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On the morning of April 20, 1914, National Guard troops siding with the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company attacked a tent colony of striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado. Twenty-one people were killed, eleven of them children. The Ludlow Massacre set off ten days of open warfare in the Colorado coalfields and, in the outcry that followed, helped win American workers the eight-hour day. The site is now a National Historic Landmark, and a 2024 federal grant is paying for a plan to preserve it.
Why the miners struck
| Colorado coal, 1910 | almost 16,000 workers — nearly one in ten jobs in the state |
| Danger | in 1912 a Colorado miner was twice as likely to die at work as the national average; more than a hundred died in mine accidents by the end of 1913 |
| The company | Colorado Fuel and Iron: about 7,000 workers, nearly 70,000 acres, and one of the worst violators of the mine-safety laws already on the books |
| The demands | enforcement of the eight-hour day, and the right to choose their own housing and doctors |
The company refused every demand, and the United Mine Workers of America called a general strike.
From tents to war
- Eviction. Striking miners and their families were thrown out of company housing and set up a tent colony at Ludlow.
- Escalation. The company's private guards and the strikers clashed repeatedly; union members armed themselves.
- April 20, 1914. Guardsmen attacked the colony to break the strike. Twenty-one people died, eleven of them children.
- The Ten Days' War. Fighting spread across the coalfields until President Woodrow Wilson sent federal troops to disarm both sides.
- The reckoning. Public outrage led Congress to have a House committee investigate. Its 1915 report helped push forward child-labour laws and the enforcement of the eight-hour day.
The grant
| Recipient | United Mine Workers of America |
| Amount | $91,260 |
| Programme | Preservation Planning Grant, American Battlefield Protection Program, National Park Service (2024) |
| For | a master plan for preserving and interpreting the Ludlow Tent Colony Site "in a sustainable and ethically responsible manner", updating the site management plan with twenty years of work since and with wider input from those who have a stake in it |
The American Battlefield Protection Program funds the preservation and interpretation of battlefields and other sites of armed conflict on American soil, through preservation planning and battlefield land acquisition grants among others.
Sources
Written from "War in the Coalfields: The 'Ludlow Massacre' and its Impact on the Eight-hour Workday", National Park Service American Battlefield Protection Program, 2024 Preservation Planning Grants series, a work of the United States government in the public domain.
Dans ces collections2024 Preservation Planning Grants Highlights
Licence : CC0 1.0 (domaine public) · Adapté de www.nps.gov
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