Columbine Colorado seems to be one of those places that'll be forever tied to tragedy and bloodshed in the popular culture. I'm sure the words Columbine and Massacre got you thinking about the 1999 tragedy at the Columbine High school when two students carried out a mass shooting killing over a dozen. But this is an account of another dark chapter in Columbine's history, this time set at the local mine. Those familiar with Labour history will know the gist of this story.
A dispute leads the mine workers to work with Industrial Workers of the World to call a general strike throughout Colorado. Scab labour kept some mines around Columbine open so it became the front line of the struggle. The mine owners relies on the police and the state militia to try breaking the strike physically. Confrontations escalated until the miners were fired upon with Tear Gas and live ammunition resulting in fatalities.
Short
history of a strike by miners in Colorado in 1927 and the massacre of
strikers at the Columbine mine by the state militia. The strike lead to
an almost complete shut down of the mining industry in the state.
For
the fifty years prior to 1927, the struggles in the Colorado mines had
been a flashpoint for labour relations throughout the mining industry
and had been marked by many strikes, aborted uprisings and
confrontations between miners and mine owners, and the state militia.
The
presence of the state militia in many strikes of course made the coal
mine disputes not only memorable because of the heroic actions of the
miners, but also because confrontations, more often than not, led to the
spilling of worker's blood.
One of the most well-known strikes of this nature was the
Ludlow strike of 1914,
where 17 workers and members of their families were murdered by the
militia. The subsequent actions of workers across the state after the
attack at Ludlow had created one of the largest uprisings by workers in
American labour history, with whole towns being occupied by armed
miners. However, although this history of labour unrest in the Colorado
mines had brought about some gains for workers, the severe repression
the miners faced had enabled their employers to, on the whole, ignore
the miners' demands, so under these circumstances, conditions and wages
had not changed considerably.
Another of the most well remembered
strikes of the time was the mine strike of 1927, and the subsequent
massacre of workers by the militia at the Columbine mine.
As they
had remained since the late 1800s, conditions in the mines were
deplorable, and large accidents often leading to scores of deaths were
common. In 1917, 121 miners had been killed in an accident at a mine in
Hastings, two years later 31 miners were killed in explosions at the
Oakdale and Empire mines and in 1922 and 1923, 27 were killed in mines
in Sopris and Southwestern. Individual accidents resulting in deaths
were almost daily occurrences. Conditions of pay weren't any better,
with many miners often being paid in scrip, money which was only
redeemable at company owned stores in mining towns. Workers had to pay
for their own tools, blasting powder and were not paid for "dead work",
which was work that was not directly mining for coal, but important to
the mine nonetheless, such as timbering supports to keep the mine safe.
Miners in Colorado had observed a general strike called by the revolutionary syndicalist union the
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1927 in support of the arrested anarchists
Sacco and Vanzetti,
who were executed in August of that year and later in the year, taking
notice of the continuing discontent amongst the miners, the IWW called a
strike of all mine workers on October 18.
The striking miners
shut down every one of the coal mines in northern Colorado except the
Columbine mine, situated just north of Denver in a small town called
Serene, which was being kept running (albeit with a very slow rate of
production) by 150 scabs who had been brought in on the promise of a
fifty cents a day increase in pay. The imported scabs were housed in
Serene, which had been turned into something resembling a fortress, with
barbed wire on the fences and armed guards at the gates.
All in
all, 113 mines across the state had been closed, with 13 still running.
The majority of miners in the state were on strike, about 8,400. As in
Columbine, the 1,750 scabs who were keeping the 13 remaining mines open
were lured away from the strike by promises of increased pay and other
such incentives. However, frequent mass gatherings on the coalfields in
the south of the state brought more and more of the miners still at work
out to join the strike. Picket lines were almost constantly harassed by
the police, and arrests were frequent. Union halls were closed, often
violently, and arrested strikers were moved from one jail to another to
prevent access by IWW lawyers, while many were just driven to the state
line and left there.
