On April 20, 1914, members of the Colorado National Guard opened fire on a group of armed coal miners and set fire to a makeshift settlement in Ludlow, Colorado, where more than a thousand striking workers and their families were camped out. Today, the Ludlow massacre, which Caleb Crain wrote about in The New Yorker in 2009, remains one of the bloodiest episodes in the history of American industrial enterprise; at least sixty-six men, women, and children were killed in the attack and the days of rioting that followed, according to most historical accounts.
Although it is less well-remembered today than other dark episodes in American labor history, such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire that claimed a hundred and forty-six lives, the Ludlow massacre—which Wallace Stegner once called “one of the bleakest and blackest episodes of American labor history”—changed the nation’s attitude toward labor and capital for the next several decades. Its memory continues to reverberate in contemporary political discourse.
In the summer of 1913, United Mine Workers began to organize the eleven thousand coal miners employed by the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel & Iron Company. Most of the workers were first-generation immigrants from Italy, Greece, and Serbia; many had been hired, a decade prior, to replace workers who had gone on strike. In August, the union extended invitations to company representatives to meet about their grievances—including low pay, long and unregulated hours, and management practices they felt were corrupt—but they were rebuffed.
A month later, eight thousand Colorado mine workers went on strike. Among their demands were a ten-per-cent pay raise, the enforcement of an eight-hour working day, and the right to live and trade outside the company-owned town. Many of the rights they sought were required by Colorado law but remained unenforced.
After getting evicted from their company-owned homes, the workers based their operations in makeshift tent cities surrounding the mines, the largest of which was the Ludlow camp. The Rockefellers responded by hiring a detective agency—comprised of “Texas desperadoes and thugs,” according to “Legacy of the Ludlow Massacre,” a sharply researched 1988 book by Howard M. Gitelman—who would periodically raid the camps, firing rifles and shotguns.
In November, the state governor called in the Colorado National Guard at the company’s behest; the Guard’s wages were supplied by the Rockefeller family, and they helped to form militias whose members carried out sporadic raids and shootings in the tent cities.
The strike stretched on for months, and in April, 1914, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., appeared before Congress, where he framed the standoff as “a national issue, whether workers shall be allowed to work under such conditions as they may choose.” He balked at the possibility of allowing “outside people”—meaning union organizers—“to come in and interfere with employees who are thoroughly satisfied with their labor conditions.” The committee chairman asked Rockefeller whether he would stand by his anti-union principles even “if it costs all your property and kills all your employees.” Rockefeller replied, “It is a great principle.”
On April 20th, a day after Orthodox Easter, four militiamen brandished a machine gun at some of the striking miners. At some point, shots were fired—the accounts are predictably inconsistent as to who fired first—and a day-long gunfight ensued.
That evening, the National Guardsmen set fire to the Ludlow colony. Thirteen residents who tried to flee were shot and killed as the camp burned to the ground, and many more burned to death. Discovered among the ruins the following morning was a women’s infirmary, where four women and eleven children had sought to escape the fighting by hiding in a cellar-like pit.
All the children and two of the women died. One survivor, Mary Petrucci, lost three of her own children in the infirmary. Years later, she recalled, “I came out of the hole. There was light and lots of smoke. I wandered among the ashes until a priest found me. I couldn’t feel anything. I was cold.”
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