At its peak in 1910, the coal mining industry in Colorado employed 15,864 people. That number accounted for 10% of the state’s jobs. The industry was dominated by just a few operators, with Colorado Fuel and Iron being the largest in the West and one of the most powerful corporations in the country. The large and powerful corporations cand cause more than a few problems. At one point, Colorado Fuel and Iron employed 7,050 people and controlled 71,837 acres of coal land. John D Rockefeller bought a controlling stake in the company in 1902, and nine years later handed over that stake to his son, John D Rockefeller Jr, who ran the business from his offices at 26 Broadway in New York.
Mining was tough and risky work. In Colorado, the miners faced constant dangers like explosions, suffocation, and collapsing walls. Back in 1912, the death rate in the state’s mines was 7.06 per 1,000 workers. That was more than double the national average of 3.15. Safety concerns were a big part of the reason for the strike. Suffering attempts to suppress union activity, the United Mine Workers of America secretly continued its unionization efforts in the years leading up to 1913. Eventually, the union presented a list of seven demands: 1. Recognition of the union as bargaining agent. 2. Compensation for digging coal at a ton rate based on 2,000 pounds (previous ton rates were of long tons of 2,200 pounds). 3. Enforcement of the eight-hour work-day law. 4. Payment for “dead work” (laying track, timbering, handling impurities, etc.). 5. Weight checkmen elected by the workers (to keep company weightmen honest). 6. Right to use any store, and to choose their boarding houses and doctors. 7. Strict enforcement of Colorado’s laws (such as mine safety rules, abolition of scrip), and an end to the company guard system.
The major coal companies turned down the demands, and in September 1913, the United Mine Workers of America called a strike. Striking workers were forced out of their company homes and relocated to tent villages set up by the union. These tents, built on wooden platforms and equipped with cast-iron stoves, stood on land the union had leased in anticipation of the strike. Ending the strike which had become quite bitter took a terrible turn. Colorado militiamen attacked a tent colony of striking workers, killing dozens of men, women, and children. After eviction attempts failed to end the strike, the Rockefeller interests hired private detectives who assaulted the colonies with rifles and Gatling guns. The miners fought back, and several were killed. When it became clear the strikers wouldn’t give up, the Rockefellers turned to the governor of Colorado, who authorized the deployment of the National Guard, with the Rockefellers agreeing to cover their wages.
At first, the strikers believed the National Guard had come to protect them, but they quickly realized that wasn’t the case. The militia was there to crush the strike…one way or the other. On April 20, 1914, two companies of guardsmen attacked the largest tent colony near Ludlow, home to about 1,000 men, women, and children. The assault began in the morning with a barrage of bullets into the tents, prompting miners to fire back with pistols and rifles. When a strike leader was killed while trying to negotiate a truce, fears grew that the attack would escalate. Women and children hid in pits beneath the tents to avoid gunfire. By dusk, guardsmen descended from the hills, setting the colony ablaze with torches and shooting at families as they fled. The full horror emerged the next day, when a telephone linesman found a pit under one tent containing the burned remains of 11 children and two women.
The “Ludlow Massacre” sparked outrage across the country, but it brought little relief to the struggling Colorado 
miners and their families. Federal troops were sent in to break the coal miners’ strike, and the workers ended up with no union recognition or meaningful gains in pay or working conditions. Over the course of the strike, 66 men, women, and children lost their lives, yet not one militiaman or private detective faced criminal charges.
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