Ludlow Massacre, The

DESCRIPTION: Faced with a strike, the mine owners drive the workers from their (company-owned) homes. The National Guard moves in and kills thirteen children by fires and guns. Since President and Governor cannot not stop the guard, fighting continues
AUTHOR: Woody Guthrie
EARLIEST DATE: 1945 (recording, Woody Guthrie)
KEYWORDS: mining strike violence death labor-movement
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Sept 23, 1913 - Beginning of the strike by coal workers against John D. Rockefeller's Colorado Iron and Fuel Co.
April 20, 1914 - A state militia company (actually composed of company thugs) attacks the Ludlow colony of strikers using machine guns and coal oil. About 21 people die, including two women and thirteen children; three strikers are taken and murdered.
April 30, 1914 - Federal troops arrive and end the fighting
Dec 7, 1914 - Voting finally ends the strike, but the UMW had already been defeated
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Scott-TheBalladOfAmerica, pp. 279-281, "The Ludlow Massacre" (1 text, 1 tune)
Greenway-AmericanFolksongsOfProtest, pp. 152-154, "Ludlow Massacre" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 134, "The Ludlow Massacre" (1 text)
DT, LUDLWMAS*
Roud #17650
RECORDINGS:
Woody Guthrie, "Ludlow Massacre" (Asch 360, 1945; on on AmHist2, Struggle2)
NOTES [6055 words]: Although reprinted many times, as one of Woody Guthrie's more important "historical" songs, I know of no field collections. - RBW
The Ludlow Massacre has been the subject of several books. In addition to those cited here (Andrews, Laughlin, and Martelle), Martelle, p. 4, points to Out of the Depths: The Story of John R. Lawson, a Labor Leader, by Barron Beshoar, and The Great Coalfield War, by George S. McGovern and Leonard F. Guttridge. Yes, that's the George McGovern who was a presidential candidate in 1972; the book is based on McGovern's 1953 Ph.D. thesis, but was rewritten by Guttridge and the documentation removed. Martelle's own book came out in 2007. Andrews published his book the next year; Laughlin published in 2006.
Martelle notes on the very first page that although there is a freeway exit for Ludlow [from Interstate 25/US Highway 85], the town itself doesn't really exist any more; the mines have mostly failed and all that is left is a sort of memorial park. Wikipedia calls it a "ghost town," but I wouldn't even call it that; it's a field with the monument in the middle. It isn't even a government-managed monument; it was set up by the United Mine Workers of America (Martelle, p. 8) in 1918 (Laughlin, p. 133). The nearest surviving town is Aguilar, Colorado, five miles to the north-northwest. There is a photo on p. 132 of Laughlin; you can also see it in Google Street View.
Andrews, pp. 6-7, says that two narratives arose from the Ludlow conflict: "Ludlow-as-battle" and "Ludlow-as-massacre." Loosely speaking, the former is the owners' version of the story and the latter is labor's.
Martelle does not even mention Woody Guthrie in its index -- rather surprising, given that Guthrie wrote at a time when the massacre was still part of living memory, which it obviously was not at the time Martelle was writing. Andrews has only one mention -- p. 6 says that the song inspired Howard Zinn, later a popular historian, to write his Masters thesis on the subject.
Labor wars in the west were quite familiar at this time. See, for instance, "Harry Orchard," for the tale of a fight more than a decade earlier. By this time, the owners knew how to respond: they hired private police forces. Sometimes it was the Pinkertons (who had by this time largely ceased to be detectives and had become mostly a private army). In the case of Ludlow, the company was the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (Andrews, p. 1), run by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (the son of the founder of the Rockefeller fortune; Andrews, p. 3), and the company they hired was the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency of Virginia (Martelle, p. 12). They were armed from the start; eventually the company gave them machine guns (Martelle, p. 93; on p. 97 he has a picture of a car that was modified to carry a machine gun and was covered with armor plate -- almost a proto-tank, or at least proto-armored-personnel-carrier; they called it the "Death Special").
They also probably had a hotline to the Colorado National Guard; Martelle, p. 20, reports that the Guard had been called out 22 times between its founding in 1879 and the events at Ludlow -- and 16 of the call-ups had been for purposes of intervening in strikes.
