%1 http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/ en Coal Mining in Colorado http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/coal-mining-colorado <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Coal Mining in Colorado</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2021-02-16T13:06:10-07:00" title="Tuesday, February 16, 2021 - 13:06" class="datetime">Tue, 02/16/2021 - 13:06</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/coal-mining-colorado" data-a2a-title="Coal Mining in Colorado"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Fcoal-mining-colorado&amp;title=Coal%20Mining%20in%20Colorado"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p>In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, coal mining was the most important industry in Colorado. Coal mines served as the crucibles of empire, churning out the fuel needed to power the railroads, <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/precious-metal-mining-colorado"><strong>precious-metal mines</strong></a>, and smelters that helped develop the region. They were also contested sites of worker resistance and rebellion where the power dynamics of industrial capitalism were acted out in tragic ways.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Although it is no longer mined in Colorado at the rates it once was, coal has maintained its relative importance to the state’s energy economy through the present. Today, coal mining remains an important industry in the <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/moffat-county"><strong>Moffat County</strong></a>, and coal-fueled power plants provide electricity to hundreds of thousands of residents along the <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/front-range"><strong>Front Range</strong></a>. These coal mines and power plants are sources of air and water pollution, and the industries coal helped fuel are equally pollutive.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Formation of Coal</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>About 70 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous Period, much of Colorado was covered by a shallow, tropical sea. When the uplift of the <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/rocky-mountains"><strong>Rocky Mountains</strong></a> began about a million years later, it pushed up the inundated land, giving rise to many swampy bogs. It was in these bogs that Colorado’s coal began to form as millions of years of the sun’s energy became trapped in vegetation that died and decomposed on top of itself. The plant material was gradually compressed into a primordial muck that eventually hardened into coal.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>When engineer <strong>Ferdinand V. Hayden</strong> surveyed the geology of Colorado in the late 1860s and early 1870s, he identified several areas that held vast coal reserves. These included the Raton Basin in southern Colorado, whose coal Hayden described as being “inexhaustible and of excellent quality,” as well as the northwest part of what was then <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/colorado-territory"><strong>Colorado Territory</strong></a>.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>The Advent of Industrial Coal</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>The earliest coal mining in Colorado took place in the late 1850s near the fledgling town of <a href="/article/denver"><strong>Denver</strong></a>, but industrial development of the state’s coal resources awaited the arrival of <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/william-jackson-palmer"><strong>William Jackson Palmer</strong></a> in the late 1860s. Over the next two decades, Palmer turned coal into Colorado’s most important commodity. In addition to founding the tourist town of <a href="/article/colorado-springs"><strong>Colorado Springs</strong></a> in 1871, Palmer opened dozens of new coal mines in southern Colorado, and his <strong>Denver &amp; Rio Grande Railroad</strong> (D&amp;RG) brought that coal to market in Denver. To manage his new coal empire, Palmer started Colorado Coal &amp; Iron, which eventually became <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/colorado-fuel-iron"><strong>Colorado Fuel and Iron</strong></a> (CF&amp;I), arguably the state’s most powerful coal company. The southern Colorado towns of <strong>Trinidad</strong> and <strong>Walsenburg</strong> became important hubs of coal mining and transport, with the latter known as “The City Built on Coal.”</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Coke and Industry</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Coal mining in Colorado developed alongside precious-metal mining. In addition to providing the fuel needed to transport gold and silver ore, coal also warmed the homes of residents in Denver and other mushrooming Front Range cities.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>By the 1860s, as gold and silver miners left behind panned-out streambeds and began extracting more metal-bearing ore from the mountains, it became apparent that extreme heat was needed to separate gold and silver from the rock that held it. Coal would provide that heat, but not just any coal would do. Smelters, the heat-driven facilities that melted gold and silver ore to extract the metals, required coal that would burn hot enough to melt rock. This type of coal, a densely layered type called <em>coking coal</em>, was formed by the supercompression of underground coal seams. When heated without oxygen, coking coal turns into <em>coke</em>, a fuel that burns hot enough to melt rock and forge steel.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In the 1880s, coke became even more essential in Colorado, as it fueled William Jackson Palmer’s <strong>steel mill</strong> in <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/pueblo"><strong>Pueblo</strong></a>. Coking coal was most commonly found in Colorado’s southern coalfields, making those fields even more important to the state’s industrial economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Major Coal Mining Locations</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>As Palmer’s southern coalfields coalesced in <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/las-animas-county"><strong>Las Animas</strong></a> and <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/huerfano-county"><strong>Huerfano</strong></a> Counties, railroad expansion allowed other parts of the state to become major coal producers as well. In 1881 the D&amp;RG reached <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/crested-butte"><strong>Crested Butte</strong></a>, in northern <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/gunnison-county"><strong>Gunnison County</strong></a>, which would contain some of the most productive mines in the state; it was also the site of the grisly <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/jokerville-mine-explosion"><strong>Jokerville Mine Explosion</strong></a> that killed fifty-nine workers in 1884. Toward the end of that decade miners began tapping coalfields in <a href="/article/boulder-county"><strong>Boulder County</strong></a>, which fueled the growth of towns such as <strong>Louisville</strong> and <strong>Lafayette</strong> in the 1890s.</p>&#13; &#13; <p><a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/garfield-county"><strong>Garfield County</strong></a> in western Colorado also held productive mines, including the volatile Vulcan Mine, which suffered <strong>three deadly explosions</strong> between 1896 and 1918. In the early 1900s, thanks to the completion of the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/denver-northwestern-pacific-railway-hill-route-moffat-road"><strong>Moffat Road</strong></a> rail line, a relatively smaller coal industry developed in <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/routt-county"><strong>Routt County</strong></a> in the northwest part of the state. After the Moffat Road reached Craig in 1913, the coal beds of Moffat County could be tapped, too.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>By 1917 Colorado had 238 coal mines operating throughout the state, most of which were divided between three companies: CF&amp;I, <strong>Rocky Mountain Fuel Company</strong>, and <strong>Victor American Fuel Company</strong>. That year, the state’s coal mines produced a total of some 12.5 million tons of coal, an increase of nearly 2 million tons from the previous year.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Even as it gradually lost market share to oil and natural gas, coal mining continued throughout the twentieth century in Colorado. In Moffat County, for instance, production reached more than 100,000 tons annually between 1943 and 1951. Mining in the state also shifted during this period from deep mining, the kind that sent miners far belowground, to open-pit mining, where heavy machinery is used to excavate shallower coal seams. By the 1960s, coal production had dwindled to the point where the industry had only a small fraction of its earlier power and influence.