ionization, “Although the United Mine Workers of America did not succeed in unionizing the Colorado coal fields until the 1930s, the events of the 1913-1914 strike played a key role in the effort” (Coal 1).
In Declarations of Independence, noted historian Howard Zinn bases his discussion of the CFI strike of 1913 on a 1936 publication by Samuel Yellen entitled American Labor Struggles. Zinn never encountered the Ludlow massacre in college studies. He argues the strike began when a young immigrant labor organizer was shot dead by two detectives working for CFI. According to Zinn, the situation in Trinidad was feudalistic: “The miners, mostly immigrants, speaking a dozen different languages, were living in a kind of serfdom in the mining towns where Rockefeller collected their rent, sold them their necessities, hired the police, and watched them carefully for any signs of unionization” (1-2). Mary Jo
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