It is ironic to note that, by this time, John D. Rockefeller Sr. had semi-retired and was devoting his energy to his charities, and his son would have liked to do the same (Laughlin, pp. 42-43); apparently the Rockefellers wanted to devote philanthropy to everyone except their employees!
For the owners, it was probably worth the fight. Colorado's coal was high-quality anthracite (Martelle, p. 16), not easy to obtain elsewhere (I seem to recall that the only other American anthracite mines were in Pennsylvania). The flip side of that, of course, is that they had a highly profitable product and could have afforded some concessions. Concessions they made none; the southern Colorado coalfields were in a desolate area with not many people, and the miners were forced to live in slapdash company towns and shop at company stores (Martelle, p. 27). (Many of the miners were immigrants, who of course were ignorant of American ways and languages and so less able to put up resistance; according to Laughlin, p. 50, at the mine at Trinity, Colorado, the miners came from 32 countries and spoke 27 different languages.)
Perhaps there would have been more money had the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company been better-run; it was full of what Martelle, p. 37, calls "rogue midlevel managers" who milked the company and ran their own local businesses for their own benefit, so there was less profit to go around than there should have been. But given the way the Rockefellers handled the organization, I doubt it.
To make things worse, the Colorado mines were unsafe, even by coal mining standards. "In 1912, the death rate in Colorado's mines was 7.055 per 1,000 employees, or 8.9 deaths for ever million tons of coal produced, compared with the national rate of 3.15 per 1,000 workers and 4.29 deaths for every million tons of coal produced" (Martelle, p. 18; Abbott/Leonard/McComb, p. 152 simply says that Colorado's death rate twice that elsewhere). Colorado had mine inspectors -- but they were so few and so under-funded that they could do little (Martelle, pp. 18-19); even the tipples used to measure what had been mined were often inaccurate (Laughlin, p. 23). There has been unrest in the mines for many years -- there had been a bombing as early as 1904 (Martelle, p. 24). The mine owners ignored even the weak Colorado safety regulations, and they bought the local sheriff, Jefferson B. Farr, who in turn set up his own juries and so was in a position to personally decide who was and was not a criminal (Martelle, pp. 30-31); Laughlin, p. 23, says he also had a network of informants among the miners to keep them in check.
To be sure, it wasn't just the owners who brought in outside help -- although they hired gunslingers, while the union brought in organizers and speakers. The most famous of the latter was the well-known Mary Harris "Mother" Jones (Martelle, pp. 72-73). Yet the owners seem to have been convinced that the miners were not organized and that the UMWA's strike plans meant nothing (Martelle, pp. 74-75).
Andrews, p. 238, lists the union demands: (1) recognition of the union, (2) a 10% pay raise, (3) an eight hour workday, (4) payment for work done to maintain the mines (at this time, miners were paid only for coal dug up), (5) check-weighmen (who determined how much coal had been mined) to be chosen by the miners, not the company, (6) freedom to buy at any store and choose their own homes and doctors, rather than using company stores, houses, and doctors, (7) abolition of the guard system and enforcement of Colorado's mining laws. Laughlin, pp. 64-65, has the same list, and notes tat Colorado law already mandated 3, 5, 7, and parts of 6 (it's just that the laws weren't being enforced); also, the miners had recently gotten a raise, so 2 was not impossible. But the owners steadfastly refused to recognize the union -- while the workers felt they needed the union to keep the companies from backsliding.
Supposedly company control was so extreme that the companies "voted evey man and woman in the employ, without any regard to their being naturalized or not, and even their mules... were registered, if they were fortunate enough to possess names" (so Graham Adams, Jr., as quoted on p. 152 of Abbott/Leonard/McComb).
