This book by Thomas G. Andrews begins with a description of the United Mine Worker strike in Colorado in 1913 that lasted several months. Violence could finally no longer be contained, and on April 20, 1914 open warfare broke out between the Colorado state militia and “…hundreds of striking coal miners of more than a dozen nationalities.” The canvas tents at Ludlow where the miners and their families were living caught fire, and two women and eleven children were asphyxiated in their cellar hideout. The book does not speculate on which side fired the first shot, but both sides blamed the other. There were many killed by the time the “Ten Days War” ended when President Woodrow Wilson sent in federal troops. The author says that a key premise of current politics continues to be that fairness and justice for working people must be achieved “…through intervention of national unions, the Democratic Party, and the federal government.”
I highly recommend the book. It is well and fairly written, and has fascinating history about the history of Colorado, the land, the environment, the people, and the conflicts between coal miners and mine owners.
The origin of opening the coal mines of Colorado is traced to William Jackson Palmer who had his apprenticeship studying the coal mining industries of England, and he was appalled at some of the working conditions he observed in those mines. “Mine work seemed to turn boys into drones, women into men, and manly laborers into ‘an inferior class of beings’.” Palmer didn’t immediate building a coal mining empire. He organized a Union light cavalry unit to fight in the Civil War. He was a brevet general by the end of the war and thus was the highest ranking Quaker on either side of the conflict. The end of the war freed Palmer to begin building an empire seeking to extract coal, or “buried sunshine” and begin powering the transformation of Colorado. Industry (mostly blast furnaces and smelters), trains, and homes were fueled. Farming prospered because there was energy to pump irritation water out of the Ogallala aquifer. Of course the air smelled of smoke from the burned coal. A Denver Post cartoon celebrated the end of a strike in 1899 and “…depicted the welcome return of inky black billows to the urban skyline above a caption that said…Prosperity.” Beneath “…the glitter of gold and silver (of Colorado mining) lay the grime of coal.”
Palmer stated that he intended to pay workers enough to have some left for saving and investing. He also gave them the opportunities for stock options and profit sharing. Coal barons who followed were less interested in the welfare of the miners.
The descriptions of the broad diversity of the nationalities of the coal miners, or colliers, who were lured to Colorado from far reaches of the world by the promise of well-paying jobs, is an interesting component of the book. Agents developed credit systems for destitute people who wanted to immigrate and the transportation lines profited as the number of immigrants swelled. The harsh conditions made me wonder why someone would travel across the planet to work in the mines. One mine inspector wrote that “…it seems that death lurks…” Electrification brought exposed wires, cages carrying the workers to the depths sometimes smashed, and power drills created clouds of choking dust. These hazards were added to the risk of death from explosion, cave in, carbon monoxide and other toxins in addition to the physical problems from working deep underground in heat with poor lighting and performing back-breaking labor. George Orwell once wrote, “Watching coal-miners work you realize momentarily what different universes different people inhabit.” There were 1,708 Colorado mine deaths between 1884 and 1912.
There are some descriptions of the mines that are on the light-hearted side. The mines were often inhabited by large numbers of mice, and the men welcomed and fed and even named them. The men found the playful and harmless creatures a welcome distraction from the long hours working under dangerous conditions. The mice were also the miners “canaries,” since they were very susceptible to very small amounts of carbon monoxide and were vibrations that warned of a roof cracking overhead. The miners watched the mice closely and responded if one keeled over or scurried away. Mules were a different story. The animals were bred to be either quite large or small, to match the height of the mines. However, almost all of the mules contributed to earning the description “stubborn as a mule.”
The men were paid by the tons of coal they mined and not for “dead work” involving activities such as building supporting timbers. They would gamble with their lives by skimping on erecting support structures to maximize the time they could be mining coal. The toiling men and animals depleted oxygen by breathing heavily from their labors, and made them, among other symptoms, indifferent, because of the low oxygen content of the mine air. There were atmospheric conditions the miners called “stinkdamp” (hydrogen sulfide), “blackdamp” (carbon monoxide mixed with other noxious vapors), “afterdamp” (heavy concentrations of carbon monoxide), and “firedamp” (methane).
The latter part of the book describes how the union grew stronger as the resentment for the working conditions and pay of the miners increased. The story is told with significant human interest insights. As an example, it is told how an African American working with an Italian immigrant enjoyed pointing out that at the end of the shift they were both black. But there was little if any humor in the dealings of the companies with the union, and labor relations worsened steadily. The union made seven demands when they went on strike in 1912. The first demand was that the union be recognized. The other six demanded better pay, better working conditions, and ending the “company town” practice. Colorado Governor Ammons initially chose not to intervene. He was warned of the volatility in the Ludlow camp, and relented to send state militiamen after there had been several gun battles.
Ammons summoned three Union officials and three key company executives to his office for a marathon negotiation to settle the strike. The company officials announced they were ready to agree to all of the union demands with the exception of recognizing the union. The union men held fast to that being the most important demand. They said “…that only through a union could they educate green men, settle grievances, and uphold the miners’ self-determined laws of safety and mutualism.” The meeting therefore failed to reach an agreement, and outrageous behavior continued on both sides while the people of Colorado worried about a “coal famine.”
President Wilson responded to the escalating violence by sending in federal troops, and the strike zone was declared “silent.” The costly fifteen-month struggle was ended by a unanimous vote by the miners.
My favorite line in the book is in the Acknowledgments, where the author describes the struggles at researching the complex history and writing the book. He writes, “History isn’t Rocket Science—it’s harder.”