The imprisoned IWW members however, did not
stay silent in the jails. A number of them participated in
demonstrations from inside jails and on one occasion, workers from the
Lafayette mine refused to leave a jail they had been placed in because,
as they anticipated, that on their leaving they would just be replaced
by more arrested miners. Since they had grown acclimatised to the cells,
they thought it best to stay so as there would be no room for other
strikers to be locked up. Another group of jailed miners even managed to
convince their jailers to form a deputies' union to obtain better wages
and conditions.
The local press launched frequent attacks on the
IWW and the strikers from their pages, often using the diverse
nationalities of miners involved in the strike to stir up racial
tension. The IWW leaders were also often smeared, being described by one
paper as "tramps with their pants pressed". By and large these attempts
to discredit the strike failed, and the communities local to strike
centres mostly ignored them.
In the south of the state, the
company that owned most of the local mines, Colorado Fuel and Iron
(CF+I), had been at the 'bargaining' table with the company controlled
'union' that had been in place since the Ludlow strike. The company
union was granted a 68 cent a day increase and a resolution was
unanimously passed by the 'workers representatives' to fire any IWW
members on the payroll. These actions played a large part in breaking
the strike in the south. The Columbine mine, still the only mine in
northern Colorado remaining in operation became a focal point of
attempts by the company that owned it, the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company,
to break the strike in the north. After five weeks of strike action and
economic stagnation for the mine owners, they became increasingly
desperate to find a way to end the strike quickly, and many more police
and National Guardsmen were drafted into Serene, bringing with them
weapons including several machine guns.
Mass rallies had been held
by workers outside the Columbine mine in Serene for several weeks and
on the morning of November 21, about 500 miners and their families
marched towards the north gate of the town. On their arrival, they were
met by plainclothed militiamen with rifles, blocking the entrance to the
gate, backed up by mine guards inside the town also armed with rifles
and tear gas grenades. Upon being refused entry into the town and after a
short discussion, the miners asserted their wish to enter, telling the
militiamen that many of them had children in Serene's school, that they
needed access to a public post office in the town and that they still
had a right to hold rallies.
With the militiamen still refusing
the open the gate, Adam Bell, a strike leader, approached the gate and
was struck on the head with a baton. As he fell to the floor, the miners
surged forward to protect him as he lay unconscious. Tear gas canisters
were fired by the militia, and many were thrown back by the rushing
miners. The strikers began to scale the gate and a battle soon ensued,
with police beating the miners back and seriously injuring several
people, including a mother of sixteen, while the miners fought back with
rocks.
The militiamen and police sustained minor injuries, the
general consensus of the day amongst the IWW men had been to leave their
weapons at the union hall or at home. Eventually, the miners forced
their way through the gate, and many began to scale the fences around
the gates. The police retreated about a hundred yards inside the town,
and fired into the mass of surging strikers with their rifles and at
least two machine guns. The miners quickly scattered, but at least six
people had been killed and more than sixty injured by the hail of
bullets, several seriously. The miners also later claimed that not only
were they fired upon by the retreated police line, but also from another
machine gun positioned at the mine tipple on their flank, which would
have created a devastating crossfire.
The massacre at Columbine
was not the last instance of violence against miners during the strike,
with two strikers being killed in Walsenburg two weeks later, as well as
numerous attacks on pickets and union halls.
The owner of the
Rocky Mountain Fuel Company, Josephine Roche (a liberal, who recognised
the need for a union, so long as said union wasn't the IWW), brought an
end to the strike several weeks after the incident at Columbine,
declaring that the company union was to be affiliated with the American
Federation of Labour, as well as eventually recognising the United Mine
Workers of America (UMWA).
The UMWA, whose members had responded
to the massacre at Ludlow thirteen years previously with such a stunning
show of aggression against the Colorado mine owners and authorities,
collaborated with the owners at the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company for
token improvements in pay and conditions for years proceeding the end of
the strike.
However, the backbone of IWW support in the Colorado
mines had been broken by the companies, and the union would never return
to such prominence in the industry again. Rather unsurprisingly, no
militia or policemen were ever held accountable for the massacre at the
Columbine mine, the only physical reminder of the attack being a small
monument at the site of the shootings. However, the striking miners and
the victims of the militia's bullets will always be remembered as the
manifestation of decades of struggle in the Colorado coal pits, which,
while having limited actual accomplishments, was one of the finest
examples of mass working class action in American labour history.
From
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