The walkout began September 23, 1913 (Martelle, p. 76). It's not clear exactly how many miners walked out -- or, of those that did, how many wanted to walk out and how many were pressured to do so. Not all mines were affected equally. Government figures, which were incomplete, showed a quarter of mines fully shut down and the rest operating at between 25% and 50% of capacity. The United Mine Workers claimed 11,232 of 13,980 (80%), which is amazingly high. Best bet is that somewhere between 50% and 70% of miners walked out, even though it meant leaving their company-owned homes and moving into tents in a Colorado rainstorm (Martelle, pp. 76-77). The companies made it clear they were not welcome back; after they left, guards searched their houses and threw their belongings into the streets (Laughlin, p. 9); they supposedly even tossed small children into the street, injuring some (Andrews, p. 247).
There were many tent camps, but that at Ludlow was the largest, the de facto headquarters; it housed about 1200 people, 500 of them miners and the rest family members and organizers (Martelle, p. 80). The Ludlow camp was fully forty acres in size (Laughlin, p. 70). Despite the discomfort the miners suffered, the Union was much better at communicating with the workers than was the company; they had leaders from 21 different ethnic groups to help the workers know what was going on (Laughlin, p.75).
The camps were miserable places, particularly with winter approaching; they were supplied with stoves, but the walls were thin wood with tents overhead. Each family was supposed to have its own tent, with a larger central tent used as a school and organization building -- but they were about a thousand tents short, so a large fraction of the strikers, perhaps a quarter, ended up having to share with others (Laughlin, p. 11). There was an events area -- but it included an open parade ground, so it can't have been very comfortable either (Andrews, p. 251).
It's hard to say who started the shooting. Before the strike, Martelle, p. 14, and Laughlin, p. 69, say that a labor leader, Gerald Lippiatt, got into an argument with the detectives, and pulled a gun -- but Lippiatt was the one who ended up dead (cf. Andrews, p. 235). His killers were found innocent (Laughlin, p. 69. I think this perhaps half-right; Lippiatt pulled his gun first, but the detectives had given him a bump in the street. They were not guilty of murder but were guilty of minor incitement). A guard, Robert Lee, was the next to be killed -- but he was hated for private reasons. Things were calm enough that, at first, the Colorado governor did not think there was need for the national guard (Martelle, pp. 81-83). The Wilson Administration appointed a mediator, Ethelbert B. Stewart, but the lines had hardened so much that no one would listen to him (Martelle, p. 92; according to Martelle, p. 134, Wilson lectured the parties a bit, but Wilson lectured everybody...).
The first large-scale attempt at violence came on September 29, when someone (presumably a group of strikers) shot up the camp of a group of Japanese miners who were working during the strike; happily, no one was killed (Martelle, p. 85, who understates the irony of the Japanese, who suffered even worse racism than the other strikers -- they were kept in their own segregated camps -- continuing to work). Clashes continued throughout September, with shots occasionally fired although casualties were few. On October 3, bombs began to be used; one blew up an explosives shed, although there is some doubt about who deployed it, and there again seem to have been no casualties (Martelle, p. 87).
On October 7, there was a big gunfight near Ludlow, though again casualties were surprisingly low -- just three injured (Martelle, pp. 88-89). But soon after, the shooting killed its first innocent bystander (Martelle, p. 90).
Although casualties remained relatively low, a lot of bullets flew over the weeks that followed. (This is one of the reasons why it is so hard to determine how many people were killed. If someone -- particularly a striker -- was shot, those with him usually carried the body away and the coroner did not see it; Martelle, p. 119). John Lawson, the UMW leader of the strikers, saw women and children being threatened by the violence and decided to have the miners dig holes under the floors of the tents to let non-combatants take shelter from the bullets (Laughlin, p. 76). This may well have saved lives at the time; it was to prove disastrous later.
The owners kept pressuring Governor Ammons to call out the militia. Ammons, who came from a poor background and had been elected with labor support in the strange three-way election of 2012, was hesitant (Laughlin, pp. 66-67; Andrews, pp. 253-254). Finally, convinced that the local authorities could not handle the situation (Martelle, p. 120), he gave in (Martelle, pp. 98-100). The militia were called out on October 28, even though the state had to borrow the money to pay them (Martelle, pp. 121-122). For a time, there were 1600 militia in the area (Martelle, p. 123), though the number was later reduced because of the cost. (According to Laughlin, pp. 86-87, the pro-Union state auditor absolutely refused to pay them, so the commander of the militia, got mine owners and banks to put up the money.)
