Colorado Experience: Ludlow Massacre

[Music] women and children died to give us the rights that we take for granted today massacring women and children has a way of fixing your attention you like the weekend you like an eight-hour workday you don't like forced overtime you have the Ludlow strikers to thank for that they started the fight they started the recognition they started turning people's attitudes towards workers they took action they had their own fate in their hands for a while they paid the ultimate price to give us safe workplace laws and constraints on corporates exploitation it's one of the most violent uprisings in history of the United States Colorado experience is a co-production of Rocky Mountain PBS and history Colorado history Colorado brings history to life for audiences of all ages through exhibits collections and historic preservation programs throughout the state history Colorado connects people to the stories places and heritage of Colorado's past that provide perspectives on today and inspire our choices for tomorrow find out more at WWDC lard org additional funding provided by elf Omar Foundation and the Boettcher foundation celebrating 75 years of philanthropy in Colorado with additional funding and support from these fine organizations and from viewers like you thank you [Music] industrialization had been going on in the United States for a century by the 19-teens by 1910 America was a nation that ran on coal coal power the factories and the railroad lines and the steam ships that brought Goods and people to the United States coal heated the homes it was probably the most essential energy source in the United States CF&I was the largest steel mill west of the Mississippi River and see if I was the largest private employer in Colorado the largest private landowner see if night drove industry and the West and certainly within the state of Colorado it was the coal that brought large companies to Colorado and also brought a really multicultural group of laborers people from all over the world poll was essential CF&I had been given as a birthday present from john d rockefeller senior to his son jr. they made America the Rockefellers made America but they needed help [Music] there was actually recruiters that went into Italy Czechoslovakia Yugoslavia Germany France Greece and the intent was if they can't speak the same language that will reduce their ability to realize their common interest and unite and form a union so they were kind of promised this way of life that was nothing but layered with gold and so they came out to work these mines they were looked at no more than you know just somebody to produce profit for the companies forced overtime when they left their homes women that were left at home would often be exploited these were ruthless conditions these were ignorant immigrants for the company and for the company men and for the people who patrolled the coal camps where people were living there were so many ways to die in a coal mine there were explosions gasps building coal secretes as part of its decaying process methane gas an explosive inner mine miners produced clouds of coal dust which not only settled in their lungs slowly suffocating them but also created an accelerant that would ignite the methane gas in 1910 alone more than 400 miners died in Colorado 210 of them in three separate explosions the vast majority of miners died in ones or twos and in Rock Falls and in small accidents a mule counted for more than a miner because it was tougher usually to replace a good mule than a miner there was no shortage of people looking to work in the mines if you're a white worker you'll be something like a fireman which requires skill and a supervisory and therefore pays better if you're not a white worker chances are you'll be working down at the rock face mining being paid solely by the amount of cold that you can mine the company actually provided the person that weighed the coal and sometimes they felt that they were getting cheated out of the amount of coal that they were actually mining if they had just couple rocks in the coal the company would say no you have rocks in your coal so we're not to pay you for that ton they would still dump it in the pile you'd have to drill the coal and then you have to put explosives in the holes that you drilled and then you have to explode them to soften the coal or loosen the coal and then from there you have to load your mind cars up then you had to support your roof because as you go into the mind you're exposing the top of the mind then you have to support it in some fashion or you get cave-ins plus they'd have to lay the rail for their coal cars as a way me and the only work you got paid for is what coal you loaded so as you were doing all this other work you weren't compensated for it so you can go to work at a mine work the whole week ten hours a day for seven days and not earn a penny and even when they went home they were still under the control of the company companies felt that it was best to control their miners by offering them housing in company towns so the miners worked in the company mine came home to a company House shopped at the company store read company approved literature they saw company approved movies they very often live behind barbed wire what the mine owners would say is look we're taking care of you this is paternalism we're making sure that you have a roof over your head you have access to supplies in these very remote mining camps we're taking care of you as much as we can but really these company towns were intended to contain labor unrest by the time they paid for their blasting powder and they paid for their explosives and paid what they owed to the company store and plus the rent of the company house they actually worked for a duffle [Music] mother Jones Mary Harris an Irish immigrant dedicated her lives to protecting the families of workers by being a socialist organizer