The Archaeology of Class War: The Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1913-1914

Archaeology of Class War the

Archaeology of Class War the

the

Colorado Coalfield Strike

edited by

of

1913–1914

Karin Larkin and Randall H. McGuire

University Press of Color ado

© 2009 by the University Press of Colorado Published by the University Press of Colorado 5589 Arapahoe Avenue, Suite 206C Boulder, Colorado 80303 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America The University Press of Colorado is a proud member of the Association of American University Presses. The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State College, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Mesa State College, Metropolitan State College of Denver, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, and Western State College of Colorado. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The archaeology of class war : the Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1913–1914 / edited by Karin Larkin and Randall H. McGuire. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-87081-955-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Coal Strike, Colo., 1913–1914. 2. Coal Strike, Colo., 1913–1914—Sources. 3. Ludlow (Colo.)—Social conditions—20th century. 4. Coal miners—Colorado—Ludlow—History—20th century. 5. Working class—Colorado—Ludlow— History—20th century. 6. Social conflict—Colorado—Ludlow—History—20th century. 7. Ludlow (Colo.)—Antiquities. 8. Excavations (Archaeology)—Colorado—Ludlow. 9. Material culture—Colorado—Ludlow—History—20th century. 10. Ludlow (Colo.)—Social life and customs—20th century. I. Larkin, Karin. II. McGuire, Randall H. HD5325.M61521913 A73 2009 331.892'8223340978809041—dc22 2009028791 Design by Daniel Pratt 18

17

16

15

14

13

12

11

10

09

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

Contents



vii

List of Figures

xi

List of Tables

xiii

Preface and Acknowledgments



Chapter one —Randall H. McGuire and Karin Larkin

1

Unearthing Class War 29

Chapter two —Randall H. McGuire

A Terrible Unrest: Class War in Colorado 69

Chapter three —Karin Larkin

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War 123

Chapter four —Margaret Wood

Building the Corporate Family: Constructing Homes, Families, and the Nation 161

Chapter five —Sarah J. Chicone From Shacks to Shanties: Working-Class Poverty and the 1913–1914 Southern Colorado Coalfield Strike



Contents

187

Chapter six —Michael Jacobson

Landscapes of Hope and Fear: A Study of Space in the Ludlow Strikers’ Colony 219

Chapter seven —Amie Gray Material Culture of the Marginalized

251

Chapter eight —Claire H. Horn

“Thou Shalt Not Dose Thyself ”: Proprietary Medicine Use at the Ludlow Tent Colony 285

Chapter nine —Summer Moore Working Parents and the Material Culture of Victorianism: Children’s Toys at the Ludlow Tent Colony

311

Chapter ten —Mark Walker Archaeology and Workers’ Memory

331

Chapter eleven —Bonnie J. Clark and Eleanor Conlin Casella Teaching Class Conflict: A Trans-Atlantic Comparison Using the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project in Undergraduate Curricula

351

Chapter twelve —Philip Duke and Dean Saitta

Why We Dig: Archaeology, Ludlow, and the Public 363

vi

Index

Figures



2

1.1 Monument to the Ludlow dead, before the vandalism

3

1.2 Monument to the Ludlow dead, after the vandalism

6

1.3 Map of the southern Colorado coalfields, 1913

23

1.4 Restored monument to the Ludlow dead

31

2.1 Aftermath of Primero Mine explosion, January 31, 1910

37

2.2 Morley, Colorado, 1907–1915, a company town

41

2.3 Miner-built housing in southern Colorado, 1900–1920

43

2.4 Miner’s family, southern Colorado, 1913–1914

48

2.5 Map of strike zone, 1913–1914

51

2.6 Women’s march, Trinidad, Colorado, 1914

53

2.7 Oberosler family and friends in front of tent at Forbes Tent Colony, 1914

54

2.8 Machine gun at Water Tank Hill, 1914

vii

Figures

56

2.9 Ludlow Tent Colony after the massacre, 1914

57

2.10 Death Pit at Ludlow, 1914

58

2.11 Dead company men at Forbes Mine, 1914

61

2.12 UMWA is here to stay, Somerton, Colorado, 2009

78

3.1 Dog-leash density map

80

3.2 Site map showing all features tested and excavated at Ludlow, 1998–2002

82

3.3– Series of maps for Berwind, Colorado, including Stock and 3.7 School canyons and Tollerburg

89

3.8 Bird’s-eye view of Ludlow Colony used in photo overlay project

98

3.9 Map of Locus 1, Ludlow

100

3.10 Plan view of Features 99 and 100 in Locus 13, Ludlow

101

3.11 Feature 70, west profile, Ludlow

102

3.12 Feature 73 in Locus 11 stratigraphic, Ludlow

104

3.13 Feature 74 in Locus 12 stratigraphic, Ludlow

108

3.14 Locus 13 glass counts by function

108

3.15 Locus 11 food group frequencies

109

3.16 Locus 11 glass by function

124

4.1 John D. Rockefeller talking with women, 1918

132

4.2 Italian mining family, southern Colorado, 1890–1910

133

4.3 Vernacular housing, Rugby, 1890–1910

134

4.4 Company housing, Rugby, 1902

137

4.5 Map showing footprint of vernacular structures and duplex structures, 1911

139

4.6 Plan of four-room square house, 1904

140

4.7 Row of four-room square homes in Berwind, Colorado, 1915

141

4.8 Bar chart showing household composition at Berwind, 1910 and 1920

142

4.9 Four-room square home with fence and yard, 1920s

viii

Figures

145

4.10 YMCA featuring similarities to domestic architecture, 1920s

147

4.11 Berwind baseball team near the clubhouse, 1922

153

4.12 Home canning–related items

164

5.1 View of abandoned residential buildings, Berwind, Colorado, 2006

166

5.2 Early cabin at Berwind, published in Camp and Plant with the caption “the sort men build for themselves,” 1904

169

5.3 Cement block housing exhibiting the popular four-room plan, Berwind, Colorado

173

5.4 Open sewage system at the former CF&I company town of Sopris, Colorado

175

5.5 Berwind house #249 first-prize winner, 1924

177

5.6 Interior (a) and exterior (b) views of a boardinghouse at the CF&I company town of Rouse, circa 1915

179

5.7 The only tent not destroyed in the Ludlow Tent Colony

181

5.8 Looking east down a residential street in the Ludlow Tent Colony, circa 1913–1914

194

6.1 Striking family standing in front of tent

195

6.2 Map of Ludlow Colony with approximate location of streets

198

6.3 Baseball game near Ludlow Colony

199

6.4 Celluloid film frame from Ludlow strikers’ colony midden

209

6.5 Death Pit after the Ludlow Massacre with evidence of construction methods

211

6.6 East-west cross-section, Feature 74

212

6.7 National Guard cross-section of Death Pit

231

7.1 Percentage of persons with two native-born parents, residents of Berwind, Tabasco, and Tollerburg, 1910

236

7.2 Production ranges of back stamps

240

7.3 Relative frequency of tableware vessel forms

243

7.4 Hand-painted Japanese porcelain

259

8.1 “Hints on Health,” August 8, 1920, Industrial Bulletin

ix

Figures

260

8.2 Mary Skrifvars, CF&I visiting nurse, 1917

273

8.3 Number of illnesses and injuries treated at CF&I steelworks and mining camps

286

9.1 Members of striking miner’s family in front of a tent at the Ludlow Tent Colony, 1913 or 1914

287

9.2 Group of strike participants, including three women, five younger children, and two infants, 1913 or 1914

288

9.3 A man and two small children play at the Ludlow Tent Colony, 1913 or 1914

289

9.4 Three boys stand in front of an effigy and snow tower during a demonstration at the Ludlow Tent Colony, 1914

290

9.5 Boys march down a street in Trinidad, Colorado, 1913 or 1914

303

9.6 Doll’s head recovered at the Ludlow Tent Colony from Feature 73, a burned tent cellar

304

9.7 Ceramic toy dishes recovered during excavations at the Ludlow Tent Colony and the nearby Berwind coal camp

320

10.1 Calls for commemoration of Ludlow began within two months of the massacre

338

11.1 Former textile industry workshop, West Yorkshire, March 2006

340

11.2 Striking University of California worker, Berkeley, September 2002

342

11.3 Melted canning jars amid other domestic items in tent cellar at Ludlow (Feature 73), August 2001

343

11.4 Diorama, Barnsley main seam

˘

Tables

106

3.1 Locus 13 group counts and relative frequencies, Ludlow 1998–2002

107

3.2 Locus 11 group counts and relative frequencies, Ludlow 1998–2002

110

3.3 Locus 12 group counts and relative frequencies, Ludlow 1998–2002

110

3.4 Locus 12 glass counts and relative frequencies, Ludlow 1998–2002

110

3.5 Locus 12 architectural remains counts and relative frequencies, Ludlow 1998–2002

111

3.6 Locus 7 group counts and relative frequencies, Ludlow 1998–2002

111

3.7 All loci comparisons by frequency

150

4.1 Vessel counts and percentages of artifacts excavated from midden in neighborhood built as part of the Industrial Representation Plan (IRP)

xi

Ta b l e s

151

4.2 Counts and percentages of food-related vessels excavated from neighborhoods that dated before and after implementation of the IRP

152

4.3 Food-related vessels by material type from neighborhoods occupied before and after implementation of the IRP

237

7.1 Feature 73 teaware and tableware ceramic back stamps

265

8.1 Amounts of identifiable glass vessel types at Ludlow

266

8.2 Proprietary medicines by locus at Ludlow

268

8.3 Medicine bottles recovered from Berwind, by area

270

8.4 Varieties of medicinal compounds at Ludlow and Berwind

272

8.5 One week’s occurrences of illness and injury in CF&I camps, as reported in Camp and Plant 1903

xii

Preface and Acknowledgments

Anybody who read about the Ludlow Massacre, anybody who heard about it was bound to be affected by it. (Zinn 2004)