This General Chase seems to have been a rather erratic character, and anti-union. Martelle, p. 123, calls him "A large man with a generous belly and a wide curling mustache, Chase, fifty-six, cut a comical figure in his military uniform, like a grandfather playing dress-up soldier with the grandkids. But Chase saw himself as the real thing." In an earlier 1903 strike, he had arrested striking miners and held them without trial; that had resulted in him being convicted by a court-martial, but he had enough popular support that he was kept on (Laughlin, p. 79). And he was a control freak -- he once threatened to arrest a reporter who had filed a story about a military train hitting a cow! (Martelle, p. 124).
There is no evidence that the governor declared martial law at the time of the call-up, but Chase acted as if there was, creating military tribunals -- one of them led by one of the mine owners' lawyers! -- to judge men he didn't like (Laughlin, pp. 84-85; Martelle, p. 132) and often denying them access to lawyers (Laughlin, p. 92) -- he even threatened to arrest two deputy district attorneys! (Martelle, p. 132). "From November through March his troops detained nearly two hundred UMW leaders without charges and periodically raided the strikers' camps" (Abbott/Leonard/McComb, p. 152; cf. Martelle, pp. 140-141). When local officials came to Chase with requests and suggestions, he brushed them off and lied about it (Martelle, pp. 126-127). Ammons probably just wanted the militia to keep the peace (so Martelle, p. 146, who says that "he ordered General Chase to direct his troops to freeze the conditions in place" -- including keeping strikebreakers out), but Chase wanted to contain the strikers and set about doing so, which surely inflamed the situation. He showed his true colors by absorbing mine guards into his under-strength militia companies (Martelle, pp. 128, 148-149; to give Chase his due, his regular troops were going home because the state wasn't paying them; Martelle, pp. 158-159).
Martelle, p. 142, claims that he tortured some detainees. He does not document physical torture, except for some instances of binding prisoners -- but he does on pp. 142-143 recount a case of a man being forced to dig what he was told was his own grave. (Fortunately, the man was released after that, emotionally wrecked but not seriously injured.) He certainly detained Mother Jones and forced her from the district (Martelle, pp. 152-153) -- something Governor Ammons agreed with, but Chase's ham-handed method drew unwanted attention to the situation. The result was a demonstration on her behalf, which resulted in a fight with the militia in which several women were seriously harmed by militia weapons, although apparently none were killed; in addition, six women and twelve men were arrested (Martelle, pp. 153-155). Chase ended up dodging a congressional subcommittee that wanted to investigate what happened (Martelle, p. 156).
The calling-out of the militia didn't do much to stop the strike, but it did make it much easier for scabs to get into the mines; coal production, which had fallen dramatically, started to pick up again (Andrews, p. 267; according to Martelle, p. 146, Ammons allowed the strikebreakers to work starting in late November -- although on p. 147 Martelle claims that the strikebreakers were brought in without being told that there was a strike on, which violated Colorado law. Indeed, Martelle, pp. 147-148, claims that some strikebreakers were promised land and instead forced to work in the mines). The militia also temporarily reduces the level of violence, as the troops helped to keep the sides apart (Martelle, p. 125. There was one out-and-out deliberate assassination, of one of the men who had killed Lippiatt; the assassin claimed union leaders put him up to it, but no charges were brought against them; Martelle, pp. 133-134; Laughlin, p. 87). But it didn't change the owners' absolute refusal to recognize the union (Laughlin, p. 81).
The Wilson administration was also trying to patch things up, but Woodrow Wilson did not become personally involved; he thought himself too distant from the situation (Martelle, p. 136).