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Work in the Coal Mines</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Working in coal mines was dirty and dangerous, and labor conditions were dismal and underregulated. Most coal mines grouped together men from more than a dozen different nations and backgrounds, including Austria, Britain, Greece, Italy, Mexico, Poland, and the United States. In the 1880s, coal miners worked from fourteen to sixteen hours per day for paltry wages that were often paid in scrip, a kind of currency that could be used only at company stores. Since many coal camps were remote, these stores were often the sole local source of food and supplies, keeping miners tethered to the company. Moreover, coal companies such as CF&amp;I often built whole company towns, where workers paid rent to live. Along with company stores, company housing ensured that most wages were returned to the company.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In the mines, workers inhaled coal dust all day long, which led to the devastating respiratory disease known as black lung. Mine shafts could collapse or flood. Rock slides and fires were also common; in 1917 the state mine inspector reported that sixty-six miners died from routine accidents, including “falls of rock, falls of coal, mine cars and motors, explosives,” and “electricity.” In addition, methane and other flammable gases released from coal beds often built up in the mines, and each morning an inspector had to check the air quality before work could begin. Employed since the early 1800s, safety lamps, whose flames burned differently when held close to flammable gases, helped determine whether a mine’s air quality was safe. Davy lamps with longer wicks were also used to burn off harmful gases.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Most mines employed inspectors to monitor safety conditions, but even a slight mistake could spell instant death for dozens of miners. This was the case in the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/hastings-mine-explosion"><strong>Hastings Mine Explosion</strong></a>, Colorado’s deadliest mining disaster, which occurred north of Trinidad in 1917. For unknown reasons, the mine inspector took apart his safety lamp and attempted to relight it with a match, triggering a gas-fueled explosion that killed 121 workers. In addition, some mines exploded despite being declared safe; this occurred in the Jokerville Mine blast of 1884, which killed fifty-nine miners. A total of eighty-five workers perished during the three explosions of the Vulcan Mine between 1896 and 1918. These disasters reflected the troubling trend of Colorado miners dying at a rate of twice the national average between 1884 and 1912.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Labor Strife</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Coal miners were victims of owner exploitation and hazardous working conditions, and they often tried to improve their lot. As early as the 1870s, they organized strikes and walkouts, and later they joined unions such as the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/united-mine-workers-america"><strong>United Mine Workers of America</strong></a> (UMWA), formed in 1890. The first UMWA local in Colorado was formed in the Boulder County town of Erie that year, and the union organized its <strong>first major strike</strong> during the <strong><a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/panic-1893">financial calamity</a> </strong>of 1893-94. Thousands of coal miners across the state walked off the job, hoping to produce a coal shortage that would force owners to meet their demands of abolishing company stores and paying workers in cash. In the end, however, there were not enough walkouts to produce a shortage, so miners went back to work under prestrike conditions. By 1900 similar actions had earned some hard-won improvements, including a state law mandating an eight-hour workday, but coal miners had to pressure companies such as CF&amp;I to follow the laws.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Recognizing the power of strikes, mine owners and companies took them seriously, employing both economic oppression and violence to stop them. Owners fired striking workers and hired strikebreakers to work for lower wages than strikers were demanding, hoping to end the strikes. When these approaches failed, mine owners and companies raised citizen militias or petitioned the state to call in the National Guard to force miners back to work.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In Colorado the UMWA was most active in the early twentieth century, with thousands of members joining strikes in the southern coalfields of <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/fremont-county"><strong>Fremont</strong></a>, Huerfano, and Las Animas Counties. A <strong>strike in 1903–4</strong> again called for the abolition of scrip and company stores, as well as implementation of the state’s eight-hour workday law. The failure of that strike led to rising tensions that exploded again in the spring of 1913. The UMWA led a strike in the southern coalfields that involved about 90 percent of the state’s coal workers and resulted in the <a href="/article/ludlow-massacre"><strong>Ludlow Massacre</strong></a> when National Guard members fired on striking miners and set the strikers’ tent colony on fire. It was the deadliest labor conflict in state history.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Coal mining conditions were hardly improved for miners by the time another major conflict broke out in the late 1920s. In 1927, during a strike in the northern coalfields of <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/weld-county"><strong>Weld County</strong></a>, the Colorado State Police (then known as the Colorado Rangers) <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/columbine-mine-massacre-0"><strong>opened fire on strikers</strong></a> and their wives at the Rocky Mountain Fuel company town of Serene, killing six and wounding twenty.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Strikes and labor conflict became less common after the passage of the federal Wagner Act in 1935, which recognized workers’ rights to unionize. Still, there remained periods of strife, such as in 1978, when miners at the Allen and Maxwell Mines in Las Animas County walked off the job for three months as part of a national strike organized by the United Mine Workers.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Environmental Effects</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>In addition to the injuries and health hazards to workers, coal mining has produced a number of negative environmental effects that Coloradans continue to deal with today. Air pollution is the largest environmental cost of coal production. To make the air in coal mines breathable, methane and other harmful gases are vented out into the atmosphere, contributing to local smog and global climate change. The West Elk Mine in Gunnison County is the largest methane emitter in Colorado, belching out emissions in 2017 that equaled those of 98,000 cars. Abandoned coal mines also release methane. Nationwide, coal mines account for almost 10 percent of all methane emissions.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In addition, mines often need to be expanded to maintain their profitability, which leads to deforestation and other forms of habitat destruction. As such, environmental groups often take the coal industry to court over mine expansion as well as pollution. At the West Elk Mine, for example, a proposed expansion into a designated roadless forest resulted in years of litigation before it was ultimately blocked in 2020—but only after the company illegally bulldozed a road through the area.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Coal-fueled power plants are another major source of pollution. In 2020 <strong><em>The Denver Post</em></strong> named Colorado’s six coal-fired power plants among the state’s top ten greenhouse gas emitters. Coal-fired power can contaminate water sources, too; in 2019 an investigation by the <strong>Platte River Power Authority </strong>found that groundwater near the Rawhide Energy Station in <a href="/article/larimer-county"><strong>Larimer County</strong></a> was contaminated with selenium, a chemical that can harm both humans and wildlife. Aware of coal’s ongoing potential to harm air and water quality and wildlife, environmental groups such as the <strong>Sierra Club</strong> and <strong>WildEarth Guardians</strong> have repeatedly sued to stop the expansion of the coal industry in the state.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Today</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Despite its environmental effects, coal mining continues in Colorado today. In Moffat County, coal still underwrites the local economy. As much as 46 percent of the total property value in the county is generated from its two major coal mines, the Colowyo and Trapper Mines. The Craig Station power plant, completed in the early 1980s and operated by the <strong>Westminster</strong>-based Tri-State Generation and Transmission company, provides hundreds of jobs in Moffat County and supplies power to some 250,000 square miles in Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Wyoming. Despite its importance to local economies in places like Craig, Tri-State has decided to shut down the company’s coal-fired plants in Colorado and New Mexico by 2030.