Colorado Coalfield War

The Colorado Coalfield War was a labor dispute in 1913 and 1914 in the Southern Coal Field. The Colorado National Guard was sent in to control striking coal miners. When the troops attacked a tent city, they killed twenty-four people, including eleven children, initially sparking a ten-day war. After this atrocity, which is known as the Ludlow Massacre, President Woodrow Wilson sent federal troops to disarm both sides and end the dispute. The death toll of the fourteen-month conflict was estimated at sixty-six, with many others injured. It was the bloodiest labor dispute in US history.

Although the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) lost the strike, the violence and death associated with it influenced public opinion and ushered in an era of progressive labor relations reforms.

Background

The Southern Coal Field is located on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains in southern Colorado. The ripples of high-grade, bituminous coal in the earth are located in Las Animas and Huerfano Counties. The seams extend into canyons, where erosion exposes the coal. The coal’s primary market was the steel industry, which meant a steady supply was required, so major corporations were involved in mining. The largest, Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I), was owned by the Rockefellers.

Most of the miners in the Southern Field lived in the canyons where the exposed coal seams lay. Many lived in company towns and company houses—all owned by the coal companies and rented to the workers. The stores and other businesses in company towns were also owned by the mining companies. The doctors, police officers, and other service providers were also employed by the mining companies. Working conditions were poor, with Colorado mines second in the nation in terms of danger. Miners in Colorado died on the job at more than twice the national average, but the mining companies were almost always found not guilty of responsibility for these deaths.

Many of the southern Colorado miners had arrived in 1903 as replacement workers, called strikebreakers. The UMWA had led this strike, which succeeded in the Northern Field but failed in the Southern Field. Most miners were immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, with a large contingent from Greece and the Balkans.

Tension in the Southern Field was high in August 1913. A union organizer was murdered by mine guards, but authorities refused to investigate. The UMWA announced a strike on September 23, 1913, when mine operators refused to agree to seven demands. These demands included recognition of the UMWA union in the Southern Field, eight-hour work days, and the right to live and shop where they chose, as well as the freedom to use any doctor they wished, instead of the company-owned businesses and services. The miners also opposed the method used to calculate their wages. A miner was paid only for each ton of coal he mined; he was not paid by the hour, nor was he paid for work that did not produce coal, such as laying track or shoring up mines using timbers. The UMWA demanded an increase of 10 percent on tonnage rates. It also wanted to choose check weightmen, those who weighed their coal, to ensure that they were not being cheated at the scales. The final demand was to see the state’s mining laws enforced and rid the miners’ towns of deputized armed guards who controlled who entered or left.

Overview

The mining companies responded to the demands by immediately evicting the workers and their families from the company houses and barring them from buying food at company stores. The UNWA was prepared. It had already rented sites near the coalfields and provided tents and ovens for the mining families. The union organized the families into tent colonies located near the mouths of canyons, where they could block any strikebreakers who might try to enter the mines. The largest colony, Ludlow, comprised about two hundred tents, which housed about twelve hundred people.

The mine operators brought strikebreakers in immediately. They hired the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency from West Virginia, which began an assault on the colonies. The harassment included beatings and shining searchlights over the tents at night. Lethal tactics included murder. Detectives drove an armored car called the Death Special that was fitted with machine guns, which were randomly fired at tents, killing one miner and a small boy. In response, many miners attacked non-union miners who remained on the job. When a company guard was killed, Governor Elias Ammons sent the Colorado National Guard to intervene.

The Guardsmen who arrived in late October began to suppress the miners’ activities. The militia commander, General John Chase, instituted an unofficial state of martial law, rounding up and jailing miners without due process, torturing and beating prisoners, charging at wives and children who were demonstrating, and destroying a tent colony. An official government report later found that militiamen even enslaved strikers.

After six months, the expense of keeping more than twelve-hundred enlisted men and officers in the field was bankrupting Colorado. Most of the militia companies were withdrawn. The two companies that remained were mostly mine guards who had been enlisted in the Guard.

The families in Ludlow celebrated Greek Orthodox Easter on April 20, 2014. Gunfire erupted from an unknown source at nine o’clock in the morning. The militia aimed waves of machine gun and rifle fire at the tent colony all day, as miners with rifles took up positions to defend the camp. A train passed between the opposing sides in the early evening, and many of the families took the opportunity to escape. The militia set fire to the tents and looted the camp. They took three miners as prisoners and later shot and killed them.

The miners had dug cellars beneath their tents where the families could take refuge from machine gun fire. During the Ludlow Massacre, four women and ten children huddled in a pit beneath one of the largest tents. Two of the women and all ten children suffocated when the militia burned down the tent. The cellar became known as the Death Pit. The death toll that day was twenty-five, including eleven children and three militiamen.

The Ludlow Massacre sparked warfare at the other colonies. The miners attacked mine guards and militia and tried to destroy the mines. The Ten-Day War only stopped when the governor requested federal assistance. Seven months later, in December 1914, the strike ended. The UMWA had lost. Hundreds of strikers were arrested and charged with murder, though most never went to trial. Ten officers and twelve enlisted men were court-martialled for the Ludlow Massacre but were acquitted.

The Colorado Coalfield War drew attention to labor conditions across the nation. The UMWA purchased the land where the colonies had been established and voted to hold it as a memorial to those who died. A monument was dedicated on May 30, 1918.

Bibliography

“Colorado Coal Field War Project.” Denver University, www.du.edu/ludlow/. Accessed 30 Oct. 2019.

“Colorado’s Southern Coalfields 1913–1914.” The Colorado Coalfield War Archaeological Project, www.du.edu/ludlow/project‗000.html. Accessed 30 Oct. 2019.

Day, Meagan. “The Richest American Family Hired Terrorists to Shoot Machine Guns at Sleeping Women and Children.” Medium, 3 Apr. 2018, timeline.com/rockefellers-hired-militias-to-shoot-at-strikers-in-ludlow-massacre-115ae488164c. Accessed 30 Oct. 2019.

Larsen, Natalie. “The Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1913–1914.” Intermountain Histories, www.intermountainhistories.org/items/show/219. Accessed 30 Oct. 2019.

“The Ludlow Massacre.” The American Experience/WGBH Educational Foundation, www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/rockefellers-ludlow/. Accessed 30 Oct. 2019.

“Ludlow Tent Colony Site.” History Colorado, 2019, www.historycolorado.org/location/ludlow-tent-colony-site. Accessed 30 Oct. 2019.

Masich, Matt. “The Colorado Coalfield War and the Children of Ludlow.” Colorado Life, 2013, www.coloradolifemagazine.com/The-Colorado-Coalfield-War-and-the-Children-of-Ludlow/. Accessed 30 Oct. 2019.

“Topics in Chronicling America—Colorado Coalfield War.” The Library of Congress, 10 July 2014, www.loc.gov/rr/news/topics/coalwar.html. Accessed 30 Oct. 2019.