unskilled workers, the counterforce that miners are able to apply in their own defense is low. Or so the capitalists calculate from the laws of supply and demand. But it turns out that there is another force to reckon with: the miners’ go-for-broke willingness to fight. The capitalists expect a smooth hoovering up of hydrocarbons and workers’ rights, but instead violence explodes. People discover, to their dismay, that the desire to exploit an energy resource as cheaply as possible can lead to something like war.
About seventy million years ago, when the Rocky Mountains were still rising out of the sea, coastal swamps covered much of present-day southern Colorado. Ferns and cycads budded, died, and rotted, adding another inch of peat to the swamp floor every forty years or so, until, after a few eons, the peat in some places was hundreds of feet deep. The peat was buried under sediment, and then for millennia it was dried, squeezed, and cooked underground. At last it became coal, dark and flammable. Twists in the earth shoved some of it back to the surface, and, in 1867, these outcroppings attracted the attention of a survey team planning the route of the Kansas-Pacific Railroad, led by a man named William Jackson Palmer.
At the time, Andrews writes, the people of Colorado were “suffering through nothing short of an energy crisis.” Rivers in the plains were too placid for mill wheels; those in the mountains too violent. Dry, infertile soil limited agriculture, and timber was rare. Palmer saw a way for the state to grow, and for a company to accrue such wealth that “there never would be any strikes or hard feelings among the laborers towards the capitalists.” It didn’t quite work out that way, but Palmer did become the largest coal-mine operator in the region, and soon Colorado was living off coal. It was burned to fire bricks, refine sugar, and bake bread, and it powered engines that pumped water, drove tractors, and ground flour. Coal oil was burned in smudge pots to save peaches from spring frost; coal gas lit the street lamps of Denver, Leadville, Pueblo, and Colorado Springs; and coal-generated electricity lit more than thirteen thousand bulbs decorating the façade of the Denver Gas & Electric Company’s headquarters. “We cannot exist without it,” Denver’s Chamber of Commerce declared, in 1907. A Denver beekeeper complained of losing eight or nine colonies of bees within a month because flowers were “continually coated with a deposit from the smoke,” but in those days smoke was welcomed as a sign of prosperity, especially by those with the means to move to suburbs upwind. The supply of coal never failed for long in cities like Denver and Pueblo, which were built at railroad junctions, giving them purchasing options. Nonetheless, politicians were careful to keep mine operators happy, and let them get away with land fraud, pollution, unsafe work conditions, and price gouging.
Oddly, in a phenomenon that Andrews calls “the paradox of coal,” one of the few things unchanged by the fossil-fuel revolution was the way that fuel itself was mined. First, a worker undermined a chunk of coal by chipping away at the foot of it with his pick, creating a gap called a kerf. Then he drilled holes, filled them with explosives, and detonated. Finally, he loaded the coal loosened by the blast onto a car. Except for the explosives, the only energy deployed was the miner’s own. An attempt at mechanization, in 1881, failed; the machines kept breaking down and miners hated them so much that they deserted. For decades, companies simply hired more men. Coal made this easy to do, because it had boosted population and efficiency—so that everywhere there were more people and less work—and had also made travel cheaper than ever before. By the eighteen-nineties, three or four thousand tons of coal could push a steamer across the Atlantic in just six days, and a ticket aboard cost only thirty dollars. Between 1870 and 1910, the non-indigenous population of Colorado grew twentyfold. Unskilled workers from Italy, Greece, Japan, the doddering Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Spanish-speaking New Mexico were hired for their muscles and their willingness to risk their lives. As an individual, a miner was expendable, and, to prevent unionizing, mine operators kept their workforce polyglot. In some Colorado counties, democracy was nearly vestigial. Industrialization was gradually reproducing the conditions of feudalism.
