October 18, 2024 • 42 mins
As tensions between striking miners, local law and the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company reached a head, all sides of the conflict became increasingly hostile. In the second chapter of this two-part series, Ben, Matt and Noel explore the outbreak of the Ludlow Massacre, along with the aftermath that reverberates in the modern day.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nolh.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. In a rare two
part episode, we are diving into the darkly disturbing, the
frankly terrifying story of something called the Ludlow massacre. And
(01:03):
when we're talking off air, you know, we realized that
this had to be a two part episode because there
was so much to get to, especially the aftermath and implications.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yeah, there's a ton of details here. What we recorded
for like an hour forty or something overall on this episode. Yeah,
it was. It's a long conversation.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
It goes in a lot of directions. We all have
a lot to say about this. We also please, we
I always said, exhort, We plead with you, fellow conspiracy
realist to check out episode one or part one of
this episode before you dive into episode two.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Well, yeah, because the context is everything, and then applying
that context and these specific things that occurred back in
nineteen fourteen to two twenty twenty four and just what
we're going through now, this is important stuff.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
One hundred percent. So let's jump right back into this
episode on the Ledlow massacre already in progress.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Look, the bullwood Feltz folks got up to some pretty
nasty stuff, especially in the tent colonies, including Ludlow, but
including other ten colonies because there were multiple. They would
have these big search lights and they would wait until
late at night and they would just roam the search
lights around the tents. Again, these are canvas tents, so
(02:29):
the whole tent lights up. They would also they built
a special evil car, an armored car called the Death
Special that had a machine gun mounted on it, and
they would drive by the edges of the cap and
just rat through the windows or through the tent.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
I don't think it's this exact agency that's depicted, but
a lot of this kind of behavior is very well,
kind of dramatized in that Woody Got three movie.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
I was talking about Bound from Glory m Yeah, and
I can see it in that from you know, these
very real events. They were also detaining people, they were
doing sniper attacks, sometimes some folks who might be union leadership,
and at the whole the.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Whole time, assassinations.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I mean, most of this is intimidation, like that's you
can see that, that's what they're doing. But some of
it is, like I'm assuming, going after lives.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah, people died. And then at the same time, you know,
the so called scab workers. We have to give them
a moment. They're like anybody else, They're just trying to
have a job, and they've probably already traversed hundreds of miles,
probably in an immigration situation or leaving, you know, a
(03:43):
very dangerous rural situation. They're they're saying, I'm not the enemy,
but the union is saying, if you're not with us,
then you're against us. And so there are also fatal
confrontations between union workers on strike and the so called scabs.
So this is very dirty business all around. This is
the dawn of something that is much larger in scope.
(04:06):
It's called the Colorado Whole Field War. Again, not in
your history textbooks at least in grade school or if
you had I don't know if you somehow had Howard
Zen at your career day. Yeah, do you think he
does or did career days? Sure, that'd be cool. I
would do. I missed doing career days. I used to
(04:28):
do them all the time. Have you guys ever done one?
Speaker 4 (04:31):
I haven't. I mean I've participated in one on the
you know, student end of it when I was a kid.
But that'd be a lot of fun. I would love
to go and talk about the wonderful world of podcast.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
You guys can come with me next time if you want.
Why do you do this?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
I've done like single days out of school, like a
career talk, like, hey, let's talk to this guy. Tell
us about your job.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
Dad.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
That's in me.
Speaker 5 (04:55):
Damn.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
I do those things. I've been doing those for a
long time. And you know, once you accept that you
are never going to be the most popular career Day guest,
then it's a wonderful opportunity. It's really cool. Hang. The
most popular guest is always the guy with the fire
truck boom the fire truck. He runs the game. He
(05:18):
is the Rockefeller of career day.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Do you make like a poster of three? A trifle?
Poster board says like podcasts the Future of Radio.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
The first time I did it, I played some videos
that we have worked on and I gave out a
bunch of house stuff works swag. Nice or the first
time I did it for this occupation. And you know,
if you got the swag, then you got the crowd
in grade school at least it probably works in college too, right,
Who doesn't want a free T shirt.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Shot glasses that just say listen to the cast, like
and subscribe shotglasses. Yeah for the college kids.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Okay, well, you know, if we get a price break
on the shot glasses, maybe we can get away with
it in grade school, like give this to your parents.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
What could go wrong? That's the question Colorado Governor Elias
m Ammon's asked when this violence is continuing to escalate.
And again, you know, the story is often explained in
terms of the men who are working as miners or
working for this detective agency or these local guards. But
(06:30):
we have to remember there were many more women and children. Right.
The population is much bigger than it sounds when you
hear some of these round numbers. The governor calls in
the Colorado National Guard, yes, a militia. On October twenty
eighth and at first the Guard seemed kind of calm,
but later evidence would show that the Guard troopers were,
(06:51):
in fact a lot of them being paid the under
the table by Colorado Fuel and Iron.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Gee, that's it's weird. How could that happen?
Speaker 3 (07:03):
I mean, think of it this way, like the Dave
and Busters example. So we're in that daven Buster's company town,
we strike, and we say pay us dollars, and then
the Atlanta Police Department comes in, or the Georgia Troopers
come in, as a better example, and they crack down
on us, and it turns out that they're getting paid
by Dave and Busters.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Dave, why Buster?
Speaker 3 (07:27):
No? Your name is so fun. An example of this
would be the adjutant there we go General for the
National Guard on the case, John Chase. John Chase has,
similar to Baldwin Felt, he has a reputation for breaking strikes.
About a decade earlier, he was involved during the Cripple
(07:50):
Creek strike, which is its own own back of badgers.
And there are a couple of inciting events, right, and
these kind of things you always look for what the
pivotal moment is, right, what is the cause of belly
or belly. On March tenth, nineteen fourteen, one of the
scab worker bodies is found on the railroad tracks near Forbes, Colorado,
(08:14):
and Forbes also has a tent colony a little smaller
than Ludlow. What happens when they find the body.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
So the guard blamed the strikers, which, Matt, you made
a point off, Mike, that certainly would be an obvious,
first choice, first line of questioning, given the controversy and
the fact that there's a lot of there's no love
loss between the union members and these quote unquote scabs.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Yeah, and so they decide to retaliate, and.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Yeah, they go in and they just talk to people right, calmly.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Well they would have if they were worried about what
we call proportional response, but they're not. Instead, they completely
destroy the nearby tent colony. Oh over in Forbes. The
strikers are just further galvanized by this, because usually in
these situations you'll see a growth in unity and commitment
(09:10):
to a cause before you break the back, right, and
so the violence escalates. It's nineteen fourteen and Colorado Fuel
and Iron is starting to run their numbers. You know,
they're Q two or Q three numbers, and they say
it's actually getting too expensive for us to maintain these troops,
(09:33):
and so in step with the politicians the governor, they
decrease the amount of National Guard on the ground and
this results in an increase in violence because now more
of those fatal conflicts can occur.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
YEP. And then on Sunday, April nineteenth, so that's like
just a month and change afterwards, in nineteen fourteen, the
National Guard creates a big circle around the camp, so
they're stationed all around the camp. Basic there's no way
to run, no direction out of the camp. You can
run without running past some National guardsmen. And they also
(10:07):
install a machine gun, so we're talking like military grade
weapons on a bluff above the camp, so overlooking the camp. Basically,
if anything happens down there, this machine gun can probably
reach you with.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Its bullets higher elevation. So yeah, let's step back a
little because I like that we're pointing out there's a
murkiness to it. The climax of this part of the
war is at that Ludlow ten colony. It's April nineteenth
when they install the machine gun. Wee hours almost April twentieth.
