The Great Coalfield War"A definitive study of the Ludlow massacre and events leading up to it. This story has much drama and struggle, and it holds some crucial lessons about industrial strife and about how viciously brutal AmericaÂs capitalists were a couple of generations ago." -- Los Angeles Times -- "The effect of this work is simply enraging, for the reality that the documentation evokes, both of wickedness and of the suffering that that wickedness caused, is intolerable." -- The New Yorker -- In the early 20th century, Colorado yielded more than a million tons of coal annually -- hacked and blasted out by immigrants from Eastern Europe living in crudely built towns owned by powerful mine operators. The companies owned the stores, ran the schools, churches, hospitals, and saloons, and bribed the region's lawmen to keep union organizers out. Mine safety was all but unheard-of when in 1913 mine explosions killed more than four hundred workers in just two of the mines. The United Mineworkers' Union infiltrated the towns, and thirteen thousand miners and their families made one mass exodus to establish a tent colony near the rail outpost at Ludlow. Months of fighting between the miners and company gunmen assisted by the Colorado State National Guard culminated in the Ludlow Massacre where tents were set afire, suffocating women and children who had sought shelter in storage pits beneath tent floorboards. The resultant public scandal compelled Washington to intervene, but it would take years before Colorado's coal miners gained union protection. The Great Coalfield War is a part of western history and an especially important part in view of today's declining union enrollments and the national movement to deregulate workplace safety laws and the federal agencies that enforce them. --Midwest Book Review |
Contents
THE COAL BARONS DOMAIN | 1 |
LIFE AND DEATH IN THE PROPERTIES | 19 |
LABOR TAKES THE OFFENSIVE | 36 |
Copyright | |
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April attorney Baldwin-Felts Berwind Boughton canyon CFI's charge Chase coal camps coal companies coal counties coal miners coal operators Colo Colorado coal Colorado Fuel Colorado National Guard Commission committee company's court Denver deputies District Doyle Ed Doyle Elias Ammons employees Farr federal fire Forbes force Frank Hayes Frank Walsh Fuel and Iron Governor Ammons Greek Hamrock Horace Hawkins House Huerfano County Industrial Relations Ivy Lee J. F. Welborn John Lawson jury Karl Linderfelt Kenehan L. M. Bowers labor Las Animas County later leaders letter Lieutenant Louis Tikas Ludlow Mackenzie King Major Hamrock ment military militia militiamen mineowners Mother Jones Northcutt officers organized Osgood political President Wilson properties Pueblo rado railroad rifle Rockefeller Rockefeller's Rocky Mountain Sheriff strike zone strikebreakers strikers telegram tent colony tion told train Trinidad Trinidad coalfield troops unionists United Mine Workers Victor-American wage Walsenburg West York