In 1892, Palmer’s company merged with another to become the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company (C.F. & I.), which was run by a former bookkeeper, John C. Osgood. Osgood hated unions, glared at photographers, and spent two and a half million dollars on a Tudor manor complete with a game park. Teddy Roosevelt visited and shot game from the manor’s portico. Soon after taking over, Osgood noticed a revealing difference between so-called open camps, which had public roads and at least a modicum of town government, and closed ones, where miners lived on company property behind a fence that the boss could shut. During a strike in 1894, it became apparent that unions had more success recruiting at open camps. In response, Osgood built his workforce tidy concrete-and-wood houses (from which the disobedient could be evicted on short notice) and started a Sociological Department, which ran kindergartens, a hospital, and night schools, hosted minstrel shows, screened films, and published a weekly magazine. Miners lodged in cottages with pseudo-Swiss façades and shared a clubhouse, with a library. At many company stores, prices were competitive, and meat was kept cheap, for the sake of miners’ strength.
But the miners weren’t grateful. Some persisted in living in open camps, in houses improvised out of adobe or recycled packing crates. They called the company store a “pluck me,” because they went into debt there spending scrip, the paper advances against future earnings that the company issued between monthly paydays. A song of the time ran:
Monop’ly keeps grasping
For more and still more;
They will soon own the earth,
Through the company store.
Miners feared the company’s power. Those who criticized the company were often sent “down the canyon” (blacklisted) or “kangarooed” (beaten up). On Election Day, the company supervised voting, and when the Republican Party needed a victory one sheriff obliged by counting as voters the heads of passing sheep. “I am king of this county,” he once boasted. Whenever a miner died in an accident, the undersheriff asked the mine superintendent whom to put on the coroner’s jury. In the decade leading up to the Ludlow massacre, just one mining fatality in Huerfano County was blamed on management, leaving payments to widows and orphans in the other eighty-nine cases to the company’s discretion.
It was only in the mine itself that miners found a measure of autonomy. Underground, a mine was laid out in a grid, like a Western town, and, along the side streets, miners were given “rooms.” Paid by the ton, miners rarely saw their bosses underground. They owned their tools and chose their hours. As they picked, drilled, and blasted, they saw in the coal around them imprints of shells and seaweed and fossils of palms and breadfruit trees. “The miners’ craft,” Andrews writes, “thus bound its practitioners to a past when the dark seams in which they toiled had been teeming swamplands.” The work was dangerous. Explosions made headlines, but falling rocks killed more miners, who could also be poisoned by underground gases, which they variously named stinkdamp, blackdamp, firedamp, and afterdamp. For their protection, Colorado miners sometimes made pets of mice, who were sensitive to vibrations and fumes before humans were able to notice them. Still, mining deaths in Colorado were twice the national average. The cause was partly political—the state mine inspector’s office was understaffed—and partly geological: the Rockies, in their chaotic rising, had left fractures in rock strata, which increased the chance of a roof collapse underground. Furthermore, at Colorado’s high elevation, the air was drier and therefore more conducive to spontaneous coal-dust explosions.
In Colorado, if a boss put a miner in a spot encumbered with rock, the miner had to cart it away at his own expense. If a ceiling looked unstable, he had to timber it, and his only payment was his own improved safety. “All such work was called ‘dead-work,’ ” Upton Sinclair explained in his 1917 novel, “King Coal,” “and it was the cause of unceasing war.” Another point of contention was the weighing of a miner’s car. The scales were widely believed to be rigged, but operators often refused to allow checkweighmen, so a miner had to depend on the company’s good faith. Nonetheless, the miner’s independence, however notional, was precious to him. “Each day I worked I learned something,” an old-timer recalled in an early-twentieth-century interview. “I learned to tell the boss to kiss it.”
Aspell of incautious spending at the turn of the century left C.F. & I. unable to pay bills and vulnerable to takeover. In 1902, the New York investor John D. Rockefeller, Sr., bought six million dollars’ worth of its stocks and bonds. In 1903, he bought a little more and accepted Osgood’s resignation.
