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"I went
down to the southern coal fields of the Colorado Fuel and Iron
Company.
I went through the various coal camps, eating in the homes of
the miners, staying all night with their families.
I found the
conditions under which they lived deplorable.
They were
in practical slavery to the
company, who owned their houses, owned all the land, so that if a miner did
own a house he must vacate whenever it pleased
the land owners.
They were paid in scrip instead of money so that they could not go away
if dissatisfied.
They must buy at company
stores and at company prices.
The coal they mined was weighed by an
agent of the company and the miners could not have a check weighman to see that
full credit was given them.
The schools, the churches, the roads
belonged to the company.
I felt,
after listening to their
stories, after witnessing their long
patience that the
time was ripe for revolt against such brutal conditions.
Much of the
fighting took place around Cripple Creek.
The miners were evicted from
their company owned houses.
They went out on the bleak mountain sides,
lived in tents through a terrible winter with
the temperature below zero, with
eighteen inches of snow on the
ground.
They tied their feet in gunny sacks and lived lean and lank
and hungry as timber wolves.
All civil law had
broken down in the Cripple Creek strike.
The militia under Colonel
Verdeckberg said, "We are under orders only from God and Governor Peabody."
Judge Advocate McClelland when accused of violating the constitution
said, "To hell with the constitution!"
There was a complete breakdown
of all civil law.
Habeas corpus proceedings were
suspended.
Free speech and
assembly were forbidden.
People spoke in whispers as in
the days of the inquisition.
Soldiers committed
outrages.
Strikers were arrested for vagrancy and worked in chain
gangs on the street under brutal soldiers.
Men, women and tiny children
were packed in the Bullpen at Cripple Creek.
Miners were shot dead as
they slept.
They were ridden from the country, their families knowing
not where they had gone, or whether they lived.
When the strike started
in Cripple Creek, the civil law was operating, but the governor, a banker, and
in complete sympathy with
the Rockefeller interests,
sent the militia.
They threw the officers out of office.
Sheriff Robinson had a rope thrown at his feet and told that if he did
not resign, the rope would be about his neck.
Shop keepers were forbidden to sell
to miners.
Priests and ministers were intimidated, fearing to give
them consolation.
The miners opened their own stores to feed the women
and children.
The soldiers and hoodlums broke
into the stores, looted them, broke open the safes, destroyed the scales,
ripped open the sacks of flour and
sugar, dumped them on the
floor and poured kerosene oil
over everything.
The beef and
meat was poisoned by the militia.
Goods were stolen.
The miners were without redress, for the
militia was immune.
Men beaten and left for dead in the road.
Organizers were thrown into jail and held without trial for months.
They were deported.
They were
landed in the desert, thirty miles from food or water.
Hundreds of
others were deported, taken away without being allowed to communicate with
wives and children.
On the 19th of April,
1914, machine guns, used
on the strikers in the Paint Creek strike, were placed in position above the
tent colony of Ludlow.
Major Pat Hamrock and Lieutenant K. E.
Linderfelt were in charge of the militia, the majority of whom were, company
gun-men sworn in as soldiers.
Early in the morning soldiers approached
the colony with a demand from headquarters that Louis Tikas, leader of the
Greeks, surrender two
Italians.
Tikas demanded a warrant for their arrest.
They had
none.
Tikas refused to surrender them.
The soldiers returned to
quarters.
A signal bomb was fired. Then another.
Immediately the
machine guns began spraying the
flimsy tent colony, the only home the wretched families of the miners had,
riddling it with bullets.
Like iron rain, bullets' upon men, women and
children.
The women and children fled to the hills.
Others
tarried.
The men defended their home with their guns.
All day
long the firing continued.
Men fell dead, their faces to the ground.
Women dropped.
The little Snyder boy was shot through the head,
trying to save his kitten.
A child carrying water to his dying mother
was killed.
By five o'clock in the
afternoon, the miners had
no more food, nor water, nor ammunition.
They had
to retreat with their wives and little ones into the hills.