On the morning of April 20, 1914, Colorado National Guard troops opened fire on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado. Armed miners returned the militia’s fire while their families hid in cellars under their tents or scurried across the plains for safety. The Guard continued firing machine guns and rifles into the colony until late afternoon and then overran the camp, looting tents and setting them aflame. When the smoke cleared, all that remained of the colony were burned wooden frames, charred iron bedsteads, and great iron stoves standing starkly on the plains. Sunrise the next day found eighteen of the camp’s inhabitants dead, including two women and ten children who suffocated in a pit below a burning tent, and a twelveyear-old boy shot through the head. The Ludlow Massacre is the most violent and best-known event of the 1913–1914 Colorado Coalfield Strike, but its significance goes far beyond this struggle. The death of innocents shocked the American public, and popular opinion soon turned against violent confrontations with strikers. After Ludlow, labor

xiii

Preface and Acknowledgments

relations in the United States started to move away from class conflict to corporate and government policies of negotiation, co-option, and regulated strikes. The press used the massacre to demonize John D. Rockefeller Jr. In response, he initiated the first important U.S. company union at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, and he launched the first large-scale corporate public relations campaign in U.S. history. Mary “Mother” Jones, Upton Sinclair, John Reed, and other important personages in labor history participated in the strike. The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) holds the massacre site as hallowed ground, maintains a monument there, and each June holds services to sanctify the ultimate sacrifice of union men, women, and children. Such shrines to the struggles of labor in this country are sorely needed because memories of class struggle have essentially been lost from popular consciousness. Strikes and labor struggle rarely leave evidence in the earth for archaeologists to dig up. The massacre at Ludlow and the subsequent burning of the colony, however, left a record of the strike in the ground. Dean Saitta of the University of Denver, Phillip Duke of Fort Lewis College (Durango, Colorado), and Randall McGuire of Binghamton University began the Colorado Coalfield War ArchaeÂ� ology Project in 1996 to unearth the story of class struggle in U.S. history. Graduate students from the University of Denver, Fort Lewis College, Binghamton University, Syracuse University, and the University of Colorado joined them to form the Ludlow Collective and investigate the Colorado Coalfield War. The collective has worked in cooperation with UMWA. The Colorado Historical Society funded the research with grants from the State Historical Fund, and the Colorado Endowment for the Humanities helped fund the educational programs. The Colorado Coalfield War is a well-documented event. The archival record of the strike includes thousands of pages, and hundreds of photographs exist of people and events that were part of it. The historians who have analyzed these records talk principally about the strike leaders and UMWA’s organizational work. They emphasize the common experience of workers in the mines and how it built the solidarity necessary for the strike. They contrast this to the home as the hearth of ethnicity that divided the miners. In these histories, the strike is a tale of striking male miners. Union workers, however, told a different story. They said that husbands and wives made the decision to strike at the kitchen table before workers ratified that decision in the union hall. They emphasized the hardship of a strike on mothers, sons, and daughters and the fact that solidarity had to spring from within the family or a strike would fail. Our research demonstrates that early–twentieth-century Colorado mining families shared a day-to-day experience of life that unified them and that the adversity of this experience forced families to strike. Archaeology provides a way to study the day-to-day experience of mining families in early–twentieth-century Colorado. The excavations of the Ludlow

xiv

Preface and Acknowledgments

Tent Colony offer a unique and unparalleled opportunity to address these issues. We need complete deposits of household remains to understand the mundane life of these households. The catastrophic abandonment of the tent colony and the subsequent burning of the tents created a “Pompeii”-like archaeological site. Families in their panic to escape the violence and fire left behind objects they would normally have treasured and taken with them. The strikers’ use of cellars for storage and protection ultimately became the record of their families’ lives and customs. In other words, the same conditions that created the devastating destruction in the end preserved the archaeological record that helped us understand the strikers’ day-to-day lives in new and important ways. Excavations in the pre- and post-strike contexts of the Berwind coal camp allowed us to compare this mundane experience before and after the strike. The chapters in this volume summarize much of the work of the Ludlow Collective for a scholarly audience. They weave material culture, landscapes, documents, oral histories, and photographs into narratives that reveal information about both the strike and life in early–twentieth-century Colorado coalfields that goes beyond standard documentary histories. They show how immigrant miners and their families negotiated pressure to become Americans. They discuss how working families used and transformed landscapes as part of their struggle. They illustrate how working-class women in the company towns were able to raise families on miners’ wages that were insufficient to feed two people and how the domestic sphere became a locus of class struggle. They answer questions such as what was the ideology and nature of poverty in the coalfields and what were the lives of children like. These insights will be of interest to historical archaeologists, as well as to western and labor historians. The turn of the twenty-first century has seen an increased emphasis on making archaeology relevant to the public. Most attempts to do this take the works of archaeologists and try to simplify them or water them down so a general public will understand what archaeologists are doing. The implicit assumption here is that all people have the same interest in the past and that the problem is simply one of communication. The Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project has tried to build a program that speaks to multiple audiences in languages they can understand, in formats that are accessible to them, and about aspects of the past that interest them. Archaeologists have traditionally spoken to two audiences: the scientific community of archaeologists and the general public. In addition to these traditional audiences the project has reached out to a nontraditional audience: unionized workers in southern Colorado and across the United States. It is unusual to hear a talk on archaeology in a union hall, but when project members speak of these events so important to union workers and about what they want to know about this history, it happens. Our efforts help make archaeology matter in the modern world.

xv

Preface and Acknowledgments

The research and fieldwork that form the foundation of this edited volume were the work of many hands. Most important were the members of the Ludlow Collective: Dan Broockmann, Donna Bryant, Sarah J. Chicone, Bonnie J. Clark, Philip Duke, Amie Gray, Claire Horn, Michael Jacobson, Kristian Jones, Jason Lapham, Karin Larkin, Randall McGuire, Summer Moore, Paul Reckner, Beth Rudden, Dean Saitta, Mark Walker, and Margaret Wood. In addition to the collective, April Beisaw and Andrea Zlotucha Kozub of Binghamton University conducted the faunal analyses at the site, Stacy Tchorzynski of Binghamton University wrote her MA thesis on the battle at Ludlow, and Erin Saar of the University of Denver did the ammunition analysis. We conducted fieldwork at Ludlow with the permission of District 22 of the United Mine Workers of America, Local 9856 of the UMWA, and the Women’s Auxiliary of L.U. 9856. The work at Berwind was done with the permission of Southern Colorado Realty. We received funding for the project from a number of sources. We used a faculty development grant from the State University of New York at Binghamton to plan the project in the summer of 1996. The Colorado Historical Society’s State Historic Fund was the principal source of funding, providing grants to the project every year from 1997 to 2004. We greatly appreciated Thomas Carr’s help with these grants. The University of Denver’s Faculty Research Fund also provided support for our work. The Walter Rosenberry Fund and the Humanities Institute of the Division of Arts, Humanities and the Social Sciences at the University of Denver provided funding for site interpretation and public education programs. The Colorado Endowment for the Humanities (CEH) funded two Summer Teacher Institutes on labor history based on the project. We especially thank CEH director Maggie Coval, her staff, and the participants in these institutes for their support of our work. A number of community institutions, including the Colorado Digitization Project, the Trinidad History Museum, and the Bessemer Historical Society, aided our work with in-kind contributions and their archival resources. Paula Manini and Susan Collins of the Colorado Historical Society were particularly helpful in this regard. Trinidad State Junior College provided housing at reduced rates and other forms of assistance. The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research funded Margaret Wood’s dissertation research on the project. We conducted our fieldwork as an archaeological field school at the University of Denver. We would like to thank the crews of 1998 through 2002. The volunteers and students in the University of Denver Summer Field School in Archaeology for 1998 were Kristen Arbuckle, Dan Broockmann, Bob Hedges, Justin Henderson, Maureen Hoof, Christie Kester, Sonya Loven, Debi Marsh, Micah McClung, Sarah Postellon, Karen Ramsey, Bryan Rozman, Meghan Steed, Matt Torhan, Howard Tsai, and Kara Weaver. The field crew and students (and

xvi

Preface and Acknowledgments

labor) in the 1999 season were Marco Aiello, Pachi Balaguer, Caroline Braker, Daniel Broockmann, Samantha Cline, Esteban Gomez, Sean Grealy, Angela GuzÂ�zino, Courtney Higgins, Laura Hortz, Patrick Morgan, Quim Oltra, Tracy Shaffer, and Alicia Valentino. The field crew for the 2000 field season included Caroline Braker, Shawn Farley, Erin Fitzgerald, Mari Heuser, Natalie Joy, Chanel Nakanishi, Kenneth Spencer, and Rebecca Wilford. The 2001 field crew consisted of Charlotte Berkshire, April Bernard, Jonathan Clark, Tanya DzhanfeÂ� zova, Stacia Falat, Catherine Foy, Signe Gabrielson, Abby Gaul, Joanne Hedley, Kathryn Levey, Amador Mijares, Alex Miller, Summer Moore, Andrew Ralles, Jessica Tollner, Angela Tonozzi, Katie Wardell, Dan Windwood, and Janna Wood. Field crew members in 2002 were Harold Barnhart, Gene Bosche, Megan Cuccia, Farah Firtha, Staci Gates, Margaret Kelly, Michael Knoll, Megan Meredith, David Victor, and Sarah Wagner. In addition, we thank Larry Conyers and Craig Stoner for Ground Penetrating Radar work and Mona Charles for magnetometer work at the Ludlow site. The most important and rewarding aspects of our research came from our collaboration with the United Mine Workers of America and the working people of southern Colorado. The UMWA Women’s Auxiliary Local 9856 maintains the Ludlow Monument and hosts the annual memorial. We single out Yolanda Romero and Carol Blatnick-Barros for the assistance they have given our research. Michael Romero, past president of UMWA Local 9856, also aided us in many ways. Bob Butero of the UMWA’s Denver office offered friendship and support. We had much interaction with, support, and inspiration from the descendant community of coal miners and other working families in southern Colorado. Many people shared their families’ histories and memories of the coal camps. They welcomed us in solidarity with labor’s struggle. They taught us things about strikes, work, and unions that one cannot learn from books or from digging in the ground. It was in this collaboration that we found the true reason for and rewards of our research. All royalties from the sale of this volume will go to the Southern Colorado Coal Miners Memorial and Scholarship Fund. Work Cited Zinn, Howard 2004 Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train. First Run Features, New York.

xvii

Archaeology of Class War the

Randall H. M c Guire and Kar in Larkin

1

Unearthing Class War

At Ludlow, a granite coal miner gazes resolutely across the windswept plains of Colorado. Beside him, a woman in classical drapery clutches her baby with one hand and rests her head on her other hand in grief (Figure 1.1). Once they gazed up into mountain valleys teeming with activity. Great coal tipples loomed over miners’ homes shrouded in the acid smoke of coke ovens. In recent times they have stared up at crumbling foundations, sealed mine shafts, and red mounds of bricks that were once coke ovens. For eighty-five years the couple stood sentinel in their grief over the site of the Ludlow Massacre—until the night of May 3, 2003, when someone decapitated both the miner and his wife with a sledgehammer (Figure 1.2). The desecration of the Ludlow Monument invoked universal outrage in union circles. The monument stood on sacred ground for organized labor. For working families, the symbolic violence of the beheadings summoned forth the real violence of the massacre of women and children at Ludlow. Striking coal miners had erected a tent colony on this spot in 1913 to shelter their families. On the morning of April 20, 1914, troops with the Colorado National Guard assaulted the colony, strafing it with two machine guns. As the day ended, the armed strikers defending the colony ran out of ammunition and fled. The



1.1. Monument to the Ludlow dead, before the vandalism. Photograph by Randall McGuire.

Unearthing Class War

1.2. Monument to the Ludlow dead, after the vandalism. Photograph by Randall McGuire.

guardsmen entered the colony, looting it and setting the tents aflame. When the smoke cleared the next day twenty people lay dead, including two women and ten children smothered in a pit below a burning tent, and a twelve-year-old boy with a gunshot wound to his head. Enraged by the deaths, the miners rose up in violent rebellion—burning company towns, dynamiting mines, and killing company employees. Finally, President Woodrow Wilson sent federal troops to restore order and put a stop to the most violent ten days of class warfare in U.S. labor history. In 2003 the statues stared out on a moribund coalfield, yet they stood as a living memorial. Every June since 1918, hundreds of working people and a handful of curious bystanders have gathered on the plains of southern Colorado to commemorate the Ludlow Massacre. At the memorial service, on June 29, 2003, Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), spoke to over 400 people. He described the Ludlow dead as “American Heroes” and “Freedom Fighters” who had won with blood the basic workplace rights so many Americans take for granted today. He announced: “This is our Vietnam Veterans Memorial, our Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, our Lincoln Memorial. There is no question whatsoever that .€.€. this monument will be restored” (Saitta