In 1907, to stanch C.F. & I.’s losses, Rockefeller assigned it a minder. LaMont M. Bowers was old school; he scorned “muckrakers, labor disturbers and the milk and water preachers and professors.” Upon arrival in Colorado, he shortened lunch breaks in the office, pruned the Sociological Department until miners’ living standards fell, and even reduced bribes to politicians. The company turned profitable. In 1910, when an explosion killed seventy-nine miners and the Colorado Bureau of Labor Statistics accused C.F. & I. of “cold-blooded barbarism” in its neglect of safety measures, Bowers assured his superiors in New York that the miners would soon “get over the excitement.” In reply, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to whom his aging father was ceding control, merely asked why C.F. & I. wasn’t growing faster. The younger Rockefeller had recently resigned from the board of Standard Oil to devote his energy to philanthropy. He was particularly concerned about fallen women.
In 1913, the United Mine Workers, a national union, decided to organize in southern Colorado. They expected a fight, and recruited surreptitiously. To undercut the union’s appeal, C.F. & I. raised pay ten per cent, started making payments twice a month, abolished scrip, limited the workday to eight hours, agreed to allow checkweighmen, and promised never again to force anyone to shop at the company store. “This keeps them in line and reasonably happy,” Bowers wrote to New York, in justification of his generosity. Rockefeller was later to claim that these concessions proved how humane his company had been, but most were requirements under Colorado state law. With less publicity, C.F. & I. hired the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, a firm whose agents had recently turned a machine gun on striking miners in West Virginia. More than three hundred Baldwin-Felts agents were quickly named sheriff ’s deputies. The union responded by having its organizers commissioned as game wardens, so that they, too, would be armed if the government suspended the right of ordinary citizens to carry guns.
“‘Present’ is not an appropriate response.”In September, the prominent campaigner Mother Jones warned miners, “If you are too cowardly to fight there are enough women in this country to come in and beat the hell out of you.” Adapting the Civil War song “Battle Cry of Freedom,” the union members sang “We’re Coming, Colorado”—
The union forever, hurrah, boys, hurrah!
Down with the Baldwins, up with the law;
For we’re coming, Colorado, we’re coming all the way,
Shouting the battle cry of union
—and voted to strike. A week later, in near-freezing rain, miners collected their tools and left the closed camps for land rented by the union, which had promised to provide tents, many of which had not yet arrived. Sanitation trenches were dug, and wooden floors were laid down. The largest colony, near a railroad depot in Ludlow, housed about twelve hundred miners and family members. It was nicknamed White City, for the color of its tents and in homage to the white buildings at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and it even had a baseball diamond. To supplement the groceries they were able to buy on their modest union benefit, strikers fished, hunted rabbits, and kept chickens. A former boxer named John R. Lawson led the strike, and the Ludlow camp’s unofficial mayor was Louis Tikas, who had run a coffeehouse in Denver and as a boy in Crete had trained cats and birds to play together peacefully.
Even before the strike, union men and detectives had begun shooting at each other. Local hardware stores sold out of guns, ammunition, and dynamite. A union organizer ordered rifles wholesale. The detectives imported machine guns from West Virginia and mounted one on a car armored with plates of steel, which strikers dubbed the Death Special. The coal companies called for the National Guard to intervene, no doubt expecting the guardsmen to break the strike, but the governor, a former rancher, had been elected with labor support, and he hesitated, not least because the state was out of money. At the end of October, a few miners and a few mine guards died in a burst of skirmishing, much of it led, on the mine operators’ side, by Karl Linderfelt, a sometime National Guardsman who already considered himself mobilized. After the strikers forced him to retreat, Linderfelt telegraphed to Denver, “The only solution is troops.” The governor gave in.
Linderfelt, one of the catalysts of the Ludlow tragedy, is a mysterious figure. Martelle reports that he grew up in Milwaukee, where his father taught classics, wrote a book on the Esperanto-like universal language Volapük, and was caught embezzling from the city library. After his father fled to Paris, Linderfelt dropped out of prep school, turned gold miner, and fought in the Philippine-American War, where he and others in the militia may have acquired a taste for torture and mutilation. (The war, in McGovern’s judgment, “may have been Vietnam’s closest parallel in U.S. military history.”) Such a taste might explain some of the offenses Linderfelt and his men committed in Colorado. On one occasion, they lined a group of strikers up against a wall and told them they were going to face a firing squad. Another time, when an officer’s horse tripped on a piece of barbed wire, Linderfelt struck a boy who happened to be nearby and shouted, “I am Jesus Christ, and all these men on horses are Jesus Christ and we have got to be obeyed.” Other militiamen ordered strikers to dig what they told them were their own graves and invited them to write farewell letters to their families. A sick man was kept in a cold cell for three weeks—he died soon afterward—and a wounded one was so deprived of sleep that he told his guard, “I feel lots better take me out and shoot me.”
