By Cynthia Becker –
Photos courtesy of the El Pueblo History Museum in Pueblo –
“Women and Children Roasted in Pit of Tent Colony.” Those words in a New York Times headline 100 years ago conjured gruesome images that stunned the nation. The April 21, 1914, report noted “45 dead, 20 hurt and many missing in a Colorado Strike War.”
Coal mining had become a major Colorado industry because of the westward push of railroads after the Civil War. Manufacturing miles of steel rails required vast amounts of coal to fire production furnaces. Industrialist William Jackson Palmer’s steel mill at Pueblo produced its first rail for his Denver & Rio Grande Railroad in 1882. Ten years later, a merger with Colorado Fuel Company created the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, known as CF&I.April 19, 1914 — The day before the massacre, families at Ludlow celebrated Greek Easter with feasting, dancing and baseball. Nearby, mounted National Guardsmen taunted the miners “You enjoy your roast today; we will have ours tomorrow.”
The company controlled all the natural resources needed to produce steel. Furnaces at the Pueblo plant were fueled by some of the richest coal beds in the state. In 1902, Eastern businessman John D. Rockefeller Sr. toured the Pueblo plant and the southern coalfields. Then he invested $6 million in CF&I stock and soon owned controlling interest in the company.
The “Trinidad field” of shiny black, high-grade bituminous coal stretched between the towns of Walsenburg and Trinidad and westward into the foothills of the Culebra Mountain Range. Most mining took place in deep canyons far from existing towns.
CF&I built company towns close to the mines for workers and their families. The typical four-room house was built of concrete block. Few had running water. Outside “privies” were little more than a hole in the ground with a board over the top. Monthly rent was $2 per room. Most camps were fenced and patrolled by armed guards, making miners and their families feel like prisoners.
The demand for coal was seasonal. Miners often worked less than 200 days per year. A miner might average $3.50 per day, depending on how much coal he dug. However, he was charged for materials and services he used, such as gunpowder or blacksmithing. These expenses could claim half of his daily pay. Out of the remainder he paid rent and bought food, clothing and other necessities at the camp’s company store.
Miners were often paid in scrip, a company form of money that could only be spent in the camp. The use of scrip had been outlawed in Colorado in 1899 but mining companies ignored the law. With a captive audience, CF&I’s Colorado Supply Company stores set the prices and turned a tidy profit.
By 1913, CF&I operated 12 mining camps in Las Animas and Huerfano counties.
Many workers were recruited from Eastern Europe. They spoke little or no English and did not quibble about their pay. By mixing men who spoke different languages on a work team, the company hoped to prevent union organizing.
Despite these efforts, United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) representatives managed to meet some of the miners and offer support to improve pay and working conditions.
Miners were paid by the weight of coal they dug each day. A man loaded his coal into a bin with his ID tag attached. The bin was hauled up to the weighing station while he was still deep underground. Miners did not trust the company’s weigh-man. They wanted to elect their own person to check the scales and ensure each worker received fair credit for his daily production. Miners also wanted to be paid when assigned to “dead work,” such as laying track for coal cars or shoring up areas of the mine to prevent cave-ins.
On September 23, 1913, thousands of CF&I miners walked off the job. Their additional demands included an eight-hour work day, increased pay rates and freedom to choose where they lived and bought their supplies. They wanted enforcement of existing Colorado mining laws and the UMWA to represent them.
Tents offered little protection from the cold and winds of winter, especially through the record-breaking blizzard of December 1913. Tent roofs caved in under the weight of snow. Surrounded by violence and gunfire, some families dug cellars under their tents to create a safe place to hide.Two days later, the strikers and their families were evicted from company housing. They left the camps in cold, drizzling rain, carrying all their belongings in wagons or on their backs.
The UMWA had prepared for this mass exodus. It leased land near the mines for 12 tent colonies and supplied 1,000 canvas tents, with wood for floors, heating and cooking stoves and iron bedsteads. Meetings and social events were held in a large community tent at the center of camp. The union paid each striker $3 per week, plus $1 per woman and 50 cents per child in the family.
The largest tent colony, with about 1,200 residents, was located just north of the small railroad depot called Ludlow. It became strike coordination headquarters for Las Animas County. A Greek miner, Louis Tikas, was elected colony leader. The men and their families were a mix of Americans and new immigrants who spoke at least 20 different languages. They had already learned to get along as co-workers and neighbors in the mining camps. Not long after they settled at Ludlow, the men built a baseball diamond complete with bleachers for spectators. The sport became a unifying activity for the whole camp.
In late October, Gov. Elias Ammons ordered the Colorado National Guard to take control of the area affected by the strike. Some 900 guardsmen arrived at Trinidad on November 1 and spread out among the tent colonies. Ludlow residents welcomed them.
The “Death Special” and armored car was designed to spread fear. The Colorado Fuel & Iron Company covered an ordinary car with steel plates, adding a machine gun and spotlight — at night, private detectives tore through the tent colony, spraying bullets into tents.During the first week of December a record-breaking blizzard roared up the Front Range, dumping 4 to 6 feet of snow from Trinidad to Cheyenne. Temperatures plummeted as 50-mile- per-hour winds drove snow into deep drifts. Ludlow families shivered in their tents, some of which collapsed.