R a n d a l l H . M c G u i r e a n d K a r i n L a rk i n

2004:85). Dean Saitta, a professor at the University of Denver and an archaeologist, also spoke at the memorial service that day (Saitta 2004). He represented the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project, which had conducted historical archaeology at the site of the Ludlow Massacre since 1996. He spoke in solidarity with the struggle of working families to sustain the rights for which men, women, and children had died at Ludlow. Saitta pointed out that we do not know if the attack on the Ludlow Monument was the random act of vandals or a calculated assault on the union. But even if the vandalism was not anti-union, it might as well have been because labor is under attack in the United States. The struggle of Ludlow continues today. The Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project

The Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project is part of that struggle. The University of Denver, the State University of New York at Binghamton, and Fort Lewis College sponsored the project, which has included faculty and students from these institutions as well as students from Syracuse University, La Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, the University of Manchester, and the University of Colorado. The project has worked closely with the United Mine Workers of America, specifically with District 22 and Local 9856 in Trinidad, Colorado. We are working to recover the memory of Ludlow and to exhume what remains of the class war of 1913–1914 in the coalfields of southern Colorado. To do this, we are building an archaeology of American working families that speaks to a variety of audiences about working-class history and experience. These audiences include the academy, the general public, schoolteachers, students, and, most important, working families. This volume brings together the work of various members of the Ludlow Collective to engage the academic community in our work. In the volume, we discuss how the project has reached our other audiences. The project incorporates theoretical, scholarly, and political goals. On a theoÂ�retical level we wish to build a praxis of archaeology that entails knowledge, critique, and action. As scholars, we wish to assess the importance of families’ lived experience in the formation and maintenance of the class consciousness that made the strike possible. Our project is a form of memory, and memory is political. The theoretical goal of the research is to build a radical praxis of archaeology, an emancipatory archaeology that confronts and challenges inequality and exploitation in the world (see Duke and Saitta 1998; Saitta 2007). Archaeological praxis necessarily involves three parts: knowing the world, critiquing the world, and taking action in the world (McGuire 2008). Knowing the world involves the traditional activities of archaeology: reconstructing the past and seeking explana-



Unearthing Class War

tions for cultural change. Critiquing the world includes critical self-examination of both the role of archaeology in the world and the inequalities in power that exist in the world. Knowledge and critique are pointless, however, unless they lead to action. At Ludlow we have crafted archaeology as political action. As scholars, we integrated archaeological evidence with archival evidence to evaluate propositions about the ways mundane experience shaped the strike. We have demonstrated that similarities in the day-to-day lives of miners’ families crosscut ethnic and cultural differences within the community of miners and that these similarities helped form a common class consciousness necessary for group action. Strikes do not just involve male miners; women and children were major participants in the 1913–1914 strike as well. We have shown how their participation sprang from their lived experience and how the struggle changed that experience (Reckner 2009). We obtained the data to test these propositions through excavations of domestic deposits in the company town of Berwind dating from the period immediately before the strike, from deposits at Ludlow that date during the strike, and from deposits in Berwind from the decade after the strike. Our results have implications for understanding this important event in U.S. history, the process of labor struggles in the United States, and current theoretical debates in archaeology over the forces of cultural change. This project is a form of memory. Our excavations at Ludlow draw attention to what happened there. Local people came out to tell us the story of their grandmother or great-uncle who lived in the camp. The excavations also attracted the attention of the media: newspapers, television, and radio. The vandalism of the monument in 2003 shows that memory and memorialization are a locus of struggle. We remember Ludlow to educate the general U.S. public about labor history. Here our message is the same as that of Cecil Roberts. Capital did not magnanimously grant Americans the workplace rights so many take for granted today. Working people won these rights with blood at Ludlow and in other struggles. Without shared consciousness and solidarity, these rights will be lost. We do not have to recover this memory for unionized working families in southern Colorado because they meet each June to remember Ludlow. Here we lend our expertise and the craft of archaeology to assist them in maintaining this memory in the face of those who would forget or destroy it. Ludlow and the Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1913–1914

In Chapter 2 Randall McGuire presents a detailed history of the Colorado strike and the class war it engendered. We draw a brief summary of that history here. In 1913, Colorado was the eighth largest coal-producing state in the United States. Most of this production centered on the bituminous coalfield around Trinidad,



1.3. Map of the southern Colorado coalfields, 1913. Drafted by Ann Hull.

Unearthing Class War

Colorado (Figure 1.3). The largest company mining coal in this region was the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I). CF&I employed approximately 14,000 workers, 70 percent of whom were foreign-born. Conditions in the mines, and of miners’ lives, were appalling. In 1912 the accident rate for Colorado mines was double the national average. Miners lived in crude, isolated mountain camps owned by the company. The company controlled the workers through the company store and by using mine guards as its private police force. In 1912 the company fired 1,200 miners on suspicion of union activities (Andrews 2008). Conditions came to a head in 1913 when the UMWA launched a massive organizing campaign to unionize the coal miners. At the same time the company brought in the Baldwin Felts Detective Agency to violently suppress the organizing efforts. The strike began on September 23, 1913, with 90–95 percent of the miners leaving the shafts and the company forcing all strikers from the company camps. The strikers streamed into about a dozen UMWA tent camps, of which Ludlow was the largest. On two occasions, one at Ludlow and the other at Forbes, company guards fired into the camps; on October 28, 1913, the governor of Colorado called out the National Guard. The Guard employed company police and increasingly became more antagonistic to the strikers. On April 20, 1914, the Guard attacked the Ludlow camp. After the attack the strikers took up arms, drove the Guard into Trinidad, and seized control of most of the mining district. Finally, after ten days of war, President Woodrow Wilson sent federal troops into the region to restore order. The strike continued until December 1914 when the UMWA, short on funds, canceled it. The Ludlow Massacre was a seminal event in U.S. labor history. Armed violence and the deaths of strikers and company agents were common within turnof-the-century labor strife, especially in the coal industry (Andrews 2008:272; Le Blanc 1999; Long 1991), but the killing of women and children was not. The deaths of Ludlow’s innocents at the hands of Colorado National Guard troops shocked the nation (Gitelman 1988). This shock fueled the Progressive Movement of the period and helped set in motion labor reforms that would be realized in the New Deal of the 1930s. Through these reforms, working people won the rights many take for granted today, such as the eight-hour day, the right to unionize, and safe workplaces (Davis 2000; Lichtenstein 2002). After Ludlow, management policies began to turn away from direct confrontation with strikers to strategies of co-option of workers’ demands. This spurred John D. Rockefeller Jr. to start the country’s first important company union and the first large-scale corporate public relations campaign. The strike involved many important ProÂ� gressive reformers and personages in labor history, including Mary “Mother” Jones, Upton Sinclair, and John Reed. It created others such as Louis Tikas. The



R a n d a l l H . M c G u i r e a n d K a r i n L a rk i n

memory of Ludlow still invigorates the union movement. For the UMWA the Ludlow site is sacred ground and a shrine to the sacrifice of working families in this country. Archives and Historiography of the Southern Colorado Coalfields

The archival record of the Colorado Coalfield War is thick and deep. The record includes thousands of pages of testimony, hundreds of letters, reams of newspaper stories, and hundreds of photographs. Historians have mined this material for over fifty years. They have produced numerous books and articles relating to life in the southern Colorado coal camps, the strike, the massacre, and the importance of these events to U.S. labor history. The 1913–1914 strike and the massacre were the subjects of two federal investigations. Before the massacre, in January 1914, the U.S. House of Representatives charged the House Committee on Mines and Mining to investigate conditions in the southern Colorado coalfields. The committee spent four weeks in southern Colorado, examined several hundred witnesses, and generated over 2,000 pages of testimony (Foster, Evans, and Sutherland 1915). After the massacre, in January 1915, the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations conducted hearings on the strike and the massacre (Adams 1966; West 1915). This investigation also examined hundreds of witnesses and produced thousands of pages of testimony. In both investigations the witnesses included company officials, local officials, union officials, members of the National Guard, and miners. The testimonies cover a wide range of topics, including the events surrounding the strike and the massacre, company policies, mine safety, and conditions of life in the coal camps. In addition to published reports (Foster, Evans, and Sutherland 1915; West 1915), documents from these investigations are available at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Major archival collections pertaining to the strike and the massacre exist in Colorado, Pennsylvania, and New York. The Denver Public Library’s Western History Department holds extensive collections related to these events, including the papers of union leaders Edward Doyle and John Lawson, the papers of National Guard officer Philip Van Cise, and the proceedings of the Colorado National Guard court-martial that followed the massacre. The Colorado HisÂ� toriÂ�Â�cal Society also has extensive collections related to the strike. In 2003 the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company turned its papers, including those relating to the period of the strike, over to the Bessemer Museum in Pueblo, Colorado. In 1994 the United Mine Workers of America transferred its archives from Virginia to the Historical Collections and Labor Archives at Pennsylvania State University in State College. At some point when the archives were in storage in Virginia,



Unearthing Class War

boxes related to the 1913–1914 Colorado strike and the Ludlow Massacre disappeared. Some materials pertaining to the strike can be found in correspondence files for District 15 and the union’s executive committee. John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s archives are held at the Rockefeller Archive Center in Sleepy Hollow, New York. The papers of his chief representative in southern Colorado, Lamont Bowers, are housed in the special collections of the Binghamton University Library, Binghamton, New York. In the first decade of the twentieth century, photography became a widely used, easy process with the advent of roll film, snapshot photography, and lightweight cameras. Professional photographers, union leaders, private individuals, and National Guard officers all took pictures of the strike and the massacre. Sociologist Eric Margolis (1988, 1994) has done extensive research on the photographs from the period and has identified over 500 images from the strike. Hundreds more surviving photographs were taken of the coal camps before and after the strike. Margolis (1988, 1994) has shown that the photographs were made, saved, and captioned for different reasons and to advance different agendas. In 1890, Oliver E. Aultman opened a photographic studio in Trinidad, Colorado. Aultman frequently worked for the coal companies, especially CF&I. His photographs for company publications and publicity portrayed the industry, order, and modernity of company mines, buildings, and housing. He took no photographs of the strike. Almeron Newman specialized in landscape photographs. He had a special camera that would take panoramic photographs. He used this camera to take panoramas of coal camps and, in 1914, a panorama of the second UMWA tent colony at Ludlow. Photographer Lewis R. Dold extensively documented the strike, the massacre, and the ten-day war. Dold used a camera format that allowed him to contact-print postcards from his negatives. He sold the postcards to the miners and printed myriad copies of each shot. His photographs thus reflect the images the strikers wanted. His are the best-known photographs of the strike, and he shot most of the images that define the strike in the historical imagination. Stuart Mace, a photographer for The Denver Times, specialized in photographs of the National Guard striking martial poses. Union organizer Edward Doyle apparently had a camera and took pictures of the strikers. These photographs ended up in various collections, often editorialized with captions. Thus cowboy artist, local museum curator, and member of the rural bourgeoisie Arthur Mitchell collected photographs of the coal camps. On the back of a photograph of a teenage girl in front of a wood and canvas shack, he wrote, “The Flower of Trinidad’s White Trash” (Margolis 1994:10). The UMWA collected strike photographs, principally Dold’s postcards. On them members scribbled captions such as “At last the devil has his own—a dead thug” (Margolis 1994:15). The CF&I’s photographic collection stresses modernity and industrial discipline.



