One hundred years ago yesterday
the Colorado Coalfield War ended.
Where the war ended, another prickly battle began for workers rights.
Some sixty-six people were
killed.
Coal miners in southern
Colorado along the Rocky Mountains Front Range between Trinidad and Pueblo, struck
against several John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s, Colorado Fuel & Iron Co.
coalmines, in September 1913, in an effort to join the United Mine Workers
of America.
Several tent colonies were
set up, because strikers were thrown out of the company town.
On April 20, 1914, Easter
Sunday. 20 people were killed at Ludlow, Colo. by the Colorado National Guard
and embedded private detectives hired by Rockefeller to break the strike. Of
the 20 killed, 11 were children and two were women; family members’ of strikers
died in a pit dug under a tent, to protect them from gunfire, when the tent was
torched.
The site has been enshrined and
is known as the “Death Pit.’”
The numbers killed that
day vary, even within the United Mine Workers of America.
One by-passer was killed.
Three National Guard and
private detectives were also killed.
When word spread to other tent colonies and gun battles raged for ten days.
Federal troops were sent to
separate the warring factions.
The strike was broken, but
the deadly events became the catalyst for unionism to take hold in America.
It was the practice of the
day, of large corporations in providing everything for the workers from:
housing, schools, to groceries, to libraries, (containing censored books), to
everything they might need through a company store, and even ministers.
However, everything provided
was just slightly overpriced, requiring the workers to establish credit, which
hooked and trapped the workers in an indebted servitude. Workers were
prohibited from acquiring goods from any other source.
An economic concept that
some argue continues to exist to this day.
Coal mining was dangerous
work and nearly 200 miners through out the country were killed each year.
The number one issue for
workers was safety.
The strike failed but a
number of things changed with numerous after-effects that have had an impact on
our society in many ways, some subtle and others more obvious:
John D. Rockefeller Jr. was
called before congress and hit hard in the day’s media.
Rockefeller set up company
unions. They could not bargain, but workers were able to meet and talk to mine
operator to express their concerns and grievances.
The damaging publicity was
so bad Rockefeller hired a public relations firm, Ivy Lee, and created a new
field of industrial public relations, which is with us today.
Note the advertising on
network newscasts and in particular, Sunday morning talk shows where such industrial
giants as Exxon/Mobile, a direct spinoff of Rockefeller Sr's Standard Oil and the third
largest company by revenue in the world, Monsanto, Archer Midland Daniels, and
others.
Lee would claim an overturned stove, not the fires started by the National Guard, caused the deaths in the pit.
Lee would claim an overturned stove, not the fires started by the National Guard, caused the deaths in the pit.
In the early 1930s Lee
consulted with a German company, I.G. Farben Industrie and would be accused of
having Nazi sympathies, he was brought before Congress, but he died before the
question was resolved.
Union activist Mother Jones gained more notoriety
Ludlow, Colorado Cola Miners
Strikers’ Massacre Centennial was Easter Sunday, April 20, 2014.
Today there are only two
coalmines in Colorado and none on the front range, yet there is a manufacturing
of other competing sources of energy.