you could even say an agitator in strikes wherever laborers were in trouble Mary Harris was there to cajole and berate and organize and march and picket and protest and strike mother jones rallied the women and children to engage in parades through the streets of Trinidad they were carrying placards they were talking about the corruption of the system we are Americans too and how come we're not being treated like Americans were being treated like dogs she led these workers to believe that there was something better if they would stick together and try to fight together very outspoken very radical very colorful and became kind of a a lightning rod of those great strike of 1913 and 1914 she was thrown into jail as a result of her agitations and when that news got out usually meant that someone was going to come to her cause and and get her out of jail because the image of putting an 80 year old woman in jail was was not a happy one for many people she's the conscience of the strike and you know she's also playing the role of the conscience of America and the conscience of the company even [Music] the great strike of 1913 was really the culmination of about fifty years of labor unrest in the Rocky Mountain West hard rock miners under the banner of the Western Federation of miners and then coal miners under the United Mine Workers had been protesting for more control of their own working conditions for about 50 years we have very little here that actually documents the event at Ludlow what we have is we have materials that predate the event which document things like the conditions in the coal mines the workers conditions accident reports the types of accidents the miners were having things like explosions in the mines possible deaths those sorts of things the miners definitely were working under some pretty harsh conditions and Ludlow was a direct result of the miners are not being satisfied with their working conditions the strike of 1913 took place in order to force concessions from management over better wages they asked her at 10 percent wage I they asked for recognition of the United Mine Workers as the agency of collective bargaining but most importantly the biggest issues for the miners was enforcement of Colorado's mine safety laws Colorado had laws on the books to protect miners but they were almost universally ignored what the miners were really interested in is making sure that their safety was protected but for the mine owners all of these issues were seen as an attack on their their right to private property and they were willing to go to war to the death in order to protect their right to work the mines in any way that they saw fit there are a very large number of deaths in the days and months during the strike leading up to the massacre and if you're really gonna understand the significance of a massacre you have to look at it all in context over the winter of 1913 1914 there were various incidents on the streets of Trinidad and up around walls and burg violence was committed on on both sides I mean the strikers were committing damage against company property and the company men would retaliate it just played out longer than anybody thought it would once the strike began union members were evicted from their company town so the United Mine Workers created a series of tent camps tent cities really on the cusp between the mountains and plains right along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains for these striking miners to live so they set up formal streets along which the tents were lined they had a communal tent where they would take meals and plan their strike activities there was a medical tent that was strategically positioned so that all of the world could tell that the miners were interested in health and well-being again they're up against this assumption that they are savages and that they are dangerous and that they will explode into violence at the drop of a hat so one strategy that the miners had was to try to present this civilized face to the world throughout the winter of 1913 and 1914 miners were living in tents out on the plains during what was a very ferocious winter with heavy snows in between the snowstorms they did things collectively to try to maintain good spirits they played baseball they embraced the American pastime as a way to kill time and from there they would send up people to pick it at the mind to prevent strikebreakers from doing any work and I think they severely restricted production of coal it affected the whole ability to produce steel once out on strike the the the miners organized in a pretty in a pretty effective way they were led by a Greek miner named Louie teeka's Lewis teeka's was an organizer and a representative for the United Mine Workers he particularly represented the Greeks who were striking at Ludlow the Greeks themselves were really tough many of them were veterans of of the Greek war for independence against Turkey and and many of the National Guardsmen were scared to death of these really tough battle-hardened strikers p'tee 'kiss had worked very hard to keep the peace between the strikers and the National Guard he was a fiery passionate able to bring the troops together kind of guy that everyone trusted and he would be the go-to guy for meeting with the militiamen who at that time were professional mercenaries his leadership skills were legendary for bringing people together across ethnic groups in the spring of 1914 circumstances had really changed tension had been growing the entire time both sides were well-armed both sides really mistrusted each other and both sides were coming closer and closer to to a point of no return at the beginning of the strike the governor of Colorado Elias Hammond called in the National Guard but over time the National Guardsmen were rotated out and they were replaced by new recruits who also worked as mine guards for the companies so by the spring of 1914 many