Actually, I have to take back my vote for #3. It was a report for (I believe) my 8th grade Colorado history class. My high school U.S. history class report was on,still developing at the time, the Cuban revolution.
Today I look back and am amazed that my mother encouraged such rummaging through the left side of life. She was a rabid Republican and thought Sen. McCarthy was situated just under God.
Every time I pass the Ludlow site on Interstate 25 I pull off to meditate there. Usually in the summer there’s a university anthropology class conducting excavations, so a visit is interesting and enlightening on several levels.
Posted by GalapagoLarry on Apr 19, 2008 at 7:10 AM
COnfer Samuel Yellen’s American Labor Struggles, published in 1936 and republished by Pathfinder in 1974.
This book has been indispensable for my teaching on anti-labor bastardry in the US since the year dot.
Brilliant quotes from the horses’ mouths.
Posted by evanj on Apr 20, 2008 at 8:12 PM
I think the sad part about the whole thing is that I didn’t learn about it in high school or college, and I majored in History. It was only when I read Howard Zinn’s “People’s History of the United States” that I learned what happened at Ludlow, and many other places.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the state of Texas doesn’t believe that this kind of thing is important for children to learn.
Posted by codymcqueen on Apr 21, 2008 at 3:40 PM
Quoting from Yellen’s American Labor Struggles, Ch.VII (Bloody Ludlow).
Backdrop: 1913. Ludlow as company town, quasi-serfdom, with the company controlling effectively the entire state apparatus.
J.D. Rockefeller Jr ‘who through ownership of 40% of the stocks and bonds controlled the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co ... had not for the ten years preceding the strike visited Coloraod or attended a directors’ meeting.’
‘The strikers maintained that five of their seven demands merely called for the enforcement of existing state mining laws which were steadily disregarded by the companies.’
But the crucial demand on which the battle was fought was over recognition of the union, the United Mine Workers, which the company contended was ‘illegal and criminal’ (sounds like the Israelis and Hamas), in the hands of ‘disreputable agitators, socialists, and anarchists’.
Enter, stage right, JDRJr before the House COmmitte on Mines and Mining inquiry:
‘Q: But the killing of people and shooting of children has not been of enough importance to you to ... see if something might be done to end that sort of thing?
A: It is a national issue as to whether workers shall be allowed to work under such conditions as they may choose. ... our interest in the laboring men in this country is so immense, so deep, so profound that we stand ready to lose every cent we put in that company rather than see the men we have employed thrown out of work and have imposed upon them conditions which are not of their seeking and which neither they nor we can see are in our interest. ...
Q: And you will [act to deny unionization] if that costs all your property and kills all your employes?
A: It is a great principle. ... It was a similar principle that the War of the Revolution was carried on. It is a great national issue of the most vital kind.’
And this is the man who (with the help of favourable conditions of World War I) effectively created the modern corporate public relations industry to defend first his father’s tarnished name and then the entire edifice of corporate America.
What an achievement.
One hundred years down the track, the same fundamental issue of the right to unionise remains.
Posted by evanj on Apr 23, 2008 at 3:07 AM