Ammons wasn't done trying to reconcile the parties. (Martelle, p. 137, comments sourly, "Ammons was proving to be incapable of gauging the depths of anti-union sentiments among... [the] owners.") In mid-November, he brought in representatives of the companies and the union and tried to mediate, but both sides were firm in their demands and the owners in particular weren't even willing to talk to the union (Andrews, pp. 258-259). They wouldn't talk to a mediator appointed by the Wilson administration, either, thinking him pro-union (Laughlin, p. 76). Andrews did eventually get the Union negotiators to accept a proposal that didn't include recognizing the union but met most of their other demands -- but the rank and file voted it down (Laughlin, pp. 88-89; Martelle, pp. 138-139). Ammons, out of ideas, seems finally to have decided to let the militia loose after that. The owners took that as a signal to start bringing in strikebreakers -- by the thousands (Laughlin, p. 90).
There was a congressional investigation started at about this time. It didn't accomplish much except to make John D. Rockefeller say publicly that he would never deal with any union (Laughlin, pp. 94-97).
No one really knows who started the climactic battle. It didn't help that John Lawson, who tried to keep things calm, was away at the time, and another man, Louis Tikas, was the local leader of the strikers at Ludlow (Andrews, p. 271; according to Abbott/Leonard/McComb, p. 151, Tikas had come from Crete in 1906 and moved to Colorado in 1912; he was unusual among the miners, according to Laughlin, p. 93, in that he had had a college education). Even worse, the officer Chase had left in charge at Ludlow, Karl E. Linderfelt, was violently anti-union and constantly seeking provocations -- he once told the strikers that his statements was the word of God, and there was an instance of him physically assaulting a teenage bystander just for being in the vicinity. (Martelle, p. 151. He had military experience, but he also sounds like a pathological liar, claiming e.g. to have studied at the Sorbonne for two years despite being apparently a high school dropout; Martelle, p. 107).
The day before the massacre was relatively festive; it was Orthodox Easter Sunday, so the many Greeks at Ludlow had been celebrating -- though a group of four soldiers had taken the occasion to try a little intimidation (Martelle, p. 160).
In Andrews's reconstruction, it started with a peaceful confrontation that grew out of control. A woman had reported her husband held by the strikers against his will (cf. Martelle, p. 160). This should have been a police matter, but a militia officer came to talk to Tikas about it. (Similarlly Laughlin, pp. 98-99, who says that Tikas was know for his attempts to keep the peace.) Tikas -- who did not accept the militia's authority within the camp -- said the missing man wasn't there; the militia wouldn't accept that answer (Martelle, p.161). Crowds of strikers gathered. Meanwhile, the aggressive Captain Linderfelt started deploying his troops and machine gun in strong positions on high ground (Martelle, p. 162).
Somebody -- we don't know who, and it's not entirely clear which side he was on -- fired a shot, and it escalated (Martelle, p. 164).
It was an asymmetric conflict: The strikers outnumbered the militia, but the militia was much better-armed (Laughlin, p. 100). And they were able to call in reinforcements, including another machine gun (Martelle, pp. 168-169).
Acccording to Andrews, one militiaman, Alfred Martin, was killed, and several miners. A teenage bystander, Primo Larese, was also killed (Martelle, p. 168).
The militia apparently strafed the camp, forcing the people into gullies or wells or their underground shelters (Martelle, pp. 166-167). It was during a seeming lull that the Snyder family came out to grab supplies, and 11-year-old Frank Snyder was killed (Lauglhlin, pp. 100-101).
Soon after, Tent #1, at the very southeast corner of the camp, caught fire, forcing several people to flee; they ended up in the pit beneath Tent #58 (Martelle, pp. 173-174). As time passed, more of the Ludlow camp caught fire, and most of the casualties were the result of that (Andrews, pp. 271-273). There is no agreement how the fire started; some claimed the soldiers started the fires (Martelle, pp. 172-173, has several accounts of this), but it's possible that it was just the result of gunfire (Laughlin, p. 101). Or perhaps the first fire was accidental but the soldiers lit more once the first had started. Martelle, pp. 182-183, tells of Colorado's deputy labor commissioner Edwin Brake hearing troops boasting of the strikers who died and the fires they set, but this might just be aggressive talk. Still, I incline to the view that at least some of the fires were started by the militia; bullets rarely start fires, and fires need wind to spread them, and I haven't seen mention of such.
