Cripple Creek Miners Strike In Colorado

Cripple Creek Miners Strike: At the end of the 19th century, Cripple Creek was the largest town in the gold-mining district that included the towns of Altman, Anaconda, Arequa, Goldfield, Elkton, Independence and Victor, about 20 miles from Colorado Springs on the southwest side of Pikes Peak. Surface gold was discovered in the area in 1891, and within three years more than 150 mines were operating there. As the silver miners came into the gold mines they caused a lowering of wages. Mine owners demanded longer hours for less pay, and assigned miners to riskier work. In January 1894, Cripple Creek mine owners J. J. Hagerman, David Moffat and Eben Smith, who together employed one-third of the area's miners, announced a lengthening of the work-day

to ten hours from eight, with no change to the daily wage of $3.00 per day. When workers protested, the owners agreed to employ the miners for eight hours a day but at a wage of only $2.50. Not long before this dispute, miners at Cripple Creek had formed the Free Coinage Union. They affiliated with the Western Federation of Miners. The union was based in Altman, and had people in Anaconda, Cripple Creek and Victor. On February 1, 1894, the mine owners began enforcing the 10-hour day. Union president John Calderwood issued a notice a week later demanding that the mine owners go back to the eight-hour day at the $3.00 wage. When the owners did not respond, the union struck on February 7. Portland, Pikes Peak, Gold Dollar and a few smaller mines immediately agreed to the eight-hour day and remained open, but larger mines held out.
1900’s
Colorado labor Wars: The Colorado labor wars were a series of labor strikes in 1903 and 1904 in the US state of Colorado, by gold and silver miners and mill workers represented by the Western Federation of Miners (WFM).

Opposing the WFM were associations of mine owners and businessmen at each location, supported by the Colorado state government. The strikes were notable and controversial for the accompanying violence, and the imposition of martial law by the Colorado National Guard in order to put down the strikes. A nearly simultaneous strike in Colorado's northern and southern coal fields was also met with a military response by the Colorado National Guard. Colorado's most significant battles between labor and capital occurred between miners and mine operators. In these battles the state government, with one exception, sided with the mine operators. Additional participants have included the National Guard, often informally called the militia; private contractors such as the Pinkertons, Baldwin–Felts, and Thiel detective agencies; and various labor entities, Mine Owners' Associations, and vigilante groups and business-dominated groups such as the Citizens' Alliance. The WFM strikes considered part of the Colorado labor wars include: Colorado City, March to April 1903, and July 1903 to June 1904, Cripple Creek mining district, March to April 1903, and August 1903 to June 1904, Idaho Springs, May to September 1903, Telluride, September to December 1903, Denver, July to

November 1903, and Durango, August to September 1903. Two scholars of American labor violence concluded, "There is no episode in American labor history in which violence was as systematically used by employers as in the Colorado labor war of 1903 and 1904.” The WFM as well embraced more violent strike tactics, and "entered into the one of the most insurgent and violent stages that American labor history had ever seen

Ludlow Massacre: The Ludlow Massacre was an attack by the Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel & Iron Company camp guards on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914.

Some two dozen people, including miners' wives and children, were killed. The chief owner of the mine, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was widely criticized for the incident. The massacre, the culmination of a bloody widespread strike against Colorado coal mines, resulted in the violent deaths of between 19 and 26 people; reported death tolls vary but include two women and eleven children, asphyxiated and burned to death under a single tent. The deaths occurred after a daylong fight between militia and camp guards against striking workers. Ludlow was the deadliest single incident in the southern Colorado Coal Strike, which lasted from September 1913 through December 1914. The strike was organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) against coal mining companies in Colorado. The three largest companies involved were the Rockefeller family-owned Colorado Fuel & Iron Company (CF&I), the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company (RMF), and the Victor-American Fuel Company (VAF). In retaliation for Ludlow, the miners armed themselves and attacked dozens of mines over the next ten days, destroying property and engaging in several skirmishes with the Colorado National Guard along a 40-mile front from Trinidad to Walsenburg. The entire strike would cost between 69

and 199 lives. Thomas G. Andrews described it as the "deadliest strike in the history of the United States".The Ludlow Massacre was a watershed moment in American labor relations. Historian Howard Zinn described the Ludlow Massacre as "the culminating act of perhaps the most violent struggle between corporate power and laboring men in American history".Congress responded to public outcry by directing the House Committee on Mines and Mining to investigate the incident. Its report, published in 1915, was influential in promoting child labor laws and an eight-hour work day. The Ludlow site, 18 miles northwest of Trinidad, Colorado, is now a ghost town. The massacre site is owned by the UMWA, which erected a granite monument in memory of the miners and their families who died that day. The Ludlow Tent Colony Site Was designated a National Historic Landmark on January 16, 2009, and dedicated on June 28, 2009. Modern archaeological investigation largely supports the strikers' reports of the event.