Once the National Guard was deployed, its general claimed the power of martial law, holding prisoners incommunicado, setting up a military commission to review detentions, and threatening to jail a local district attorney if he interfered. According to Papanikolas, one union organizer took advantage of his indefinite incarceration to read “The Pickwick Papers,” “The Three Musketeers,” and “Les Misérables.” Mother Jones took advantage of hers to win publicity, and, when a thousand women protested her detention by marching through the city of Trinidad, the general, who in peacetime served Denver as an ophthalmologist, panicked. On horseback, he kicked a sixteen-year-old girl; then he fell off his mount and in revenge cried out, “Ride down the women!”—an order that led his cavalry to slash with sabres at a square full of women. One was cut on the face, another on her hands, and a third had an ear partly severed.
The militiamen, meanwhile, weren’t being paid, because the state auditor sympathized with the union and was holding up funds. As a result, citizen volunteers began to be replaced in the militia by guards and detectives salaried by the mine operators. Though the Colorado National Guard had at first been welcomed by the strikers and even played baseball with them, the militiamen gradually sided more and more openly with the mine operators. A final break came in March, 1914. The corpse of a strikebreaker—either a victim of bludgeoning or a drunk who fell on the railroad tracks, depending on who was asked—was found near the tent colony of Forbes, and guardsmen arrested the Forbes men and tore the tents down. Despite the mounting violence, mine operators refused even to meet with union representatives, and Congress summoned the younger Rockefeller to Washington to explain the impasse. Rockefeller testified that the miners were striking against their will, coerced by outside agitators, and that his company was fighting for the workers’ freedom. “And you would do that if that costs all your property and kills all your employees?” a congressman asked. “It is a great principle,” Rockefeller replied. [???]
While Congress was asking questions, southern Colorado grew deceptively peaceful, and by mid-April the governor had withdrawn all but two National Guard companies, one of which was Linderfelt’s.
On the morning of April 20th, the day after Orthodox Easter, four guardsmen interrupted Louis Tikas as he was looking at photo postcards in the tent of Pearl Jolly, a married woman he may have been romancing. The soldiers had heard that a man was being held in the Ludlow colony against his will. Tikas irritably denied the charge but agreed to walk to the depot to talk it over. Put on guard by Tikas’s prickliness, the officer in command there ordered a machine gun to the top of a hill that overlooked the tents. Some men from the camp saw the gun and saw horsemen galloping between the hill and the depot, took their rifles, and slipped into a sand cut along railroad tracks just south of the colony. As Tikas left the depot, he heard three explosions—Linderfelt said later that he detonated them as a signal, to call for reinforcements—and shooting broke out between the strikers and the militia. Some women ran with their children to a dry arroyo to the north, others to a pump station near the railroad tracks. But a number of women and children descended into pits that had been dug beneath their tents months before, soon after they moved to the colony. They were, after all, mining people; they felt secure underground.
The gunfire lasted all day. The militia shot dogs and chickens. One militiaman, one bystander, and several strikers fell. An eleven-year-old boy was picked off when he and his parents emerged from their cellar during an apparent lull. When a private car was commandeered to transport a machine gun, one of the civilians in it overheard an order “to drive everyone out and burn the colony.” And, just after seven o’clock, the brakeman of a southbound train passing the colony saw a man in uniform setting fire to a tent. Andrews considers the arson “a matter of speculation,” but most historians fault the guards for the fire, and all witnesses agreed that the camp was soon ablaze. Around the time that the fire started, Linderfelt led a charge into the camp. (His men were seen plundering an accordion, a sewing machine, a suitcase, an umbrella, and a bicycle.) Only once they had penetrated the camp, Linderfelt later claimed, did he realize that people were hiding in the pits beneath their tents. He also claimed that his men tried bravely to rescue them, but, if so, they never looked in the cellar of tent No. 58, where four women and eleven children had taken refuge. “The tent over us caught fire and blazed up big and the smoke commenced to come down on top of us,” a survivor later recalled. “The bigger children tried to climb up out of the cellar, and they took hold of the burning floor, and their little fingers were burned and they fell back on top of us.” The women and children lapsed into unconsciousness. One woman came to and escaped the pit later that night; another got out the next morning, when soldiers were again seen setting fire to the tents. Smoke suffocated the rest.
