orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER) (02/04/85)
It seems that Libertarians lack both an understanding of the history of the Labor Movement, and an understanding of how this emerged from a "free enterprise" system. The following is a concise account of the conditions before the infamous "Ludlow Massacre", please remember that the conditions described here were repeated all over America in Company Towns and struggles between workers and capitalists: (From "The American Establishment" by Leonard and Mark Silk) The crucial event in the childhood of the Rockefeller Foundation was the Ludlow Massacre, which happened on April 20, 1914, less than a year after the Foundation was incorporated. Six months earlier some 9,000 coal miners had made their way from the camps of the Colorado Fuel and Iron, Co., which the Rockefellers owned, to tent colonies erected by the United Mine Workers on leased land. The miners were demanding union recognition, payment in cash not company scrip, and enforcement of state mining laws. Three earlier strikes to organize the mines- in 1883, 1893, and 1903- had been broken; in fact many of the strikers of 1913 were the strikebreakers of 1903. Ludlow was the largest of the tent colonies and the CF&I's managers brought in militiamen (My note: your cherished "private police force") in early April 1914 to destroy it; they mounted a machine gun on a hil overlooking the town. A battle broke out, though it was never determined who fired the first shot. Forty died and many more were wounded. The militiamen moved in fast, set the tents ablaze, took some strikers prisoner and shot three of them. Two women and eleven children who had tried to hide in a pit below the tents suffocated or burned to death. tim sevener whuxl!orb