R a n d a l l H . M c G u i r e a n d K a r i n L a rk i n

Eight books and at least two dissertations tell the story of the strike, the massacre, and the ten-day war. Barron Beshoar grew up in Trinidad. His father, Dr. Benjamin Beshoar, provided the strikers with medical care, and the young Barron had accompanied his father to the tent colonies. As an adult, Barron Beshoar (1957) published a biography of strike leader John Lawson that primarily focused on the 1913–1914 strike. This anecdote-rich account became a union staple and has been reprinted many times. George McGovern (1953) wrote his doctoral dissertation at Northwestern University on the Colorado strike. When he ran for president in 1972, Leonard Guttridge reworked the dissertation into the book The Great Coalfield War (McGovern and Guttridge 1972). Only one participant in the strike wrote a book-length account of it. Mary Thomas was born to coal miners in Wales and came to the United States following her errant coal miner husband. After he left her, she ended up at the Ludlow Tent Colony, a single mother with two children. She became a notable person in the camp, in part for her fine singing voice. She later took her married name, O’Neal. In 1971 she published her biography, which focused primarily on the strike (O’Neal 1971). Also in the 1970s, Zeese Papnikolas embarked on a biography of Louis Tikas, a Greek miner and the elected leader of the Ludlow Colony. Papnikolas (1982) wrote a poignant personal account of Tikas’s life and role in the 1913– 1914 strike. David Wolff (2003) focused his comparative study on two western coalfield massacres: the 1885 massacre of twenty-eight Chinese miners at Rock Springs, Wyoming, and the Ludlow Massacre. Thomas Andrews’s (2003) dissertation at the University of Wisconsin at Madison focused on the historical developments that led to the massacre and the war. More recently, Scott Martelle (2007) wrote a journalistic account of the strike and the massacre. Marilynn Johnson (2008) compared the Colorado strike to the Johnson County Cattle War. Finally, Thomas Andrews (2008) has written a sweeping account that begins with a geological history of coal. The 1913–1914 strike and massacre have also provided fuel for historians looking at other issues. The strike figures prominently in biographical studies of John D. Rockefeller Jr. (Chernow 1999). Howard Gitelman (1988) has written about how the strike transformed labor relations within both the Rockefeller empire and the United States in general. Pricilla Long (1985) studied the role of women in the strike, and Ludlow appears prominently in her history of the coal industry (Long 1991). The Colorado strike figures in many historical analyses of mining issues such as miners’ economic welfare (Fishback 1992), strike violence (Fishback 1995), and mine safety (Whiteside 1990). Finally, Lee Scamehorn’s (1992) corporate history of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company could not avoid the Ludlow Massacre, although he seemed to want to stay away from discussing it. By the 1970s, most of the coal miners who had participated in the Colorado strike were elderly or dead. Two researchers rushed to collect the survivors’ sto-

10

Unearthing Class War

ries. In the late 1970s, Eric Margolis undertook an oral history project about coal mining in the West that focused heavily on the Ludlow Massacre. He interviewed dozens of miners and collected over 200 hours of videotaped interviews. These interviews are archived in the Western Historical Collections, University of Colorado Library. His project also produced “Out of the Depths—The Miners’ Story,” a sixtyâ•‚minute segment of the PBS series A Walk through the 20th Century with Bill Moyers, which was broadcast on September 5, 1984. As part of his biography of Louis Tikas, Zeese Papnikolas collected oral histories from seventeen participants in the strike. They are archived at the American West Center of the University of Utah, Provo. What Can Archaeology Tell Us about the Colorado Coalfield War?

Strikes and the labor struggle rarely lend themselves to archaeological analysis because they tend to leave little in terms of material remains. The Ludlow Massacre site, however, offered a unique opportunity to use archaeology in the study of the labor struggle. In many ways it is the perfect archaeological site: a short-term occupation destroyed by fire and only slightly disturbed afterward. The major historical works on the strike focus on the events, strike leaders, and UMWA’s organizational work in the strike. They agree that the families who went out on strike did so because the conditions of their day-to-day lives had become intolerable and their future bleak. The oral histories focus on the lived experience of working families in early–twentieth-century Colorado. They confirm the grueling nature of daily life in the coal camps. Yet none of these studies provides more than an anecdotal understanding of what conditions were before, during, and after the strike. The documentary record of primary texts, photographs, and oral histories on the Colorado Coalfield War is incredibly robust, but it leaves a major issue unexamined. Working families created the class consciousness and solidarity necessary for the strike from their shared experience of everyday life. These experiences shaped the lives of miners and their families, but the documents focus on large-scale, high-profile political responses to the conflict that obscure these mundane aspects of life. Historians have tended to emphasize the male miner and commonalities of the work experience as the source of the social consciousness that united ethnically and racially diverse miners. The histories usually imply, and sometimes assert, that the miners shared a common lived experience at work but returned to ethnically different home lives. In this way they accept a very traditional hypothesis of labor action that emphasizes the agency of men and downplays the role of women. This hypothesis tends to equate class and class struggle with active men in the workplace and ethnicity and tradition with passive women in the home.

11

R a n d a l l H . M c G u i r e a n d K a r i n L a rk i n

We, and many others, are skeptical of this traditional view (Beaudry and MroÂ�zowski 1988; Cameron 1993; Long 1985, 1991; McGaw 1989; Mrozowski, Ziesing, and Beaudry 1996; Shackel 1994, 1996). We agree that ethnic identities crosscut class in southern Colorado and that they hindered the formation of class consciousness, but we question the equations class = workplace = male and ethnicity = home = female. Alternatively, we would propose that class and ethnicity crosscut both workplace and home, male and female. We thus expect to find that working-class men in the mines and working-class women in the homes shared a common day-to-day lived experience that resulted from their class position and that ethnic differences divided them in both contexts (Reckner 2009). We can demonstrate from existing analyses that ethnic divisions existed in the workplace. In southern Colorado the miners worked as independent contractors and formed their own work gangs that were routinely ethnically based (Beshoar 1957; Long 1991; McGovern and Guttridge 1972; Papanikolas 1982; Reckner 2009). Historical and industrial archaeologists have also demonstrated in many other cases that nineteenth- and early–twentieth-century workplaces were ethnically structured (Bassett 1994; Hardesty 1988; Wegars 1991). In the traditional hypothesis the commonality of the work experience overcomes these ethnic divisions in the workplace and an ethnically based home life to create a class consciousness. The idea that a commonality of lived experience in the home also aided in the formation of a common class consciousness is more difficult to demonstrate from existing analyses. The histories agree that the day-to-day lives of miners’ families were hard, but they provide little more than anecdotal evidence about the reality of these conditions. Historian Priscilla Long (1985), in an analysis that supports our alternative hypothesis, has demonstrated that women in the Colorado coalfields shared a common experience of sexual exploitation, but she lacks detailed data on the realities of day-to-day lived experience in the home. Our alternative hypothesis stresses the importance of the home in the creation of class consciousness. We seek to prove that the day-to-day material conditions of home life crosscut ethnic divisions before, during, and after the strike. If this is the case, we will argue that women and children were active agents, with male miners, in formulating a social consciousness to unify for the strike. Alternatively, if our analyses show that each ethnic group’s home life had distinctive day-to-day material conditions, then we will accept the traditional notion that families followed the lead of male miners who acquired a common class identity in the shafts. Historical archaeology offers a very productive arena for archaeologists to examine the relationship among social consciousness, lived experience, and material conditions in affecting cultural change (Orser 1996; Shackel 1996). In

12

Unearthing Class War

historical periods the archaeologist can integrate documents and material culture to capture both the consciousness and material conditions that formed lived experience (Barile and Brandon 2004; Beaudry 1988, 2007; De Cunzo and Herman 1996; Delle, Mrozowski, and Paynter 2003; Leone 1995; Leone and Potter 1988, 1999; Little 1992). In the documents, people speak to us about their consciousness, interests, and struggles, but not all people do so with the same force or presence. Also, they rarely speak in detail about their day-to-day lives. People, however, create the archaeological record from the accumulation of the small actions that make up their lived experience. Thus the archaeological record consists primarily of the remains of people’s mundane lives, and all people leave traces in this material record. Historical archaeologists bring to the table a craft that reveals the material conditions of everyday lives in the coal camps and tent colonies of southern Colorado. The historical accounts say that life was hard, and many anecdotes illustrate the adversity of day-to-day experience. Mining families unknowingly left a detailed record of this experience in the ground. Archaeologists can recapture it in the burned remains of their tents, in the layout of camps, in the contents of the latrines, and by shifting through the garbage they left behind. Exactly what did people eat, how was it prepared, what few possessions did they have, and what did women and children do in the home to make up for the inadequacy of a male miner’s salary? In many photos striking families stand in front of their tents. We use archaeology to pull back the flaps and look inside the tents. By examining everyday life before the strike, we know better why people went out on strike. A look at this experience in the UMWA tent camps gives us a glimpse of what life was like during the strike, and a look at the objects used daily after the strike reveals how that experience changed as a result of reforms that followed the strike. We have conducted excavations at the massacre site and in the mining town of Berwind, from which many of the Ludlow strikers came. A tent offers little shelter on Colorado’s windswept plains. At Ludlow the miners excavated cellars and threw up earthen ridges around their tents. When we excavate within the ridges and cellars we find the remains of their daily lives. We uncover pieces of the stoves on which the families cooked their meals and the tin cans, jars, and bottles that contained their food. In each tent we find fragments of the iron beds in which multiple family members must have slept. Mixed in among it all we find religious medals and the badges of fraternal clubs, the emblems of the social organizations that helped the families survive. Occasionally we unearth the fragment of a treasured object: a porcelain teacup, a musical instrument, or a toy that would have brought some small comfort to a hard life. The cellars tell the story of the attack. Fire-damaged family possessions sit on the floors: a rusted bedstead, metal basins, a row of canning jars melted in place, and a

13

R a n d a l l H . M c G u i r e a n d K a r i n L a rk i n

porcelain doll’s head deformed by the heat of the fire. To reach them we dig through a level of burned wood, charred canvas, and rusted grommets from the burned tents. On top of all this is a layer of charcoal, coal clinker, rusted metal, and charred possessions the miners used to fill in the holes after the massacre. At Berwind we have identified two clusters of homes, one dating to before the strike and the other after. Here we have excavated in trash dumps, latrines, and yards. What Has Archaeology Told Us about the Colorado Coalfield War?