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Even though production has declined almost every year since 2012, Colorado remains the eleventh-largest producer of coal in the country, with nearly one-quarter of its coal exported to other countries. The West Elk Mine remains one of the state’s largest, employing around 220 people and producing nearly 4 million tons of coal in 2016. Coal from within and beyond the state provides more than half of Colorado’s net electricity generation. This means that coal will play a part in Colorado’s economy for at least the next decade, even as state and industry leaders move toward less pollutive and renewable energy sources.</p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-author--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-author.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-author.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-author field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-author"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-author">Author</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-author"><a href="/author/encyclopedia-staff" hreflang="und">Encyclopedia Staff</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coal-mining" hreflang="en">coal mining</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coal-mining-colorado" hreflang="en">coal mining in colorado</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coal-miners" hreflang="en">coal miners</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coal" hreflang="en">coal</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coal-mines" hreflang="en">coal mines</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/moffat-county" hreflang="en">Moffat County</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/craig" hreflang="en">Craig</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/energy" hreflang="en">energy</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/smelter" hreflang="en">smelter</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/railroads" hreflang="en">railroads</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/colowyo" hreflang="en">colowyo</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/routt-county" hreflang="en">routt county</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/west-elk-mine" hreflang="en">west elk mine</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/crested-butte" hreflang="en">crested butte</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/jokerville-mine" hreflang="en">jokerville mine</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/garfield-county" hreflang="en">Garfield County</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/vulcan-mine" hreflang="en">vulcan mine</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/hastings-mine-explosion" hreflang="en">hastings mine explosion</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/boulder-county" hreflang="en">boulder county</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/weld-county" hreflang="en">weld county</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/las-animas-county" hreflang="en">Las Animas County</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/ludlow-massacre" hreflang="en">Ludlow Massacre</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/ludlow" hreflang="en">ludlow</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/colorado-fuel-iron" hreflang="en">colorado fuel &amp; iron</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/pueblo" hreflang="en">pueblo</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coking-coal" hreflang="en">coking coal</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/huerfano-county" hreflang="en">huerfano county</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/walsenburg" hreflang="en">walsenburg</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/lafayette" hreflang="en">Lafayette</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/louisville" hreflang="en">louisville</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/strike" hreflang="en">Strike</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/labor-history" hreflang="en">labor history</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/united-mineworkers-america" hreflang="en">united mineworkers of america</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/umwa" hreflang="en">umwa</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/unions" hreflang="en">unions</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/columbine-mine-massacre" hreflang="en">columbine mine massacre</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links--inline.html.twig * links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-references-html--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-references-html.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-references-html.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-references-html field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-references-html"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-references-html">References</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-references-html"><p>John Aguilar, “<a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2020/06/18/west-elk-mine-court-ruling-poania/">State Orders Coal Company to Cease Expansion of West Elk Mine Into Roadless Area Near Paonia</a>,” <em>The Denver Post</em>, June 18, 2020.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Thomas G. Andrews, <em>Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War </em>(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Aspire Mining Limited, “<a href="https://aspiremininglimited.com/what-is-coking-coal/">What Is Coking Coal</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Allen Best, “Amid the Pandemic, Can Colorado Still Lead on a Just Transition From Coal?” <em>Energy News Network</em>, August 5, 2020.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Sam Brasch, “<a href="https://www.cpr.org/2020/03/05/craig-colorado-believes-in-coal-now-it-needs-a-plan-to-reinvent-itself/">Craig, Colorado Believes in Coal. Now It Needs a Plan to Reinvent Itself</a>,” <em>Colorado Public Radio</em>, March 5, 2020.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Center for Biological Diversity, “<a href="https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/lawsuit-launched-over-illegal-air-pollution-colorado-coal-mine-2019-12-17/">Lawsuit Launched Over Illegal Air Pollution at Colorado Coal Mine</a>,” December 17, 2019.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Tessa Cheek, “<a href="https://www.coloradoindependent.com/2015/05/14/environmentalists-are-targeting-colorado-coal-successfully/">Environmentalists Are Targeting Colorado Coal, Successfully</a>,” <em>Colorado Independent</em>, May 14, 2015.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Tamara Chuang, “<a href="https://coloradosun.com/2019/03/19/colorado-coal-ash-water-contamination/">Chemical Contamination From 7 Colorado Coal-Fired Power Plants Found During Groundwater Monitoring</a>,” <em>Colorado Sun</em>, March 19, 2019.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>City of Lafayette, Colorado, “<a href="https://www.lafayetteco.gov/DocumentCenter/View/152/Coal-Mining-Heritage-of-Lafayette?bidId=">The Coal Mining Heritage of Lafayette</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.craigdailypress.com/news/craig-station-works-to-supply-the-demand/">Craig Station Works to Supply the Demand</a>,” <em>Craig Press</em>, October 14, 2014.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>James Dalrymple, <a href="https://spl.cde.state.co.us/artemis/nrserials/nr930010internet/nr9300101917internet.pdf"><em>Fifth Annual Report of the State Inspector of Coal Mines—1917</em></a> (Denver: Eames Brothers, 1917).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2017/09/08/feds-approve-west-elk-mine-expansion/">Feds Approve Expansion of West Elk Mine in Western Colorado Against Environmental Group Objections</a>,” <em>Grand Junction Daily Sentinel</em> (via <em>The Denver Post</em>), September 8, 2017.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Ferdinand V. Hayden, <a href="https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2003/0384/report.pdf"><em>Preliminary Field Report of the United States Geological Survey of Colorado and New Mexico</em></a> (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1869).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Bruce Finley, “<a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2020/01/19/colorado-air-pollution/">What’s Polluting Colorado’s Air? 125 million Tons a Year of Heat-Trapping and Hazardous Gases</a>,” <em>The Denver Post</em>, January 19, 2020.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Mark Jaffe, “<a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2015/05/11/colorado-mine-approvals-failed-to-look-at-environmental-impacts/">Colorado Mine Approvals Failed to Look at Environmental Impacts</a>,” <em>The Denver Post</em>, May 11, 2015.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2020/05/lawsuit-targets-arch-coal-s-illegal-air-pollution-colorado-coal-mine">Lawsuit Targets Arch Coal’s Illegal Air Pollution at Colorado Coal Mine</a>,” Sierra Club, May 14, 2020.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Noré V. Winter et al., <a href="https://www.treadofpioneers.org/pdf/Routt_County_Historic_Context_1994.pdf"><em>Historic Context of Routt County</em></a> (Boulder, CO: Winter and Company, 1994).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Kelsey Ray, “<a href="https://www.coloradoindependent.com/2016/05/03/colorados-worst-methane-polluter-is-an-arch-coal-mine-west-elk-john-hickenlooper/">Colorado’s Worst Methane Polluter Is an Arch Coal Mine</a>,” <em>Colorado Independent</em>, May 3, 2016.