Tikas was deliberately sought out, and the vicious Captain Linderfelt got into a fight with him (Martelle, p. 175). Rather than have Tikas arrested, Linderfelt bashed his head with a rifle butt. Andrews says Linderfelt's men then shot Tikas in the back; similarly Martelle, p. 176, although he says that others were also shot. Laughlin, pp. 102-103, is more cautious. Linderfelt found Tikas and bashed him so hard that he doubtless sustained a concussion, but left him alive with two men as guards. No witness was there when Tikas was shot, and the guards claimed he was caught in the crossfire, even though the militia had swept most of the camp by then. Tikas had been shot by four bullets. Three of the bullets, which hit him in the back, were steel-jacketed bullets of the type that only the militia would have had; the fourth bullet (which, admittedly, was considered the fatal one) was an ordinary lead bullet that could have been fired by a striker or one of the many vigilante types hired by the owners -- or by a militiaman who used a gun other than his standard-issue weapon. We can't know who fatally shot Tikas, but it certainly looks as if the militia did its best to make certain of his death. None of which changes the fact that Linderfelt was patently guilty of assault.
Martelle, p. 2: "The nadir came on a sunny Monday morning in April 1914, when a detachment from the Colorado National Guard engaged in a ten-hour gun battle with union men at Ludlow, where a tent colony housing some eleven hundred strikers and their families had been erected. Seven men and a boy were killed in the shooting, at least three of the men -- all striking coal miners, one a leader [i.e. Tikas] -- apparently executed in cold blood by Colorado National Guardsmen who had taken them captive. As the sun set, the militia moved into the camp itself and an inferno lit up the darkening sky, reducing most of the makeshift village to ashes. It wasn't until the next morning that the bodies of two mothers and eleven children were discovered where they had taken shelter in a dirt bunker beneath one of the tents. The raging fire had sucked the oxygen from the air below, suffocating the families as they hid from the gun battle.
"The deaths of the women and children quickly became known as the Ludlow Massacre, and the backlash was vicious and bloody."
According to Laughlin, pp. 103-104, that there were four women and eleven children who had taken shelter in that particular pit, and that a burning bed and other roof debris had fallen on the opening. Two of the adult women and all of the children were asphyxiated; two women, Mary Petrucci and Alcarita Pedregon, survived, although the smoke affected them enough that they were not rational when found by the Ludlow postmistress, Susan Hollearan. Petrucci was the first one out, emerging around 5:30 to hunt for water (Martelle, pp. 176-177). She was found by the Ludlow postmistress, Susan Hallearine, who tried to get troops to help with a rescue, but they declared the site unsafe, so Hallearine had to go back herself (Martelle, p. 178).
Laughlin, pp. 104-105, believes that the casualties of the day to that point were 24: 13 who died in the pit, plus the boy Frank Snyder; one other passer-by; Tikas; four other miners; plus one militiaman and three mine guards. Abbott/Leonard/McComb, p. 153, reports, "Five strikers and one militiaman fell in the fighting, one boy died from a stray bullet and two women and eleven children choked to death on thick smoke in the cellar underneath one of the tents when the National Guard set fire to the colony."
The owner of a neighboring ranch, Frank Bayes, had to flee with his family, and when he returned, he found his home wrecked by the militia, even though he was not a striker (Martelle, p. 181).
Considering the large number of people in the area, the casualties were relatively light. But they ignited a broader war.
The tent city fire was not the end of things; the strikers were barred from the site after the fire, and charged that bodies found there were incinerated so that the militia would not have to admit how many they killed. The union eventually claimed 46-66 casualties (Andrews, p. 275). "Remember Ludlow!" was the cry (Andrews, p. 278). The UMWA suddenly started getting tens of thousands in new contributions, and miners in other areas mobilized to fight (Martelle, pp. 184-185). The surviving strikers went on a rampage against the owners; the map on p. 264 of Andrews shows six mines destroyed, plus one associated town (Forbes. Four of the destroyed mines were in the vicinity of Empire, northwest of Ludlow). According to Martelle, pp. 186-187, the strikers on several occasions forced mine guards and militia to take shelter in mine entrances -- and then blew up the entrances. This despite the attempts by ministers and local public officials to defuse things.