The work reported in this volume and in others (e.g., Saitta 2004, 2007) presents the results of archaeological investigations at Ludlow and Berwind. Our research has fleshed out the working-class experience in western coal camps and striker tent colonies. The Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project’s key findings thus far include: • Distribution of surface and subsurface remains at Ludlow suggests a wellordered and well-maintained colony that sought to project an image of solidarity and civility. Our excavations of tent cellars confirm that the striking families used them for a variety of purposes in addition to protection from hostile forces and the elements, including storage and possibly habitation. The planning and organization evident in cellar design and construction indicate that the striking miners had anticipated and prepared for a long struggle. We found no evidence to substantiate the existence of ethnically distinct precincts within the Ludlow Tent Colony, although this could change with broader excavation (Reckner 2009). • As we expected, our excavations of trash pits, privies, and the midden revealed a reliance on canned foods. We found more evidence for alcohol consumption at Ludlow than we observed at the coal camp of Berwind. The greater consumption at Ludlow likely relates to the use of drink to break the boredom of a long strike. Faunal analysis suggests that strikers ate cows, sheep or goats, chickens, pigs, and spadefoot toads. Two-thirds of the beef cuts were shanks from the fore- and hindquarters, which are particularly cost-effective cuts. The butchering marks on most faunal material from the site indicate the use of saws to process meat. All butchering marks suggest that an inexperienced person did the processing. This would make sense if meat was purchased by, or donated to, the strikers in bulk sections. • Tableware and teaware remains from tent cellars suggest that miners acknowledged genteel Victorian, middle-class American values that prescribed elaborate matched table settings and formal teawares. However, differences in the stratigraphic context of decorated and plainware ceramics within cellars suggest that the latter saw greater use in everyday practice

14

Unearthing Class War and that working-class families may have privileged coffee drinking over taking tea. This implies that miners incorporated only selected elements of the existing American middle-class value system, ones that best fit with a working-class consciousness. Working families did not totally reject Americanizing influences; rather, they negotiated a careful balance between American and Old World identities that would serve the cause of collective action. • The archaeological work at Berwind contributes to a small but growing database of archaeological investigations of company towns in the United States. Working at Berwind, Margaret Wood (Chapter 4) has produced substantive insights into women’s economic strategizing and changes before and after the strike. Her analyses open a window onto women’s shared realities and anxieties that became instrumental in creating interfamily ties of mutual support and assistance. These alliances would have paralleled those formed among men in the mine shafts. • Our excavations have given us a few insights into the battlefield logistics and tactics employed by the strikers on April 20 and during the subsequent ten-day war, insights that have escaped historians (Andrews 2008:271). Archaeological excavations at Ludlow confirm that strikers were armed with a variety of weapons, including Winchester rifles and shotguns. However, we found no clear direct archaeological evidence for stockpiles of ammunition as suggested by the documentary record. Sixty-four percent of the ammunition we recovered by excavation came from a single cellar. This may verify that strikers did indeed have caches of ammunition and arms in the tent colony, but the evidence is localized and comparatively thin. • The same ambiguity surrounds evidence for the alleged existence of rifle pits within the colony, as repeatedly emphasized in testimony from Colorado militiamen before the Commission on Industrial Relations and in the militia’s own reports on the Ludlow Massacre. However, thus far we have not clearly identified any features like those described by militia leaders. The artifact content of the best candidate for such a pit includes food remains, building materials such as nails, and clothing parts. Less than 1 percent of this feature’s contents relates to firearms, suggesting a function as something other than a rifle pit. The location of another possible rifle pit feature corresponds to those plotted on a map of the colony made by the National Guard after the massacre. However, this second feature has only three cartridges associated with it, and its depositional history suggests a trash pit. In summary, there is no concrete evidence for the existence of rifle pits at the Ludlow Tent Colony. The absence of such evidence dovetails with post-strike testimonies given by people other than militiamen. No other individual in the archival record describes or even suggests the existence of rifle pits at Ludlow. It thus appears that the Colorado militia perceived the Ludlow Colony as more dangerous than it actually was. Or militia leaders may have purposely exaggerated the threat, and these

15

R a n d a l l H . M c G u i r e a n d K a r i n L a rk i n

exaggerations have been uncritically incorporated into official histories of the strike.

These and other investigations by project personnel are helping to clarify the day-to-day lived experience of miners in the shafts and families in the homes. The work makes contributions that supplement, extend, and correct the documentary record. But ours is still work in progress. We have much to do to substantiate the various kinds of material support the besieged Ludlow strikers received from outside sources, as well as their novel, “homegrown” support strategies. Descendants and Descendant Communities and the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project

Many historical archaeologists have argued that scholars have an obligation to work with the descendant communities of the sites we study (Blakey and LaRoche 1997; Shackel 2004; Singleton and Orser 2003; Spector 1993; Wilkie and Bartoy 2000). Many of these researchers confuse the descendants of historical communities with a descendant community. In the case of Ludlow we have tried to serve both descendants and the descendant community, but we recognize that in this case only the descendant community is a community of struggle. The project has entered into a collaboration with the UMWA and unionized workers in southern Colorado to advance this struggle. This collaboration entails all of us working together with integrated goals, interests, and practices. The archaeologists and the UMWA have contributed different resources, skills, knowledge, authority, and interests to the collaborative effort. We have combined these distinctive qualities in the shared goals of remembering Ludlow and educating the public about the struggle of working families. Many descendants of the striking miners come to the memorial each year. They are principally professional Anglos. Few are miners or members of the working class. They, their parents, or both participated in the great social mobility of the 1950s and 1960s, and today they are teachers, lawyers, businesspeople, managers, and administrators. They are scattered across the United States. They share an identity as descendants of the massacre, but they do not form a community, either in the sense that they live near each other or in being members of any type of interacting group, organization, or club. The descendants desire a familial and personal memorialization of the strike and massacre. They attend the memorial to establish a connection to this familial heritage and to see to it that their family’s role in these events is properly honored. We have aided descendants in various ways, such as marking the graves of ancestors and correcting errors on the labeling of historical photographs.

16

Unearthing Class War

The unionized working people of southern Colorado make up the descendant community of the 1913–1914 Colorado Coalfield Strike. A few are biological descendants of people who participated in the strike, but the vast majority have no ancestral connection to the events of 1913–1914. Some are ethnic whites (Italians and Eastern Europeans), but the vast majority are Chicano. They maintain the monument, organize the memorial, and make the struggle of 1913–1914 part of their active union struggle. Effective collaboration usually starts with the definition of an objective or a problem so that all involved can have a say in that definition. We spent nearly two years planning the project and establishing a working relationship with the UMWA before beginning excavations. We made contact with the UMWA at all levels, from the national executive committee to the local in Trinidad. The first thing union leaders wished to establish was that we were sympathetic to the goals of the union movement. As they explained more than once, we were asking to work on sacred ground. Once we had established that we shared common political goals, the union met our interests with bemused curiosity. After all, what we were proposing was not Indiana Jones. Several individuals in Local 9856 and its Women’s Auxiliary became key in setting up the project. Yolanda and Michael Romero have long been union activists and major people involved in the memorial service each year. Women’s Auxiliary member Carol Blatnick-Barros had studied archaeology in college and worked on excavations. She became an invaluable facilitator in our discussions with the union. With this relationship established, the Colorado Coalfield War ArchaeÂ�ology Project focused on the sites of the Ludlow Tent Colony and Massacre and the ColoÂ�rado Fuel and Iron Company camp of Berwind. These sites provided the two contexts needed to assess our goals of identifying working, living, and social conditions leading up to, during, and following the strike. We focused on understanding and mapping both sites using a variety of techniques. This helped us examine the ways they could inform us about the daily living conditions of the miners and their families. We also tested specific features such as tent pad locations, cellars, privies, and middens that provided material culture remains to help us address our specific research agenda, as discussed in Chapter 3. Based on our excavation, artifact analysis, and interpretations, we were able to produce a variety of products geared to both academic and general interest audiences as well as educational programs. These are discussed further in Chapters 11 and 12. Archaeology as Memory The chronicle of class warfare in Colorado clashes with most accepted narratives of class relations in the United States, particularly the West (McGuire and

17

R a n d a l l H . M c G u i r e a n d K a r i n L a rk i n

Reckner 2002). The hidden history of Ludlow represents a watershed event in American history that our project seeks to uncover for a broad range of constituencies. Many visitors to the memorial site are unaware of what happened there. They are often uncomfortable with the implications of the story. Pointof-interest signs on the interstate that identify the exit to the Ludlow Massacre Memorial draw a small but steady stream of summer tourists to the site. Most of these individuals arrive expecting to find a monument to an Indian massacre. Others see the story of Ludlow as a reminder of an unfortunate past the nation has transcended. Various people in southern Colorado have told us that the union needs to let go of the memory of Ludlow. These people believe everyone in the United States has become middle-class and that class conflict should therefore be forgotten as a bad memory. This line of thought has the ideological power to undermine and make irrelevant the real problems working-class people face in the United States today. The story of the 1913–1914 Coalfield War and the Ludlow Massacre is a history that has been hidden, lost, or at best selectively remembered outside union circles. Within the union movement, Ludlow is a shrine and a powerful symbol invoked to raise class consciousness and mobilize union members. In this context, our excavations become a form of memory, recalling for visitors what happened at Ludlow, the sacrifices of the strikers, and the fact that the rights of working people were won through a terrible struggle. The story of Ludlow has great popular appeal. The violence of the events and the deaths of women and children make the history a compelling story. It is also not a tale of a distant or exotic past. Within the union movement, memory leads to action as working people see their contemporary struggles as a continuation of the struggle at Ludlow. Our research focus on everyday life humanizes the strikers because it talks about them in terms of relationships and activities modern audiences also experience—for example, relations between husbands and wives or parents and children and activities such as preparing food for a family or doing the laundry. The parallel between the modern realities of these experiences and the miners’ lives gives modern audiences a comparison through which to understand the harshness of the strikers’ experience. In the United States, archaeological excavations are considered newsworthy. Our first two seasons of excavation resulted in articles in every major newspaper in Colorado. Eric Zorn, a columnist with The Chicago Tribune, covered our excavations in his Labor Day column in 1997. He titled the column “Workers Rights Were Won with Blood.” Our excavations give the events of 1913–1914 a modern reality; they live again and become news again. We have also focused on developing interpretive programs at the massacre site. The United Mine Workers of America has made Ludlow and the massacre

18

Unearthing Class War

a symbol of its ongoing struggle. But the tourists who regularly visit the site need more explicit background information on the 1913–1914 strike to understand Ludlow’s significance in the present. Every summer from 1997 through 2002, hundreds of people visited our excavations and, through site tours provided by our staff and students, learned the story of what happened there. At the Ludlow memorial service in June 1999, we unveiled an interpretive kiosk that includes three panels: one on the history of the strike and the massacre, a second on our archaeological research, and a third on the relationship of Ludlow to current labor struggles. We also mounted traveling exhibitions that we put up at the memorial service and sent to union halls around the country. During the summer of 2006, we installed a more detailed interpretive trail at the site. An important component of our education program has been the preparation of school programs and educational packets for Colorado’s public schools. We prepared a curriculum for middle school students on the history of labor in Colorado, with the 1913–1914 strike as its central focus. We also assembled a teaching trunk and made it available to schools in the Denver metropolitan area. During the summers of 1999 and 2000 we held training institutes for teachers sponsored by the Colorado Endowment for the Humanities, in which we educated teachers on labor history and on how to develop classroom materials to use in teaching Colorado labor history. A key part of our project was the creation of a University of Denver field school that did the actual excavation. In the field school we trained students in archaeological methods and techniques and also taught them about U.S. labor history. Most of the students who attended the field school came from solidly middle-class backgrounds but had very little direct connection to workingclass experiences and institutions. They had acquired their knowledge of labor unions from mainstream educational and media organizations. While some had been exposed to American labor history and the idea of class structures in U.S. society, the majority had few experiences that had led them to become aware of class in general and, more specifically, of their own class position. The nature of the Ludlow Massacre site brings the reality of class and class conflict in American history into sharp relief for students. The awareness of class in the past, however, in no way precludes the denial of class in one’s own present. Interactions between students and the local labor community challenged this latter notion. The annual UMWA memorial service at the Ludlow Monument confronted students with the phenomena of labor unionism and working-class solidarity in a powerful way. Every summer, staff and students of the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project attended these gatherings along with between 300 and 1,000 union people from all over the United States and from many different industries. At these and other events, students