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Christopher J. Schreck, “<a href="https://scalar.usc.edu/works/the-colorado-fuel-and-iron-company/strikes-and-other-labor-disputes">Strikes and Other Labor Disputes</a>,” Labor Relations in the Industrial West, updated December 14, 2016.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Brian K. Trembath, “<a href="https://history.denverlibrary.org/news/remembering-colorados-coal-warsand-coal-miners">Remembering Colorado’s Coal Wars  . . . And Coal Miners</a>,” Denver Public Library Western History and Genealogy Department, September 2, 2015.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>University of Denver, “<a href="https://www.du.edu/ludlow/cfhist.html">A History of the Colorado Coal Field War</a>,” Colorado Coal Field War Project, n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>US Energy Information Administration, “<a href="https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/coal/mining-and-transportation.php">Coal Explained: Mining and Transportation of Coal</a>,” updated October 28, 2019.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>US Energy Information Administration, “<a href="https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=CO">Colorado: Profile Analysis</a>,” updated March 19, 2020.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>US Environmental Protection Agency, “<a href="https://www.epa.gov/cmop/sources-coal-mine-methane">Coal Mine Methane Sources</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Bian Zhengfu et al., “Environmental Issues From Coal Mining and Their Solutions,” <em>Mining Science and Technology </em>20 (2010).</p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-additional-information-htm--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-additional-information-htm field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-additional-information-htm">Additional Information</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"><p>Earthjustice.org, “<a href="https://earthjustice.org/features/colorado-forests-and-coal">Coal’s Toll on Colorado’s Forests</a>,” updated June 8, 2017.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Ferdinand V. Hayden, <a href="https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/70038931"><em>Seventh Annual Report of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, embracing Colorado</em></a> (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1873).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Fawn-Amber Montoya, ed., <em>Making an American Workforce: The Rockefellers and the Legacy of Ludlow</em> (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2014).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>F. Darrell Munsell, <em>From Redstone to Ludlow: John Cleveland Osgood’s Struggle Against the United Mine Workers of America </em>(Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2009).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Randall H. McGuire and Paul Reckner, “<a href="https://users.clas.ufl.edu/davidson/Historical%20archaeology%20fall%202015/Week%204/McGuire%20&amp;amp;%20Reckner%202003.pdf">Building a Working-Class Archaeology: The Colorado Coal Field War Project</a>,” <em>Industrial Archaeology Review</em> 25, no. 2 (2003).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Jonathan H. Rees, <em>Representation and Rebellion: The Rockefeller Plan at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1914–1942 </em>(Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2010).</p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> Tue, 16 Feb 2021 20:06:10 +0000 yongli 3536 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org United Mine Workers of America http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/united-mine-workers-america <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">United Mine Workers of America</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2021-01-21T14:09:27-07:00" title="Thursday, January 21, 2021 - 14:09" class="datetime">Thu, 01/21/2021 - 14:09</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/united-mine-workers-america" data-a2a-title="United Mine Workers of America"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Funited-mine-workers-america&amp;title=United%20Mine%20Workers%20of%20America"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p>The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) formed in 1890 to fight for better pay and working conditions for the nation’s coal miners. In Colorado the union was most active in the early twentieth century, with thousands of members joining strikes in the southern coalfields of <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/fremont-county"><strong>Fremont</strong></a>, <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/huerfano-county"><strong>Huerfano</strong></a>, and <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/las-animas-county"><strong>Las Animas</strong></a> Counties. In the spring of 1913, the UMWA led a strike there that resulted in the <a href="/article/ludlow-massacre"><strong>Ludlow Massacre</strong></a> and the ensuing <strong>Coalfield Wars</strong>.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The UMWA’s involvement in the Coalfield Wars made it one of the most famous unions in Colorado history. Unlike Colorado’s other famous union, the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/western-federation-miners"><strong>Western Federation of Miners</strong></a> (WFM), the UMWA still exists today; it serves about 70,000 workers across seven districts in the United States and Canada. Colorado is part of the union’s western district, which serves about 4,000 members, most of whom belong to the <strong>Navajo Nation</strong>.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Origins</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>With coal fueling most of the nation’s industry during the late nineteenth century, coal companies accumulated great wealth and political power. In Colorado, <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/william-jackson-palmer"><strong>William Jackson Palmer</strong></a>’s <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/colorado-fuel-iron"><strong>Colorado Fuel and Iron</strong></a> was among the largest corporations in the nation, consisting not only of coal mines throughout the state but also <strong>railroads</strong> and a <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/minnequa-steelworks-office"><strong>steel mill</strong></a> in <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/pueblo"><strong>Pueblo</strong></a>.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Meanwhile, nineteenth-century coal miners held one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. They worked fourteen or sixteen hours a day in dirty, cramped conditions. Mine shafts could collapse, flood, or fill up with flammable gas and explode, like when the <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/jokerville-mine-explosion"><strong>Jokerville Mine</strong></a> blew up near <a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/crested-butte"><strong>Crested Butte</strong></a> in 1884. Companies paid miners not in cash but in scrip, a kind of company currency that could be used only at company stores, which were often the sole local source of tools and food. This practice ensured that most wages were returned to the company. Miners also paid the company to live in “company towns,” corporate-controlled villages that reflected companies’ desires to keep their workforce close and under control.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In this arrangement, workers held little power. Before the 1890s, miners were often fired or jailed for trying to improve their situation by organizing and striking. These brutal corporate reprisals created fertile ground among workers for the formation of labor unions.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Formation</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>The United Mine Workers was forged in the battlegrounds of the Midwestern coalfields, where workplace accidents and punishment for labor activism were common. The UMWA began on January 25, 1890, when two Ohio-based unions, the Knights of Labor and the National Miners’ Federation, joined forces in Columbus. Their constitution called for a strategy of “conciliation, arbitration, and strikes” to improve pay and working conditions for miners. Among their initial demands was an end to company stores and the outlawing of “non-resident police officers” who were often deployed against striking miners. Dues were set at five cents per month.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The union’s initial membership consisted mostly of British immigrants. The UMWA was among the first unions to explicitly allow African American miners in its ranks, though they were not treated equally and were often relegated to more menial jobs. The union also included workers who fought on both sides of the <strong>American</strong> <strong>Civil War</strong> and later brought together various groups of European immigrants, breaking down language barriers with solidarity based on common problems. Over the years, the UMWA’s inclusive approach to organizing became its hallmark, allowing the union to outlast other, more exclusive unions.