The Colorado Coal Field Wars: The Ludlow Massacre

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The episode unearths the tragic story of the Ludlow Massacre, drawing connections between past labor struggles and the contemporary fight for workers' rights. It highlights the desperate conditions faced by miners and their families, ultimately leading to a violent confrontation that reshaped labor relations in the United States. 

• Overview of the Colorado Coal Field Wars 
• Unsafe mining conditions and high fatality rates 
• Demands for better wages and working conditions 
• The role of company towns in controlling miners 
• The arrival of the National Guard and its alignment with corporate interests 
• The violent outbreak of the Ludlow Massacre on April 20, 1914 
• The aftermath and impact of the massacre 
• Legal ramifications and trials that followed 
• Changes initiated by Rockefeller in response to public backlash 
• Continuing relevance of the Ludlow Massacre in today's labor movements

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:25):
The.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Okay, so welcome to another episode of Deviant
Criminology.
I am one of your hosts, RichardWeaver.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
Heather Kenney.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
And we're going to go this week with another.
I have no idea what we'retalking about.
So, heather, you have broughttogether a lovely case that you
were going to present to me, andI am going to give sidebar
commentary.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
So this actually is a case that I probably should
have learned about when I wasyounger and I did not.
I came across this informationduring a time when I was driving
back and forth from ColoradoSprings down to Albuquerque on a
regular basis, and if you'veever driven that stretch of road
, there's places where there'sabsolutely nothing.

(01:22):
You can't see a single light asfar as the eye can see, and the
stars are incredible and it'sbeautiful and it's wonderful.
So don't don't take that as anegative.
I love those areas.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
The opposite of driving through Kansas, which is
just nothing.
Yes, yes.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Beautiful mountain, sunset stars the whole bit and
somewhere along that road thatdrive there was a sign about
Ludlow massacre and I was likeroad that drive, there was a
sign about.
Ludlow Massacre and I was likethat sounds kind of important,
kind of big.
So eventually I googled it andwhen I read through what
happened I was like wow, this issomething pretty significant.

(01:55):
I probably should have knownabout this.
But it relates to the ColoradoCoal Field Wars and specifically
from September 1913 to aboutMay of 1914, these events were
going on and it ended whenPresident Woodrow Wilson sent in
federal soldiers to end it.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
This is like well before what's known more as the
Harlan Coal Mine Wars and stufflike that, which were the 1920s
and 30s.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
Yeah, this is like a pre-Crawl Okay.
Yeah, so this would have beenbefore that Pecan interest,
which I think that's the stuffthat you like, that which are
the 1920s and 30s.
This is like a pre-Crawl.
Okay, yeah, so this would havebeen before that Peacemakers,
which I think that's the stuffthat you're more familiar with.
Yes, yes.
So in this war, depending onwhose information you look at,
somewhere between 70 and 200people were killed.
Cool, I'm sure that people havedifferent ways of counting who
was impacted and I'm sure, likeso many of these types of events

(02:44):
, some people are importantenough to count and other people
are not.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
And it also depends on who hid the bodies better
Exactly.
That's one thing you see.
A lot in coal mining fields ispeople just went missing.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yes, they were never found.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
So it was always reported like well, they moved
or they transferred or yeahRight, they must have moved on
to some other job yes, yes, bymoving on to a heavenlier place,
I guess it's especially easierthen, because you couldn't track
people down.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
There wasn't facebook or oh yeah internet searches or
any of that?
nope.
So prior to the cold field warsthere were other strikes, um,
mostly miners for silver andgold.
So that's an important contextbefore it.
Just because some of theplayers from that conflict
carried over into this conflict.
So people already brought somebaggage from prior conflicts

(03:34):
into this one.
So it wasn't like this was abrand new thing where nobody had
had any interest before, justsome background.
In 1910, so this would havebeen shortly before this strike
war started 1910, the coalmining in Colorado employed
about 16,000 people, which atthat point were about 10% of the
jobs in the state.

(03:55):
In 1912, the death rate forColorado mines was about 7.06
per 1,000 workers.
The national rate was 3.15 perthousand, so more than double
for these mining areas, miningtowns.
Just in 1913 alone 110 men diedfor in Colorado, so significant

(04:21):
number of people.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
It sounds like a very .
I mean, it's always coal miningand any type of mining has
always been classified asdangerous, but this is double
the average of what's happeningeverywhere else.
So obviously you can.
I'm already sensing thatthere's some issues with safety
and the way the corporations andthe companies are protecting
their workers.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
So I don't know about your research for the Kentucky
mines that you know about, butat least for Colorado at that
point in time they had companytowns and I'll let you elaborate
on that.
And there was also 40% fewerfatalities in the union mines
nationwide than in the non-unionmines at the time.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
So yeah, the coal mining towns like you saw this a
lot in Kentucky and other areasbasically the coal companies
would build these little townsnear the mines and in those
towns they would provide thehousing.
They had little stores thatwere ran by the company.
So the house you rented wasfrom the company, the stores you

(05:29):
bought from were owned by thecompany, so all your rent was
paid to the company.
When you got paid, they wouldpay you partially in US currency
, but then they would also payyou in something called script,
which was only usable inside thecompany store.
So there's an old and why I'mforgetting the name of the
singer right now, but it's asong called 16 Tons where he

(05:50):
talks about like I owe my soulto the company store Because so
many times you went in debt tothe company because everything
was controlled by them pricesand there was no competition of
where to go shopping for itbecause they were so far out.
So these went on for a long time.
Script was used up into the1940s.
So yeah, there was a lot ofproblems and unionized was rare,

(06:13):
like even in Kentucky, whichwe're going to talk about in
other episodes, because that'ssomething I really want to hit
on, but even in the 1920s and30s, there they weren't
unionized, and that's what ledto some of these wars was trying
to unionize because theconditions were so bad.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
And that's basically what this is about some of those
attempts to unionize and getbetter conditions.
So our players in this?
It started off with the UnitedMine Workers of America and they
started the strike on behalf ofthe Rocky Mountain Fuel Company
and Victor American FuelCompany workers Specifically.
There's also another group thatbecomes key in this, which is

(06:50):
the Colorado Fuel and IronCompany CFNI for short, and John
Rockefeller Jr had controllinginterest in that company.
His father, john Rockefeller,had gotten the controlling
interest and then passed it onto his son, rockefeller Jr, and
they had about 72,000 acres andhis father had had controlling

(07:13):
interest of that company since1902.
And then Jr took it over nineyears later.
And if you don't know anythingabout the Rockefellers, they're
East Coast people.
They weren't really involved inthe things that were happening
in Colorado because they were inNew York and removed physically
from what was going on inColorado.
At some point the ColoradoNational Guard also gets

(07:36):
involved, so we'll talk aboutthat.
But those are the major playerscoming into our description of
events.
So the whole thing startedbecause workers had these
horrible, unreasonable demands.
They wanted their union to berecognized so that the union
could bargain for the workers.
They wanted a bettercompensation rate for their ton

(07:58):
rate, and I'll explain what tonrate is here in a second.
Eight hour work days, paymentfor dead work and I'll explain
what that is in a moment.
Also, a weight check person whowould be brought from the
working side of it, not thecompany side of it, because at
the time the person who wouldcheck all the weights was a

(08:18):
company man, so he would decidewhat the weight was and what he
was going to pay out for thatand there was no check or
balance.
There was nobody on theworker's side to say that's not
the correct weight, you need toadjust that or fix that weight.
They also wanted to have theright to use any store, any
boarding house or any doctors,just as you were mentioning

