[Mb-civic] Rockefeller history lesson

[Mike Blaxill]

This is an excerpt from Howard Zinn's People's
History book (chapter 13) about a mining strike
in Colorado involving a company owned by the
Rockefellers.  While we've made some progress
since the early 1900's, I see parallels to the
ways that entrenched corporate interests, even
our "trusted" NY Times (ahem, Judy Miller...),
scratch each others backs when the going gets
rough. Enjoy.

---------------------------------------------

 "a telephone linesman going through the ruins of
the
     Ludlow tent colony ... found the charred,
twisted bodies
     of eleven children and two women.  This
became known as
     the Ludlow Massacre."

The Ludlow Massacre

"... shortly after Woodrow Wilson took office
there began in
Colorado one of the most bitter and violent
struggles between
workers and corporate capital in the history of
the country.

"This was the Colorado coal strike that began in
September 1913
and culminated in the 'Ludlow Massacre' of April
1914.  Eleven
thousand miners in southern Colorado ... worked
for the
Colorado Fuel & Iron Corporation, which was owned
by the
Rockefeller family.  Aroused by the murder of one
of their
organizers, they went on strike against low pay,
dangerous
conditions, and feudal domination of their lives
in towns
completely controlled by the mining companies. 
...

"When the strike began, the miners were
immediately evicted
from  their shacks in the mining towns.  Aided by
the United
Mine Workers Union, they set up tents in the
nearby hills and
carried on the strike, the picketing, from these
tent colonies. 
The gunmen hired by the Rockefeller interests --
the Baldwin-
Felts Detective Agency -- using Gatling guns and
rifles, raided
the tent colonies.  The death list of miners
grew, but they
hung on, drove back an armored train in a gun
battle, fought to
keep out strikebreakers.  With the miners
resisting, refusing
to give in, the mines not able to operate, the
Colorado
governor (referred to by a Rockefeller mine
manager as 'our
little cowboy governor') called out the National
Guard, with
the Rockefellers supplying the Guard's wages.

"The miners at first thought the Guard was sent
to protect
them, and greeted its arrival with flags and
cheers.  They soon
found out the Guard was there to destroy the
strike.  The Guard
brought strikebreakers in under cover of night,
not telling
them there was a strike.  Guardsmen beat miners,
arrested them
by the hundreds, rode down with their horses
parades of women
in the streets of Trinidad, the central town in
the area.  And
still the miners refused to give in.  When they
lasted through
the cold winter of 1913-1914, it became clear
that
extraordinary measures would be needed to break
the strike.

"In April 1914, two National Guard companies were
stationed in
the hills overlooking the largest tent colony of
strikers, the
one at Ludlow, housing a thousand men, women,
children.  On the morning of April 20, a machine
gun attack began on the tents. The miners fired
back.  Their leader, ..., was lured up into
the hills to discuss a truce, then shot to death
by a company
of National Guardsmen.  The women and children
dug pits beneath the tents to escape the gunfire.
 At dusk, the Guard moved down from  the hills
with torches, set fire to the tents, and the
families fled into the hills; thirteen people
were killed by
gunfire.

"The following day, a telephone linesman going
through the
ruins of the Ludlow tent colony lifted an iron
cot covering a
pit in one of the tents and found the charred,
twisted bodies
of eleven children and two women.  This became
known as the
Ludlow Massacre.

"The news spread quickly over the country.  In
Denver, the
United Mine Workers issued a 'Call to Arms' --
'Gather together
for defensive purposes all arms and ammunition
legally
available.' Three hundred armed strikers marched
from other
tent colonies into the Ludlow area, cut telephone
and telegraph
wires, and prepared for battle.  Railroad workers
refused to
take soldiers from Trinidad to Ludlow.  At
Colorado Springs,
three hundred union miners walked off their jobs
and headed for
the Trinidad district, carrying revolvers,
rifles, shotguns.

"In Trinidad itself, miners attended a funeral
service for the
twenty-six dead at Ludlow, then walked from the
funeral to a
nearby building, where arms were stacked for
them.  They picked up rifles and moved into the
hills, destroying mines, killing mine guards,
exploding mine shafts.  The press reported that
'the hills in every direction seem suddenly to be
alive with
men.'

"In Denver, eighty-two soldiers in a company on a
troop train
headed for Trinidad refused to go.  The press
reported: 'The
men declared they would not engage in the
shooting of women and children.  They hissed the
350 men who did start and shouted imprecations at
them.

"Five thousand people demonstrated in the rain on
the lawn in
front of the state capital at Denver asking that
the National
Guard officers at Ludlow be tried for murder,
denouncing the
governor as an accessory.  The Denver Cigar
Makers Union voted
to send five hundred armed men to Ludlow and
Trinidad.  Women in the United Garment Workers
Union in Denver announced four hundred of their
members had volunteered as nurses to help the
strikers.

"All over the country there were meetings,
demonstrations. 
Pickets marched in front of the Rockefeller
office at 26
Broadway, New York City.  A minister protested in
front of the
church where Rockefeller sometimes gave sermons,
and was
clubbed by the police.

"The New York Times carried an editorial on the
events in
Colorado, which were not attracting international
attention. 
The Times emphasis was not on the atrocity that
had occurred,
but on the mistake in tactics that had been made.
 Its
editorial on the Ludlow Massacre began: 'Somebody
blundered ...'  Two days later, with the miners
armed and in the hills of
the mine district, the Times wrote: 'With the
deadliest weapons
of civilization in the hands of savage-mined men,
there can be
no telling to what lengths the war in Colorado
will go unless
it is quelled by force ... The President should
turn his
attention from Mexico long enough to take stern
measures in
Colorado.'

"The governor of Colorado ask for federal troops
to restore
order, and Woodrow Wilson complied.  This
accomplished, the
strike petered out.  Congressional committees
came in and took
thousands of pages of testimony.  The union had
not won
recognition.  Sixty-six men, women, and children
had been
killed.  Not one militiaman or mine guard had
been indicted for
crime.

[...]

"The Times had referred to Mexico.  On the
morning that the
bodies were discovered in the tent pit at Ludlow,
American
warships were attacking Vera Cruz, a city on the
coast of
Mexico--bombarding it, occupying it, leaving a
hundred Mexicans dead--because Mexico had
arrested American sailors and refused to
apologize to the United States with a twenty-one
gun salute. 

Could patriotic fervor and the military spirit
cover up class
struggle?  Unemployment, hard times, were growing
in 1914. 
Could guns divert attention and create some
national consensus
against an external enemy?  It surely was a
coincidence--the
bombardment of Vera Cruz, the attack on the
Ludlow colony.  Or
perhaps it was, as someone once described human
history, 'the
natural selection of accidents.'  Perhaps the
affair in Mexico
was an instinctual response of the system for its
own survival,
to create a unity of fighting purpose among a
people torn by
internal conflict.

"The bombardment of Vera Cruz was a small
incident.  But in
four months the First World War would begin in
Europe.
                           --oOo--