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 1897 the union scored its first victory when it earned an eight-hour work day from mine operators after a strike that involved 150,000 coal workers across the Midwest. Later, in 1902, the UMWA became the first union to be recognized by the federal government when President Theodore Roosevelt negotiated the end to another strike in the Midwest. Companies, however, were reluctant to recognize the union, so labor strife persisted throughout the twentieth century.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>First Activity in Colorado: Strike of 1894</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>The UMWA made early inroads in Colorado, which was the heart of the western coal industry at the time. In 1890 two colliers from Erie, on the <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/front-range"><strong>Front Range</strong></a>, founded the state’s first UMWA chapter. By 1892 there were some 800 members throughout the state, including Italians, Austrians, Greeks, Britishers, Latino, and others.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In 1894 miners in Fremont County participated in the UMWA’s nationwide strike, the first activity associated with the union in Colorado. Groups of strikers traveled to Las Animas and Huerfano Counties, encouraging other coal miners to join in the strike. A depressed regional economy—reeling from the <strong>Panic of 1893</strong>—hurt the union’s recruiting efforts, but the strikers persevered. They reorganized into larger groups and continued marching for solidarity in the southern coalfields, even as they witnessed company-hired thugs beating union members in some of the camps. Strikers numbered some 1,200 strong by the time their procession reached <strong>Trinidad</strong>. Miners from Crested Butte walked out in solidarity as well.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Among the strikers’ demands was a fairer pay system that included a semimonthly payment in cash instead of scrip, as well as abolition of the company store. But the strikers could only hold out for so long, living off food and other donations from friendly farmers and townspeople. In August 1894, 400 strikers from Fremont County narrowly voted to return to work at prestrike wages, a decision echoed by the other UMWA groups in Colorado. Although the 1894 strike was unsuccessful, it proved that southern Colorado was fertile ground for union activity and that unions had community support.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Strike of 1901</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>By the turn of the twentieth century, the power of coal bosses and companies such as CF&amp;I created a terrible situation for Colorado coal miners. When they attempted to organize for a redress of grievances such as pay and work conditions, local authorities jailed, fired, or assaulted them on behalf of companies. Huerfano County Sheriff Jefferson Farr was particularly known for his violent raids on union gatherings. One observer referred to this expression of corporate power in the southern coalfields as “a reign of terror.”</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Under these conditions, in January 1901, UMWA workers in southern Colorado organized a strike against CF&amp;I in solidarity with other company workers in Gallup, New Mexico. This time, CF&amp;I chief <strong>John Osgood</strong> gave in to some of the miners’ demands, including revision of the unfair compensation system that paid miners by weight of coal mined. This system often created unsafe work environments, as it drove miners to spend more of their time gathering coal instead of shoring up safety features. Osgood agreed to several changes that made the weight system fairer but did not dispose of it. The strike also failed to win concessions from bosses on things such as scrip or company stores.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In the wake of the 1901 strike, the state of Colorado created a legislative committee to investigate the working and living conditions of coal miners. When the committee’s work was published, its account of miners living in rudimentary housing on paltry wages and enduring beatings by sheriffs turned public sentiment against companies like CF&amp;I and generated sympathy for unions. The investigation prompted CF&amp;I to set up a “sociological department” in 1901 to improve living conditions in company towns, many of which lacked basic necessities such as clean water. In this way, the UMWA’s partially successful 1901 strike laid the groundwork for future labor gains.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Labor Wars of 1903–4</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>After a brief lull in 1902, Colorado was again rocked by labor conflict in 1903–4. The Western Federation of Miners led walkouts in the metal mining districts of <a href="/article/telluride"><strong>Telluride</strong></a> and <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/cripple-creek"><strong>Cripple Creek</strong></a>, while in September 1903 the UMWA again organized a strike among southern coalfield workers. The strikers made many of the same demands as in 1894, including semimonthly payments in cash, higher wages, and adherence to laws that required proper ventilation in mine shafts. Again, they were defeated, as Governor <strong>James Peabody</strong> was an antiunionist who sent in the National Guard to crush the strikes.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Ludlow and the Coalfield Wars</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>Even though companies like CF&amp;I had promised to shorten workdays and reform company towns, historian Clare V. McKanna notes that “town life had improved little” by 1913. That fall, UMWA coal miners in southern Colorado again went on strike to demand better wages and improvements to working and living conditions. Again, they were met with force from mine owners and the government. On behalf of mine owners, who had already bought such union-busting tools as an armor-plated car, Governor <strong>Elias M. Ammons</strong> deployed the National Guard to the coal camps in Las Animas County. On April 20, 1914, guardsmen opened fire on armed miners at the Ludlow tent colony, about fifteen miles north of Trinidad. Guardsmen then lit the encampment on fire, and thirteen women and children—families of the miners—burned to death while taking shelter in a pit beneath a mattress in one of the tents.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>When other miners in the area learned of the guard’s actions, they went on the warpath. Dozens of people were killed on both sides over the next week, until President Woodrow Wilson sent in the US Army on April 28. The strike did not end until December 10, 1914.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>The <em>Rocky Mountain News </em>referred to the incident that started the Coalfield Wars as the “Ludlow Massacre,” and the guard’s callous disregard for miners’ families won the union public sympathy. UMWA leaders leveraged the tragedy into a successful public relations campaign that turned even more Americans against the companies. In response, CF&amp;I owner John D. Rockefeller, Jr., sought to forge a middle route by creating a company union. Although this signaled a tolerance for worker organization that scarcely existed before Ludlow, the formation of the company union dealt a blow to the UMWA because it did not gain the recognition it sought during the strike.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Post-Ludlow Activity</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>The 1920s saw more labor disputes across the state, especially in the northern coalfields in <a href="/article/boulder-county"><strong>Boulder County</strong></a>. Tensions remained high in the south, too. In 1921 CF&amp;I cut miner pay by thirty cents, prompting independent mines in southern Colorado to do so as well. In response, the UMWA organized another strike, doling out $800 to striking miners and their families during the work stoppage. After this unsuccessful strike, mining demographics began to shift, as about 60 percent of new hires in the mining industry were of Mexican or other Spanish-speaking ancestry. Other strikes occurred again in 1922 and 1927, neither of which afforded workers much respite from their ongoing plight. Instead, the strikes of the 1920s, combined with changes in federal law, helped convince CF&amp;I to abandon its company union in 1933.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Labor and industry were both decimated by the <strong>Great Depression</strong> of the 1930s, but the election of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and a prolabor Democratic Congress in 1932 was a shot in the arm for the nation’s struggling labor movement. In 1933 Roosevelt signed the National Industrial Recovery Act, which banned company unions and allowed collective bargaining. Two years later, the Wagner Act compelled businesses to bargain with unions that had majority employee support. With two scrawls of his pen, Roosevelt accomplished what the UMWA had sought for more than three decades—union recognition.