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Killing for Coal: America's Deadliest Labor War (2008)

by Thomas G. Andrews

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1674161,860 (3.71)3
This book offers a bold and original perspective on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre and the ?Great Coalfield War. ? In a story of transformation, Andrews illuminates the causes and consequences of the militancy that erupted in colliers ? strikes over the course of nearly half a century.
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A straightforward narrative of the 1914 Colorado coal war. Author Thomas G. Andrews is a university professor, and is, as you might expect, on the side of the strikers – but not obnoxiously so. The coal companies – in this case, Colorado Fuel and Iron – reacted to earlier strikes by setting up “company towns” where miners could live in more or less comfortable little cottages – and be evicted if they went on strike. As a result, coal miners from around Trinidad, Colorado, were living in a tent city near the Ludlow rail stop, watched over by uneasy Colorado National Guardsmen. The State Auditor was pro-strikers, and had blocked the appropriation to pay the Guard; unfortunately this move backfired, as the mining companies volunteered to pay them instead, perhaps affecting their neutrality. Nobody knows who shot first, but when it was over one Guard private and about 20 strikers were dead – most striker fatalities were women and children, who were burned to death when tents caught fire (it might seem fairly easy to escape a burning tent, but the strikers had prepared for a long siege by building dugouts beneath their tents, and the Guard raked the encampment with machine gun fire, presumably discouraging people from coming out of the dugouts until it was too late). The body of strike leader Louis Tikas, who had been negotiating with the Guard when the shooting started, was found later; his skull was fractured and he’d been shot in the back.

This is the whole story as far as the miner’s union monument at the site is concerned; Andrews details what happened next. The miners, understandably unhappy about things, marched through the nearby company town of Forbes and burned it down, killing ten strikebreakers and Colorado Guardsmen in the process. Ten more mines between Walsenburg and Trinidad also got torched. Although there were no more pitched battles, random assassinations and murders brought the total fatality count to somewhere between 75 and 100, making the Colorado Coalfield War the deadliest labor dispute in US history.

Andrews starts with a geological history, which is correct as far as it goes (I was a little surprised to learn that the southern Colorado coal belt is Cretaceous, as most US coal is Carboniferous). This is followed by the development of the coal fields; Andrews notes that railroad lines were laid out to take advantage of minable coal deposits. Andrews often seems to be apologizing for coal, perhaps suspecting that his typical readers have been brought up to believe that Coal is Evil Incarnate; thus we are repeatedly reminded that if it wasn’t for coal, there wouldn’t be a Colorado (not to mention a United States). The explanations are almost pathetic; it’s necessary to remind us that railroads ran on coal, factories ran on coal, and people heated their houses with coal. I have the annoying feeling that a good chunk of readers are under the impression that the 19th and early 20th centuries were all electric, generated by windmills. A coal miner’s travails were many; Colorado, for reasons never explained, had a much higher fatality rate per ton produced than Eastern mines. Andrews gets in a little trouble with this by using miner’s terminology: stinkdamp, blackdamp, afterdamp and firedamp. Stinkdamp is hydrogen sulfide; blackdamp is confusingly called a “combination of carbon dioxide and nitrogen” which is technically true but makes it sound like a chemical compound rather than just air with the oxygen removed; afterdamp is mostly carbon monoxide left over after an explosion; and firedamp is methane. You could, of course, get actual “damp” with a vengeance; mines sometimes encountered groundwater (although the book doesn’t mention it, the Colorado School of Mines football field has a monument to a number of miners drowned when a tunnel broke into a flooded, abandoned mine. Survivors made it to the elevator and pulled the “emergency up” signal. They must have been mourning their lost friends as the cage went up as fast as the surface steam winch could lift it. Then one of the miners noticed his feet were wet. By the time they finally outpaced the rising water, it was up to the necks of the taller men and the short ones were hanging from the cage roof. I think I would have had some nightmares after that). And finally, mines cave in despite the best efforts of timbermen.

There are plenty of other interesting items about mining mixed in with the strike narrative. Miners were paid by the ton (I am of the age to remember the Tennessee Ernie Ford ballad “Sixteen Tons”) and a mine boss could subtly punish miners he didn’t like by assigning them to poorer mine areas; one of the strikers demands was to be allowed to apportion mine “rooms” themselves to give everybody a chance. The union wasn’t above some dirty tricks itself; a favorite tactic was to use an “inside man” who was a union member who posed as a miner willing to inform on his fellows. The “inside man” would claim that miners uninterested in the union were actually troublemaking union members. Management would fire them, making them disgruntled and more willing to unionize at their next job; actual union members would apply for their jobs and get them, based on the “inside man’s” recommendation. The entire mine workforce could be gradually unionized this way without management knowing any better.

Well mapped, illustrated and footnoted; and reasonably fair and balanced. Nothing particularly poetic about the writing but certainly readable. ( )
  setnahkt | Dec 14, 2017 |
Introduction: Civil war, red and bloody -- 1. A dream of coal-fired benevolence -- 2. The reek of the new industrialism -- 3. Riding the wave to survive an earth transformed -- 4. Dying with their boots on -- 5. Out of the depths and on to the march -- 6. The quest for containment -- 7. Shouting the battle cry of union.
"Killing for Coal offers a bold and original perspective on the Ludlow Massacre and the Great Coalfield War. In a sweeping story that begins in the coal beds and culminates with the deadliest strike in American history, Thomas Andrews examines the causes and consequences of the militancy that erupted in colliers' strikes over the course of nearly half a century. He reveals a complex world shaped by the connected forces of land, labor, corporate industrialization, and workers' resistance." "Andrews illuminates the human and environmental transformations that turned a wild Western frontier into a gritty epicenter of union management conflict. Exploring struggles over social and environmental justice in a nation growing increasingly dependent on the fossilized energy that the miners worked to unearth, he makes a powerful case for rethinking the relationships that unite and divide workers, consumers, capitalists, and the natural world."--BOOK JACKET.
  SMELibrary | Sep 2, 2016 |
The author has encapsulated numerous social and economic conditions into a coherent chronicle of life struggling to exist both in and above the coal mines for the men and their families. It is a griping study of the truth in the social and environmental history of a labor struggle. The author's probes the origins of fossil fuel dependency in the American West, the role of workplace environments in shaping mine worker solidarity, and the coalescence of migrant laborers from many nations into a fighting force which culminates in spiraling violence between coal miners and mining companies during the Ludlow Massacre and Colorado Coalfield War of 1913-14. ( )
  earthwind | Jan 30, 2014 |
A fascinating history of of how mineral extraction, and specifically coal, came to define Colorado and its economy in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Focusing on the southern coal fields in the vicinity of Walsenburg and Trinidad, this well-researched account portrays the great disparity between the hardness of the miner's life and that of the coal operators and managers. It is a tale of greed, mendacity, and class warfare. Not altogether different from oil and other mineral exploration in many countries today. Certainly the next time I make the drive from Denver to Albuquerque I'll be seeing the country in a completely different light. ( )
  co_coyote | Jul 27, 2009 |
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This book offers a bold and original perspective on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre and the ?Great Coalfield War. ? In a story of transformation, Andrews illuminates the causes and consequences of the militancy that erupted in colliers ? strikes over the course of nearly half a century.

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