The next day, the National Guard does attack to that
(10:44):
earlier point. No one sure exactly what instigated the violence,
but the most popular account you can find in historical
records says that the day after some members of the
colony celebrated the Orthodox Easter, three guardsmen approached the camp,
so there's no firing yet, and they say, hey, you're
(11:05):
holding someone against their will. Let them go. Go fish,
We don't have the person you're looking for. The leader
of the camp is a guy named Louis Tikas Tikas,
and he gets an offer from these guardsmen. At the
same time, they say, hey, come meet us about a
half mile away in Ludlow Village. This is getting out
(11:28):
of control, right, just for the good of the families,
let's talk true. So come meet our leader, Major Patrick J.
Hamrock dumb last name, it's his real last name.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Maybe a little nominate determinism there too, And they meet
at a train station in Ludlow Village, about a half
mile from the colony. And while this meeting was going down,
two separate militias, the ones running that machine gun, take
positions strategic positions along a rail route about half a
mile south of blood Log and it's not almost like
(12:01):
they're laying the groundwork for an ambush, right.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
So at the same time, simultaneously, concurrently there are miners
Union miners who are armed Greek miners, and they begin
flanking this other arroyo. And when two of the militia
forces explosions occur later we'll learn outside of the fog war.
(12:25):
These are detonated to draw support from National Guard units,
and these explosions alert the Ludlow tenth colony. Most of
the people have heard, you know, three National Guards are here,
right and have seen someone trying to make that siege perimeter,
but they don't really know what's happening, so they hear
(12:47):
the explosions. The miners at this point are pretty well
militarized themselves. They take up positions at the bottom of
the hill right, So again the elevation here is a
big factor. The militia opens fire and then hundreds of
miners their families they run for cover. Chaos is raining.
Three of the strike leaders, including Tikas, are captured and
(13:10):
killed by the Guard. It very much does seem like
the Guard lied to him. They conspired to lure tik
Us out and never intended to make a truce.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
There's reccounts that just say they're shot and left to
their left where they died. Right, They just left their
bodies there. They didn't do anything ceremoniously. They didn't pick
up their bodies and take them to you know, whatever
hospital or you know, whatever medical assistance they were there.
They just shot them and their bodies fell.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Yeah, the bodies hit the floor. The strikers are out
gunned and they're you know, they're exercising gutty tactics, but
they run out of ammo with that.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Let's take a quick break here a word from our sponsors,
and return with more on the Ludlow massacre. And we're back.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
And so a lot of people retreat to the countryside
right to gather forces and figure out their next step.
A lot of women and children, because they've already had
this siege mentality. A lot of women and children hide
in cellars that have been dug beneath these canvas tents.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Because they're bullets flying right.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Right, and these are not the fancy pants cellars of
old New England. These are holes in the ground. The
guard responds by dousing the tents and kerosene and setting
them a flame.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
And the big question for history here is how yeah,
how awhere were they that most of these tents had
something dug beneath them Because of the cold that we
talked about, one of the main ways to get away
from that cold is to go a bit underground. And like,
did any of those National guards men know? It seems
(15:03):
like one person could have raised their hand and said, hey, whoa, whoa.
But again, this is a big movement. These are a
lot of National guardsmen doing this is not one or
two dowsing with kerosene and then setting fires. It's going
through and systematically clearing this tent.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
The banality of evil which we discussed earlier, I was
just following orders. Yeah, we have to remember the National
Guard here is pulled from people who are loosely familiar
with the area. It was not an uncommon practice, especially
in inclement weather, to dig into the ground like that. So
it is possible that they didn't know or didn't think
(15:41):
about it in the heat of the heat of the conflict,
but it is it begs probability right to say that
it didn't occur once. I mean, especially in just one
cellar alone. There were eleven children and two women found
burned and suffocated to death, body so mangled that it's
impossible to know which of these tortures events actually killed them.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yeah, but it's likely that just the flames above them,
filling that cellar with smoke got to them.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
First, the oxygen out as well.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Yeah, So are you saying they thought the tents were
empty because they weren't aware of the dugout cellars or
it's by design, like I mean, they were they were
intending to burn.
Speaker 6 (16:27):
People alive, basically, right, it's highly It is cartoonishly unlikely
that they would not have thought about people having cellars
dug under the tents.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
It is incredibly unlikely.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
Where do they think they were? Like, I mean it,
don't you know?
Speaker 2 (16:47):
I mean, I agree with you. It's it's hard for
me to come to grips with knowing how bad of
a situation it would be for the company, Right, that's
once gets out that women and children were burn their
lives like that, So it's hard for me to grasp like, well,
(17:08):
was it on purpose? Was it an accident or was
it just oversight? Or I mean, are they trying to
send a message to the striking miners will kill your family.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
At least some of at least some of them had
to know because this has burned the village to save
the village type stuff. This is insidious kind of total
war because you're removing any infrastructure. I mean. In total,
the massacre resulted in twenty five deaths, three of whom
were National Guard troops, and there was media on the
(17:38):
scene and photographs of the ten colonies because this tension
had been rising for a while in the Colorado Coalfield War.
There are reports you could see on the ground about
this from a New York Times reporter talking about that
a bit off air, so the deaths were a matter
of national interest. The rest of the country knew about this,
and most people blamed John D. Rockefeller Junior, because you know,
(18:03):
for years, this guy has not really cared about where
his money's coming from. He's out in some fancy pants
part of New York and he's just saying, mall col
bring me more cold, and that's actually pretty close to
what he was doing.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
And to your point, Matt, at this point it becomes
a major optics problem, like a major PR disaster, and
that's more the issue than the actual lives lost. You know,
as far as the company is concerned, I would argue,
I mean, you know, of course they're gonna, in their
pr response probably address the egregious oversights and the over
(18:41):
zealousness of National guardsmen, and how you know their hearts
are with the families. But you know, it's all kind of.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
Smoking mirrors if you haves in prayers, right, are you guys? Okay?
If I read just one short excerpt from this New
York Times article, of course.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Oh absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
April twenty first, the day after the massacre nineteen fourteen. Quote.
Just get a sense. Imagine you're a member of the public, right,
you've never been to Colorado. This is how you're learning
about this. The lud Blow Camp is a massive charred
debris and buried beneath it is a story of horror
imparalleled in the history of industrial warfare. In the holes
(19:20):
which have been dug for their protection against the rifles fire,
the women and children died like trapped rats when the
flames swept over them. Now you're just somebody in Florida
reading this, right, You're just somebody on the West coast
or in Chicago or something. This is how you're learning
(19:41):
about the disastrous, heartbreaking result here that comes entirely from
corporate corruption and stuff.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
Like this that really demonstrates the power of the press
and like how important it is for that poetic description
to go around painfully poetic description where it really starts
to make people understand the stakes and almost for the
first time, perhaps see the evil of the situation.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Yeah, I want to call out our source here, just
because we're talking about how the internet archive is down
and it's really hard to locate that actual New York
Times article unless you're going to a place to find it.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
You can see a great compilation from PBS, right American Experience.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah, exactly, So you can look up PBS American Experience, Rockefellers,
the Ludlow Massacre, and you can find that specific excerpt
that we just read. But there's also all kinds of
other interesting stuff in there in a couple of New
York Times articles from nineteen fourteen that you can find,
but they are mostly a part of the aftermath with
(20:44):
like the Rockefellers coming through and trying to I guess
spin this a little bit.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Yeah, it's a pr stuff I was talking about earlier. Yeah,
it's a different conspiracy, right, And you can see in
there also Rockefeller's timeline, where he appears to be rethinking things,
also speaks with Congress. The America is watching this in rage,
in astonishment. And you don't have to be pro union, right,
(21:13):
there were not everybody was pro union back then? Right then?