19

R a n d a l l H . M c G u i r e a n d K a r i n L a rk i n

presented their work on the archaeology of Ludlow and discussed its meaning with working people. Archaeology as Political Action When we conceived the project in the mid-1990s, an active, unionized coal mine was still operating west of Trinidad. When we entered the field in 1997, we were disappointed to hear that the mine had closed just before Christmas 1996. We feared this closing would transform the project from an active engagement with a union community to a postindustrial memory project, but it did not work out that way. Ludlow remains a sacred place for the UMWA, and the District 22 office in Price, Utah, took over responsibility for the monument. The memorial service remains a national event for the union, with representatives from the national executive council attending each service. Since the project began, both county workers in Las Animas County and hospital workers at the Trinidad hospital have unionized. Both groups of workers choose the union of their fathers and uncles, the United Mine Workers of America. Both groups also identify with the 1913–1914 strike. Finally, striking steelworkers from Pueblo, Colorado, made the Ludlow Massacre a powerful symbol of their struggle. Working people in southern Colorado still struggle for dignity and basic rights. From 1998 until 2004, when the strike ended, several hundred participants in the Ludlow memorial services were striking steelworkers from Locals 2102 and 3267 in Pueblo, Colorado. They struck CF&I to stop forced overtime. They wanted to regain one of the basic rights for which the Ludlow strikers had died: the eight-hour day. They embraced the Ludlow Massacre as a powerful symbol in their struggle. Such is the power of Ludlow that the parent company (Oregon Steel) changed the name of its Pueblo subsidiary from CF&I to Rocky Mountain Steel to distance itself from the events of 1914. This move also prompted the donation of the CF&I archives to the Bessemer Museum in Pueblo. Following difficult debates in contract negotiations, a former president of Oregon Steel stated that the workers were “still mad about Ludlow” (Saitta, Walker, and Reckner 2006:200). At one point the strikers set up a tent camp in an empty lot across the street from the headquarters of Oregon Steel. The company was determined to break the union and to deprive the steelworkers of another of the basic rights the Ludlow strikers had struggled for: the right to collective bargaining. In June 1999 we twice addressed the Pueblo steelworkers, and afterward several individuals insisted that we accept small monetary donations to further our research (McGuire 2004). It was important to them that we accept this unsolicited support, and they dismissed our counterargument that the money should go to the locals’ strike relief fund. In the spring of 2004, the steelworkers won the strike.

20

Unearthing Class War

Chapters and Themes The chapters in this volume speak to a scholarly audience about our academic goals and how we have articulated those goals through a political praxis. They apply the craft of archaeology to knowing, critiquing, and taking action in the world. These chapters are unified by the praxis of the project and by five themes that stem from the project’s goals: • The struggle for labor rights and dignity—things that were won with blood • The idea of class consciousness as a basis for a strike and the home as a locus for forming such consciousness • The idea that class, gender, and ethnicity crosscut and do not necessarily work in opposition to each other • The idea of memory and remembering as a form of political action and struggle • Most important, the idea of building an archaeology for multiple audiences, including a nontraditional (working-class) audience.

Margaret Wood, in Chapter 4, provides a thought-provoking and insightful discussion of how the reforms CF&I presented after the strike were designed to promote certain ideals of class consciousness and conformity. She examines how the locus of the home was used to reinforce company ideals related to class, family, and “American” identity. The use of a built environment to underline and reinforce unity, cooperation, and identity was reflected in the coal camps of Berwind and was intentionally utilized. The adoption of practices, such as home canning, that co-opt and alter the original intentions of the built environment gives archaeologists insight into the changeable nature of the structure. In Chapter 5, Sarah Chicone discusses notions of poverty and class consciousness. She examines constructions and conceptions of home and how they are both limited by and form our ideas of poverty and class. She attempts to challenge the notions of poverty that modern society places on our understanding of the living conditions of miners in both the Berwind coal camp and the Ludlow Tent Colony and forces us to address the “complex reality of social position and class wealth that emerged from the coalfields of southern Colorado.” Michael Jacobson, in Chapter 6, also examines the use of physical space and the built environment to challenge or reinforce ideas of social norms, ethnic identity, and class. Jacobson explores the use of space as a material expression of mediation and strategy. He discusses the fact that space was contested and manipulated by both sides to achieve their individual goals. These goals unfortunately ended in violent conflict that was again arbitrated through space and

21

R a n d a l l H . M c G u i r e a n d K a r i n L a rk i n

the built environment. Jacobson discusses the use of space in the fight for basic rights and dignity, as well as the use of the landscape to reinforce company, class, and ethnic ideals and consciousness. In Chapter 7, Amie Gray discusses the ideal of Americanization and the reality of ethnic, class, and social identities as reflected in the material culture of the time. She examines the ceramic assemblage of one family’s home to outline the fact that gender, ethnicity, and class often crosscut and do not necessarily work in opposition to each other, despite flagrant attempts to create uniform class and social identities during this period in American history. The discrepancies between middle- and upper-class ideals put forward during this period often did not translate into lower-class practices. This discrepancy in class practice is discussed in Chapter 8, in which Claire Horn compares the ideals proposed by “modern medicine” and the middle- to upper-class social structure with the reality of mining life and ailments. In Chapter 9, Summer Moore examines the use of play as an important tool for socialization, identity construction, and maintenance in the formative younger years of life. She uses the children’s toys uncovered from the Ludlow Tent Colony to explore how they fit into American, Victorian, and ethnic identities. Such toys often play an important role in the creation and maintenance of social and ethnic identities. A central metaphor of politically conscious archaeologies is that we are recovering silenced histories or giving voice to those without power. In Chapter 10, Mark Walker argues that in the case of Ludlow, when we look deeper we find that the history we seek to recover is not that silent or awaiting archaeologists to recover it but is instead jealously guarded. “Official histories” silence the Ludlow Massacre, as is the case with many similar episodes of class struggle in the United States. Nonetheless, it remains an event that has great importance in the construction of working-class identity and struggles up to the present. The chapter discusses the history of Ludlow as memory, an understanding of the past that, to a certain extent, creates and is created in the practices of everyday life. Ludlow is a living memory, and as such the debates over the control of this memory are fractious and ongoing. Chapters 11 and 12 examine the idea of building archaeology for multiple audiences, including the nontraditional (working class) and students. In Chapter 11, Bonnie J. Clark and Eleanor Conlin Casella examine how the archaeological work of the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project can be an important and powerful tool for teaching students about class, social issues, and conflict management. In Chapter 12, Philip Duke and Dean Saitta outline the various audiences to which this work appeals as well as the myriad methods the project employed to reach these disparate audiences. This research has wide and important implications for many interested parties.

22

Unearthing Class War

1.4. Restored monument to the Ludlow dead. Photograph by Randall McGuire.

Today, the granite miner still gazes resolutely across the windswept plains of Colorado (Figure 1.4). After the vandalism, UMWA Local 9856 in Trinidad, Colorado, put out a call for funds to restore the monument. Tens of thousands

23

R a n d a l l H . M c G u i r e a n d K a r i n L a rk i n

of dollars poured in from union locals and individuals. On June 5, 2005, UMWA’s executive board, along with officials of other unions, politicians, scholars, visitors, and over 1,000 rank-and-file union members, gathered to rededicate the memorial. The miner and his wife still stand sentinel in their grief over the clearest case of class war in U.S. history. The site of the Ludlow Massacre remains a living memorial and a reminder that workers’ rights were won with blood. Works Cited Adams, Graham 1966 The Age of Industrial Violence, 1910–1915: The Activities and Findings of the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations. Columbia University Press, New York. Andrews, Thomas G. 2003 The Road to Ludlow: Work, Environment, and Industrialization, 1870–1915. PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison. 2008 Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Barile, Kerri, and Jamie C. Brandon 2004 Household Chores and Household Choices: Theorizing the Domestic Sphere in Historical Archaeology. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Bassett, Everett 1994 “We Took Care of Each Other Like Families Were Meant To”: Gender, Social Organization, and Wage Labor among the Apache at Roosevelt. In Those of Little Note: Gender, Race, and Class in Historical Archaeology, ed. Elizabeth Scott, 55–79. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Beaudry, Mary 2007 Findings: The Material Culture of Needlework and Sewing. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Beaudry, Mary (editor) 1988 Documentary Archaeology in the New World. Cambridge University Press, Cam-Â� bridge. Beaudry, Mary C., and Stephen Mrozowski 1988 The Archaeology of Work and Home Life in Lowell, Massachusetts: An Interdisciplinary Study of the Boott Cotton Mills Corporation. Industrial Archaeology 19:1–22. Beshoar, Barron B. 1957 Out of the Depths: The Story of John R. Lawson, a Labor Leader. Golden Bell Press, Denver. Blakey, Michael, and Cheryl LaRoche 1997 Seizing Intellectual Power: The Dialogue at the New York African Burial Ground. Historical Archaeology 31(3):84–106.

24

Unearthing Class War Cameron, Ardis 1993 Radicals of the Worst Sort: Laboring Women in Lawrence, Massachusetts 1860–1912. University of Illinois Press, Urbana. Chernow, Ron 1999 Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. Vintage Books, New York. Davis, Mike 2000 Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the U.S. Working Class. W. W. Norton, New York. De Cunzo, Lu Ann, and Bernard L. Herman (editors) 1996 Historical Archaeology and the Study of American Culture. Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, DE. Delle, James A., Stephen A. Mrozowski, and Robert Paynter (editors) 2000 Lines That Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Duke, Philip, and Dean J. Saitta 1998 An Emancipatory Archaeology for the Working Class. Assemblage 4. www.sh ef.ac.uk/assem/4. Fishback, Price V. 1992 Soft Coal, Hard Choices: The Economic Welfare of Bituminous Coal Miners, 1890– 1930. Oxford University Press, New York. 1995 An Alternative View of Violence in Labor Disputes in the Early 1900s: The Bituminous Coal Industry 1890–1930. Labor History 36(3):426–456. Foster, M. D., John M. Evans, and Howard Sutherland 1915 Report on the Colorado Strike Investigation Made under House Resolution 387. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. Gitelman, Howard 1988 Legacy of the Ludlow Massacre: A Chapter in American Industrial Relations. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Hardesty, Donald L. 1988 The Archaeology of Mines and Mining: The View from the Silver State. Society for Historical Archaeology, Pleasant Hill, CA. Johnson, Marilynn 2008 Violence in the West: The Johnson County Range War and Ludlow Massacre: A Brief History with Documents. Bedford and St. Martin’s, New York. Le Blanc, Paul 1999 A Short History of the U.S. Working Class: From Colonial Times to the Twenty-First Century. Humanity Books, New York. Leone, Mark 1995 A Historical Archaeology of Capitalism. American Anthropologist 97(2):251– 268.