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>By the 1940s, Colorado’s UMWA chapters had more Latino members, as the Spanish-speaking working class expanded through immigration and guest-worker programs like the <strong>Bracero Program</strong>. In April 1946, UMWA President John L. Lewis organized a nationwide strike to win union-sponsored healthcare, another aspect of miners’ lives that remained under company control. Company doctors had incentives to downplay conditions such as black lung, a deadly respiratory disease caused by breathing in coal dust. The 1946 strike involved 400,000 miners from twenty-six states, including Colorado, where coal mines in Routt County went “idle” and railroads from <strong>Steamboat Springs</strong> to <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/aspen"><strong>Aspen</strong></a> ran fewer trains on account of the coal shortage. Eventually, President Harry Truman saw the strike as a threat to the nation’s postwar economic recovery, so he ended it by presenting UMWA leadership with an agreement that created the UMWA health and welfare fund, which still serves union members today.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Over the ensuing decades, the power of coal companies waned as oil began to overtake coal as the nation’s preeminent fossil fuel. This translated into fewer strikes and direct actions by unions like the UMWA.</p>&#13; &#13; <h2>Today</h2>&#13; &#13; <p>The UMWA survived President Ronald Reagan’s union-busting campaign and endures today. The union serves not only coal miners but also workers from the manufacturing, health care, and corrections industries. It has more than 70,000 members from all fifty states as well as Canada.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In an era marked by widespread divestment from coal, Navajo coal miners in the UMWA’s western district are among the strongest advocates for continuing coal production. In 2013 the UMWA helped organize Navajo miners to support a new lease that would have kept their nation’s coal plant operating until 2044. Although the new lease passed, the plant’s parent company, Salt River Project, decided to abandon the lease after finding cheaper energy elsewhere.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>In Colorado, the legacy of the UMWA is tied to the Ludlow Massacre. Union leaders voted to put up a monument to the victims of the massacre in 1916, and in 2014 Governor <a href="http://www.coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/john-hickenlooper"><strong>John Hickenlooper</strong></a> included UMWA representatives on his team tasked with commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the tragedy.</p>&#13; </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-author--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-author.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-author.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-author field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-author"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-author">Author</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-author"><a href="/author/encyclopedia-staff" hreflang="und">Encyclopedia Staff</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/united-mineworkers-america" hreflang="en">united mineworkers of america</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/united-mine-workers" hreflang="en">United Mine Workers</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/labor-history" hreflang="en">labor history</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/colorado-labor-history" hreflang="en">colorado labor history</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/union" hreflang="en">union</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/labor-unions" hreflang="en">labor unions</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/ludlow" hreflang="en">ludlow</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/las-animas-county" hreflang="en">Las Animas County</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coal-mining" hreflang="en">coal mining</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coal-miners" hreflang="en">coal miners</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coal" hreflang="en">coal</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/william-jackson-palmer" hreflang="en">william jackson palmer</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/colorado-fuel-iron" hreflang="en">colorado fuel &amp; iron</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/john-d-rockefeller-jr-0" hreflang="en">john d rockefeller jr</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/rockefeller" hreflang="en">rockefeller</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/trinidad" hreflang="en">Trinidad</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/ludlow-massacre" hreflang="en">Ludlow Massacre</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coalfield-wars" hreflang="en">coalfield wars</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links--inline.html.twig * links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-references-html--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-references-html.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-references-html.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-references-html field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-references-html"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-references-html">References</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-references-html"><p>Carl Abbott, Stephen J. Leonard, and Dave McComb, <em>Colorado: A History of the Centennial State </em>3rd ed. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 1994).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Thomas G. Andrews, <em>Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War </em>(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=STP19460404&amp;e=01-04-1946-----en-20--1-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-strike-------0-----">Coal Mines Idle as New Contract Is Being Debated</a>,” <em>Steamboat Pilot</em>, April 4, 1946.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=ADT19460509.2.7&amp;srpos=74&amp;e=01-04-1946-----en-20--61-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-strike-------0-----">Coal Strike Stops Aspen Daily Train</a>,” <em>Aspen Daily Times</em>, May 9, 1946.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.dispatch.com/article/20120125/NEWS/301259720">Columbus Mileposts——Jan. 25, 1890: United Mine Workers Form; Daily Wage Low</a>,” <em>Columbus Dispatch</em>, January 25, 2012.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=STP19460530.2.41&amp;srpos=131&amp;e=01-04-1946-----en-20--121-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-strike-------0-----">Commenting on Current Events</a>,” <em>Steamboat Pilot</em>, May 30, 1946.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Alan Derickson, “The United Mine Workers of America and the Recognition of Occupational Respiratory Diseases, 1902–1968,” <em>American Journal of Public Health</em>, 81, no. 6 (June 1991).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Herbert Hill, “Myth-Making as Labor History: Herbert Gutman and the United Mine Workers of America,” <em>International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society </em>2, no. 2 (Winter 1988).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“Independent Mines Close,” <em>Herald Democrat </em>(Leadville, CO), December 5, 1921.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Library of Congress, “<a href="https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/great-depression-and-world-war-ii-1929-1945/labor-unions-during-great-depression-and-new-deal/">Labor Unions During the Great Depression and New Deal</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Clare V. McKanna, <em>Homicide, Race, and Justice in the American West, 1880–1920 </em>(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>Fawn-Amber Montoya, ed., <em>Making an American Workforce: The Rockefellers and the Legacy of Ludlow </em>(Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2014).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>F. Darrell Munsell, <em>From Redstone to Ludlow: John Cleveland Osgood’s Struggle Against the United Mine Workers of America</em> (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2009).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>United Mine Workers of America, “About,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>UnionFacts.com, “<a href="https://www.unionfacts.com/union/United_Mine_Workers">United Mine</a> Workers,” updated November 15, 2016.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>UnionFacts.com, “<a href="https://www.unionfacts.com/lu/58575/UMW/22">United Mine Workers<strong>,</strong> District 22</a>,” n.d.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>“<a href="https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&amp;d=CTR18940314.2.14&amp;srpos=3&amp;e=-------en-20--1-byDA-img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-%22united+mineworkers%22-------0--">Washington Notes</a>,” <em>Colorado Transcript</em>, March 14, 1894.</p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-additional-information-htm--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-additional-information-htm field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-additional-information-htm">Additional Information</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"><p>Keith Gildart, “Two Kinds of Reform: Left Leadership in the British National Union of Mineworkers and the United Mineworkers of America, 1982–1990,” <em>Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas</em> 3, no. 2 (2006).</p>&#13; &#13; <p>UMWA Union, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5nzONL68Rs">: 125 Years of Struggle and Glory</a>,” YouTube, April 21, 2017.