of the National Guardsmen were receiving two paychecks one from the state of Colorado and one from the mines to protect the miners interests their pay was paid out of the pockets of a partisan in this labor dispute to do what to defend everybody to defend the Coloradans now to protect the mine interests a lot of the people in the car National Guard that got hurt marshaled afterwards if you look very closely at the testimony during those court-martial hearings you'll see people be accused of in a few cases admit to doing really awful things to union members and Union sympathizers long before the massacre ever happened the miners would terrorize scabs and strike breakers the National Guard and private detectives hired by the mine companies would in turn terrorize the miners private detectives from the baldwin-felts detective company manufactured this armored car with a machine gun mounted on the back that they called the death special and they would tear through these tent cities firing the machine gun around just to spark terror and fear among the miners and and their families it would routinely circle the tent colony spraying machine-gun fire over the heads of the colonists and searchlights were set up in the foothills above the colony and light would be played on the tent colony at night anything to disrupt the daily rhythms of the workers as a result of all of this most of the miners were keeping firearms and tent city like let low many people dug a small cave underneath the tent they would do that to store supplies the firearms to be sure but it was also seen as an emergency shelter in case shooting really began there were stories told by the National Guardsmen about how well-armed the strikers were our archaeology didn't really disclose weapons of mass destruction where the WMDs we ought to find ammunition caches and rifle pits etc etc and I think by the time April rolled around the company had about had it because their profits were being eaten up their men were being harassed what went wrong that would allow something like this to happen in April nineteen nineteen fourteen the miners at Ludlow celebrated Greek Easter and they did it with dancing and feasting and celebration and they even had a baseball game with some of the national guardsmen they sensed that this was going to be coming as well because some comments have been made by militiamen about you know you have your fun today and then we'll have our fun tomorrow the colonists may have had a heads up that something was going to happen the next day and in fact it did when tensions began to multiply in the morning of April 20th Lewis teeka's went to the National Guard to negotiate a truce instead he was beaten he was hit in the head with a rifle but so hard that it broke the stock of the right bolt this National Guard officer pulled out his revolver and shot him killed him right on the spot the one person who's willing to make the first peaceful gesture is mistreated and in this case it enraged the strikers who were more than ready to return fire on the National Guard there's some dispute about what happened on the morning of April 20th a lot of historians believed that there was going to be a premeditated attack on the colony as a final effort to try to break the strike [Music] before long there's a running gun battle going on with the strikers fleeing for their lives almost immediately it turned into a full-scale battle the miners grab their rifles and hid along an arroyo trying to draw the National Guard away from their families at the Ludlow tent colony the National Guardsmen mounted a machine gun on top of a nearby hill and sprayed the miners in the camp somewhat randomly with machine gun fire one of the most important moments in the violence is when a train passes by they're shooting each other from the different sides of the railroad track and so when a train passes by it provides cover for people to escape the militiamen quoi mercenary soldiers moved into the colony to set tents aflame some ten miners were killed as well as one National Guardsman I'm not sure that they were intending to kill people I think they just wanted to disperse the colonists and see if this would help in breaking the strike they went about systematically firing the camp to destroy it and destroy the miners base most of the colonists got out except for these 13 people these eleven children and two women who got caught in a tent cellar below a burning tent that collapsed on top of them and they were suffocated and that's when it hit the fan really and got national press [Music] there's terrible violence after the logo massacre you get this ten-day war which is essentially begins when the miners take revenge against scab workers and company guards and anyone else they can find all over southern Colorado but in the aftermath of the massacre miners took to their guns and they began attacking company towns and company mines throughout the southern Front Range attacking sounds like Forbes driving out the scabs and the National Guardsmen they're throwing dynamite into the mines to blow them shut burning buildings in the company towns killing superintendents killing National Guardsmen killing strikebreakers especially it was the bloodiest civil insurrection in American history since the Civil War when the colony was burning people dispersed up into the Black Hills people hightailed it to the houses and friends and neighbors that they might have known they camped out up in the hills you know small groups of miners would organize and then basically do guerrilla warfare try to strike back at the company tear up railroad lines burn company buildings destroy property they ran the state militia out of the area they ran the company guards out of the area and they actually went into these towns and took over the mines and they had control of mainly Los Alamos County a war from okay that culminates with President Wilson calling in the United States