After four months, the cost of National Guard protection had overwhelmed the state. The governor removed all but 200 guardsmen. They were replaced by a militia of mine employees — clothed, armed and paid by CF&I — plus hired strike breakers from the Baldwin Felts Detective Agency, known for their brutality in West Virginia coal strikes. The miners were armed with rifles and shotguns. The militia had high powered rifles and 12 machine guns. To harass the strikers, guards shone spotlights into the camps at night and randomly fired shots over the tents.
On April 6, 1914, John D. Rockefeller Jr., who had taken over CF&I management from his father, told a congressional committee: “These men [strikers] have not expressed any dissatisfaction with their conditions. The records show that the conditions have been admirable. … A strike has been imposed upon the company from the outside.”
Two weeks later, on April 19, 1914, Ludlow residents celebrated Greek Easter. They feasted on roast lamb and enjoyed dancing and a baseball game.
The next morning, militia leaders summoned Tikas to a meeting at Ludlow Depot. There was a disagreement and Commander Karl Linderfelt struck Tikas over the head with a rifle butt. Tikas escaped. Soon shots were fired between the strikers’ colony and the militia camp. (Both sides later claimed the other had fired first.) The shooting continued all day, punctuated by shouts, and frantic screams and wailing babies. One person said the canvas tents were so full of bullet holes they looked like lace.
When a train stopped on the tracks between the colony and the militia camp, some Ludlow residents escaped into hills to the east. A number of women and children remained hidden in dugouts (basements) under their tent floors, and a few huddled in a community well.View of Ludlow after the burning of the camp.
The militia moved into the colony at dusk. Militiamen poured kerosene over the tents and set them on fire. Beneath the tent of Alcarita Pedregon, four women and 10 children sat in a dugout. The tent above was consumed by flames, killing everyone in the dugout but two women, who escaped alive.
Some militia men rescued women and children but others looted the camp. Three strikers, including Louis Tikas, were captured and executed by the militia. The Ludlow camp was a charred tumble of metal bed frames, cook stoves, pots and pans. Here and there parts of a doll or child’s toy stuck out of the rubble.
The day after the massacre, Rockefeller Jr. received a telegram from CF&I Vice President Lamont Bowers:
“April 21, 1914 … Ludlow tent colony of strikers totally destroyed by burning 200 tents, generally followed by explosion, showing ammunition and dynamite stored in them.”
When word of events at Ludlow spread to other tent colonies, groups of miners retaliated. Six mines and company towns were destroyed in two days. The rampage continued for a week. On April 28, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson deployed federal troops to restore order in Colorado. He directed Gov. Ammons to withdraw all state troops.
After order was restored and the victims were buried, the camp was rebuilt. The strike continued through the summer and fall.
One of several staged promotional photos taken during the time the camp was initially established. In 1915, Rockefeller Jr. gave his version of the events at a hearing by the U.S. Commission Industrial Relations:
“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 … 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.”
The strike ended without resolution or union representation on December 10, 1914. The union was bankrupt. Coal companies blacklisted many of the strikers and hired replacements.
Testimony after the massacre revealed there had been no ammunition stockpile at Ludlow, as reported by the militia. The U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations noted in its 1915 final report:
“The Colorado strike was a revolt by whole communities against arbitrary economic, political and social domination by the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company and the smaller coal mining companies that followed its lead. This domination has been carried out to such an extreme that two entire counties of southern Colorado for years have been deprived of popular government. … [L]arge groups of their citizens have been stripped of their liberties, robbed of portions of their earnings, subjected to ruthless persecution and abuse and reduced to a state of economic and political serfdom … [T]he government of these counties … has been brought under this domination and forced or induced to do the companies’ bidding.”
Four hundred eight miners were arrested; 332 were indicted for murder. Legal proceedings dragged into 1920 but most miners never came to trial. Only four persons were convicted, including John R. Lawson, a UMWA organizer, who was sentenced to life in prison for shooting a deputy sheriff. The Colorado Supreme Court later overturned all four convictions.
The last company mining towns in Colorado closed in 1947.
The UMWA purchased 40 acres of land where the Ludlow camp had stood. In 1917, its members erected a monument on the site. The union declined Rockefeller Jr.’s request to speak at the dedication ceremony, citing fear for his safety. The monument was designated a National Historic Site on January 16, 2009.
Since 1918, an annual gathering at the monument on the third Sunday of June has commemorated the Ludlow Massacre. This year, in honor of the 100th anniversary, the Ludlow Massacre Centennial Remembrance Ceremony at the monument has been moved to May 17 and 18. Several other exhibits, lectures and ceremonies are planned at local museums.
To visit the Ludlow Monument take I-25 to exit 27 (about 14 miles north of Trinidad). Follow Road 44.0 west about a half mile to the Ludlow Monument.
To see photos from the Ludlow exhibit at the El Pueblo History Museum in Pueblo, visit http://youtu.be/r3bMmKhSRL4
Watch a video excerpt from STRIKE! Mother Jones & the Colorado Coal Field War at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7DpYsfjBpY
Cynthia Becker is a freelance writer from Pueblo.