</p>&#13; &#13; <p><a href="https://umwa.org/">United Mine Workers of America</a>.</p>&#13; &#13; <p>University of Denver, “<a href="https://www.du.edu/ludlow/cfhist3.html">A History of the Colorado Coal Field War</a>.”</p>&#13; </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> Thu, 21 Jan 2021 21:09:27 +0000 yongli 3475 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org Colorado Fuel & Iron http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/colorado-fuel-iron <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--title--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--title.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--title.html.twig * field--string.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Colorado Fuel &amp; Iron</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--title.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--uid--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--uid.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--uid.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'username' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> <span lang="" about="/users/yongli" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">yongli</span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/user/username.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--uid.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--created--encyclopedia-article.html.twig x field--node--created.html.twig * field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field--created.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'time' --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> <time datetime="2016-09-29T16:45:11-06:00" title="Thursday, September 29, 2016 - 16:45" class="datetime">Thu, 09/29/2016 - 16:45</time> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/time.html.twig' --> </span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/field/field--node--created.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'addtoany_standard' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * addtoany-standard--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * addtoany-standard--node.html.twig x addtoany-standard.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <span class="a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list" data-a2a-url="http://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/colorado-fuel-iron" data-a2a-title="Colorado Fuel &amp; Iron"><a class="a2a_dd addtoany_share" href="https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcoloradoencyclopedia.org%2Farticle%2Fcolorado-fuel-iron&amp;title=Colorado%20Fuel%20%26%20Iron"></a><a class="a2a_button_facebook"></a><a class="a2a_button_twitter"></a><a class="a2a_button_email"></a></span> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'modules/contrib/addtoany/templates/addtoany-standard.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--body--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--body.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--body.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-body"><p>The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&amp;I) was a coal and steel company based in <a href="/article/denver"><strong>Denver</strong></a> and <strong><a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/pueblo-0">Pueblo</a>.</strong> Most of its <strong>coal</strong> mines were located in southern Colorado. Its only <strong>steel mill</strong> was located in Pueblo. The firm came into existence as a result of a merger between the Colorado Coal and Iron Company and the Colorado Fuel Company in 1892. By 1910 it employed approximately 15,000 people, or about one-tenth of the entire Colorado workforce. During the 1920s it was the largest industrial corporation in the state.</p> <p>CF&amp;I also pioneered welfare capitalism—a strategy in which a company provides support in all aspects of employees’ lives in order to improve morale and loyalty. In 1901 it created a “Sociological Department,” an umbrella administrative organization for many management-sponsored programs such as schools and beautification efforts for mining towns, clubhouses for workers, a company hospital, and new housing. A glossy magazine, <em>Camp &amp; Plant</em>, was sent all around the country to highlight these activities. This publication contributed to the spread of welfare capitalism to other industries and regions. Management ramped down the Sociological Department’s programs during the 1908 recession, thinking them unnecessary. This led to the most important labor dispute in the company’s history.</p> <p>CF&amp;I was the main opponent of the <strong><a href="https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/united-mine-workers-america">United Mine Workers of America</a> </strong>(UMWA) during the union’s efforts to organize the Colorado coalfields in the early twentieth century. As the largest mining firm in the state, CF&amp;I led the entire western coal industry during two major strikes in 1903–4 and 1913–14. Its staunch opposition in both disputes originated from the company’s primary stockholders and owners, the Rockefeller family of Standard Oil fame. During the bloody 1913–14 strike, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who ran the family’s interests for his retired father, publicly agreed with the notion that keeping unions out of CF&amp;I was worth it even “if it costs all your property and kills all your employees.” This attitude directly resulted in the infamous <a href="/article/ludlow-massacre"><strong>Ludlow Massacre</strong></a> in which at least nineteen people, including women and children, were killed.</p> <p>In response to bad publicity from the Ludlow Massacre, Rockefeller began to backpedal from his staunch opposition to worker organization, creating what came to be known as the Rockefeller Plan. The Rockefeller Plan was an employee representation plan designed to give CF&amp;I miners and steelworkers enough say over the terms and conditions of their employment so that they would not join a union or strike to gain union recognition. The results of the plan were mixed. Many workers, especially skilled ones, appreciated the plan both for the opportunity it gave them to voice their complaints and as a vehicle for the delivery of the company’s renewed efforts at welfare capitalism. However, less-skilled workers, particularly the Mexican and Mexican American workers who joined the company’s ranks, especially after World War I, did not have enough of a stake in the company to participate in the plan. As a result, CF&amp;I still faced major strikes in 1919, 1927, and 1933, when the UMWA finally organized the firm’s miners. The plan continued on in the steel mill until 1942, when it was invalidated by the National War Labor Board under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 as an illegal “company union.”</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-author--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-author.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-author.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-author field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-author"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-author">Author</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-author"><a href="/author/rees-jonathan-h" hreflang="und">Rees, Jonathan H.</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-keyword--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-keyword.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-keyword.html.twig * field--entity-reference.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-keyword field--type-entity-reference field--label-above" id="id-field-keyword"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-keyword">Keywords</div> <div class='field__items'> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/colorado-fuel-iron" hreflang="en">colorado fuel &amp; iron</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/cfi" hreflang="en">cf&amp;i</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/colorado-fuel-iron-history" hreflang="en">colorado fuel &amp; iron history</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/william-jackson-palmer" hreflang="en">william jackson palmer</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/john-rockefeller-jr" hreflang="en">john rockefeller jr.</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/united-mineworkers-america" hreflang="en">united mineworkers of america</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coal" hreflang="en">coal</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/coal-mining" hreflang="en">coal mining</a></div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-keyword"><a href="/keyword/pueblo-steel-mill" hreflang="en">pueblo steel mill</a></div> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'links__node' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * links--node.html.twig x links--inline.html.twig * links--node.html.twig * links.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/contrib/bootstrap_barrio/templates/navigation/links--inline.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-references-html--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-references-html.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-references-html.