Ludlow massacre

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The camp after the massacre
The Ludlow Memorial to the victims of the Ludlow Massacre

The Ludlow Massacre was a bloody National Guard attack on striking miners in Ludlow , Colorado on April 20, 1914, killing 25. In the area of ​​today's ghost town, the Ludlow Monument stands in memory of the victims. The site of what was then the Ludlow Tent Colony has been a National Historic Landmark since 2009 .

Colorado Coal Field

Ludlow lies below the Sangre de Cristo Range at the exit of two valleys in which several important coal mines were located. They belonged to the Rockefeller family , especially their Colorado Fuel & Iron Company , based in Pueblo .

Has come almost worked for the mines only fresh to the United States immigrants . The working and living conditions of the miners were unreasonable.

The workers were only paid according to the coal mined, not by hours, so all preparatory and securing work was not paid. The scales on which the conveying capacity was measured were often manipulated. Due to the climate in the mountains, work in the opencast mines was only possible seasonally, so that hardly any worker worked more than 200 days. Because they owned all of the land around the mine, the workers had to live in company apartments and the rent was deducted directly from their wages. So-called scrips , private currencies of the mining company, with which the workers could only shop in the company's shops at the company's prices , were sometimes issued as wages . The practice was illegal, but the coal-mining towns of southern Colorado lacked a functioning judiciary. Labor regulations and the fundamental norms of labor law were also not complied with. The accident rate was twice the national average.

The strike

Since a wave of strikes in 1903, in the course of which the previously employed Irish and Welsh were laid off and replaced by strikebreakers , immigrants from southern and southeastern Europe in particular, especially Italians and Greeks, as well as Mexicans and African-Americans, have worked in southern Colorado.

In September 1913, the United Mine Workers of America organized a strike in the coal towns of Colorado. Striking workers were expelled from the factory settlements and moved to tent cities that were built at the valley exits. The situation was intended to prevent strikebreakers from being brought into the mines. The Ludlow Tent Colony at the Ludlow freight yard was the largest of these tent cities, with a population that fluctuated over time. The highest number is estimated at 1,300 residents, including 500 workers, 300–400 women and the rest children. The mining companies brought in and intimidated scabs and a private security company specializing in breaking miners' strikes from West Virginia . They illuminated the tent cities with searchlights at night and drove past the tents in an improvised armored car and shot them with a machine gun .

The National Guard

When the strikers armed themselves, Governor Elias M. Ammons called in the National Guard . This was initially neutral, but soon sided with the company's interests. The commander of the National Guard had already been involved in the crackdown on a strike in 1904 and increasingly called employees of the mine security service to the guard. He locked strikers in cattle gates, suspended their habeas corpus rights and ordered the use of the cavalry against a demonstration by women and children of those illegally detained. Strikers were murdered sporadically. At the beginning of April 1914, the high costs for the militia, which had been called up for six months now, threatened the state bankruptcy of Colorado, which is why all units except two companies were dismissed. The conflict had to be ended quickly to avoid costs.

April 20th was the Orthodox Easter of the Greek strikers. In the morning, for reasons unknown, a firefight began between the National Guard and the strikers. When a train pulled into the station and stood briefly between the tent city and the soldiers, almost all residents of the tents were able to flee.

The National Guard then put the tents on fire and started the camp plunder . Two women and ten children who were hiding in a pit under the floor of one of the tents died. Another boy was deliberately shot. Three leaders of the strikers who had met to negotiate with officers of the Guard in the train station were murdered after the fighting began. A total of 25 people were killed that day, including three National Guardsmen and one completely bypassed person.

The consequences

As a result of the news of the Ludlow massacre, the conflicts in the other tent cities escalated into open rioting for ten days. The strikers attacked mines, burned them down, took senior executives hostage and shot members of the company's security services. Sections of the National Guard called to help sympathized with the workers, mutinied and refused to take action against the strikers. The violence did not end until Governor Ammons, at the urging of demonstrators , asked the federal government for support from the army , which is considered neutral . 1,600 soldiers arrived on May 1st and disarmed all civilians, including auxiliary police, and confiscated all stocks from arms dealers. They also prevented the use of strikebreakers from other states. The strikes continued peacefully until December 1914 and resulted in the union being largely defeated. 66 people were killed during the strike.

The events drew the attention of the media on the east coast to the conditions in the mining towns. In particular, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. has been blamed by the newspapers for the exploitation of workers. He then hired the PR specialist Ivy Lee and invested large sums of money to improve his image. This is considered to be the birth of corporate public relations . As a result, he brought large parts of the family assets into the Rockefeller Foundation, which was founded in 1913, and made it available for charitable purposes. In 1914 he was one of the most hated people in the country, and around 1920 he was considered the greatest philanthropist . Investigations took place at all levels of politics, and a lieutenant in the National Guard was the only person involved and convicted of hitting the head of a subsequently murdered strike leader with the butt of his rifle, which was classified as inadmissible. Jane Addams , Max Eastman , Mother Jones , John Reed , Walter Lippmann and Upton Sinclair wrote about the Ludlow massacre . In the medium and long term, the labor laws were strengthened and the living and working conditions of workers improved.

The United Mine Workers of America union later bought 16 hectares of land in Ludlow and erected the Ludlow Monument for the victims of the massacre in 1918. It was desecrated by strangers in 2003 and restored until 2005. From 1997 to 2002 Ludlow was examined archaeologically . In the process, knowledge was gained about the living conditions of the strikers, for example about their arming with small-caliber shotguns , which did not pose a threat to the National Guard. The Ludlow Town Colony Site was designated a National Historic Landmark on January 16, 2009 . The massacre was processed by Woody Guthrie in his 1944 song Ludlow Massacre .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ This chapter draws heavily on the Colorado Coal Field Project: A History of the Colorado Coal Field War . University of Denver, 2000 (accessed December 22, 2009)
  2. ↑ a b National Park Service: National Historic Landmark Nomination - Ludlow Tent Colony Site (accessed January 22, 2016; PDF; 2.4 MB)
  3. ↑ Michael Turney: Ivy Lee was decades ahead of his colleagues . Northern Kentucky University.
  4. ^ Colorado Coal Field Project: The Archeology of the Coal Field Project . University of Denver 2000 (accessed December 22, 2009)
  5. ^ Ludlow Town Colony Site. In: National Historic Landmarks Program (NHL). National Park Service , accessed February 8, 2013 .

Coordinates: 37 ° 20 ′  N , 104 ° 35 ′  W