The fighting that followed came to be known as "The Ten Days' War" (Andrews, p. 9; on p. 14 he puts the total casualties at between 75 and 100). Trials would follow; United Mine Workers official John Lawson would be sentenced to hard labor for life (Andrews, p. 14).
Governor Ammons (who was out of the state) at once gave General Chase authority to call up more militia, promising to find money somehow, and also headed back to Colorado (Laughlin, p. 106; Martelle, p. 181). This didn't help much; many of the militia wouldn't serve because they hadn't been paid -- and many train crews refused to carry them (Martelle, pp. 188-189).
The lieutenant governor and the UMWA's lawyer managed to negotiate a cease-fire, which held for the most part but did not end the tension (Martelle, pp. 190-192; he thinks one reason it held is that the miners were taking the time to bury their dead). While this was going on, Ammons requested federal help (Laughlin, p. 107). But the strikers were also calling for all the help -- and weapons -- they could get (Martelle, pp. 195-196). Eventually violence flared again, with 54 people being killed before exhaustion set in (Martelle, pp. 198-210. Andrews, pp. 279-281, points to a Women's March calling for peace, but while they managed to talk to Ammons, I can't see any evidence that it mattered; no other source even mentions it).
President Wilson, after two days of trying and failing to get Rockefeller to budge (Martelle, pp. 194-195), agreed to a limited federal intervention (Laughlin, pp. 108-109). Troops arrived from Nebraska on April 30, 1914, with orders to disarm everyone and close gun shops and saloons (Laughlin, p. 110); they arrived about the time the fighting sputtered down (Martelle, p. 210), and their presence kept it from starting up again. The UMWA, meanwhile, had spent almost its entire assets on the strike; it could do no more. It abandoned its demand for recognition and, in effect, said it would take whatever it could get (Laughlin, p. 112). President Wilson tried to offer a peace plan in September 1914; the Union accepted it, but the operators (who correctly felt that they had won the strike and were unwilling to replace the strikebreakers they had hired) rejected it (Laughlin, p. 114). The UMW officially ended the strike on December 7 (according to Andrews, p. 283, they used Wilson's peace proposal as a justification); the remaining strikers scattered, and Federal troops started pulling out (Laughlin, p. 115).
The National Guard "investigated" what its soldiers had done. No significant punishments were issued, not even for the abuse and probably murder of Tikas. The civil authorities ignored the guards and went after the strikers; more than a hundred, including strike leader John Lawson, were indicted (Laughlin, pp. 112-113). In every possible sense, the strikers had lost.
Strikers and UMW people had to face the courts, though. They came before a judge who had worked for the coal companies, and they were prosecuted by an attorney who had been part of the company's protection force (Laughlin, p. 116). When the first trial for the murder of a guard ended in a hung jury, the judge staged another trial with a jury he picked himself and got the verdict he wanted. Another trial produced a life sentence for murder against Union leader John Lawson even though (at least according to Laughlin, p. 117) the testimony against Lawson was prejudiced and he was not present for the murder.
The outcry was sufficient that the new governor, George Carlson (whose election had set up the conditions for the trials; the voters had wanted no part of Ammons in 1916, according to Martelle, p. 218) and his attorney general backed off -- although it wasn't enough to save them from electoral defeat in 1916 (Laughlin, p. 118). Lawson's conviction, and several others, were overturned in 1917 (Laughlin, pp. 118-119; Martelle, pp. 215-216 -- though he notes that the UMWA dropped Lawson after his exoneration so he still suffered).
Andrews, p. 1, claims it was "the deadliest strike in the history of the United States." The name "Ludlow Massacre" apparently was from a UMW publicity person in Denver (Laughlin, p. 110).
After it was all over, the federal Industrial Relations Commission investigated, bringing up a lot of dirt about Rockefeller's management and causing the company to give the new workers better terms than the strikers had had (Laughlin, pp. 124-131). It marked the beginning of a turn in the attitude of the federal government, from anti-labor to relatively neutral.