Army and that's what puts end to the violence and eventually destroyed the strike technically was a failure but it was a turning point we do have the meeting minutes from the period before and after Ludlow those minutes basically say no one attended and no business was conducted and those minutes they say the same thing for a period of of about a year six months before Ledlow and six months after the outcome of the Ludlow massacre was kind of mixed on the one hand love though became a rallying cry for labor flavors and labor unions throughout the country remember Ludlow became a slogan of labor radicalism in many respects on the other hand that the reforms that came out of Ludlow were somewhat lukewarm john d rockefeller jr. who controlled Standard Oil and the Colorado fuel and iron company hired a public relations expert to help him rehabilitate his image in the wake of the massacre I think definitely other companies throughout the country were watching CF&I his activities a response to Ludlow it was a lot of very negative publicity for the further Rockefeller families John Rockefeller came out and visited the scene and talked to Mother Jones and talked to some of the families and talked to the women and got his company to implement what was called a company Union an organization of workers that's not an independent trade union but it's created by the company most observers certainly most labour historians dismiss the company Union as being a creature of management it's not a real union but over in the archives they had the records of the company Union and it turns out when I started reading those records that the people who are in the company Union were not management Patsy's they made lots of demands and they actually made a lot of progress improving the working conditions and the living conditions for themselves and their families but things really didn't change and by the 1920s another series of very violent strikes broke out in Colorado over many of the same issues people paid so much attention to the Ludlow massacre because of the Rockefellers involvement and because of the deaths that they paid a lot of attention to Rockefellers supposed solution to the labor relations problems there and because of that it got a enormous amount of press and when it failed it's because you're a good clue for companies all over America that maybe this isn't the best arrangement [Music] it's just one piece of the puzzle it says workers need to have recourse to prevents industrialists from exploiting them ruthlessly a lot of people started thinking differently about safety and minds about workers rights the miners themselves live a decent life now because of what the miners in the past have went through and struggled it probably would have done better had they won the strike and been able to join the United Mine Workers of America but they didn't awfully well for themselves considering it's the best-known company union in the United States in the early 20th century they started the fight who started the recognition they started turning people's attitudes towards workers what really changed things for coal mining was increased mechanization automating a lot of the processes that had previously been done by human beings and the New Deal of the 1930s which legislated more power to labor unions those were the real reforms but there were in another generation away the Ludlow monument is one of the more evocative labor monuments it's got very moving language on it that talks about the ultimate price that people paid to win a safe workplace and the enforcement of labor laws and it consists of a man a woman and a child all three of whom were intimately involved in the events of the strike sometime in March of 2003 people came in and beheaded the male and the female that vandalism occurred against the background of a steel workers strike for 85 years it had been undisturbed until you get this coincidence of archaeological research combined with a really nasty steel worker strike up at pueblos if I was a betting man I would bet that the vandalism was anti-union motivators these inequities over power and energy and labor still exist the balance between labor and capital has always been tipped in favor of laws and protections for capital the Colorado was a colony of the United States that produced raw materials in exchange for that the lives of young men and women who came out seeking opportunity been instead found exploitation who found that the American dream for them was very circumscribed by the conditions of industrial America in the early 20th century the miners at Ludlow they didn't win but they won for all of us and everybody that goes to work every day and gets a paycheck should be thankful that there was little miners and what they did [Music] Colorado experience is a co-production of Rocky Mountain PBS and history Colorado history Colorado brings history to life for audiences of all ages through exhibits collections and historic preservation programs throughout the state history Colorado connects people to the stories places and heritage of Colorado's past that provide perspectives on today and inspire our choices for tomorrow find out more at www.yearsyoungernaturally.com

Channel: Rocky Mountain PBS

Views: 211,263

Keywords: Ludlow, Ludlow Massacre, Ludlow Massacre (event), Las Animas County, Workers' rights, Coal, Coal miners, Miners, CF&I, United Mine Workers of America, UMWA, Colorado Experience, Colorado, Rocky Mountain PBS, RMPBS, History Colorado, labor laws, 1913, 1914

Id: 6qIHN68YNXw

Length: 28min 21sec (1701 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/Averydispleasedbork]

Now i need a patch of this

[u/Daniel_Finklebottom]

https://youtu.be/Ive6jmd4OKw

[u/stygianelectro]

I was reading through a list of labor history landmarks and memorials the other day, and it was really appalling how many of them were erected in memory of workers murdered by the US armed forces.