File:Ludlow Massacre Memorial Site by Night, Showing the Steel Plate Over the Underground Room Where Victoms Were Smothered During the Fire.jpg

English: If Sand Creek is the most shameful single incident in Colorado history, Ludlow is seated firmly in the number two spot. In terms of death, fewer than twenty people lost their lives, but the real tragedy of Ludlow is how its lessons were not learned, destined to be repeated over and over throughout America’s industrial history.

The United Mine Workers demanded concessions from mining companies in Colorado in late 1913, including an eight-hour work day, payment for completion of non-mining work such as laying track, recognition of the union, checking of mining company-determined weights, and the ability to shop in stores other than those owned by the mining companies. They also wanted existing mine safety laws enforced. The eight-hour workday was already codified into law, but at the time only applied to government workers.

Those demands were not met. Strikebreakers hired by The Colorado Fuel & Iron Company (with John D. Rockefeller Jr. as its CEO), and the rest of the Colorado mining interests, used Gatling guns and rifles in an attempt to evict the miners from the tent camp they had set up when they were evicted from their company homes. At least seven months into the strike, patience ran out, and the tent city was attacked, with the assistance of the Colorado National Guard. Among the dead were seven men and one boy who were shot, and eleven children and two women who had been suffocated by fires over pits they had dug for protection, which sucked all the oxygen out of the hastily dug hiding places. Bodies of the dead were savagely hacked up, their possessions looted, and several bodies were laid out by railroad tracks as a lesson to other striking miners, before finally being removed at the demand of the railroad days later.

In the aftermath, Rockefeller was called to Washington for testimony, where he was asked the question, “If you had known that that company, composed in large part of mine guards, was going to be put into the field, what action would you have taken as a Director of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company?” His response was: “I would have taken no action… I would have deplored the necessity which compelled the officers of the company to resort to such measures…”

Here’s a great quote from those same proceedings, reviewing a letter from C.M. Bowers, Chairman of the Executive Board, read into the record: “He said that he had finally ‘got our little cowboy Governor whipped into line’ to use the militia to take strike-breakers to the mines. Former testimony was read to show how Attorney General Farrell had persuaded the Governor at the alleged urging of a number of banks to use the troops for the mine operators. Mr. Rockefeller said he had no direct knowledge on the subject, and that the officers of the company could be relied on to do what was best and right.” Rockefeller denies any knowledge, all while backing up whatever decisions may have been made without allegedly consulting him. Neither he nor his employees are responsible.

Let’s look at another statement made by Rockefeller: “There was no Ludlow massacre. The engagement started as a desperate fight for life by two small squads of militia against the entire tent colony… There were no women or children shot by the authorities of the State or representatives of the operators… The two women and eleven children who met their death in a pit... were smothered. That such an outcome was inevitable as a result of placing this number of human beings in a pit …While this loss of life is profoundly to be regretted, it is unjust in the extreme to lay it at the door of the defenders of law and property, who were in no slightest way responsible for it.”

Aside from the repulsive denial of the event itself, note Rockefeller’s deft handling of spin to further his narrative. His first flourish is to paint his own men as the victims, a tactic still in quite common use today. The deaths of the women and children are generally regarded as “the massacre,” and Rockefeller rightly points out that no women or children were literally shot, instead blaming their deaths on those who might seek to protect them by hiding them. Notice also that he makes no mention of any of the men who were shot. He simply ignores them.

While many were indicted, not a single person from any mining group was convicted of any charges hav-ing to do with the deaths. One miner was convicted, but his conviction was overturned by the Colorado Supreme Court. So in the end, the official legal record shows that no one was responsible for anything.

While the miners fought for many rights we now take for granted, their strike was crushed, and they went back to work late in 1914. The Adamson Act, passed in 1916, provided for an eight-hour workday, but only for railroad workers. Miners wouldn’t be afforded the same coverage until 1937. Reduced work and better pay was instituted by Henry Ford in 1914 when he doubled pay in addition to capping shifts at eight hours, but even the increased productivity and profits that resulted weren’t enough to turn the tide of industry for decades to come.

There is a wealth of information available on this event and the circumstances surrounding it. In addition to the notes sources, further reading is encouraged with “Killing for Coal,” by Thomas G. Andrews, Harvard University Press, 2008.