Martelle's Appendix B, pp. 222-224, lists all the victims known to have died in the 1913-1914 labor war. Martelle says that at least 75 people were killed in the course of the war. He lists five uninvolved bystanders, 37 strikebreakers and guards (some of them killed from hiding), and 33 strikers and family. This means that more than half those killed on the miners' side died in the Massacre of April 20. The adult women killed were 37-year-old Patricia Valdez, along with four of her children, and 27-year-old Fedelina Costa, along with two of her children; one of the men killed outside was Charles Costa, Fedelina's husband. Five other children were also killed in the bunker. The oldest of the suffocated children was nine years old; six of them had not yet reached their fifth birthday.
Martelle, p. 5, while he attributes much of the blame to the miners, also blames the National Guard for much of the violence -- they ignored the miners' constitutional rights even though martial law had never been declared.
William Lyon Mackenzie King, the future Canadian Prime Minister, was working with Rockefeller on the response to Ludlow. His estimate was that about two hundred people died in the entire course of the strike, including those who died not of gunshots but of the effects of exposure (Laughlin, p. 130). Mackenzie King's proposal to resolve the situation was what Andrews, p. 286, calls a "company union." But that didn't chance Rockefeller's attitudes.
The UMWA dedicated its memorial on May 30, 1918. Mary Petrucci, the survivor of the Ludlow camp fire who had lost three children in the fire, dedicated it (Martelle, p. 211). John D. Rockefeller Jr. reportedly attended at a distance, without publicly announcing himself (Martelle, p. 212). He doesn't seem to ever have admitted that his anti-Union stance and failure to oversee his local subordinates was responsible for the many deaths. Instead, he brought in public relations people to improve the Rockefeller image -- although he did at least remove Lamont M. Bowers, the local company boss responsible for the mines (Martelle, pp. 214-215). It didn't bring peace to Colorado's coalfields. Andrews, p. 287, points to strikes in 1919, 1921, 1922, and 1927. Economics ultimately had the last laugh; a great many of the Colorado mines failed in the 1930s, and almost all were gone by the 1950s (Andrews, p. 288). Ludlow wasn't the only place that ended up desolate.
Woody Guthrie's text seems to me to have a fairly accurate "feel," but the actual details are not always right.
"It was early springtime when the strike was on" -- correct; the Massacre took place in April 1914.
"They drove us miners out of doors" -- this did happen, but is out of sequence. The miners had been driven out of their homes in September 1913, at the very beginning of the strike.
"We moved into tents up at old Ludlow" -- the mining camps were indeed tent camps.
"Every once in a while a bullet would fly, Kick up gravel under my feet" -- correct but it may give a wrong impression. That is, there were occasional skirmishes. But it was rare for bullets to enter the camps. Not entirely unknown, but rare.
"We dug us a cave that was seven foot deep" -- basically right.
"That very night your soldiers waited" -- flatly false. All evidence is that the fight was unplanned and unintentional.
"You snuck around our little tent town, Soaked our tents with your kerosene" -- unproved; there is testimony to this effect, but it is not sufficiently corroborated for us to be certain.
"Thirteen children died from your guns" -- Thirteen died in the pit, but they were not all children, and they died of suffocation, not by being shot.
"While your bullets killed us all around" -- as the casualty figures above show, there were relatively few casualties other than those in the pit, and the militia also suffered casualties; it was not a one-sided fight.
"We told the Colorado Governor to call the President, Tell him to call off his National Guard, But the National Guard belonged to the Governor, So he didn't try so very hard." Unfair from beginning to end, biased, and mostly flat wrong. Ammons spent the entire strike trying desperately, if incompetently, to settle things, and he wanted the Guard to keep the peace, not start a fight. (If anyone should be blamed, it is General Chase.) And Ammons tried to get President Wilson to intervene, and had no luck until after the Ten Day War had started.
"They sold their potatoes and brought some guns back, And they put a gun in every hand" -- many miners were given arms after the Massacre, but the vast majority of them were paid for by outside donations
"And the Red-neck Miners mowed down these troopers, You should have seen those poor boys run" -- apart from the glorification of violence, this gives a false impression. Yes, the miners attacked several mines and forced the troopers to retreat, but it wasn't a one-sided war.
- RBW
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File: SBoA279

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