The Ludlow Massacre, Colorado 1914
The Southern Colorado Coal Strike lasted from September 1913 until December 1914. Organized by the UMW the strike was against several coal mining companies including the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, owned by John D. Rockefeller. After several years of organizing in secret among the Colorado miners, in 1913 the UMW presented a list of demands to the mine operators. The union also leased land near the entrances to mine areas for the purpose of erecting tent cities in the event that the owners denied the demands and evicted miners from their company homes.
When their demands were rejected out of hand the miners went on strike. Rockefeller and the other owners hired the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, known for aggressively conducting strikebreaking. The agency operated an armored car which patrolled the mines to protect strikebreakers and to intimidate the strikers by occasionally shooting at them or the tent cities housing their families.
Incidents of violence between strikers and strikebreakers led to the deployment of the National Guard, which ordered the destruction of one of the tent cities, Forbes, in March. The tent city was destroyed while unoccupied. By this time, although the strikers remained in place, the support of the Baldwin-Felts Agents and the National Guard had allowed the mine operators to replace most of the union workers with strikebreakers, and mine production was not seriously impaired.
On April 20 National Guard troops demanded that a man they alleged was being held against his will in one of the tent cities be released. Shortly after this demand was made the tent city was attacked from a machine gun emplacement and by troops on either side. Many miners and their families fled from the camp using a passing train to shelter them from the bullets. By evening the tent city was in flames, after the fires were out bodies were found of women and children who had taken shelter from the gunfire by hiding in pits beneath their tents. Nineteen people were killed.
In the aftermath outraged armed miners attacked numerous mines and support companies, leading to more than fifty deaths throughout Colorado. The UMW withdrew the strike after running out of money to support it. Most of the miners by then had been replaced. To improve living conditions for the miners and his public image Rockefeller hired management experts to make the company towns more livable and the working conditions for the miners safer.