Is now you don't have to be pro union to
object to the indiscriminate murder of civilians. And these folks
aren't doing anything wrong. They're not a threat to the
law enforcement of the militia. They're literally hiding in the
ground and try not to die.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
And again to see something to see it's so starkly
that something is very, very broken in this system and
that something has to.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Change, right, that's the idea. Something must be done, and
it continues. The aftermath of this massacre, even though the
public already knows about it, is even worse. This is
followed by something called the Ten Day War, which is
again part of the larger Colorado Coalfield War. So miners
are retaliating for this massacre. Lies. People have lost family members, right,
(22:03):
friends that barely survived, and they say, look, it's now,
it's on site. Right, the time for speaking has passed.
We are attacking anti union town officials. We're attacking strike breakers,
the overseers, the people are running the mines. They take
control of an area about fifty miles long five miles wide.
(22:26):
All in all, fifty people die during this ten day war,
and ultimately it reaches a guy named Woodrow Wilson who
did a couple other things, but one time he was
US president.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
Not particularly popular when it comes to super producer Max
Williams of.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
The Ningians History podcast.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
Yeah, guy was kind of a pill.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Yeah. I like the name Woodrow, but which ruined it
for everybody.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Funny. His boyhood home is actually in my hometown of Augusta, Georgia,
and I once lived on the corner of Woodrow and Wilson.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Yea who That's one of those things where every so
much stuff in the neighborhood gets named after the guy.
Like there's a small town in Tennessee where I want
to say it was it was Johnson or Jackson. But
there's there's a town. We'll follow up on this later.
There's a town where everything is named after that guy.
It's a small town. I only know about it because
(23:22):
I have family living there, and if you ask the
people who live there, like, hey, yeh sure, like this
president they all say no, the only town is now
so he's unpopular.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
But there's a street right out right around where I
live called generally.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Eventually, well, as we were talking about it earlier, they
don't specify which generally that it could be, you know,
like a law about a Russian president, just that a
general general is.
Speaker 6 (23:54):
Named after generally the name Lee, yes, yes, yeah, specifically
is a different cul de sac, but the.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
Perhaps Lady Gaga's character from the New Joker film.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
I'm gonna skip it, I think. But okay, So the
President Woodrow Wilson makes the decision to send in federal troops. Luckily,
these troops are paid by the US government actually, and
not by a corporate mining interest, so they're able to
somewhat well. The disaster and strike negotiations reach an ending point.
(24:29):
They end peacefully on December tenth of that same year.
But the strikers don't really get any of those seven again,
very reasonable demands they made in the first place. A
lot of them go to get arrested.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
Yeah, and four hundred of them go to trials which
last until nineteen twenty, though none were convicted.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
That's so crazy to me, all this strife, all this
loss of life all of the I didn't mean to
rhyme that, you guys, but all of this terrible stuff happened,
and the strikers don't get anything, and then the state
in the country attempt to take all these people to
court and nobody gets convicted. Just what was it for?
Speaker 3 (25:14):
I mean, absolutely nothing, right, geous it Also we also
see that there was one guy, a fellow leader of
the strike called John Art Lawson. He's convicted of murder,
but eventually, once the story moves from the headlines, his
conviction is overturned. There were some like twenty twenty two
(25:38):
National guardsmen originally in trouble. They were going to be
court martialed, they got exonerated. Congress held a bunch of
hearings and didn't do anything.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
Jeez, what were the charges against some of these miners.
They were like being accused of inciting a riot or
of like you know, openly firing on the people who
firing on them, which I would argue is self defense.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Murder, assault, vandalism, destruction of property, maybe theft in some cases.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
But similar to the Leonard Peltzier story we were talking about,
where it's like you just because you have a government
agency descending on you and firing on you does not
make their cause legitimate. And it's at a certain point
they are coming for your life and you have to
defend yourself and not think about the fact that it's
a government subsidized or perhaps even part of the government.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
This is a national Guard we're talking about here, right,
the Colorado.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Yeah, all right, let's take a quick pause here hear
a word from our sponsor, and then come back to
the Ludlow massacre and we have return.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Let's jump right back in. Okay, now we know there's
one big thing that's on all of our minds. Fellow
conspiracy realist, Whatever happened to this poor Rockefeller guy? You
know what I mean? Yeah, he went through so much
he had to write letters. Take a letter he talks
(27:11):
to Congress, right, dictated but not read by Rockefeller Junior.
He does make some tangible improvements. Ultimately, though, he decides
to make his own company sponsored union. Is that alternative
mean classic capitalism?
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (27:28):
But like I mean, it's just it's just kind of
lip service, right, I mean, it evolves understood.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
A better form, but in the beginning, I'm just it
makes me think of one of my favorite lines about capitalism.
Capitalism is the one ideology that figured out. If you
see someone say screw capitalism, you can print it on
a T shirt and sell that T shirt to them.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah, and here you go. I want to read this
statement before we get to this last thing that we're
going to say. Hear about John D.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Rockefeller.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
This is a statement that he made in June of
nineteen fourteen. So massacre occurs in April. This is in
June of nineteen fourteen. This is what Rockefeller stated happened.
He says there was no Ludlow massacre. The entanglement started
as a desperate fight for life by two small squads
(28:23):
of militia against the entire tent colony. There were no
women or children shot by the authorities of the state
or representatives of the operators. While this loss of life
is profoundly to be regretted, it is unjust in the
extreme to lay it at the door of the defenders
of law and property, who were in no slightest way
(28:45):
responsible for it. That thought of the defenders of law
and property isn't that doesn't that strike you, guys as
like representing what police forces are. The American dream be
defenders of law and property.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Yeah, we've spoken about this before, sort of the the
legal standing or prioritization of law enforcement. Right, it comes
up pretty often in protest and.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, well the good guys are the landowners and the
company owners, right, I mean in the at least in
this worldview that he puts out there in June of
nineteen fourteen.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
And it comes back again in just like in that
time and in this time, and in recent years, it
will always come up because it is a dilemma of
philosophic perspective. Right, everybody wants to be the main character.
Nobody wants to be the bad guy, right, And that
is that is an argument Rockefeller makes, and he realizes
(29:48):
that there is another war afoot, another conflict that a
lot of people aren't thinking about in terms of what
it is, which is an optics war, a war of
information and narrative. And this is where we see a
very strange era in public relations. Our buddy Johnny Dee
brings in a PR expert. He's in, Oh the peasants,
(30:11):
hey to me, not only in Colorado, but broad and
the contacts is really innovative. Boober and Shaker, I'm not
being sarcastic, very smart person named Ivy Lee, and Ivy
Lee says, look, we need an optics campaign, Johnny. You
need to go to Colorado yourself, and I need media there.
I need them to take pictures of you shaking the hands,
(30:34):
kissing the babies, hanging out at a church social.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
Shaking the babies, kissing the hands.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Yeah, we need to we need don't shake them too heart.
We need to also have some peopil right, a glowing
kind of homespun exploration of your time, and you know,
a picture you hearing grievances and responding to those. If
we could get you on a home tour, we'll find
you some Rockefeller friendly families. Do you walk with and
(31:00):
go through the facilities? The media loved it, Look said
America the dead so quickly forgotten Old Johnny. De's just
like us. We're not so different you and I. Geez
it worked.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Should we read another excerpt from the visit that we've
got from September twentieth, nineteen fifteen, when Rockefeller's out there
talking to the men and women who run his iron
and coal company. We are all partners in a way
that we were like alluding to, Yeah, do you want
to do. Would you mind doing that? I think you
(31:36):
do awesome.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Well, thank you, Bett, I'm honored bless us with your
reading to play that to a type, to play the
villain here who didn't see himself as a villain. We
are all.
