Where We’re Heading,and Where We Came From
The modern workers’ movement that has arisen from the global economic crisis has its roots in the Industrial Revolution and the great atrocities that came with it.
When I read quotes from right-wing pundits calling for helpless children to rummage through garbage for food, presented without the kind of tongue-in-cheek humanity that infused Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” I shutter in fear. It’s this kind of thinking, bought and paid for by large corporate interests that is dividing our nation into two groups, the “have-nots” and the “have-nots” who hope to someday be “haves”.
We’re very quick to forget the great tragedies of slightly under one hundred years ago, like the infamous Ludlow Massacre. It’s not common knowledge in this day and age, but in 1914 striking coal miners in Ludlow, Colorado were brutally attacked by the National Guard for standing their ground against corporate greed.
Historian Howard Zinn has called the massacre, ”the culminating act of perhaps the most violent struggle between corporate power and laboring men in American history”.
The workers wanted, among other things, strict enforcement of Colorado’s existing safety laws, payment for work expected of them but not directly related to mining (handling dangerous raw materials, timbering), and enforcement of an eight hour work day. The answer from the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron company was to hire the private security service Baldwin–Felts to break the will of the strikers. They randomly sprayed bullets into the tent city of the strikers, maiming women and children. When this wasn’t enough to scare the miners back to work management petitioned Colorado governor Elias Ammons to rally the National Guard. He did, and within only a few days the situation went from bad to worse.
The body of a replacement worker was found near the mine and without investigation the commanding officer ordered his troops to destroy the strikers’ camp. While the miners mourned at a public funeral for infants who recently died, the National Guard opened fire on them. They burned the tents and shot wildly. No less than eleven children were murdered by the Guard that day.
The lesson to be learned isn’t one of distrust for corporate greed and the complacency, if not conspiracy of the government, which is well accounted for. The lesson is in the response of the common people. Over the next ten days workers, now armed, took to the forty odd mile stretch of frontier that connected several mines and population centers, fighting back the guard at every point. Union workers openly distributed firearms to their ranks and the guerrilla war raged until the union ran out of funding. Hundreds of laborers were jailed and a handful of Guardsmen were court martialed. They lost. The good guys lost.
From that crushing defeat came awareness in the American people that any one of them could have been a worker at Ludlow. They didn’t mock them or condemn them. They saw that this small group, so rich from the backbreaking labor of their low paid coaliers, would stop at nothing short of murder to save a few pennies. The American people saw this and said “No”.
Hearings were held in Washington and John D. Rockefeller himself is on record as having said that he, “would have taken no action” to have prevented the killings had he been in direct command. So brazen were the leaders of industry that they would openly agree to their crimes against humanity. They felt invincible. They weren’t.
It would be a slow climb from Ludlow but reforms took hold and American workers are safe to earn a living under conditions that protect their human rights. This change came about through the sacrifice and bravery of people like Mary Harris “Mother” Jones. Through their tireless efforts to educate the people of this nation that we’re all one united family, they were able to turn the political tide from the super rich to the average person.
Where are we heading? Are we moving forward or are we moving back? Has the monster of corporate greed again risen so high that not even the slaughter of children is out of the range of the possible? Perhaps not yet, but that doesn’t mean we should sit idle while the super rich wine and dine our leaders. We can’t allow the papers and the television and the radio to tell our stories for us. It’s again time to take to the streets and educate our fellow Americans that they’re not exempt from hardship. We need to remind them, every chance we can, that we’re the same as they are. This isn’t just a movement for the poor, the long term unemployed, or the minority races. The issues of fair pay, corporate tax, and societal safety nets concern each and every one of us. We have time to change the way things are going. We can really make a difference, but we need to find common ground.
If you’re a liberal, I urge you to start conversations in your church. Get involved in public radio. Get involved in civic organizations. Make friends. Put a face to your ideas and you might just be able to make a difference when it’s put to a vote.
Until that time, be proud of who you are and what you stand for. Times may be hard, but remember Ludlow when you witness police brutality and flippant statements from the fiscal elite. The more pressure they put on us, the more steam will build. In the end we can win a standard of living that we, as Americans, can be proud of. We’ve done it before.