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-references-html field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-references-html"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-references-html">References</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-references-html"><p>Darrell F. Munsell, <em>From Redstone to Ludlow: John Cleveland Osgood’s Struggle Against the United Mine Workers of America </em>(Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2009).</p> <p>Jonathan H. Rees, <em>Representation and Rebellion: The Rockefeller Plan at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1914–1942</em> (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2010).</p> <p>H. Lee Scamehorn, <em>Mill &amp; Mine: The CF&amp;I in the Twentieth Century</em> (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992).</p> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-additional-information-htm--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-additional-information-htm.html.twig * field--text-long.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-additional-information-htm field--type-text-long field--label-above" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"> <div class="field__label" id="id-field-additional-information-htm">Additional Information</div> <div class="field__item" id="id-field-additional-information-htm"><p>Thomas G. Andrews, <em>Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War </em>(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008).</p> </div> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-4th-grade--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-4th-grade.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-4th-grade.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-4th-grade field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-field-4th-grade"><p><span style="font-family:times new roman,serif; font-size:12.0pt">In 1892 Colorado Fuel &amp; Iron Company (CF&amp;I) was formed. It was based in <strong>Denver</strong> and <strong>Pueblo</strong>. Its <strong>coal</strong> mines were mostly found in southern Colorado. Its only <strong>steel mill</strong> was built in Pueblo. In 1910 about one-tenth of Colorado workers were working for CF&amp;I. By 1920 CF&amp;I was the largest industrial corporation in the state.&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:times new roman,serif; font-size:12.0pt">There was a reason why CF&amp;I grew to be so large. A new idea called “welfare capitalism” began at CF&amp;I in 1901.This idea was very new in Colorado at that time. It meant that a company gave workers what they needed to live day-to-day. New housing was built for the workers. CF&amp;I also built a hospital, schools, and clubhouses. It was important to make the mining towns look beautiful. A magazine, <em>Camp &amp; Plant</em>, had pictures and articles to show the good things happening at CF&amp;I. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:times new roman,serif; font-size:12.0pt">Then the recession of 1908 came. The company cut back on some of these basic supports. The workers were not happy with the new changes. CF&amp;I workers were not allowed to belong to an organized labor union. At that time the <strong>United Mine Workers of America</strong> (UMWA) was a well-known labor union. By 1913–14, the workers grew very frustrated and went on strike. The Colorado National Guard was sent to stop it. There was a fight between the two groups. Members of the National Guard killed striking miners and set a camp on fire. The event was called the <strong>Ludlow Massacre</strong>.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:times new roman,serif; font-size:12.0pt">The owners of CF&amp;I lived in New York and not in Colorado. They heard about the Ludlow Massacre and knew a different plan was needed. Not all workers liked the new plan. There were more strikes in 1919, 1927, and 1933. This was when the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) finally organized the Company’s miners.&nbsp;</span></p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-8th-grade--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-8th-grade.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-8th-grade.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-8th-grade field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-field-8th-grade"><p>In 1892 the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&amp;I) was a coal and steel company based in <strong>Denver </strong>and <strong>Pueblo.</strong> Most of its <strong>coal</strong> mines were located in southern Colorado. Its only <strong>steel mill</strong> was located in Pueblo. By 1910 it employed about one-tenth of the entire Colorado workforce.</p> <p>CF&amp;I also pioneered “welfare capitalism,” a strategy in which a company supports all aspects of employees’ lives to improve morale and loyalty. During the 1908 recession, CF&amp;I management halted many of these activities, thinking them unnecessary. This led to the most important labor dispute in the company’s history in 1913–14.</p> <p>CF&amp;I was the main opponent of the <strong>United Mine Workers of America </strong>(UMWA), a union that lobbied for better pay and working conditions for mine workers. The Rockefeller family, of Standard Oil fame, owned CF&amp;I during the bloody strikes of 1913–14. Owner John D. Rockefeller, Jr. stated publicly that unions should be kept out of CF&amp;I. This attitude led to the <strong>Ludlow Massacre</strong><strong>, a battle between striking coal miners and the Colorado National Guard. </strong><strong>At</strong> least nineteen people, including more than a dozen women and children, died in the massacre.</p> <p>Because of bad publicity from the Ludlow Massacre, Rockefeller created what came to be known as the Rockefeller Plan. It was designed to give CF&amp;I miners and steelworkers enough control over their employment so that they would not join a union. CF&amp;I still faced major strikes in 1919, 1927, and 1933. At that time the UMWA finally organized the firm’s miners. The Rockefeller plan continued at the steel mill until 1942, when it was overturned by the National War Labor Board as an illegal “company union.”</p> <p>CF&amp;I declared bankruptcy in 1990. Its steel mill still stands in Pueblo today.</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <!-- THEME DEBUG --> <!-- THEME HOOK: 'field' --> <!-- FILE NAME SUGGESTIONS: * field--node--field-10th-grade--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--node--field-10th-grade.html.twig x field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig * field--field-10th-grade.html.twig * field--text-with-summary.html.twig * field.html.twig --> <!-- BEGIN OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> <div class="field field--name-field-10th-grade field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item" id="id-field-10th-grade"><p>Formed in 1892, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&amp;I) was a coal and steel company based in <strong>Denver</strong> and <strong>Pueblo.</strong> Most of its <strong>coal</strong> mines were located in southern Colorado. Its only <strong>steel mill</strong> was located in Pueblo. By 1910 it employed approximately 15,000 people, or about one-tenth of the entire Colorado workforce. During the 1920s, it was the largest industrial corporation in the state.</p> <p>CF&amp;I also pioneered welfare capitalism, a strategy in which a company provides support in all aspects of employees’ lives in order to improve morale and loyalty. A glossy magazine, <em>Camp &amp; Plant</em>, was sent all around the country to highlight CF&amp;I activities. This publication contributed to the spread of welfare capitalism to other industries and regions. During the 1908 recession, CF&amp;I management halted many of these activities, thinking them unnecessary. This led to the most important labor dispute in the company’s history.</p> <p>CF&amp;I was the main opponent of the <strong>United Mine Workers of America </strong>(UMWA). CF&amp;I led the entire western coal industry against the union during two major strikes in 1903–4 and 1913–14. Its opposition in both strikes came from the company’s owners, the Rockefeller family of Standard Oil fame. During the bloody strike of 1913–14, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., publicly agreed with the idea that keeping unions out of CF&amp;I was worth it, even “if it costs all your property and kills all your employees.” This attitude led to the <strong>Ludlow Massacre</strong><strong>, in which Colorado National Guardsmen fired on striking coal miners in southern Colorado. </strong>Nineteen people, including more than a dozen women and children, were killed.</p> <p>Because of bad publicity from the Ludlow Massacre, Rockefeller began to retreat from his opposition to worker organization. He created what came to be known as the Rockefeller Plan, which was designed to give CF&amp;I miners and steelworkers enough control over their employment so that they would not join a union. The results of the plan were mixed. CF&amp;I still faced major strikes in 1919, 1927, and 1933. At that time the UMWA finally organized the firm’s miners. The Rockefeller plan continued at the steel mill until 1942. It was overturned by the National War Labor Board as an illegal “company union.”</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> <!-- END OUTPUT from 'themes/custom/encyclopedia/templates/field/field--node--encyclopedia-article.html.twig' --> Thu, 29 Sep 2016 22:45:11 +0000 yongli 1899 at http://coloradoencyclopedia.org