Speaker 5 (31:49):
Partners in a way. Capital can't get along without you Min,
and you min can't get along without capital. When anybody
comes along and tells you that capital and labor can't
get along together, that man is your worst enemy. We
are getting along friendly enough here in his mind right now,
and there's no reason why you men cannot get along
with the managers of my company.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
But I am back in New.
Speaker 7 (32:11):
York migration just petrician that it was just like the
corporate the corporate structury of it too, the baking.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
It answers the question, you know, like I'm not going
to be here.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Yeah, but look look how great we're getting along when
daddy's here, When Daddy goes home, and you guys could
get along and play just fine.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
It does have that energy, right. It does seem to
the people thought, although we're cracking on him and he
deserves it, it does seem that people thought he was
making good faith efforts, you know, what do you guys think?
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Well, I mean there were there were improvements made. The
only counterpoint to it is that I and you kind
of alluded to this earlier ben the way it functions
in capitalism with something like this occurs, there are slight improvements.
You you push the needle just enough right now, the
new standard is there, but it's only moved slightly.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
And something of this magnitude to even get that slight movement,
which is just so frustrating.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah, you need an Act of Congress, You need a
major event. You need something to occur where everybody can
look at it and say, oh, well, we need at
least that, right, And it's always at least that.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Yeah, and the Overton windows shifts again, right, and not
for nothing?
Speaker 4 (33:34):
You know.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Well, some of the more cynical of us in the
crowd say, isn't this like the old story about the
trees who kept voting for the axe to be president
of the forest. You know, the forest got smaller and smaller,
but the trees would get together and they would say,
you know, the axe isn't perfect, but that handles wouldn't.
He's kind of like us. Oh god, it's an antique
(33:59):
that one hurts. Okay, Yeah, And I guess we have
to ask to like, obviously, folks, we've made this in
two parter. We know it's it's a little longer than usual,
but we hope you find it worth your time. It's
it's obviously very important to us as well, and we
have to ask what this tells us about the modern day.
I hope I haven't over salted the soup. That doesn't
(34:22):
make sense, all right, nobody likes the salty soup, but
we might might have mentioned it too much. But do
we see some parallels here or some potential parallels?
Speaker 5 (34:34):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (34:34):
How could you?
Speaker 4 (34:35):
Of course, it sums the whole thing up, and it's
just continued. The struggle continues. We mentioned the sugar industry
and how very very very similarly dangerous conditions and labor
camp type scenarios still exist to this day. So that
micro movement that you're talking about, Matt, I mean, it's
still slow even to this day. And also I was
(34:59):
gonna mention and earlier like it is technically illegal for
companies to retaliate against you know, unionizing workers on paper,
but you know, I have a dear friend who was
recently on strike, you know, in the legal profession in
New York City, and when he returned from strike, there
is very clear retaliatory action taking place, because it's easy
to hide it behind other actions, you know, and it's
(35:22):
just it's hard to prove, and the advantage remains on
the side of the companies, I think for full argument.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Well, also, you know to that point this acquaintance of
mine as well, and you're talking about proving retaliation means
proving intent, and intent is very difficult to prove, especially
when there are so many other things you could throw
up at the screen as the reason. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Well, in the news as we're recording this, on October third,
the International Longshoreman's Association came to terms, and that's forty
five thousand human beings who work in ports, like all
along the Gulf Coast and the East Coast of the
United States. They were going to strike, and that was
gonna be a massive deal for the United States of America. Like,
(36:17):
and we were talking about this offline a lot. We
mentioned it, I think in a strange news but we
were just mentioning the effects that would have on little
things like our ability to get paper towels right and
fresh fruit and things like that, and it would have
massive effects on the lives of everybody, these forty five
(36:39):
thousand people who were represented by this one union. But
thankfully they came to a deal negotiated that basically said
we're gonna postpone our strike until ear I think mid
January of twenty twenty five. So let's get this deal
done or you guys, the United States basically is in trouble.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
Right at least go to the negotiating team. And that
is that leads us to other question. You know, has
the era of the Pinkerton past.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
That I think that I think so, yeah, you can't
crack skulls anymore.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
It's just in this obtree.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
Yeah, the optics of it are just too damaging, you know,
maybe because of the public opinion and all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
So, I mean, they have to tread more lightly.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
And a lot of these anti union, anti labor practices,
I think the most egregious and outward ones we see
are by companies like Amazon and their warehouse employees and
things like that. But my point is they have to
be a little more sneaky about it.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Yeah, that's that was my question. Is the age of
the pinkered in past or has it simply evolved? And
if it has passed to your point, then for how
long is it a permanent passage or is it another
cyclical iteration? Because I think we see that these things
come and go over time. You know, I don't think.
(37:55):
I don't think it's impossible that these kinds of tactics
might return. We know they still happen in other parts
of the world, in other countries. You know, you don't
have to look far to see the merk squads that
certain energy interest will hire up to and including overthrowing
a duly elected government, you know.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
And then we also know that as the individuals and
parties and what have you who hold power kind of shift,
it's possible to roll that stuff back, you know, whether
it be oversights of industry, regulations and things like that
that can be rolled back. You're not wrong, man, But
I do see a future, given an a radical enough shift,
maybe not even that radical, where things like this sort
(38:35):
of labor protection could shift as well.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Guys, we need a new version of the Wire looking
at you, David Simon, We need a new version that
shows all this stuff from the longshoreman to the tycoons
in New York city to write just this shows all
of this stuff working again.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
One season of The Wire though, was the first time
I really understood the inner workings of long shoremen and
a lot of that kind of stuff for the dock
workers there in Baltimore. It's a really good point, as
Simon is really great at kind of explaining the intricacies
of these kinds of relationships and then where the power
structures and all the different you know, involved parties kind
of lie.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
It's a really really smart guy.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Well what does it look like now? And Ben, to
your point, what does that look like when there are
android law enforcement officers patrolling the docks, you know, and
that kind of thing like.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
Yeah, and what does it look like in a surveillance state? Yeah?
This is this is something that made this in our
minds more than worthy of a two part episode. It
seems this conspiracy and the Ludlow massacre tells us a
lot about the modern day, and we want to hear
your stories of similar off obscured history. One thing is
(39:48):
for certain, from Haffa to Colorado, from longshoremen to the
Pinkerton's history is chock full of the stuff they don't
want you to know. So hit us up with your
stories from the u, US, from other countries, from any
time in history. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
Find us all over the internet on your platform of choice.