Louis Tikas
was riddled with shots while he tried to lead women and children to safety.
They perished with him.
Night came.
A raw wind blew down
the canyons where men, women and children shivered and wept.
Then a
blaze lighted the sky.
The soldiers, drunk with blood and with the
liquor they had looted from the saloon, set fire to the tents of Ludlow with
oil-soaked torches.
The tents, all the poor furnishings, the clothes
and bedding of the miners' families burned.
Coils of barbed wire were
stuffed into the well, the miners' only water supply.
After it was
over, the wretched people crept back to bury their dead.
In a dugout
under a burned tent, the charred bodies of eleven little children and two women
were found-unrecognizable.
Everything lay in ruins.
The wires
of bed springs writhed on the ground as if they, too, had tried to flee the
horror.
Oil and fire
and guns had robbed men and women and children of their homes and slaughtered
tiny babies and defenseless women.
Done by order of Lieutenant
Linderfelt, a savage, brutal executor of the will of the Colorado Fuel and Iron
company.
Rockefeller got busy.
Writers were hired to write pamphlets which were sent for broadcast to
every editor in the country, bulletins.
In these leaflets, it was shown
how perfectly happy was the
life of the miner until the agitators came; how joyous he was with the
company's saloon, the company's pig-stys for homes, the company's teachers and
preachers and coroners.
How the miners hated
the state law of an eight-hour working day, begging to be allowed to work ten,
twelve.
How they hated the state law that they should have their own
check weighman to see that they were not cheated at the tipple.
And all
the while the mothers of the children who died in Ludlow were mourning their
dead.
And so I could go on and on." - Mary "Mother"
Jones
Ivy Ledbetter
Lee is retained by John D.
Rockefeller Jr to represent
his family and
Standard Oil, ("to burnish the family image"), after the
coal mining rebellion in
Colorado known as the "Ludlow Massacre".
Ivy Ledbetter Lee was the
first to use modern public relations
propaganda for corporate purposes.
The term "public
relations" first appeared in the 1897 Yearbook of Railway
Literature.
April 20,
1914
A number of Company B troopers- as instructed by superiors-
locate themselves atop Water Tank Hill, just south of Ludlow.
Many
miners spotted the militiamen, and being quite concerned, armed themselves and
moved to key points where they could closely watch activities.
Suddenly
the sound of riffle fire echoed through the nearby hills.
Neither the
militia nor the miners knew who fired these shots.
Despite this, an
exchange of gunfire began, as both confused miners and militiamen believed they
were coming under attack.
The militia were outnumbered but had a choice
location and a machine gun.
The spray from the gun drove armed strikers
back toward the tents, and provided excellent coverage for guardsmen advancing
toward the tents.
Company A reinforcements arrived with another machine
gun offer support.
The miners now faced two automatic weapons and about
150 guardsmen.
Machine gun and rifle fire forced women and children to
take refuge in storage cellars beneath the tents.
The bodies of two
women and 11 children - victims of asphyxiation - were found huddled within a
cellar.
Five strikers, 2 other youngsters, and at least 4 men
associated with the militia joined them in death.
The Ludlow Massacre
spawned the Colorado Coalfield War.
During the ten days of fighting at
least fifty civilians lost their lives, including twenty-one killed at Ludlow.
From 700 to 1,000 armed strikers gained control of large areas of
territory, and waged open warfare against
mine guards, militia
and mine
employees.
Ivy Ledbetter Lee was retained by John D. Rockefeller Jr
to represent Standard
Oil ("to burnish the family image"), after the coal mining
rebellion.
Upton Sinclair dubbed him "Poison Ivy" after Lee tried to
send bulletins saying those that died were victims of an overturned stove, when
in fact they were shot by the Colorado National Guard.
Ivy Ledbetter
Lee was an inaugural member of the Council on Foreign Relations in the U.S.
when it was established in New York City in 1921.
Shortly before his
death in 1934, Congress was investigating his work in Nazi Germany on behalf of
the company IG Farben. |
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