Shortly after Linderfelt entered the camp, Tikas and two other strikers were brought before him as captives. Linderfelt cracked his rifle over Tikas’s head so hard that he exposed bone in his skull and snapped the rifle’s stock. A sergeant later told a military investigator under oath that Linderfelt then ordered Tikas’s execution, though the charge was never proved. Several historians believe that militiamen told Tikas and his friends to run and then shot them in the back. The bodies lay exposed for three days.
For a week and a half, strikers took revenge. Crying “Remember Ludlow!” they dynamited, looted, burned, and otherwise destroyed at least half a dozen mines. By the time federal troops arrived, they had more or less evened the kill.
In the month following the massacre, Upton Sinclair sent the Ludlow women and children on a tour that reached Woodrow Wilson’s White House, but the union gave up the strike in December, financially exhausted. Rockefeller, whom the violence had at last embarrassed, hired a publicist to spin the disaster and a labor-relations specialist to fix it. Bowers was quietly retired. “My hope is that I am progressing,” Rockefeller told a federal commission in January, 1915. He intended to let workers elect representatives within C.F. & I. to raise grievances with management. The federal commission condemned the plan for a company union as “an instance of that handing down of favors in which autocrats have always delighted,” but that fall Rockefeller danced with coal miners’ wives in a schoolroom in southern Colorado, and he seemed to have prevailed.
The legacy of Ludlow is not easy to discern. Andrews notes that, in the aftermath, neither side cared to remember the workers’ armed rebellion. The union seems to have preferred to imagine its martyrs pure, and the mine owners may have been reluctant to spread the news that workers had fought back with bullets and torches and got away with it. But one can perhaps still see traces of the conflict in today’s political rhetoric. One of the few whom Rockefeller failed to charm was the union leader John Lawson, who caricatured the philanthropist as offering “health for China, a refuge for birds, food for the Belgians, pensions for New York widows, university training for the elect, and never a thought of a dollar for the thousands of men, women, and children who starved in Colorado.” Here, perhaps, is the real-life antecedent of the phony-hearted liberal élitist who stalks the prose of right-wing pundits today. And Ludlow may also be the source of this figure’s complement, the worker whose only political instinct is to distrust government. At Ludlow, after all, strikers tied red bandannas around their throats for a uniform and were called rednecks. For good reason, they were wary of the state—it was shooting at them.
In the end, though, government was the redneck’s ally and even his salvation. Without the intervention of federal troops, trusted by both sides to behave neutrally, the coal war would almost certainly have lasted longer and taken even more lives. It was a federal bureaucrat who praised the miners’ effort as “a strike of the twentieth century against the tenth-century mental attitude.” After a journalist was murdered for trying to expose the Ludlow sheriff ’s political corruptions, a federal district attorney called it “a political killing,” and the Colorado Supreme Court deposed the sheriff, writing of his vote rigging that “no more fraudulent and infamous prostitution of the ballot is conceivable.”
In other words, the lesson of Ludlow may be that, in the pursuit of energy and in combats between capital and labor, there is one more force to reckon with. When a representative democracy wins people’s trust, it is capable of moderating disputes among corporations, the market, and the individual. Time suggests that nothing else can take its place, though from time to time corporations have offered to do so. According to Andrews, most of the open camps of southern Colorado still survive and have grown into towns, though some are struggling. But you can’t even find the ruins of most of the company-owned closed camps without a good map. ?
Published in the print edition of the January 19, 2009, issue.Caleb Crain is the author of “Necessary Errors,” “American Sympathy,” and “Overthrow.”