We are conspiracy Stuff on Facebook, where you can join
our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy. Let us
know what you think about the episodes. Talk with your
fellow conspiracy realists. The floor is yours. We are also
conspiracy stuff on xfka, Twitter, as well as YouTube, where
you can find video content, colure for your enjoyment. On
(40:26):
Instagram and TikTok, however, we are Conspiracy and Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Hey, do you want to call us and tell us
your thoughts? Like this thought from John Lawson, who was
head of the United mind Workers in nineteen fifteen. Here
we go quote, mister Rockefeller has missed the fundamental trouble
in the coal camps. Democracy has never existed among the
men who toil under the ground. The coal companies have
(40:51):
stamped it out. Now, mister Rockefeller is not restoring democracy,
He's trying to substitute paternalism for it. I just thought
that was a really interesting thought, an interesting quote. Do
you have an interesting thought or quote or something you
want to say to us? Call one eight three three
std WYTK. When you call in, give yourself a cool
(41:11):
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If you got more to say than can fit in
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Speaker 3 (41:22):
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we receive. Be well aware, yet out of rate, sometimes
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Speaker 2 (42:00):
Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nolh.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. In a rare two
part episode, we are diving into the darkly disturbing, the
frankly terrifying story of something called the Ludlow massacre. And
(01:03):
when we're talking off air, you know, we realized that
this had to be a two part episode because there
was so much to get to, especially the aftermath and implications.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yeah, there's a ton of details here. What we recorded
for like an hour forty or something overall on this episode. Yeah,
it was. It's a long conversation.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
It goes in a lot of directions. We all have
a lot to say about this. We also please, we
I always said, exhort, We plead with you, fellow conspiracy
realist to check out episode one or part one of
this episode before you dive into episode two.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Well, yeah, because the context is everything, and then applying
that context and these specific things that occurred back in
nineteen fourteen to two twenty twenty four and just what
we're going through now, this is important stuff.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
One hundred percent. So let's jump right back into this
episode on the Ledlow massacre already in progress.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Look, the bullwood Feltz folks got up to some pretty
nasty stuff, especially in the tent colonies, including Ludlow, but
including other ten colonies because there were multiple. They would
have these big search lights and they would wait until
late at night and they would just roam the search
lights around the tents. Again, these are canvas tents, so
(02:29):
the whole tent lights up. They would also they built
a special evil car, an armored car called the Death
Special that had a machine gun mounted on it, and
they would drive by the edges of the cap and
just rat through the windows or through the tent.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
I don't think it's this exact agency that's depicted, but
a lot of this kind of behavior is very well,
kind of dramatized in that Woody Got three movie.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
I was talking about Bound from Glory m Yeah, and
I can see it in that from you know, these
very real events. They were also detaining people, they were
doing sniper attacks, sometimes some folks who might be union leadership,
and at the whole the.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Whole time, assassinations.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I mean, most of this is intimidation, like that's you
can see that, that's what they're doing. But some of
it is, like I'm assuming, going after lives.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah, people died. And then at the same time, you know,
the so called scab workers. We have to give them
a moment. They're like anybody else, They're just trying to
have a job, and they've probably already traversed hundreds of miles,
probably in an immigration situation or leaving, you know, a
(03:43):
very dangerous rural situation. They're they're saying, I'm not the enemy,
but the union is saying, if you're not with us,
then you're against us. And so there are also fatal
confrontations between union workers on strike and the so called scabs.
So this is very dirty business all around. This is
the dawn of something that is much larger in scope.
(04:06):
It's called the Colorado Whole Field War. Again, not in
your history textbooks at least in grade school or if
you had I don't know if you somehow had Howard
Zen at your career day. Yeah, do you think he
does or did career days? Sure, that'd be cool. I
would do. I missed doing career days. I used to
(04:28):
do them all the time. Have you guys ever done one?
Speaker 4 (04:31):
I haven't. I mean I've participated in one on the
you know, student end of it when I was a kid.
But that'd be a lot of fun. I would love
to go and talk about the wonderful world of podcast.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
You guys can come with me next time if you want.
Why do you do this?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
I've done like single days out of school, like a
career talk, like, hey, let's talk to this guy. Tell
us about your job.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
Dad.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
That's in me.
Speaker 5 (04:55):
Damn.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
I do those things. I've been doing those for a
long time. And you know, once you accept that you
are never going to be the most popular career Day guest,
then it's a wonderful opportunity. It's really cool. Hang. The
most popular guest is always the guy with the fire
truck boom the fire truck. He runs the game. He
(05:18):
is the Rockefeller of career day.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Do you make like a poster of three? A trifle?
Poster board says like podcasts the Future of Radio.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
The first time I did it, I played some videos
that we have worked on and I gave out a
bunch of house stuff works swag. Nice or the first
time I did it for this occupation. And you know,
if you got the swag, then you got the crowd
in grade school at least it probably works in college too, right,
Who doesn't want a free T shirt.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Shot glasses that just say listen to the cast, like
and subscribe shotglasses. Yeah for the college kids.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Okay, well, you know, if we get a price break
on the shot glasses, maybe we can get away with
it in grade school, like give this to your parents.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
What could go wrong? That's the question Colorado Governor Elias
m Ammon's asked when this violence is continuing to escalate.
And again, you know, the story is often explained in
terms of the men who are working as miners or
working for this detective agency or these local guards. But
(06:30):
we have to remember there were many more women and children. Right.
The population is much bigger than it sounds when you
hear some of these round numbers. The governor calls in
the Colorado National Guard, yes, a militia. On October twenty
eighth and at first the Guard seemed kind of calm,
but later evidence would show that the Guard troopers were,
(06:51):
in fact a lot of them being paid the under
the table by Colorado Fuel and Iron.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Gee, that's it's weird. How could that happen?
Speaker 3 (07:03):
I mean, think of it this way, like the Dave
and Busters example. So we're in that daven Buster's company town,
we strike, and we say pay us dollars, and then
the Atlanta Police Department comes in, or the Georgia Troopers
come in, as a better example, and they crack down
on us, and it turns out that they're getting paid
by Dave and Busters.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Dave, why Buster?
Speaker 3 (07:27):
No? Your name is so fun. An example of this
would be the adjutant there we go General for the
National Guard on the case, John Chase. John Chase has,
similar to Baldwin Felt, he has a reputation for breaking strikes.
About a decade earlier, he was involved during the Cripple
(07:50):
Creek strike, which is its own own back of badgers.
And there are a couple of inciting events, right, and
these kind of things you always look for what the
pivotal moment is, right, what is the cause of belly
or belly. On March tenth, nineteen fourteen, one of the
scab worker bodies is found on the railroad tracks near Forbes, Colorado,
(08:14):
and Forbes also has a tent colony a little smaller
than Ludlow. What happens when they find the body.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
So the guard blamed the strikers, which, Matt, you made
a point off, Mike, that certainly would be an obvious,
first choice, first line of questioning, given the controversy and
the fact that there's a lot of there's no love
loss between the union members and these quote unquote scabs.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Yeah, and so they decide to retaliate, and.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Yeah, they go in and they just talk to people right, calmly.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Well they would have if they were worried about what
we call proportional response, but they're not. Instead, they completely
destroy the nearby tent colony. Oh over in Forbes. The
strikers are just further galvanized by this, because usually in
these situations you'll see a growth in unity and commitment
(09:10):
to a cause before you break the back, right, and
so the violence escalates. It's nineteen fourteen and Colorado Fuel
and Iron is starting to run their numbers. You know,
they're Q two or Q three numbers, and they say
it's actually getting too expensive for us to maintain these troops,
(09:33):
and so in step with the politicians the governor, they
decrease the amount of National Guard on the ground and
this results in an increase in violence because now more
of those fatal conflicts can occur.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
YEP. And then on Sunday, April nineteenth, so that's like
just a month and change afterwards, in nineteen fourteen, the
National Guard creates a big circle around the camp, so
they're stationed all around the camp. Basic there's no way
to run, no direction out of the camp. You can
run without running past some National guardsmen. And they also
(10:07):
install a machine gun, so we're talking like military grade
weapons on a bluff above the camp, so overlooking the camp. Basically,
if anything happens down there, this machine gun can probably
reach you with.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Its bullets higher elevation. So yeah, let's step back a
little because I like that we're pointing out there's a
murkiness to it. The climax of this part of the
war is at that Ludlow ten colony. It's April nineteenth
when they install the machine gun. Wee hours almost April twentieth.