(08:38):
before, because they couldn'tthey only could buy things
through the company after thecompany paid them.
Couldn't, they only could buythings through the company after
the company paid them.
And they also wanted strictenforcement of Colorado's laws,
which again, oh my gosh, howhorrible.
You actually want us to followthe law Completely unthinkable.
And before that there was a USHouse Committee on Mines and
Mining and they had found thatthe Colorado laws were really

(09:00):
good when they examined them.
But they said the fatalityrates indicated that there was a
problem.
And nobody really like comesright out and says it.
But as far as the governmentside, as far as the law
enforcement side.
But when you have a group thatsays the laws are really good
but the result's bad, theproblem to me seems obvious that
there's either a lack ofenforcement or some type of

(09:22):
compliance issue along the way.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
Well, one thing I'm just seeing a lot of enforcement
or some type of complianceissue along the way.
Well, one thing I just see in alot of different coal mining
towns and cases because this iskind of an area that I've gotten
a lot of interest in the lastfew years is the coal mines, the
oil refinery, like all thesedifferent sources of basically
stripping the land.
It was very lucrative, so itwas very easy to buy off

(09:48):
sheriffs, to buy off politicians, to buy off inspectors.
So, yeah, you could have thebest laws in the world, you
could have great supposedcompany support, but when you
just paid somebody and sadly wesaw that even up to today, I
mean there are still miningaccidents in the US that are
killing individuals and a lot ofit goes back to well, this
company had 16 infractions justlast year but we gave them time

(10:12):
to fix it or they got to workaround.
So that's one of the I thinkthe biggest problems is plagued
mining from the beginning in theUS is that it was just so easy
to pay off people and it wasnever about the workers.
And you see that, like in HarlanCounty again, like I want to

(10:33):
talk about later, was thesheriff was directly in the
pocket of and he was justbasically a thug for the
companies.
He didn't care about thecitizens.
Because you're making a lotmore money, especially in these
rural areas, from thesecompanies than you're going to
make as your normal sheriff'spaycheck.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
And yeah, I think even today we have problems
where law enforcement in generalare not compensated in a way
that brings out the best inpeople and people who are not
tempted by those other resources.
It's really easy to say I'm notgoing to take that money and
I'm going to do my job.
When you have a well-paying job, it's a lot harder to resist

(11:11):
those temptations when you feellike you can't send your kids to
college or you can't get themthe things that they need, or
you feel like you know week toweek can I make my mortgage
payment and things of thatnature.
So I think that that ties intoit too, that you need money from
somewhere.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
I think there's that.
And then also A small towns andeverything.
Many times people had familythat were working for the
companies and if you have theability to have the money to get
elected to a position likesheriff or city council, you
probably also had the money tobe related to somebody that had
connections into the federal um,into these private companies,

(11:49):
and it made it a lot easier.
But also a lot of people thinkwhen corruption happens, it's oh
, here's a hundred thousanddollar check.
Well, this time it probablylike here's a thousand dollars,
turn a blind eye.
But in a lot of these areas itstarted with just simple things
like hey, you know what we'llpay for your house, since you're
going to live in the county, inthe corporation town, so well,

(12:10):
now you don't have to pay rent.
You know what?
Hey, how about we give you alittle extra?
You know money for food thisweek?
And it starts small and aftertime, once you've got them on
the hook, it's like well, you'vealready accepted all this from
us.
What's another little bit toturn another blind eye to what's
going on.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
And I'm sure, sometimes too, getting them the
job in the first place.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
To have that connection.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Rigging elections, paying for elections.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
Yeah, I never heard of that before, right?
So one of the things that Imentioned was dead work, and you
know that has a weird tone toit.
But basically dead work is likedead time, things that you
don't get paid for.
So because you were paid thetonnage rate which I also
mentioned.
Tonnage rate meant thateverything you brought out of

(12:54):
the mine was weighed and thenyou would get paid by the ton
that you were bringing out.
So anything you did that didn'tbring coal out of the mine for
weighing you did not get paidfor.
So things like shoring up thesides of the shaft or trying to
build the I guess it'd behorizontal supports to keep the

(13:17):
roof or the top of the tunnelfrom collapsing, all of those
types of things you're not goingto get paid for.
So then it becomes thisbalancing Like if I add an extra
three supports that'll take mean hour, then that's an hour.
I can't be bringing tonnage out, so I'm not going to get paid
for that.
So then you have workers whoare trying to do the bare
minimum of the dead work to getin and get what they need to get

(13:41):
paid.
But because they're doing thebare minimum, there's more
accidents.
So our union has made thesehorrible demands, like the fact
that the mine should actuallyfollow the law and actually pay
them for the work that they'redoing.
And the response fromRockefeller's company CF&I came
in 1913, and it was to evict allof the striking miners.

(14:04):
So, just like you were talkingabout the company town where you
had to live, there, they saidall right, if you don't like
these conditions, you don't likethe terms of your employment,
get out.
So they immediately throw allthese people out and now they're
all homeless and, as you werementioning, not a whole lot of
area around to absorb that manypeople suddenly becoming

(14:24):
homeless.
So in advance of this strike,the union had secured some area,
leased it because they wereanticipating that this might be
the response.
And so one of the places thatthey leased ended up being
referred to as the Ludlow TentColony and approximately 1,200

(14:45):
miners and their families wentto this colony and basically it
consisted of tents placed onwood platforms.
So this land was leased by theunions and, as such, the unions
strategically selected wherethey were going to lease that
land at so that it would blocktraffic through the canyons to

(15:08):
get to and from the mines.
So it wasn't just about movingthese people, but it was also
about strategically making lifedifficult for the companies once
they got rid of all of theseworkers.
And Ludlow was one of theseplaces that they went, and it's
northwest of Trinidad, colorado,and it's a complete ghost town

(15:29):
now, but if you ever drivethrough there you can see it.
There's very little there atthis point in time.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
So I think another thing that's important to
remember as you're moving onthis is that it wasn't until
1935 that the US passed theNational Labor Relations Act
that gave like protections forunionizing.
So, yeah, at this point, likeif you strike, you had no
protections, there was no faircollective bargaining or
anything like that.

(15:56):
So, yeah, it was very easy tojust toss you out and find the
next person that was standing inline.
And what year are we at?
1910?
.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
Yeah, about 1910 to 1914 at this range.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
Luckily, it's prosperous enough that there's
plenty of workers that arewilling to soup in and take
these jobs.

Speaker 3 (16:15):
And it's also you have the gold mining and silver
mining too going on.
So, depending on the price, youcan also try to bring miners
from other aspects of theindustry in and pull them away
from those places.
So, again, like you were saying, labor wise, I don't think they
had a shortage of laborers thatthey could bring in to replace
anybody that they wanted to getrid of.

(16:35):
And one of the other things thecompany would do you were
talking about companies hiringpeople to be their muscle or
enforcement things like thatthey hired a group called the
Baldwin-Felts Detective Agencyand basically these guys were
complete assholes.
They were known to fire bulletsinto the tents, they would kill

(16:56):
and maim people.
They had an actual armored carthat they had made that had a
machine gun that they called theDeath Special, that they had
made, that had a machine gunthat they called the Death
Special and that was actuallybuilt by CF&I in Pueblo and then
given to this detective agencyto use, as they were trying to
intimidate I mean, that's whatit was it was intimidate and

(17:17):
harass these workers until theywould go away and leave them
alone so that they could runtheir business how they wanted
to, without having to acquiesceto any of these demands for
basic what's, I think, what wewould consider basic rights at
this point in time.
You know things like not beingset up to die by your employer.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
You know minor details Well it seems like the
history of these companies isthe use of violence,
intimidation, assault, murder,so historically that seems to
have been a big way of trying tobeat people into submission.
Basically, and it's sad becauseit's not like this was a one

(17:58):
time event.
You look at the coal mines,mining fields, oil fields,
railroad building.
There's a lot of abuse ofcitizens, of immigrants, so it's
just I don't know.
I think it's a bigger aspect totalk about at another time in
another environment, about justhow these corporations really
did take advantage ofindividuals and were protected

(18:19):
by governments.

Speaker 3 (18:21):
And, like you said, it goes into several different
industries and other areas, likethe Triangle Shirt Factory fire
.
If you look at Sinclair's, thejungle with the meat packing
facilities.
It wasn't just mining, it wasacross the board.
So in response to the sniperattacks that were coming into

(18:42):
the tent cities, the miners dugpits under the tents so that
they could try to hide when theydidn't need to be out in the
open, so that if somebody wereto shoot through the tents they
could at least have some placewhere they would be safe and not
be hit by all of those bullets.
Because of all of this conflictthat's going on, the Colorado
Governor Amons calls in theColorado National Guard in

(19:06):
October of 1913.
And in the beginning it seemslike things are better.
The National Guard was there totry to stop both sides and
de-escalate both sides of thisconflict.
But it didn't take very longuntil the Guard leaders aligned
with the company and so againthings start to go askew because
the company is able to getthese key players and people of

(19:29):
importance under their thumb.
And one of those people, generalJohn Chase, had served during
the Cripple Creek strike, whichhad been a couple of decades
earlier, and in that era therewas a replacement worker who had
been killed and in retaliationAn entire tent city, the Forbes
tent colony, was destroyed whilethe residents were at a funeral

(19:52):
for two infants, so that one atleast the people who lived in
the tents were gone someplaceelse when he came in and wiped
out the entire colony.
When he came in and wiped outthe entire colony but there was
again that history and thisspecific general chase already
had animosity towards otherminers, so it wasn't like he was

(20:14):
coming in fresh and looking atthe situation and of course all
things seem to lead back toCripple Creek somehow.
So he was associated with thatarea and eventually the
government runs short on funding.
So the guard is recalled, butthey leave back one little group
and it's referred to as Troop A, consisting mostly of CFNI

(20:38):
guards and Baldwin-Felts guardsin Colorado National Guard
uniforms.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
Baldwin felt guards in Colorado.
National guard uniforms oh,this is recipe for disaster.
It's kind of like the you know,we're protected by the fake
badge that we just happened tobuy from, like, the cookie jar
cookie candy store a couple ofdays ago.
And now I'm a.
I'm a cop with this plasticbadge that the kids like to play
.
Now you've got guys thatalready wanted to be cops and
soldiers now being able to hideand mass themselves as soldiers.

(21:07):
And the other thing is you'vegot people that are fighting for
like just safety in the mind.
It's like this mind couldcollapse.
I'm not getting paid a lot, allright, I'm fired, and now I'm
getting shot at like well, fuck,like you know, it doesn't
matter if I'm damned.
If I do, I damn if I don Die ina mine or get shot trying to go
out and take a piss Like Idon't know.
This is just.
You feel bad when we look backat the way we treat these

(21:30):
individuals, but you can alreadysee like you're pushing people
to their limit.
And you've got one side ofbullies which you could talk
about the Zimbardo experimentand the Stanford prison
experiment and how people, whenthey get a little bit of power,
suddenly explode with abuse ofthat power.
But where this is at now, itsounds like it's just everything

(21:57):
that boils right before shithits the fan.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
And I think it's also important to think about their
families, because this is an erawhere women can't just go out
and work and make the same typeof money men can.
Nature where, if you went intothat mine and didn't come out,

(22:28):
it had a massive impact on yourwife and children because they
would no longer have a means tosupport themselves.
So it wasn't just their owninterests on the line, it was
everything for their wholefamily.
So all this tension is rising,the stakes are getting higher
and higher and finally, on April20th of 1914, all the shit hits
the fan and there's still adispute as to exactly what

(22:50):
happened and what started it.
Because, even though there'stons of accounts and witness
statements and affidavits andyou can go down an entire rabbit
hole looking through all of thedifferent evidence that there
is, like every story, the peoplewho were the miners have one
set of facts and what theyobserved, and the people who
were running the companysecurity have their own set of

(23:13):
facts and their view of whathappened.
So some people say that theguards were actually trying to
execute an arrest warrant andwere met with resistance.
Some people say that they weregoing in to try to rescue a
person who was being heldagainst their will, and some
other people say, basically,they just set up machine guns
and killed everybody for noreason.
So, depending on which versionof events you look at or which

(23:37):
witness statements you take intoaccount, there's various
different ways that this couldhave gone down.
I have my own mindset as to howI think it went down, but in
full disclosure.
There's other people who saythat things didn't happen the
way I suspect that they happened.
But there was a camp leader,louis Tykus, and he was called

(23:58):
out to meet with Major Patrick JHammond about a half mile away.
Major Patrick J Hammond, abouta half mile away, and the
representation was that theywere going to try to talk about
finding a resolution, trying todeescalate the violence, trying
to figure out how to moveforward from where they were at,
trying to get out of this verytense, dangerous situation.
And while he's gone, the guardsstart setting up machine guns

(24:23):
around the tent colony, which ofcourse you know it's not going
to be a good result.
Like no matter why they'resetting them up.
Like you can see, there'salready, they're already
shooting at you in your tentcity and now there's machine
guns showing up.
So luckily some people noticedand were able to leave and some
of the survivor accounts andwitness statements we get are
from those people who saw thosethings happening.

(24:44):
Some of the survivor accountsand witness statements we get
are from those people who sawthose things happening and made
those observations and said, hey, we need to get out of here,
especially women and children.
A lot of the men would sendtheir families away if they saw
these things happening, but noteverybody saw this because,
again, you have 1,200 people-ishin this tent city, so as

(25:05):
they're setting these things up.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
Not everybody's going to be aware of what's happening
.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
So, danny, why?

Speaker 2 (25:07):
are those men putting machine guns up over there?
I think they're just here tosay hello, exactly, exactly.

Speaker 3 (25:14):
And so around 9 or 10 am there's these explosions
that go off, and once theexplosions go off, the machine
guns around the tent city openedfire into the tent city.
The guards claim that the menthat were in the tent city
started firing on them first,and then they responded and

(25:34):
opened fire on them.
And one of the guard statementssaid something along the lines
of they saw women and childrenleaving and figured, since they
were shooting at the guards,they must have gotten all of
their family members out.
So they felt free to just letloose with the machine guns at
that point, because they justfigured you know anybody who

(25:55):
wanted to get out or should havegotten out were gone by that
point.
The evidence doesn't supportthat.
The evidence supports thatthere were still plenty of women
and children there and based onthe numbers that are
represented, I don't understandhow you would think that they
were all gone.
So I find that representationof facts a little bit I don't

(26:17):
know if suspicious is the rightword self-serving I think
self-serving is a little bit ofa better term to come to mind.
So, as all of this is going on,you have some people who are
trying to flee, especially thewomen and children.
The machine guns are justspraying bullets.
There's accounts of as thewomen and children are trying to

(26:38):
leave, that they're being shotdown.
There's some men who aregrabbing rifles because they
don't have very many but they dohave some trying to come up and
flank the people on the machineguns to try to eliminate the
people who are using the machineguns on the tent city and
things are just escalating andas things are escalating, more
guards are coming in to supportthe effort to eliminate this

(27:03):
tent city and the people who arein it.
There's also a report at onepoint a freight train is moved
in in front of the machine gunsin an effort for the miners to
be able to escape on foot andblock that fire at least for a
short time.
And the conflict continues allday long and at the end of it

(27:24):
the National Guard soaks thetents that are left in kerosene
and sets it all on fire.
And some of the reports frompeople who survived even said
that the places where it didn'tseem to be burning very well,
from people who survived evensaid that the places where it
didn't seem to be burning verywell, they would come in and put
more kerosene on and ignite thefire more to.
So it wasn't just like aone-time thing.

(27:44):
It wasn't just like this oneperson did this and the whole
thing went up.
According to many of thestatements, it was a very
deliberate team effort to getthis done the.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
The biggest question is like what is the fucking end
game?
Because?
Do you want these workers back?
Or is it just to kill them off?
Because you're not having topay them anymore, so they're not
really a burden on you?
Besides, maybe, like just beingout there, they're not taking
your resources.
This is really just like a dickmeasuring contest of like oh
well, you went against us,you're speaking out against us,
we'll just massacre entirefamily bloodlines.

(28:16):
Oh well, you went against us,you're speaking out against us,
we'll just massacre entirefamily bloodlines.
And unfortunately, companieslike seem to have no problem
with this before.
We saw this with the railroadslike even within the last few
years, they've been finding massgraves of irish and asian uh,
individuals along railroads thatwere built because it was just
cheaper to kill them off than tomaybe have to compensate them.
Or if they were to speak out inthe atrocities that you were

(28:39):
committing, either the ways thatyou were building the railroads
, the way you were mining, ifthat got out, then it would
bring attention.
Well, it's almost.
Somehow, sadly, it's easier toexplain a massacre than it is to
explain your violations in yourmining companies, and it just
makes no sense to me, and Ithink it's even more sickening

(29:00):
to think that you're talking alittle over 100 years ago.
This is not ancient history.
This is still recent in UShistory, and even being 1914.
At this point.
Right around this is April,only a few months from the start
of world war one which wouldchange things to a point.

(29:21):
But historically it's justpeople killing americans,
killing americans over money,and it's just a sad reality that
will continue on even pasttoday.
So it's just yeah, this isunfortunately not a rare
occurrence.
I just think it was well hiddenin history.

Speaker 3 (29:43):
And especially given how many resources are involved.
As far as the lack of necessityfor it, these companies were
making tons of money.
It wasn't like they couldn'tafford to pay these workers.
It wasn't like they were goingto shut down because they didn't
have enough.
They had plenty.
It was very lucrative.
They were making tons of money.
Rockefellers I think most peopleknow the name Rockefeller even

(30:06):
if they don't know the historythere.
But you had the Rockefellersand the Vanderbilts at the time,
Very, very well off families.
They were the reason why thingslike income tax and estate tax
were put into effect againaround that 1913 timeframe.
A lot of people don't realizethat we didn't always have an
income tax and it was supposedto be designed to break up these
family legacy groups who had alock on all of these companies,

(30:30):
to try to make America anopportunistic place for
everybody, where you weren'tjust born into wealth and then
had this dynasty that youcontrolled huge portions of land
and people and politiciansindefinitely.
So that was part of the reasonwhy they put those taxes in
place were to try toredistribute that wealth, to
give more people a chance torise up in companies and social

(30:55):
standing and things of thatnature.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
That has fucking worked outstandingly.
I know, hasn't it.
Right, I mean, I don't knowabout millionaires and
billionaires running thegovernment.

Speaker 3 (31:04):
No no.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
Seems outlandish in this day and age.

Speaker 3 (31:07):
Not at all.
It's just an exchange of feudalsystems.
Right, we tried to get awayfrom one feudal system and now
we have the same system, justset up in a different way, where
people are inheriting spots ofimportance instead of working
for those spots, which wassupposed to be the point of
America that we and it made nosense because it's kind of
unfortunately you see it, eventoday, like oh, all they had to

(31:46):
do was say, yeah, we'll meet youat the time like $4 an hour or
whatever they wanted, or $10 perton, because the only place you
have to spend your money isright in our towns.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
So all we have to do is raise the prices of rent a
little bit, raise the prices inour stores a little bit.
We're paying you more money,but we're just on the back end.
The other companies that we ownand stuff are going to get that
money right back.
So in the end, if these weresmart businessmen, they could
have just set it up to get theirstuff back, but they were so
arrogant they wouldn't evenconcede to this little bit of oh

(32:23):
, we'll give you more money thatwe're just going to get right
fucking back in our stores.
Instead, let's slaughterinnocent men, women and children
, because in the end our bottomline will be better with the
death of hundreds of peopleinstead of a couple of dollars
extra an hour.

Speaker 3 (32:33):
And I think a big part of this control too,
because if you give them thisthing, then what are they going
to want next?
And next they're going to wantus to actually follow the law.
Like how horrible would that beif, all of a sudden, we have to
do what's legally required ofus?
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
And I mean and they talked about this and other
conflicts that I've seen relatedto labor across the U?
S if you give in one place,then the next place thinks they
can move up, and the next placesthey can move up and maybe they
can unionize and get betterstuff.
So if you make an example outof this one area and this one
group of people, then maybe youshut down the rebellions in

(33:09):
other places.

Speaker 3 (33:10):
Which is exactly, I think, what they were thinking
here, because there had beenthose other areas before that,
those other conflicts beforethat leading up to this.
So, again, I think thismight've been that breaking
point where both sides were likeI'm done, I'm not messing with
you anymore, this is what I wantand I'm not willing to give any
further on this.
And I think that's part of whatled up to this situation.

(33:32):
And somehow, while all of thisis going on, uh, who we talked
about earlier, who is one of theleaders of the camp, comes into
contact with the guard.
Some people said he wasapproaching them to try to
negotiate a ceasefire at thatpoint, but he and two other
members of the mining communityare taken by the national guard

(33:53):
and while two of the guards holdTakis, one of the other guard
commanders, lieutenant CarlLinfelt, who had had conflicts
with Takis in the months beforeleading up to this, breaks his
rifle butt over his head andlater the bodies of Takis and
the other two miners are foundand they're shot in the back.
During the time that thishappened, they said that those

(34:18):
individuals were trying to fleefrom custody and so they were
shot in the back as they wererunning away and the guards the
officers in the guard would notallow those bodies to be removed
for burial.
So they sat on the side of therailroad for three days before,
finally, the railroad unionintervened and said you need to
get these bodies off of ourrailroad and go bury them.

(34:39):
So it wasn't even just thatlike it's bad enough.
You've already destroyedeverything we have.
You've shot at us, you've burntour tent city, now you've
killed us, and now we can't evenretrieve our dead to bury them.
So it was a complete and totalcontrol, annihilation situation.
And so at the end of this again, the counts are a little bit

(35:02):
different.
Some people had a count of 21.
Some people said 25.
People are dead from thisspecific incident, not the
entire duration of this strikewar, but just at Ludlow, just
this one incident, and includedin that are 11 children and two
women who were found in one ofthose cellars.

(35:24):
We talked about how, when theywere shooting in the tents, they
dug underneath the woodenplatforms to have a cellar to
hide in.
During the attack, 11 childrenand two women went into one of
those shelter areas and whenthey burnt the tent city down,
they killed these people whilethey hid in this cellar.
So it's like pretty horrific tothink about that.

(35:48):
They're in there and people areburning this down around them
and nobody tried to help themget out.
Nobody, you know, took a pauseand said, okay, you can, you can
escape, you can get out, andthey were afraid enough that
they stayed where they were atand and perished.
So it's to me it's mind boggling.

(36:08):
I have a hard time wrapping mymind around that situation.
One of the magazines hadreported that there were 55
women and children killed, but Ihaven't been able to find that
supported in other accounts.
So I don't think it was thatmany.
But again, it depends on whoyou ask and how people were
counted.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
And information back then.
Again, like you said, it wasn'ttoday, it was word of mouth, it
was slow through telegram.
Each side wanted to make their.
We kind of see it in conflictsnow in other countries where one
side will say, oh, we onlykilled five of their people.
And then the other side will belike, oh, they killed 500 of
our people in war.

(36:46):
And even though this is in theUnited States and it's a small
skirmish in this town, it'sstill a war zone.
I mean, you've got a lot ofpeople shooting each other and
each side wants to make theother look bad while making
themselves not look good.
The only thing that it doesn'tbring solace to anybody, but
it's kind of.
The wish I have is that any ofthe soldiers or mercenaries are

(37:08):
involved in this suffered a lifeof internal psychological
fucking hell when they realizedthat they massacred innocent
women and children for a smallamount of money.
Like I just hope somewhere inhell there's a place that they
have to relive that every day.

Speaker 3 (37:23):
I would hope so too, although on some level I don't
know that that is possible,because I think your conscience
would get you sooner than that.
I think that, as you werewatching these things happen, if
you had that level of awarenessat some point, you would say,
okay, this isn't okay.
Even if you didn't feel likeyou could stand up to the other
people, maybe you could try tosave one of the kids Some

(37:47):
three-year-old kid's wanderingaround.
You'd think it'd be okay tojust grab that kid and be like
this one's coming with me orsomething.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
I don't know.
There's also the concept thatpsychological um aspect.
You have, like we see it andthe way they used to do firing
squads, where you had sevenpeople but only six had live
rounds.
So you could always try toconvince yourself you were the
one that had the didn't have thelive round, so you personally

(38:14):
didn't cause a harm.
Now, of course, whoever dumpedgasoline on that specific spot
will always know who they were.

Speaker 3 (38:21):
And I think too, just like you're saying, that level
of separation where if you'reshooting a machine gun or
something that has long range,it's a lot less violent in that
person's mind, I think, than ifyou're in close proximity where
you're stabbing them orsomething of that nature, where
you're seeing them face to facein close proximity.

Speaker 2 (38:43):
It's kind of like the conversation you have with,
like, the difference between,like, a sniper and a serial
killer, or when you're on acrime scene and you've obviously
seen this before where it'svery easy to tell if somebody's
just shot once from a distanceor close range.
Most of the time that'sindicative of it's, it's a
robbery, it's an impersonal, butyou see somebody stabbed up

(39:04):
close five, six, ten times.
It's personal, like there.
There was some type of actualhatred there.
So, yeah, I think it's easierto disassociate yourself from a
distance than it is when you'reup close.
But even up there can betelltale signs, the difference
between I took the time to burnthis body and set it on fire.
There's a personal hatredcompared to a single shot and I

(39:27):
left him to die.

Speaker 3 (39:29):
And that's also you know again the devastation there
.
They could have just as easilyswept the town and arrested all
the men.
It's not like they were heavilyarmed, especially after the
conflict lasted all day.
They would have had noammunition, they had few guns to
begin with.
There would have been verylittle risk at that point for
them to sweep the town andeliminate.
And they're tense.

(39:50):
You don't have to set them onfire.
You could just as easily knockthem to the ground and haul the
canvas away or whatever you wantto do with it well, I mean, you
can go back to like 1300 siegementality.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
If you've got all these machine gun engagements
set up, you just starve them out, you don't have to open fire.
That is basically for lack ofme not being sensitive at all to
the plight of massacres, ofpeople that commit massacres.
But this is just like I want toshow my big dick moment.
So I'm going to shoot a ton ofbullets.
I'm going to tell my lackeys toshoot a ton of bullets Cause I

(40:24):
want to show who's the biggerman by the bigger guns we have.
Instead of, let's just take thetime, maybe deny him food for a
little while, not let them throwtheir sanitation out where they
want to come to us and ask forhelp.
No, let's just kill them,because that, for some reason,
just makes me feel like more ofa man or more of a.
I have more power by doing thisand this is something we see

(40:47):
across.
The companies do all this.
They find it much easier.
Instead of trying to waitthings out, let's just kill,
invade, take people out of theirhomes, you know, violate their
every right possible under theconstitution.
Somehow in these mining townsthose rights went out.

Speaker 3 (41:04):
The window, and I think part of the reason why
they do that is thepsychological intimidation for
others and the people who areleft, because if they circled
around and said we're not goingto give you any food or water
until you give up, and then themen at one point were like, okay
, my wife and kid, you know they, they, my wife and kids need to
get out.
This is not safe for themanymore.
You guys go on.

(41:25):
Even if at some point he dies,he'll die in the knowledge that
his family hopefully, eventhough they won't have any
income or any way to supportthemselves are safe someplace,
that maybe their children willend up somehow taken care of
someplace else, whereas if youare there in the moment and you
see your whole family decimatedand everything you own destroyed

(41:48):
, and then those tales get outto other places, people who
might maybe think about doingthe same thing will decide you
know what.
That's too high of a price.
I can't do that.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
It's kind of like the scene in I don't know five out
of every three movies where theantihero goes in and kills all
but one bad guy and grabs thebad guy and is like tell them
what you saw here today andthrows him out.
That's kind of what it is here.
Look at all these people wemassacred.
Now go tell other people like,throws them out, like that's
kind of what it is here.
Look at all these people wemassacred.
Now go tell other people whenyou go to try and find your next
job or you get back in themining system.

(42:21):
Look you guys don't want torebel.
Because I was at thesedifferent camps, I was at love
low when this massacre happenedand I lost my own family or
right, right, exactly like youdon't.

Speaker 3 (42:33):
You don't want to go through what happened there.
So, of of course I mentionedbefore, the National Guard's
version was all the women andchildren were gone and the
strikers were the ones who shotat them first and started the
shooting.
But again, there's so manywomen and children impacted
there.
That just doesn't make sensechildren impacted there.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
That that just doesn't make sense.
Well, I'm again like.
I'm a veteran.
I'm I support the military alot, but it's not like at this
time in us history.
The us military had a shiningreputation of being upfront and
honest.
I mean from the you know nativeamericans, even in this time
period, I think, would say thatthe uS military was not exactly
the most reliable source oftheir own behavior.

Speaker 3 (43:20):
And this is even just the Colorado National Guard, so
it's even more localized.
And at this point the actualguard other than Troop A, had
been recalled.
So the only people there atthat point is this group of
Troop A, so it's even moreconcentrated.
It's not even just like youhave a general army Like.
These are specifically peoplewho are interested in the

(43:40):
outcome of this conflict at thispoint in time.
It's not like a neutral lawenforcement agency or some type
of enforcement.
Days of violence and it's knownas the 10-Day War, where people
who were sympathetic to theminers and the union attack all
kinds of places that areanti-union and anti-union

(44:03):
establishments, and the minersend up taking control of an area
that's about 50 miles by 5miles, which is pretty
significant when you think aboutit.
And of course, during thisconflict you have more people
who die.
So finally the president sendsin the federal troops to disarm
both sides and the ColoradoCoalfield War is basically

(44:25):
declared over and it ends upwith about 75 fatalities.
Again, depending on where youlook, some people the numbers
are closer to 200, some closerto that 75 number, and
eventually the union runs out ofmoney at the end of the year.
So, even though they declaredit over, when the Army shows up
at the end of the year, union'sout of money, they're done.

(44:47):
At the end of the day, theunion was not recognized.
The workers didn't get anythingon their list.
They didn't get theireight-hour day.
They didn't get proper pay fortheir tonnage or proper weight
controls for their tonnage orpay for their dead work time.
Any of that.
They didn't get any of it.
No law enforcement of the lawsthat were in place.

(45:08):
So when you look at it on thesurface you'd say, oh, this was
a colossal failure.
You got nothing and so manypeople lost everything.
But there's a lot more to it.
The ripple effect that happenedfrom that, even though the union
ran out of money and theydidn't get anything they wanted,
it did end up in the trials ofabout 400 minors, 332 of them

(45:32):
for murder, and these trialstake place through 1920 and
resulted in no convictions,except for John Larson, who was
one of the strike leaders whowas there, and he was convicted
in 1950 to a life sentence formurder for one of the guards who
were killed, the deputy sheriff, and with his 1915 life.
It was a hard labor convictionbut it ended up two years later

(45:56):
going up to the Colorado SupremeCourt and overturned.
So he ended up not having aconviction after all, and he had
also participated in thoseCripple Creek strikes of 1903
and 1904.
And in 1903, his house, alongwith several other of the strike
organizers' homes, weredynamited and his daughter, fern

(46:20):
, apparently, was thrown fromher crib when this dynamite
explosion happened and he hadalso at one point been shot with
a shotgun.
So there was a lot for himpersonally leading up to Ludlow,
for him to be brought up onthese murder charges of this
deputy sheriff, when they'vebeen doing all these things to

(46:40):
him, his friends and his familylike forever.
Just it boggles my mind On theflip side of it, depending again
on what numbers you look atsome said 12, some said 22.
National Guard memberspotentially 10 officers faced
court martial but ultimatelythey're exonerated 10 officers

(47:01):
faced court-martial butultimately they're exonerated.
And Lieutenant Carl Lindfeld hewas the one who was responsible
for the execution death ofTychus and the other two.
He ends up being foundresponsible but acquitted, and
I'm not exactly sure what thatmeans as far as like cause.
I don't know military law.
I don't know how you can befound responsible but at the
same time acquitted.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
Basically, it sounds like what they're saying is yeah
, you did this, but it wasjustified in the conflict
environment.
The only weird things aboutthis is and this is a
conversation that even today isgoing to be had is you weren't
really supposed to deploy UStroops inside the US?
I'm not sure exactly when thatbecame like law, because even

(47:47):
now, like it takes an act ofCongress to be able to do
something like that, but that'skind of what it sounds like, is
that?
But this was something that wasseen and I mean there's so much
because you said this is 1920,they're going to trial and stuff
.
There's so much that's happenedin between this time period of
between 1910, 1914, when you'vegot this battle happening in his
mind.
Then you're going into WorldWar II.

(48:08):
A lot of sentiments changed atthat time and people were being
tried by juries that looked likethem.
They weren't soldiers, theyweren't rich people.
Looked like them, they weren'tsoldiers, they weren't rich

(48:32):
people.
So I think this kind of buildsinto what we see in other
episodes we've talked about inthis time period where you start
to see almost the anti-hero andthe Wild West lower class.
So it doesn't surprise me thatyou could have had 500 people
tried and none of them wouldhave been found guilty because
they were seen as folk heroes atthis point.
And then the military.
I mean, it's a court-martial.
You're being tried by your ownpeople.
If they admit you did somethingwrong, then it becomes a bigger

(48:54):
.
The government did somethingwrong, so of course, no, we
didn't do anything wrong.

Speaker 3 (49:00):
Which this guy, I mean, he was a real piece of
work.
Linderfeld again.
Funny enough, he started off asa mine guard in Cripple Creek
in 1913 at the beginning of thestrike.
And then he goes from being amine guard to being the deputy
sheriff at Ludlow, to taking amilitary command, and then he
claims martial law has beendeclared.
There was no indication that itever was.

(49:22):
But he says that there is amartial law order declared and
with that he starts running aportion of the Colorado National
Guard in the area and thatspecific portion of the guard
was not sent to the area thatthey were actually in, if that
makes sense.
So he says, oh, there's martiallaw.
And then he runs off to thisarea that he's not actually been

(49:45):
officially deployed to.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
My mommy sent me an order for martial law but it got
lost in the mail.
I'm sorry.
That's just the dumbest thingever.
I'm waiting for my martial laworder.
It's supposed to be here anyday through USPS.
I'm waiting for my martial laworder.

Speaker 3 (50:00):
It's supposed to be here any day through USPS.
Well, and then on top of that,not only is he there saying
there's martial law in an areathat he's not been ordered to be
at, he's then conductingillegal searches and seizures,
and mostly what he's taking isammunition.
So again now he's making surethat he disarms his enemies and
taking the ammunition, so it'snot only disarming them but
giving him additional resourcesto use against them.

(50:22):
He seems to be the first onewho morphs one of the Colorado
Guard units from the Guard unitand the sheriffs into the
Baldwin felts and one into oneunit called Company B, and so it
seems like he's the one whofirst spins it.
Where he gets these people, whowere probably people he already

(50:44):
knew as a coal mine guardbefore all of this started into
this National Guard group.
So you know, I don't know thathe was recruiting people he knew
, but it would make sense,because how many guards ended up
in this unit and how many ofthe people from Baldwin Phelps,
the detective agency, end upcoming in there?

(51:07):
And he had a bad reputationbefore Ludlow.
In fact, there was a lawprofessor who tried to contact
the governor to ask that he besuspended because he saw
Linderfelt attacking and hittinga boy.
He was beating a boy who wastrying to take a train.
So he saw that, contacted thegovernor and said hey, can you

(51:27):
take this person off of hiscommission?
It didn't happen.
And then later Ludlow happened.
And then this professor cameforward and said I told you he
was a bad dude.
Nobody got him out and see whathappened.
And then even on their own sidethere was a captain who said
that he deliberately keptLinfield's company stationed
away from Ludlow because he hadconcerns that something might

(51:50):
happen.
And sure as shit he packed uphis stuff, said I'm coming to
this area, even though he wasn'tordered there, and declared
martial law and took over.

Speaker 2 (51:59):
Yeah, it sounds like this was a lot less of a
national guard unit and morelike a gang of outlaws, like
this seems, which, again in thistime period, like you're out of
the west so you don't havethose roving gangs like old
outlaws, but this seems morelike you're more starting to see

(52:19):
organized crime and this guywas just very smart about
bringing his friends in, armingthem under the guise of here we
are as military representativesand really it's about whoever's
paying to keep him in whateverposition he's meant to be in.
If that's going to ludlow andmassacring people, he's
basically a gun for hire andit's just.

(52:43):
You know, even in the 1910s andmoving forward and going out
west, it seems like there were alot of issues with this.
the farther you got away fromcivilization and when the owners
of these companies aren't outthere.
They they're in New York andWashington and it's very easy to
go tell politicians oh no, thereports you're getting back

(53:04):
aren't correct.
It's just so much easier tomanipulate things from the
source and still distanceyourself to be able to say well,
I didn't really know, thesepeople were massacring people.
Nobody ever told me that's notwhat the intelligence was being
brought back to me from mycompany.
Nobody ever told me that's notwhat the intelligence was being
brought back to me from mycompany.
And unlike now where you can goshow me the email, back then it
was just word of mouth and, ofcourse, money talked.

Speaker 3 (53:26):
And even with the whole like word of mouth thing,
linderfeld admits that he hitTakis and he admits in the court
martial that he hit him withhis Springfield rifle and they
find him guilty of assault, butthen they attach no criminality
to that action, which again itjust boggles my mind that he
basically had two people holdthis man while he beat him to

(53:47):
death and nothing came of it.
Like that just doesn't sit wellwith me at all and as somebody
who was involved in lawenforcement, that just like gets
under my skin and makes me wantto scream because how, how can
that happen?
How could he get away with that?

Speaker 2 (54:04):
Well, I think in God we could probably create a whole
podcast just on how lawenforcement developed.
But back in that time it wasn'tuncommon for law enforcement to
use heavy handed tactics.
Like when we look back at WyattEarp and you know the
questionable reality of whatreally happened at the okay

(54:24):
corral there's again there.
There's conflicting reports ofwho shot first and what that was
like, or even to Bat Masterson,who was known for waiting his
gun so he could pistol whippeople.
This wasn't 1820s when BatMasterson and Wyatt Earp were
around like.
This is late 1800s, early 1900sand 1910s.
So law enforcement back then itwas a lot more punishment than

(54:48):
it was that concept of keepingthe peace, and the more almost
violent you were, the more yougot praised for keeping them
criminals in line.

Speaker 3 (54:58):
Yeah, I suppose.
And you also had the whole likeneeds-killing defense and
things like that.
Where you know, I guess youcould try to convince somebody
that Takis is the bad guy andneeds to be gone.
But at the same time it juststill boggles my mind that you
could have that many witnessesand he even gets on the stand
himself and says, yep, I did it.
And people are like all right,cool, cool, cool, you go on your

(55:21):
merry way.
But the silver lining in all ofthis if silver mining, silver,
ha ha silver lining.
Silver lining.

Speaker 2 (55:29):
Very well played.

Speaker 3 (55:30):
Thank you.
There's a house committee onmines and mining investigation
and they published a report in1950.
And that report gets the ballrolling to help support the
child labor laws that come intoeffect and that helps get our
eight-hour workday.
So, even though the minorsdidn't get it from the strike
because of this report andinvestigation, eventually we all

(55:54):
get to have our eight-hour daybecause of their sacrifice.
And what year was that?
The report came out?
In 1915.
1915.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (56:02):
And then also in 1915 , that's when John L Larson is
convicted and sentenced to thatlife sentence.
He also testified to theCommission on Industrial
Relations, which again, I'm likegeez, he's dealing with his own
conviction and his own trialand at the same time he's off
testifying on this othercommission.

(56:24):
So he challenged John DRockefeller Jr regarding the
conditions of the camps,including the validity of
elections that they held there,where he said, the election
judges counted votes from sheepand mules and even boxcars, and
he testified about the houses aswell, as when his house and the
four other union organizers'homes were dynamited, and so he

(56:46):
brought attention to that whenhe went and testified to this
commission.
Prior to all of this happening,Rockefeller had appeared before
a US congressional hearing onstrikes shortly before the
massacre.
Now that this has happened,there's this huge backlash on
Rockefeller because he had puthis name out there.
That like this is the waythings are going.

(57:06):
And then Ludlow happens, and so, there again, word reaches the
East Coast, Like you weretalking about who's controlling
the East Coast versus who'sletting information come out of
Colorado and there's thismassive backlash.
There's protesters, there'sanarchists, they're following
Rockefeller.
Even at one point in time heleaves for his family estate

(57:26):
that's 30 miles away, there's afailed bombing plot against him
and then there's a dynamiteexplosion that ends up leading
New York City Police Departmentto create the bomb squad.
So there was a lot of falloutfrom this.
Rockefeller, on the other hand,at some point sees the writing
on the wall, maybe has thatattack of conscience that you
were talking about, that look inthe mirror moment.

(57:48):
But he decides that forwhatever reason or motivation,
whether it be altruistic or lessthan that, he needs to change
things.
And he hires a labor relationsexpert.
He creates committees that workwith worker representatives
discussing working conditions,safety, health, recreation.

(58:10):
He makes all kinds ofimprovements to their towns,
such as roads and recreationfacilities, and part of his
solution is to startcompany-sponsored unions, which,
of course, is less than idealbecause now again the company is
controlling the union.
But at least it was somethingand at least it gave the workers
on some level a forum to airtheir grievances and be heard.

(58:34):
And he also hires a publicrelations expert, again trying
to repair the damage that hadbeen done to his reputation and
to the company's reputation.
And he goes to Colorado and heactually meets with the miners
and their families and heactually checks on conditions
there and talks to them and thiswas a very new idea for him to
actually personally go andinteract with these people and

(58:56):
see what's going on firsthandinstead of just relying on
reports from the bottom up as towhat's going on.
So I think that really changedthings too and brought a new
accountability for people whowere in charge and expectation
for what they should be doing.
So as we look now back as faras the reflected importance,

(59:22):
there's been many people whohave studied this and declared
it a turning point for the laborlaw and labor relations.
George McGovern did hisdoctoral dissertation in 1972,
the same year he was running forpresident.
On this specific incident.
There's many books and songs.
There is a verse novel, whichis a type of poetry.

(59:42):
There's an opera UptonSinclair's King Cole is based on
this event.
So in hindsight it's huge.
Because they were moved out soquickly, Archaeologists have
been able to study it.
It was the first type of areaof this kind that was studied by
archaeologists because it waspreserved so well, because

(01:00:03):
everybody was gone almostimmediately.
So it has a lot of significancenow, looking back, which again
I'm like how did I never hearabout this?
How did I you know in highschool?
Why did I not learn about this?
But the site is now owned by theUnited Mine Workers of America.
It was purchased by them in1916.
They placed a monument there tothe lives that were lost in

(01:00:26):
1918.
And then, in 2003, becausepeople are so wonderful and
altruistic, vandals came and cutthe head off of the male figure
and the arm off of the femalefigure of the monument that was
there, Because you know, that'simportant Fucking savages.
Exactly, Exactly, and theynever figured out what happened

(01:00:48):
or figured out who wasaccountable or found the missing
parts.
But it was repaired and it wasunveiled in 2005.
And then it was designated as aNational Historic Landmark in
2009.
So that is the details of theLudlow Massacre.

Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
I think there's so much to unpack with this and you
can talk about kind of whathappened before Ludlow and if we
put us in the season that we'rein, that's the ghost of
Christmas past, okay, what'sgonna happen?
Then you get to the sludlowincense, like okay, here's the
ghost of christmas present.

(01:01:25):
And then we get to these changesthat are happening in the 1920s
like the ghost of christmasfuture and maybe scrooge has had
his change of heart, which isrockefeller in this and the rich
people are gonna see.
Oh fuck, no, like thesemassacres and slaughters and the
horrible things continue forlike another 50 plus years, into
even now.
Now you're not seeing as muchof the violence, but I mean even
into the 60s and 70s and placeslike Harlan County, kentucky,

(01:01:48):
bath, all these other areas.
It's still a fight betweenunions which, for the most part,
are just workers trying to havesafer environments, especially
mines.
I mean, you're already dealingwith these horribly dangerous
environments Again, a lot ofwhere I look at, and even silver

(01:02:09):
mining has their own problemswith lung diseases and things
like that that you're alreadygoing to have a shortened life.
But these things didn't changeand even with the labor union
laws that came into effect,people were still being pushed
by sheriffs and their housesraided.
So this is kind of what shouldbe the start of a beautiful like

(01:02:30):
let's change.
But really it's just one of thefirst real document cases of
something that would become atrend across the United States,
of these big, well-fundedcompanies massacring and
slaughtering and what we see isthis Scrooge didn't wake up on
Christmas Day and see abeautiful world.
He woke up on Christmas Day andsaw more people who needed to

(01:02:51):
crush him in his boot.

Speaker 3 (01:02:53):
Or at least for Rockefeller, the realization
that if he kept having theappearance of doing that, that
there were going to beconsequences.
That even if he didn't haveconsequences from the government
, that there would be enough ofthese protesters and anarchists
coming after him.
That, you know, maybe at onepoint he wouldn't be lucky
enough to get away from the bomb.
Maybe at one point, instead ofblowing themselves up, they

(01:03:15):
might blow him up.
So I think at least, if nothingelse, there was the realization
that he needed to at least makethe appearance that he was
listening.
Now, whether anybody actuallylistened or not, like we can
always hope that they did onsome level, even if it was a
self-serving reason to not looklike the bad guy anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
Well, and we saw this in bootlegging and we see this
with drug trafficking today.
And I'm not saying that miningand drug trafficking are the
same, but in a way they kind ofare, because you know one's
legal, one's illegal, but bothstrip resources in a way to make
money for one.
And when one person goesstraight and like you know what?
I don't want to do this anymore.
I want to be a productivemember of society and I don't

(01:03:56):
want to be hurting other people.
Productive member of societyand I don't want to be hurting
other people.
There's always somebody willingto step in and fill that void,
to exploit and take careadvantage of other people.
Unfortunately, that's just thecycle and you know it goes from
mining to other resources andonce that's done and it goes to,
you could say, the restaurantindustry, other stuff, where
you're taking advantage ofpeople looking for work, so the

(01:04:18):
rich can get rich and the poorget poorer.
And unfortunately, even to thisday now, unions are losing
their power.
A lot of states are going towrite to work.
Unions don't have the samestrength they had to bargain and
protect people and it's avicious cycle that people may
not see as a criminal justiceissue or true crime issue when
you first hear like, oh, we'regoing to talk about this.

(01:04:39):
This little massacre we'retalking about is a much larger
stain on the rape, assaults,murders, abuses that happened to
families across this timeperiod.

Speaker 3 (01:04:57):
I think I would totally agree with that.
Hopefully someday we'll getbetter at figuring out how to
work these things out, althoughprobably not.

Speaker 2 (01:05:07):
We can always hope they did.
It's been 115 years and it'sstill.
We may call it different things, but it's unfortunately still
the same today.
And you know, even in the 80s,when Reagan talked about trickle
down economics, like oh, if wetax people and we get these
income taxes.
It's going to help redistributethe wealth.
Well, even today and it's not apolitical conversation, it's

(01:05:29):
just flat out economics youstill have a very small
percentage of ultra rich whenyou have a majority of people
that are lower and middle class.
That obviously hasn't worked.
So when we sit and we talkabout what's the problem?
The problem is workers havenever been protected nearly as
much as the people that controlthe corporations, that pay the
government officials and that'smy soap box for the week, so I'm

(01:05:53):
just going to go ahead and getthat one.
But no, I definitely thinkthere's a lot more episodes
coming.
You know me working and reallyhaving this new passion and love
for the last three years ofeastern Kentucky and going into
Pennsylvania and stuff that.
There's a lot of thesehistorical things that we talked
about and need to be brought upBecause, again, as we say, a
lot of our episodes and we'llalways remind people this isn't

(01:06:16):
really about true crime as aglorification of all criminals.
That's the opposite of whatwe're trying to do.
Really.
What we're trying to do is acriminal justice broadcast that
has the criminal elements butreally shows what the victims in
society has suffered because ofthe acts of others.
So this is just another exampleof these are people that were

(01:06:38):
just trying to work, supporttheir families in hard times 10
years before the GreatDepression hits, and they were
victimized.
They were taken horribly abusedby a system that didn't see
them well, and even in this one,law enforcement and government
agencies were not the helpinghand but the military wing of

(01:07:01):
private corporations.
So box number two I'll step offof, but I think this has been a
great episode.
I really liked this case.
I really like when we do theseones where you just bring me
something and you're like I'mgoing to tell you all these
facts and I can just sit hereand go oh shit, this is not
going to go well, because theynever do.
We wouldn't be talking aboutthem.
If it was Happy Rainbows, thiswould be the Happy Rainbow

(01:07:22):
podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:07:24):
So I'll have to do the next one where you get to do
the Kentucky coal mines and yes, I have to put that together.

Speaker 2 (01:07:29):
And the other thing I think is kind of sad Now bring
this up, because you talkedabout that memorial which is
kind of out in the middle ofnowhere, harlan Kentucky has.
Kentucky has this beautifulcoal mining museum and I'll
probably bring this up like ahundred times because it's an
amazing facility but it's likethree hours from anything you
really have to be like.
You know, I'm going to take awhole day of my life to go to
these museums and I think that'sone thing.
How, in a way, these historicalevents get lost, especially

(01:07:53):
when you talk about, like thecoal mining wars or you talk
about the Ludlow, is becausethey happen in these remote
areas that people aren't inanymore.
So it just kind of becomes thisghost and this shell that
nobody ever really talks aboutand it's good that we're
bringing light back to those.

Speaker 3 (01:08:15):
I mean, just as your point goes, I never heard about
this and it was only because Idrove past that sign I don't
even know how many times, as Iwas frequently traveling between
Colorado and Albuquerque thatafter you see the sign so many
times, you say what the heck isthat and you look it up.
But had I not been driving thatroad constantly, I would have
never thought to look it up andI still wouldn't know about it

(01:08:37):
today.

Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
If it wasn't for Timothy Olfaint and Walter
Goggins I wouldn't give a rat'sass normally about and I don't
mean this to be mean, but likenowhere Kentucky.
Like I was a city kid fromIndianapolis but the more I went
up in academia and thenwatching Justified and seeing
the way the Harlan County inEastern Kentucky was presented
and then I was given theopportunity to go work at a
university there and I fell inlove with it like amazing people

(01:09:05):
, a rich history and then reallyseeing the impacts from a
social work side and a criminaljustice side of what coal mining
and those coal towns,everything have done to an
entire state and and those coaltowns and everything have done
to an entire state and how muchthey still take themselves back

(01:09:28):
to that because it's not as farremoved.
Like I did a class on the coalmining wars in Harlan with some
of my students at the universityI worked at.
Most of them this is a coupleof years ago, hadn't even heard
of these things, but they werefrom that county or surrounding
counties and went home andtalked to their parents and
grandparents and some of theirparents grandparents were in
these strikes and were part ofthis and they were like we've
never even heard of this back alittle bit of history about

(01:10:00):
their own grandparents and toremind America of the struggles
that have led us where we're attoday, and to inform criminal
justice and police officers andlawyers and stuff that you have
an ethical duty to protect thecitizens, not to be corrupt.
To me, it's a win-win for us andwe get to continue to talk
about things we love to talkabout.

Speaker 3 (01:10:20):
Absolutely so until next time.

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):
I want to thank you all so much for listening to our
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(01:10:45):
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(01:11:06):
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(01:11:28):
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