25

R a n d a l l H . M c G u i r e a n d K a r i n L a rk i n

Leone, Mark P., and Parker B. Potter Jr. 1988 Introduction: Issues in Historical Archaeology. In The Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States, ed. Mark P. Leone and Parker B. Potter Jr., 1–26. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC. 1999 Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism. Kluwer Academic, New York. Litchtenstein, Nelson 2002 State of the Union: A Century of American Labor. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Little, Barbara (editor) 1992 Text-Aided Archaeology. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL. Long, Priscilla 1985 The Women of the C.F.I. Strike, 1913–1914. In Women, Work, and Protest: A Century of U.S. Women’s Labor History, ed. Ruth Milkman, 64–85. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. 1991 Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America’s Bloody Coal Industry. Paragon House, New York. Margolis, Eric 1988 Mining Photographs: Unearthing the Meaning of Historical Photos. Radical History 40:32–48. 1994 Images in Struggle: Photographs of Colorado Coal Camps. Visual Sociology 9(1):4–26. 2000 “Life Is Life”: One Family’s Struggle in the Southern Colorado Coal Fields. Colorado Heritage (Summer):30–47. Martelle, Scott 2007 Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West. Rutgers University Press, Rutgers, NJ. McGaw, J. A. 1989 No Passive Victims, No Separate Spheres: A Feminist Perspective on Technology’s History. In In Context: History and the History of Technology, ed. S. H. Cutcliffe and R. Post, 172–191. Lehigh University Press, Bethlehem, PA. McGovern, George 1953 The Colorado Coal Strike, 1913–1914. PhD dissertation, Northwestern University, Evansville, IL. McGovern, George S., and Leonard F. Guttridge 1972 The Great Coalfield War. Houghton Mifflin, Boston. McGuire, Randall H. 2004 Colorado Coalfield Massacre. Archaeology 57(6) (November–DeÂ�cemÂ�ber):62–70. 2008 Archaeology as Political Action. University of California Press, Berkeley. McGuire, Randall H., and Paul Reckner 2002 The Unromantic West: Labor, Capital, and Struggle. Historical Archaeology 36(3): 44–58.

26

Unearthing Class War Mrozowski, Stephen, Grace H. Ziesing, and Mary C. Beaudry 1996 Living on the Boott: Historical Archaeology at the Boott Mills Boardinghouses, Lowell, Massachusetts. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst. O’Neal, Mary Thomas 1971 Those Damn Foreigners. Minerva Books, Hollywood. Orser, Charles 1996 A Historical Archaeology of the Modern World. Plenum, New York. Papanikolas, Zeese 1982 Buried Unsung: Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Reckner, Paul 2009 Social Difference, Community Building, and Material/Social Practice: Solidarity and Diversity at the Ludlow Tent Colony, 1913–1914. PhD dissertation, State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton. Saitta, Dean 2004 Desecration at Ludlow. New Labor Forum 13:84–87. 2005 Labor and Class in the American West. In North American Archaeology, ed. S. Loren and T. Pauketat, 359–385. Blackwell, London. 2007 The Archaeology of Collective Action. University of Florida Press, Gainesville. Saitta, Dean J., Mark Walker, and Paul Reckner 2006 Battlefields of Class Conflict: Ludlow Then and Now. Journal of Conflict Archaeology 1:197–213. Scamehorn, H. Lee 1992 Mill and Mine: The CF&I in the Twentieth Century. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Shackel, Paul 1994 A Material Culture of Armory Workers. In Domestic Responses to NineteenthCentury Industrialization: An Archaeology of Park Building 48, Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, ed. Paul Shackel, 10.1–10.7. U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, National Capital Region, Regional Archaeology Program, Washington, DC. 1996 Culture Change and the New Technology: An Archaeology of the Early American Industrial Era. Plenum, New York. Singleton, Theresa, and Charles E. Orser Jr. 2003 Descendant Communities: Linking People in the Present to the Past. In Ethical Issues in Archaeology, ed. L. J. Zimmerman, K. D. Vitelli, and J. HollowellZimmer, 143–152. AltaMira, Walnut Creek, CA. Spector, Janet D. 1993 What This Awl Means: Feminist Archaeology at a Wahpeton Dakota Village. Minnesota Historical Society Press, Minneapolis.

27

R a n d a l l H . M c G u i r e a n d K a r i n L a rk i n

Wegars, Priscilla 1991 Who’s Been Workin’ on the Railroad: An Examination of the Construction, Distribution, and Ethnic Origins of Domed Rock Ovens on Railroad-Related Sites. Historical Archaeology 25:37–65. West, George P. 1915 Report on the Colorado Strike. U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, Washington, DC. Whiteside, James 1990 Regulating Danger. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Wilkie, Laurie A., and Kevin M. Bartoy 2000 A Critical Archaeology Revisited. Current Anthropology 41(5):747–778. Wolff, David A. 2003 Industrializing the Rockies: Growth, Competition, and Turmoil in the Coalfields of Colorado and Wyoming. University Press of Colorado, Boulder.

28

Randall H. M c Guire

2

A Terrible Unrest

Class War in Colorado

I suppose I’ll live a long time, but I don’t see how I can ever be happy again. .€.€. I can’t have my babies back. But perhaps when everybody knows about them, something will be done to make the world a better place for all babies. —Mary Petrucci (The New York Times 1915:7)

On April 21, 1914, class warfare raged on the plains of southern Colorado. Near the Ludlow railroad depot, troops of the Colorado National Guard hunkered down in a burned-out union tent colony, besieged by armed strikers. The morning before, they had attacked the colony with machine gun and rifle fire and, after a daylong battle, driven the strikers out. The bodies of two women and ten children lay at the bottom of a dark, smoky pit in the colony. Passengers on a passing train were horrified to see the corpses of union leaders Louis Tikas and James Fyler sprawled by the tracks. Hundreds of enraged miners were ranging through the nearby mountains razing company towns. They set fire to buildings, dynamited mine shafts, fatally shot company employees, slaughtered the mine mules, and at Forbes they burned down a house with four Japanese strikebreakers inside. Finally, on April 29, federal troops intervened and brought an end to the war.

29

Randall H. McGuire

Strike-related violence, especially in coal strikes, was not unusual at the beginning of the twentieth century (Andrews 2008:272). But the killing of women and children at Ludlow outraged the American public. The ten-day war that followed the Ludlow Massacre also realized long-standing fears of class warfare in the United States. The death of innocents helped turn popular opinion against violent confrontations with strikers, while at the same time corporate reformers started to call for a new relationship between capital and labor. Gradually, capitalists began to replace the ideology of social Darwinism with a new ideology of an industrial partnership between capital and labor, albeit a relationship in which capital remained the senior partner. The massacre marks a pivotal point in U.S. history when labor relations began to move from class warfare to corporate and government policies of negotiation, co-option, and regulated strikes. Capitalism, Progressives, the Union, and Coal in the Early Twentieth Century

At the dawn of the twentieth century, industrialism and capitalism were firmly established in the United States. The nation had exceeded Great Britain in manufacturing output to become the greatest industrial nation in the world. Laissezfaire ruled the country, but a powerful Progressive Movement challenged it. Immigrants from southern and Eastern Europe flocked to America by the hundreds of thousands. They dramatically changed the country’s ethnic and cultural makeup, but they encountered a formidable xenophobic reaction to their presence. They became the capitalists’ reserve army of the unemployed for the burgeoning factories, mills, and mines. Within the labor movement, reform-minded craft unions like the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) battled with revolutionary unions like the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) for the immigrants’ minds, hearts, hands, and dues (Davis 2000; Lichenstein 2002). Coal powered the nation (Andrews 2008; Long 1991). Coal ran the trains; heated factories, schools, and homes; turned electric generators; and drove machinery. Baked into coke and mixed with iron ore and limestone, coal made steel. Coal drove the great machines of industry, but miners still dug coal by hand (Whiteside 1990:32–54). Deep underground they set dynamite charges to blast the black rock from the earth. They then used picks and shovels to load the coal into mine cars pulled by mules and, later, electric engines. The companies paid miners by the ton for coal they loaded each day. In 1913, Colorado companies did not pay miners to perform “dead work,” which included all the activities necessary to get to the coal seams, including timbering mine tunnels, removing waste rock, laying track, and removing rockfalls. Not being paid for dead work meant miners earned more money if they shorted the activities that made their workplace safer (Whiteside 1990:53). Many

30

A Terrible Unrest

2.1. Aftermath of Primero Mine explosion, January 31, 1910. Courtesy, Denver Public Library, Western History Collection, x-63177, Denver, CO.

dangers lurked in the mines. Sparks ignited coal dust and methane gas, and the explosions could kill hundreds of miners in a single accident. In 1910 three southern Colorado coalmines exploded, killing a total of 210 miners (Figure 2.1) (Whiteside 1990:73). Most men died or were injured in less dramatic ways (Martelle 2007:19). The kick of a mule, rock falling from the roof, a plunge down a mine shaft, a mistimed dynamite charge, runaway mine cars, and dozens of other mundane accidents maimed and killed many more miners than the widely publicized disasters. Between 1900 and 1930, 71,160 coal miners died in U.S. mines (MSHA 2006). In the anthracite coalfields of Pennsylvania, a miner faced a one-in-eleven chance of dying during his career in the mines (Dublin and Licht 2005:49). During the same period, nonfatal injuries outnumbered fatal ones by a factor of fifty to one. Few men left the mines without disabilities. The Progressive Era

At the start of the twentieth century, Progressive reformers sought to transform the United States (Chambers 2000). They wanted to make the economy more efficient, the government more democratic, the workplace safer, and

31

Randall H. McGuire

society more just. They sought to close the immense gap industrialization had opened up between the haves and the have-nots. Although they had success, many of their reforms would not be fully realized until the New Deal of the 1930s. The reformers confronted the great monopolies that dominated the turnof-the-century U.S. economy. Prominent among these was Standard Oil. In 1900, Standard Oil controlled 90 percent of the U.S. oil industry and had made John D. Rockefeller Sr. the richest man in America (Chernow 1999). One of the Progressives’ first victories was passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1890. This law legislated the breakup of the monopolies, and in 1911 a U.S. Supreme Court decision ordered the dismantling of Standard Oil. By this time, John D. Rockefeller Jr. had taken his father’s place as head of the family’s more diversified business empire. Muckraking journalism defined the era. Progressive journalists, writers, and photographers used their crafts to expose the graft, corruption, exploitation, waste, and scandal of the times. Photography became a major tool of social commentary, beginning with Jacob Riis’s (1890) book How the Other Half Lives. Among the most famous writers was Upton Sinclair. His novel The Jungle (1906) led to the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. The Jungle told the story of a Lithuanian immigrant family working in the Chicago stockyards. The novel revealed how they were cheated, exploited, impoverished, and discriminated against. Immigration

The Progressive era witnessed the greatest period of mass immigration in U.S. history. Between 1880 and 1920, 23.5 million people entered the United States (Daniels 2002:124). Italians accounted for the largest group of these immigrants (4.1 million), with Poland, Greece, Hungary, and Russia providing the bulk of the remainder (Daniels 2002:188). Chinese had been immigrating to the West Coast since the 1840s, but laws passed in the 1880s ended Chinese immigration to the United States. The laws did not bar other Asian immigration, though, and by the end of the nineteenth century, Japanese were arriving on the West Coast in the tens of thousands. The outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910 led to a massive flow of Mexican people who joined long-established Mexican American communities in the western United States. Many in America blamed the immense poverty, disease, and crime in early– twentieth-century U.S. cities on the immigrants. They argued that these “new immigrants” were less educated, less intelligent, less skilled, and more seditious than the “old immigrants.” Reformers sought to “Americanize” the immigrants by replacing their culture, civic values, language, and customs with an American