The next day, the National Guard does attack to that
(10:44):
earlier point. No one sure exactly what instigated the violence,
but the most popular account you can find in historical
records says that the day after some members of the
colony celebrated the Orthodox Easter, three guardsmen approached the camp,
so there's no firing yet, and they say, hey, you're
(11:05):
holding someone against their will. Let them go. Go fish,
We don't have the person you're looking for. The leader
of the camp is a guy named Louis Tikas Tikas,
and he gets an offer from these guardsmen. At the
same time, they say, hey, come meet us about a
half mile away in Ludlow Village. This is getting out
(11:28):
of control, right, just for the good of the families,
let's talk true. So come meet our leader, Major Patrick J.
Hamrock dumb last name, it's his real last name.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Maybe a little nominate determinism there too, And they meet
at a train station in Ludlow Village, about a half
mile from the colony. And while this meeting was going down,
two separate militias, the ones running that machine gun, take
positions strategic positions along a rail route about half a
mile south of blood Log and it's not almost like
(12:01):
they're laying the groundwork for an ambush, right.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
So at the same time, simultaneously, concurrently there are miners
Union miners who are armed Greek miners, and they begin
flanking this other arroyo. And when two of the militia
forces explosions occur later we'll learn outside of the fog war.
(12:25):
These are detonated to draw support from National Guard units,
and these explosions alert the Ludlow tenth colony. Most of
the people have heard, you know, three National Guards are here,
right and have seen someone trying to make that siege perimeter,
but they don't really know what's happening, so they hear
(12:47):
the explosions. The miners at this point are pretty well
militarized themselves. They take up positions at the bottom of
the hill right, So again the elevation here is a
big factor. The militia opens fire and then hundreds of
miners their families they run for cover. Chaos is raining.
Three of the strike leaders, including Tikas, are captured and
(13:10):
killed by the Guard. It very much does seem like
the Guard lied to him. They conspired to lure tik
Us out and never intended to make a truce.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
There's reccounts that just say they're shot and left to
their left where they died. Right, They just left their
bodies there. They didn't do anything ceremoniously. They didn't pick
up their bodies and take them to you know, whatever
hospital or you know, whatever medical assistance they were there.
They just shot them and their bodies fell.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Yeah, the bodies hit the floor. The strikers are out
gunned and they're you know, they're exercising gutty tactics, but
they run out of ammo with that.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Let's take a quick break here a word from our sponsors,
and return with more on the Ludlow massacre. And we're back.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
And so a lot of people retreat to the countryside
right to gather forces and figure out their next step.
A lot of women and children, because they've already had
this siege mentality. A lot of women and children hide
in cellars that have been dug beneath these canvas tents.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Because they're bullets flying right.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Right, and these are not the fancy pants cellars of
old New England. These are holes in the ground. The
guard responds by dousing the tents and kerosene and setting
them a flame.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
And the big question for history here is how yeah,
how awhere were they that most of these tents had
something dug beneath them Because of the cold that we
talked about, one of the main ways to get away
from that cold is to go a bit underground. And like,
did any of those National guards men know? It seems
(15:03):
like one person could have raised their hand and said, hey, whoa, whoa.
But again, this is a big movement. These are a
lot of National guardsmen doing this is not one or
two dowsing with kerosene and then setting fires. It's going
through and systematically clearing this tent.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
The banality of evil which we discussed earlier, I was
just following orders. Yeah, we have to remember the National
Guard here is pulled from people who are loosely familiar
with the area. It was not an uncommon practice, especially
in inclement weather, to dig into the ground like that. So
it is possible that they didn't know or didn't think
(15:41):
about it in the heat of the heat of the conflict,
but it is it begs probability right to say that
it didn't occur once. I mean, especially in just one
cellar alone. There were eleven children and two women found
burned and suffocated to death, body so mangled that it's
impossible to know which of these tortures events actually killed them.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yeah, but it's likely that just the flames above them,
filling that cellar with smoke got to them.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
First, the oxygen out as well.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Yeah, So are you saying they thought the tents were
empty because they weren't aware of the dugout cellars or
it's by design, like I mean, they were they were
intending to burn.
Speaker 6 (16:27):
People alive, basically, right, it's highly It is cartoonishly unlikely
that they would not have thought about people having cellars
dug under the tents.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
It is incredibly unlikely.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
Where do they think they were? Like, I mean it,
don't you know?
Speaker 2 (16:47):
I mean, I agree with you. It's it's hard for
me to come to grips with knowing how bad of
a situation it would be for the company, Right, that's
once gets out that women and children were burn their
lives like that, So it's hard for me to grasp like, well,
(17:08):
was it on purpose? Was it an accident or was
it just oversight? Or I mean, are they trying to
send a message to the striking miners will kill your family.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
At least some of at least some of them had
to know because this has burned the village to save
the village type stuff. This is insidious kind of total
war because you're removing any infrastructure. I mean. In total,
the massacre resulted in twenty five deaths, three of whom
were National Guard troops, and there was media on the
(17:38):
scene and photographs of the ten colonies because this tension
had been rising for a while in the Colorado Coalfield War.
There are reports you could see on the ground about
this from a New York Times reporter talking about that
a bit off air, so the deaths were a matter
of national interest. The rest of the country knew about this,
and most people blamed John D. Rockefeller Junior, because you know,
(18:03):
for years, this guy has not really cared about where
his money's coming from. He's out in some fancy pants
part of New York and he's just saying, mall col
bring me more cold, and that's actually pretty close to
what he was doing.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
And to your point, Matt, at this point it becomes
a major optics problem, like a major PR disaster, and
that's more the issue than the actual lives lost. You know,
as far as the company is concerned, I would argue,
I mean, you know, of course they're gonna, in their
pr response probably address the egregious oversights and the over
(18:41):
zealousness of National guardsmen, and how you know their hearts
are with the families. But you know, it's all kind of.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
Smoking mirrors if you haves in prayers, right, are you guys? Okay?
If I read just one short excerpt from this New
York Times article, of course.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Oh absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
April twenty first, the day after the massacre nineteen fourteen. Quote.
Just get a sense. Imagine you're a member of the public, right,
you've never been to Colorado. This is how you're learning
about this. The lud Blow Camp is a massive charred
debris and buried beneath it is a story of horror
imparalleled in the history of industrial warfare. In the holes
(19:20):
which have been dug for their protection against the rifles fire,
the women and children died like trapped rats when the
flames swept over them. Now you're just somebody in Florida
reading this, right, You're just somebody on the West coast
or in Chicago or something. This is how you're learning
(19:41):
about the disastrous, heartbreaking result here that comes entirely from
corporate corruption and stuff.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
Like this that really demonstrates the power of the press
and like how important it is for that poetic description
to go around painfully poetic description where it really starts
to make people understand the stakes and almost for the
first time, perhaps see the evil of the situation.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Yeah, I want to call out our source here, just
because we're talking about how the internet archive is down
and it's really hard to locate that actual New York
Times article unless you're going to a place to find it.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
You can see a great compilation from PBS, right American Experience.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah, exactly, So you can look up PBS American Experience, Rockefellers,
the Ludlow Massacre, and you can find that specific excerpt
that we just read. But there's also all kinds of
other interesting stuff in there in a couple of New
York Times articles from nineteen fourteen that you can find,
but they are mostly a part of the aftermath with
(20:44):
like the Rockefellers coming through and trying to I guess
spin this a little bit.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Yeah, it's a pr stuff I was talking about earlier. Yeah,
it's a different conspiracy, right, And you can see in
there also Rockefeller's timeline, where he appears to be rethinking things,
also speaks with Congress. The America is watching this in rage,
in astonishment. And you don't have to be pro union, right,
(21:13):
there were not everybody was pro union back then? Right then?
Is now you don't have to be pro union to
object to the indiscriminate murder of civilians. And these folks
aren't doing anything wrong. They're not a threat to the
law enforcement of the militia. They're literally hiding in the
ground and try not to die.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
And again to see something to see it's so starkly
that something is very, very broken in this system and
that something has to.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Change, right, that's the idea. Something must be done, and
it continues. The aftermath of this massacre, even though the
public already knows about it, is even worse. This is
followed by something called the Ten Day War, which is
again part of the larger Colorado Coalfield War. So miners
are retaliating for this massacre. Lies. People have lost family members, right,
(22:03):
friends that barely survived, and they say, look, it's now,
it's on site. Right, the time for speaking has passed.
We are attacking anti union town officials. We're attacking strike breakers,
the overseers, the people are running the mines. They take
control of an area about fifty miles long five miles wide.
(22:26):
All in all, fifty people die during this ten day war,
and ultimately it reaches a guy named Woodrow Wilson who
did a couple other things, but one time he was
US president.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
Not particularly popular when it comes to super producer Max
Williams of.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
The Ningians History podcast.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
Yeah, guy was kind of a pill.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Yeah. I like the name Woodrow, but which ruined it
for everybody.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Funny. His boyhood home is actually in my hometown of Augusta, Georgia,
and I once lived on the corner of Woodrow and Wilson.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Yea who That's one of those things where every so
much stuff in the neighborhood gets named after the guy.
Like there's a small town in Tennessee where I want
to say it was it was Johnson or Jackson. But
there's there's a town. We'll follow up on this later.
There's a town where everything is named after that guy.
It's a small town. I only know about it because
(23:22):
I have family living there, and if you ask the
people who live there, like, hey, yeh sure, like this
president they all say no, the only town is now
so he's unpopular.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
But there's a street right out right around where I
live called generally.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Eventually, well, as we were talking about it earlier, they
don't specify which generally that it could be, you know,
like a law about a Russian president, just that a
general general is.
Speaker 6 (23:54):
Named after generally the name Lee, yes, yes, yeah, specifically
is a different cul de sac, but the.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
Perhaps Lady Gaga's character from the New Joker film.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
I'm gonna skip it, I think. But okay, So the
President Woodrow Wilson makes the decision to send in federal troops. Luckily,
these troops are paid by the US government actually, and
not by a corporate mining interest, so they're able to
somewhat well. The disaster and strike negotiations reach an ending point.
(24:29):
They end peacefully on December tenth of that same year.
But the strikers don't really get any of those seven again,
very reasonable demands they made in the first place. A
lot of them go to get arrested.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
Yeah, and four hundred of them go to trials which
last until nineteen twenty, though none were convicted.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
That's so crazy to me, all this strife, all this
loss of life all of the I didn't mean to
rhyme that, you guys, but all of this terrible stuff happened,
and the strikers don't get anything, and then the state
in the country attempt to take all these people to
court and nobody gets convicted. Just what was it for?
Speaker 3 (25:14):
I mean, absolutely nothing, right, geous it Also we also
see that there was one guy, a fellow leader of
the strike called John Art Lawson. He's convicted of murder,
but eventually, once the story moves from the headlines, his
conviction is overturned. There were some like twenty twenty two
(25:38):
National guardsmen originally in trouble. They were going to be
court martialed, they got exonerated. Congress held a bunch of
hearings and didn't do anything.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
Jeez, what were the charges against some of these miners.
They were like being accused of inciting a riot or
of like you know, openly firing on the people who
firing on them, which I would argue is self defense.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Murder, assault, vandalism, destruction of property, maybe theft in some cases.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
But similar to the Leonard Peltzier story we were talking about,
where it's like you just because you have a government
agency descending on you and firing on you does not
make their cause legitimate. And it's at a certain point
they are coming for your life and you have to
defend yourself and not think about the fact that it's
a government subsidized or perhaps even part of the government.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
This is a national Guard we're talking about here, right,
the Colorado.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Yeah, all right, let's take a quick pause here hear
a word from our sponsor, and then come back to
the Ludlow massacre and we have return.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Let's jump right back in. Okay, now we know there's
one big thing that's on all of our minds. Fellow
conspiracy realist, Whatever happened to this poor Rockefeller guy? You
know what I mean? Yeah, he went through so much
he had to write letters. Take a letter he talks
(27:11):
to Congress, right, dictated but not read by Rockefeller Junior.
He does make some tangible improvements. Ultimately, though, he decides
to make his own company sponsored union. Is that alternative
mean classic capitalism?
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (27:28):
But like I mean, it's just it's just kind of
lip service, right, I mean, it evolves understood.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
A better form, but in the beginning, I'm just it
makes me think of one of my favorite lines about capitalism.
Capitalism is the one ideology that figured out. If you
see someone say screw capitalism, you can print it on
a T shirt and sell that T shirt to them.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah, and here you go. I want to read this
statement before we get to this last thing that we're
going to say. Hear about John D.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Rockefeller.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
This is a statement that he made in June of
nineteen fourteen. So massacre occurs in April. This is in
June of nineteen fourteen. This is what Rockefeller stated happened.
He says there was no Ludlow massacre. The entanglement started
as a desperate fight for life by two small squads
(28:23):
of militia against the entire tent colony. There were no
women or children shot by the authorities of the state
or representatives of the operators. While this loss of life
is profoundly to be regretted, it is unjust in the
extreme to lay it at the door of the defenders
of law and property, who were in no slightest way
(28:45):
responsible for it. That thought of the defenders of law
and property isn't that doesn't that strike you, guys as
like representing what police forces are. The American dream be
defenders of law and property.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Yeah, we've spoken about this before, sort of the the
legal standing or prioritization of law enforcement. Right, it comes
up pretty often in protest and.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, well the good guys are the landowners and the
company owners, right, I mean in the at least in
this worldview that he puts out there in June of
nineteen fourteen.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
And it comes back again in just like in that
time and in this time, and in recent years, it
will always come up because it is a dilemma of
philosophic perspective. Right, everybody wants to be the main character.
Nobody wants to be the bad guy, right, And that
is that is an argument Rockefeller makes, and he realizes
(29:48):
that there is another war afoot, another conflict that a
lot of people aren't thinking about in terms of what
it is, which is an optics war, a war of
information and narrative. And this is where we see a
very strange era in public relations. Our buddy Johnny Dee
brings in a PR expert. He's in, Oh the peasants,
(30:11):
hey to me, not only in Colorado, but broad and
the contacts is really innovative. Boober and Shaker, I'm not
being sarcastic, very smart person named Ivy Lee, and Ivy
Lee says, look, we need an optics campaign, Johnny. You
need to go to Colorado yourself, and I need media there.
I need them to take pictures of you shaking the hands,
(30:34):
kissing the babies, hanging out at a church social.
Speaker 4 (30:37):
Shaking the babies, kissing the hands.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Yeah, we need to we need don't shake them too heart.
We need to also have some peopil right, a glowing
kind of homespun exploration of your time, and you know,
a picture you hearing grievances and responding to those. If
we could get you on a home tour, we'll find
you some Rockefeller friendly families. Do you walk with and
(31:00):
go through the facilities? The media loved it, Look said
America the dead so quickly forgotten Old Johnny. De's just
like us. We're not so different you and I. Geez
it worked.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Should we read another excerpt from the visit that we've
got from September twentieth, nineteen fifteen, when Rockefeller's out there
talking to the men and women who run his iron
and coal company. We are all partners in a way
that we were like alluding to, Yeah, do you want
to do. Would you mind doing that? I think you
(31:36):
do awesome.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Well, thank you, Bett, I'm honored bless us with your
reading to play that to a type, to play the
villain here who didn't see himself as a villain. We
are all.
