35. The Ludlow Strike and massacre in Colorado
Rockefeller was one underwriter of a loan which led him, through and with his son John Jr, to gain a controlling interests in subsidiaries of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. In 1913 and 1914 labor violence among the coal miners, corporate interests, and labor organizers led to violence which included the deaths of women and children in the mining camps. Although the Rockefellers were not personally involved in the violence nor the hiring of the strikebreakers which led to it, and despite relief efforts undertaken by the Rockefeller Foundation in the aftermath, public opinion fanned by an outraged (and often outrageously inaccurate) press condemned the Rockefellers, and his public reputation reached its nadir.