Ludlow Colorado Mine Massacre 1914: Deadly Strife Led To Better Labor Laws, JD Rockefeller Jr Blamed

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- Colorado PBS. One of the most significant events in the struggle for labor laws in America played out in Las Animas County in the spring of 1914. With the control of much of Colorado's coal mines in the hands of just a few companies, miners grew increasingly intolerant of low wages & dangerous working conditions.

Despite efforts to suppress union activity, the UMW- United Mine Workers of America called a strike in Sept. of 1913. Over the next few months, tensions escalated as the striking miners ransacked several mines. The dispute culminated in a violent clash on April 20, 1914. Despite this tragic outcome, the event sparked national outrage and led the way of workers' rights in America.
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- (Wiki) The Ludlow Massacre was a mass killing perpetrated by anti-striker militia during the Colorado Coalfield War. Soldiers from the Colorado National Guard & private guards employed by Colorado Fuel & Iron Company (CF&I) attacked a tent colony of roughly 1,200 striking coal miners & their families in Ludlow, Colo., on April 20, 1914. Approximately 21 people, including miners' wives & children, were killed. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., a part-owner of CF&I who had recently appeared before a U.S. States congressional hearing on the strikes, was widely blamed for having orchestrated the massacre.

The massacre was the seminal event of the 1913–1914 Colorado Coalfield War, which began with a general UMW of America strike against poor labor conditions in CF&I's southern Colorado coal mines. The strike was organized by miners working for the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company & Victor-American Fuel Company. Ludlow was the deadliest single incident during the Colorado Coalfield War & spurred a 10-day period of heightened violence throughout Colo.

In retaliation for the massacre at Ludlow, bands of armed miners attacked dozens of anti-union establishments, destroying property & engaging in several skirmishes with the Colorado National Guard along a 225-mile front from Trinidad to Louisville. From the strike's beginning in Sept. 1913 to intervention by federal soldiers under President Wilson's orders on April 29, 1914, an estimated 69 - 199 people were killed during the strike. Historian Thomas G. Andrews has called it the "deadliest strike in the history of the United States."

The Ludlow Massacre was a watershed moment in American labor relations. Socialist historian Howard Zinn described it as "the culminating act of perhaps the most violent struggle between corporate power & laboring men in American history."...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre