Colorado Fuel and Mining Co Strike

Such were the pay and conditions when on September 23, 1913, nine thousand miners walked out of Rockefeller-owned mining camps of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (Millies 1). Strikers moved into a tent city at Ludlow, Colorado, while National Guard units were called in to keep the “peace”. Many claimed the Colorado state militia (among them Rockefeller employees) was carrying out the orders of Rockefeller when they sprayed Ludlow with machine-gun fire. In the barrage of gunfire and fires set to the tents, more than 40 miners and their family members, including women and children, were murdered (Millies 1).

Huge coal deposits lay buried beneath the hills and mountains of Colorado. The Colorado Fuel and

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o prevent strikebreakers from entering, and defending themselves against armed assaults” (Zinn 2). When it proved the miner’s resistance was too strong to break, Rockefeller hired detectives from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency to breakup the strikers. The detectives used weapons and a machine gun mounted on an armored car to fire into the tents where miners lived. When even this did not dissuade the mines, the National Guard was called in to maintain order. The miners unwittingly welcomed the National Guard with open arms, figuring they were representatives of the United States and would protect them. Just the opposite occurred. With a ruthless brutality the militia began to assault the outmanned miners. Upon first arriving in town the members of the armed guard routinely beat and jailed the strikers while protecting scabs as they went to work in the mines. Finally the strikers had seen enough injustice to fight fire with fire. One strikebreaker was killed and others were beaten. Four mine guards were murdered while protecting a scab. The Rockefeller detective who killed the immigrant, Gerry Lippiatt, who began the strike, was murdered by gunfire. Despite the brutality of the winter, the miners managed to cling t
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Approximate Word count = 1577
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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