Speaker 5 (31:49):
Partners in a way. Capital can't get along without you Min,
and you min can't get along without capital. When anybody
comes along and tells you that capital and labor can't
get along together, that man is your worst enemy. We
are getting along friendly enough here in his mind right now,
and there's no reason why you men cannot get along
with the managers of my company.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
But I am back in New.
Speaker 7 (32:11):
York migration just petrician that it was just like the
corporate the corporate structury of it too, the baking.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
It answers the question, you know, like I'm not going
to be here.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Yeah, but look look how great we're getting along when
daddy's here, When Daddy goes home, and you guys could
get along and play just fine.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
It does have that energy, right. It does seem to
the people thought, although we're cracking on him and he
deserves it, it does seem that people thought he was
making good faith efforts, you know, what do you guys think?
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Well, I mean there were there were improvements made. The
only counterpoint to it is that I and you kind
of alluded to this earlier ben the way it functions
in capitalism with something like this occurs, there are slight improvements.
You you push the needle just enough right now, the
new standard is there, but it's only moved slightly.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
And something of this magnitude to even get that slight movement,
which is just so frustrating.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah, you need an Act of Congress, You need a
major event. You need something to occur where everybody can
look at it and say, oh, well, we need at
least that, right, And it's always at least that.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Yeah, and the Overton windows shifts again, right, and not
for nothing?
Speaker 4 (33:34):
You know.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Well, some of the more cynical of us in the
crowd say, isn't this like the old story about the
trees who kept voting for the axe to be president
of the forest. You know, the forest got smaller and smaller,
but the trees would get together and they would say,
you know, the axe isn't perfect, but that handles wouldn't.
He's kind of like us. Oh god, it's an antique
(33:59):
that one hurts. Okay, Yeah, And I guess we have
to ask to like, obviously, folks, we've made this in
two parter. We know it's it's a little longer than usual,
but we hope you find it worth your time. It's
it's obviously very important to us as well, and we
have to ask what this tells us about the modern day.
I hope I haven't over salted the soup. That doesn't
(34:22):
make sense, all right, nobody likes the salty soup, but
we might might have mentioned it too much. But do
we see some parallels here or some potential parallels?
Speaker 5 (34:34):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (34:34):
How could you?
Speaker 4 (34:35):
Of course, it sums the whole thing up, and it's
just continued. The struggle continues. We mentioned the sugar industry
and how very very very similarly dangerous conditions and labor
camp type scenarios still exist to this day. So that
micro movement that you're talking about, Matt, I mean, it's
still slow even to this day. And also I was
(34:59):
gonna mention and earlier like it is technically illegal for
companies to retaliate against you know, unionizing workers on paper,
but you know, I have a dear friend who was
recently on strike, you know, in the legal profession in
New York City, and when he returned from strike, there
is very clear retaliatory action taking place, because it's easy
to hide it behind other actions, you know, and it's
(35:22):
just it's hard to prove, and the advantage remains on
the side of the companies, I think for full argument.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Well, also, you know to that point this acquaintance of
mine as well, and you're talking about proving retaliation means
proving intent, and intent is very difficult to prove, especially
when there are so many other things you could throw
up at the screen as the reason. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Well, in the news as we're recording this, on October third,
the International Longshoreman's Association came to terms, and that's forty
five thousand human beings who work in ports, like all
along the Gulf Coast and the East Coast of the
United States. They were going to strike, and that was
gonna be a massive deal for the United States of America. Like,
(36:17):
and we were talking about this offline a lot. We
mentioned it, I think in a strange news but we
were just mentioning the effects that would have on little
things like our ability to get paper towels right and
fresh fruit and things like that, and it would have
massive effects on the lives of everybody, these forty five
(36:39):
thousand people who were represented by this one union. But
thankfully they came to a deal negotiated that basically said
we're gonna postpone our strike until ear I think mid
January of twenty twenty five. So let's get this deal
done or you guys, the United States basically is in trouble.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
Right at least go to the negotiating team. And that
is that leads us to other question. You know, has
the era of the Pinkerton past.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
That I think that I think so, yeah, you can't
crack skulls anymore.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
It's just in this obtree.
Speaker 4 (37:13):
Yeah, the optics of it are just too damaging, you know,
maybe because of the public opinion and all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
So, I mean, they have to tread more lightly.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
And a lot of these anti union, anti labor practices,
I think the most egregious and outward ones we see
are by companies like Amazon and their warehouse employees and
things like that. But my point is they have to
be a little more sneaky about it.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Yeah, that's that was my question. Is the age of
the pinkered in past or has it simply evolved? And
if it has passed to your point, then for how
long is it a permanent passage or is it another
cyclical iteration? Because I think we see that these things
come and go over time. You know, I don't think.
(37:55):
I don't think it's impossible that these kinds of tactics
might return. We know they still happen in other parts
of the world, in other countries. You know, you don't
have to look far to see the merk squads that
certain energy interest will hire up to and including overthrowing
a duly elected government, you know.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
And then we also know that as the individuals and
parties and what have you who hold power kind of shift,
it's possible to roll that stuff back, you know, whether
it be oversights of industry, regulations and things like that
that can be rolled back. You're not wrong, man, But
I do see a future, given an a radical enough shift,
maybe not even that radical, where things like this sort
(38:35):
of labor protection could shift as well.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Guys, we need a new version of the Wire looking
at you, David Simon, We need a new version that
shows all this stuff from the longshoreman to the tycoons
in New York city to write just this shows all
of this stuff working again.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
One season of The Wire though, was the first time
I really understood the inner workings of long shoremen and
a lot of that kind of stuff for the dock
workers there in Baltimore. It's a really good point, as
Simon is really great at kind of explaining the intricacies
of these kinds of relationships and then where the power
structures and all the different you know, involved parties kind
of lie.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
It's a really really smart guy.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Well what does it look like now? And Ben, to
your point, what does that look like when there are
android law enforcement officers patrolling the docks, you know, and
that kind of thing like.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
Yeah, and what does it look like in a surveillance state? Yeah?
This is this is something that made this in our
minds more than worthy of a two part episode. It
seems this conspiracy and the Ludlow massacre tells us a
lot about the modern day, and we want to hear
your stories of similar off obscured history. One thing is
(39:48):
for certain, from Haffa to Colorado, from longshoremen to the
Pinkerton's history is chock full of the stuff they don't
want you to know. So hit us up with your
stories from the u, US, from other countries, from any
time in history. We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
Find us all over the internet on your platform of choice.
We are conspiracy Stuff on Facebook, where you can join
our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy. Let us
know what you think about the episodes. Talk with your
fellow conspiracy realists. The floor is yours. We are also
conspiracy stuff on xfka, Twitter, as well as YouTube, where
you can find video content, colure for your enjoyment. On
(40:26):
Instagram and TikTok, however, we are Conspiracy and Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Hey, do you want to call us and tell us
your thoughts? Like this thought from John Lawson, who was
head of the United mind Workers in nineteen fifteen. Here
we go quote, mister Rockefeller has missed the fundamental trouble
in the coal camps. Democracy has never existed among the
men who toil under the ground. The coal companies have
(40:51):
stamped it out. Now, mister Rockefeller is not restoring democracy,
He's trying to substitute paternalism for it. I just thought
that was a really interesting thought, an interesting quote. Do
you have an interesting thought or quote or something you
want to say to us? Call one eight three three
std WYTK. When you call in, give yourself a cool
(41:11):
nickname and let us know on that message if we
can use your message and your voice on the air.
If you got more to say than can fit in
a three minute voicemail, why not instead send us a
good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware, yet out of rate, sometimes
of void, writes back. Can't wait to hear your statements,
your stories. Send the most chilling quotes from the dictators
and patricians that you're aware of. Join us out here
in the dark conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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