TIL: Today I Learned... (4 Viewers)

[Tapxe]

The Ludlow Massacre was a mass killing perpetrated by anti-striker militia during the Colorado Coalfield War. Soldiers from the Colorado National Guard and private guards employed by Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) attacked a tent colony of roughly 1,200 striking coal miners and their families in Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914. Approximately 21 people were killed, including miners' wives and children. John D. Rockefeller Jr. was a part-owner of CF&I who had recently appeared before a United States congressional hearing on the strikes, and he was widely blamed for having orchestrated the massacre.

The Ludlow Massacre was a watershed moment in American labor relations. Socialist historian Howard Zinn described it as "the culminating act of perhaps the most violent struggle between corporate power and laboring men in American history".[9] Congress responded to public outrage by directing the House Committee on Mines and Mining to investigate the events.[10] Its report, published in 1915, was influential in promoting child labor laws and an eight-hour work day.

Ludlow Massacre - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I don't think folks today realize what happened to create the protections currently being dismantled.

 

[DJ1BigTymer]

Ludlow Massacre - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I don't think folks today realize what happened to create the protections currently being dismantled.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

 

[Sailorsaint]

Ludlow Massacre - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I don't think folks today realize what happened to create the protections currently being dismantled.

There were many violent strikes during the Robber Baron days. The one that I always think about was the Carnegie Steel strike when Frick hired the Pinkertons to enforce his policies. It was on the "Men who built America" series on History channel a while back. Sadly, looks like we are on the verge of a modern day Robber Baron movement.

 

[Saintman2884]

There were many violent strikes during the Robber Baron days. The one that I always think about was the Carnegie Steel strike when Frick hired the Pinkertons to enforce his policies. It was on the "Men who built America" series on History channel a while back. Sadly, looks like we are on the verge of a modern day Robber Baron movement.

Thing is, Andrew Carnegie had sort of allowed the Carnegie Steel strike to fester to a boiling point and adopt a more "hardball" negotiating standpoint from his chief deputy, Frick, and when Carnegie left for a private holiday cruise back to Scotland, he sort of knew based on Frick's temperament and hardline stance, what was probably going to occur in Pa. and if it did and public outcry got to the point where Congressional hearings were called, he could always blame it on Frick. And for those who watched the "Men Who Built America" series about 10-15 years ago, that's essentially how it went down and Frick was the "hothead" convenient fall guy and ironically, not long after the Carnegie Steel massacre, he was attacked by a pro-labor anarchist and boyfriend of Emma Goldman in his office.

The incident permanently altered public sentiment and worker perception towards Andrew Carnegie whereas before many of his own employees had actually thought he was a good boss and even today, this incident has been sort of whitewashed or sanitized whenever brought up in terms of Andrew Carnegie's direct culpability or responsibility for this massacre.

 

[Saintman2884]

Ludlow Massacre - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I don't think folks today realize what happened to create the protections currently being dismantled.

While legislation was passed pre-WWI sort of forbidding child labor in theory or establishing 8-hour work days, what many corporations tended to do for next couple of decades was instead of hiring pre-teens and young children, mining, timber corporations started hiring workers in their early teens like 13-15, a bit older in age from 8-9 year olds in the 1880's and 90's in the "Gilded Age" but still flirting around in that grey moral area legally and sometimes even breaking it. And many industrialized workers in essential sectors still pulled 14-18 hour days well into the 1930's and Great Depression even during WWII.