32

A Terrible Unrest

culture. Other Americans embraced a virulent xenophobic nativism (Behdad 2005). They claimed that the new immigrants were not only culturally inferior but also racially inferior to Anglo-Americans. This movement culminated in the 1920s with laws that limited immigration. Outside the South a revived Klu Klux Klan focused its hatred on immigrants. In Colorado, the Klan burned crosses outside coal camps with their immigrant miners (Margolis 2000:44). Early–twentieth-century capitalists consumed immigrant labor just as their factories consumed coal. Most of these immigrants had been peasants in their homelands. Nearly all came with the intention of returning to their homelands with sufficient funds to establish a farm (Daniels 2002:213–214). They arrived ill prepared for industrial labor and mainly worked in unskilled positions in industry and mining. One of the main characteristics of the unskilled, industrial workforce was extremely high turnover, averaging 100 percent a year (Nelson 1995:85–86; Slichter 1919). Capitalists could always count on more immigrants to replenish the reserve army of the unemployed. As technological and organizational changes allowed the deskilling of production, owners could break strikes of skilled workers with immigrant scabs (Braverman 1998). This constant flow of immigrants and the high turnover rates among unskilled workers hindered union organizing efforts (Nelson 1995). Labor’s Struggle

Workers did not bend to their industrial yoke willingly but resisted in violent strike after violent strike (Davis 2000; Le Blanc 1999). U.S. law did not protect workers’ right to form labor unions, engage in collective bargaining, or strike until the 1930s. In 1877, during a nationwide railroad strike, Pittsburgh workers besieged troops of the Pennsylvania militia in a railroad roundhouse. During the same strike, in Chicago state militia and police fired on strikers, killing scores of people in the “Battle of the Viaduct.” Fifteen years later in the nearby community of Homestead, Pennsylvania, striking steelworkers seized the mill and engaged in pitched gun battles with Pinkerton agents employed by the steel company. Strikes and labor actions were particularly bloody in the nation’s coalfields (Andrews 2008; Fishback 1995). When Colorado reformer Josephine Roche took control of the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company in 1928, she invited the United Mine Workers to unionize the company. As an act of goodwill, she disposed of the thousands of dollars’ worth of machine guns, barbwire, and ammunition the company had stored to deal with labor disturbances (Time 1931). In the first three decades of the twentieth century, unions called not only for improved working conditions but also for the establishment of a socialist economy (Davis 2000; Le Blanc 1999). In 1886, reform-minded craft unions

33

Randall H. McGuire

banded together to form the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The AFL primarily represented skilled workers and sought reforms to improve working conditions, safety, and compensation. The AFL pushed for legislation to close off immigration. Following the model of the AFL, two miners’ unions united in 1890 to form the UMWA, which actively sought to organize immigrants and African Americans. It quickly gained membership in the East, South, and Midwest but initially had little success in the West, where a more radical unionism was born. In 1893, miners organized the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) in Butte, Montana. The new union adopted the motto “[l]abor produces all wealth; wealth belongs to the producer thereof ” (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:39). The WFM launched a series of violent strikes in Colorado’s hard-rock mines that culminated in the 1903 Cripple Creek Strike ( Jameson 1998). The Colorado militia under the command of Denver ophthalmologist John Chase violently put down the Cripple Creek Strike. By 1903 the WFM and the UMWA competed to organize Colorado coal miners. In 1905 the WFM played a key role in forming the IWW, and the radical IWW would continue to compete with the UMWA for the loyalty of Colorado coal miners until the New Deal of the 1930s. The specter of class warfare hung over the nation at the beginning of the twentieth century. Anarchists and socialists sought to ignite such warfare in a revolution to overthrow capitalism. Progressives sought to blunt and remove this threat by reforming capitalism. Capitalists sought to maintain their profits and privilege in the face of both the specter and the reformers. In August 1912 the U.S. Congress authorized the formation of a U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations (Adams 1966; McGovern and Guttridge 1972:314–315). President Woodrow Wilson appointed the Progressive senator from Missouri, Francis Patrick Walsh, to head this commission. Congress charged the commission to identify the origins of industrial discord in the United States and to prescribe remedies for that conflict. The outbreak of class warfare in Colorado would soon consume its time and attention. Coal and Colorado

Hard-rock mining for gold, silver, and lead industrialized Colorado. The extraction of these minerals required tools, machines, and, most important, railroads. Coal powered the steam engines in the mines, the railroad engines, and the steel mills that produced the rails. Seams of bituminous coal run through the east slope of the Rocky Mountains. Northwest of Denver, near the university town of Boulder, coal occurs in strata deep under the plains. In the south, seams of coal lace the mountains facing the plains. The southern coalfield began at the New Mexico border in Las Animas County, with its county seat at Trinidad,

34

A Terrible Unrest

and extended north into Huerfano County, with its county seat at Walsenburg. Coal mining had begun in the southern field by the 1870s. In 1892 two existing companies merged to form the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) (Scamehorn 1992). In Pueblo, Colorado, CF&I operated the only steel mill between the Missouri River and the Pacific Coast. It also established coalmines and coke ovens in the southern coalfield to feed that mill. By 1913, Colorado was the eighth largest coal-producing state in the nation. The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company

The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I), under the direction of John Osgood, grew rapidly to become the most powerful coal and steel operation in the West (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:8; Scamehorn 1992; Wolff 2003:121). Osgood took a paternalistic attitude toward his workers. In the mountains of western Colorado, he created a model company town at Redstone, where CF&I ran a coke plant. In 1901 the company set up a Sociological Department to look after the welfare of the workforce and shape the workers to fit the company’s mold of good employees. Many of the Sociological Department’s ideas and policies were progressive in nature, but it was an arm of the company whose purpose was to increase profits (Andrews 2003:428–429). That same year, CF&I published the first issue of a weekly company magazine titled Camp and Plant. The magazine was glossy, professionally produced, and an unabashed propaganda organ for CF&I. It conveyed the company line to the workers and provided them with a safe alternative to the muckraking press. CF&I became one of the most powerful economic and political forces in Colorado. The Engineering and Mining Journal estimated that by 1906, 10 percent of Colorado’s population depended on CF&I for their livelihood (Whiteside 1990:8–9). In 1903, Osgood and his cronies lost control of CF&I. With Standard Oil under legal assault as a result of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, John D. Rockefeller looked to diversify his holdings, and his gaze fell on Colorado. Rockefeller moved to consolidate the company by installing his own people in positions of power. He appointed Jesse Welborn president of the company, but the company faltered and faced bankruptcy. In 1907, he sent Lamont Montgomery Bowers to oversee CF&I as chair of the Board of Directors. Bowers shared Rockefeller’s upstate New York roots and Baptist faith (Pepper 1979). He was a capitalist of the old school with no interest in Progressive ideas or meddling. Rockefeller gave Bowers simple instructions: cut costs and increase output. Rockefeller did not supervise his managers’ affairs as long as the bottom line remained healthy. The new regime at CF&I slowly dismantled Osgood’s paternalism. First they suspended publication of Camp and Plant, then they abolished the Sociological Department. Osgood did not leave the Colorado coal industry, however. He took

35

Randall H. McGuire

control of the Victor-American Fuel Company and built it into the foremost of CF&I’s competitors in southern Colorado. The new regime at CF&I immediately faced a crisis. The United Mine Workers called a convention in Pueblo, Colorado, in September 1903 to organize Colorado coal miners for a statewide strike. Representatives of the Western Federation of Miners also attended, and they called for the coal miners to follow the example of the hard-rock miners in Cripple Creek and strike (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:42–47). On November 9, miners in both the northern and southern fields walked out on strike. Operators in the north quickly made concessions and accepted the UMWA as the representative of their miners, and within a month the strike there had ended. In the south, things did not go so well. The operators led by CF&I refused to recognize or negotiate with the UMWA (Wolff 2003:218). In Cripple Creek, General John Chase broke the hardrock strike by deporting strikers and imprisoning hundreds of them in outdoor bullpens without trials. The militia commander in the southern coalfields did the same. More important, the coal operators began bringing Italians, Poles, and other immigrants into the southern field as strikebreakers (Whiteside 1990:48). On June 2, 1904, the UMWA terminated strike benefits, and the strike in the south failed. The strike gave the UMWA a foothold in northern Colorado and transformed the culture of the southern coalfield. In the late nineteenth century, coal operators had attracted Irish and Welsh miners to Colorado by promising higher wages than they were paid in Pennsylvania and the Midwest (Whiteside 1990:47– 48). These were experienced miners, often with union backgrounds. During the 1903 strike, many of these miners left for other coalfields, and the militia deported some of them. Others left, disillusioned by the failure of the strike. Many of those who sought to get their jobs back at the end of the strike found that Italians, Eastern Europeans, Mexicans, African Americans, and Japanese had taken their places (Beshoar 1957:1; Whiteside 1990:47–48; Wolff 2003:192–193). CF&I managers would claim that the immigrants appeared as a result of the favorable conditions the company created in southern Colorado. Federal law prohibited U.S. companies from recruiting workers in foreign countries. Years later, however, Upton Sinclair would claim that he had seen color posters advertising jobs with CF&I in southern European railroad stations (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:51). By 1910, the ethnic makeup of the southern field had been transformed. Seventy percent of the workforce was non–English speakers (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:52). UMWA (1912) organizers in 1912 listed twenty-four nationalities in the southern field. Thirty percent of these were English, 30 percent Italians, 24 percent Eastern Europeans, 7 percent Mexicans, 4 percent Greeks, and 1.6 percent Japanese. In 1913, 15,000 to 20,000 people lived in CF&I-owned coal camps in southern Colorado (West 1915:34).

36

A Terrible Unrest

2.2. Morley, Colorado, 1907–1915, a company town. Courtesy, Colorado Historical Society, Trinidad Collection, Scan #20004309, Denver, CO.

Life in the Southern Colorado Coalfields

The conditions of miners’ lives in southern Colorado were abysmal. Every week someone was crippled or killed under falling rock or the wheels of a runaway ore car (Andrews 2008; Martelle 2007). Every few years a mine would explode and dozens of men would die. The operators often ignored state laws regulating safety, working conditions, and the fair compensation of miners. The miners and their families lived in crude shacks in isolated company towns (Figure 2.2). The company controlled the housing, the store, the medical facilities, the town saloon, and all recreational facilities. Company guards acted as police and determined who could come and go in the communities. The company also dominated the local political structure and instructed its employees on how to vote. As was typical in coalmines of the time, workers in southern Colorado could be divided among professionals, company men, and miners (Andrews 2008; Whiteside 1990:39). A handful of professionals, including a mine superintendent, teachers, and doctors, worked in each community. Company men were paid by the hour. Shot firers entered the mines between shifts and set off charges to loosen the coal. Pit bosses assigned miners to rooms (work areas in the mines)

37

Randall H. McGuire

and supervised the work. Most company men, however, were “outside men.” Workers in the coke ovens pulled hot coke out of the ovens and into waiting ore cars. Blacksmiths shoed the mules, and mechanics maintained the apparatus of the mines. The vast majority of workers were miners, however. The companies regarded coal miners as independent contractors, and the miners formed their own work gangs, usually made up of family members or friends from the same ethnic background (Beshoar 1957; Long 1991; McGovern and Guttridge 1972; Papanikolas 1982; Reckner 2009). The shift pit boss could assign a work gang to an easily worked room where the men could straightforwardly load a large amount of coal. Or he could send them to low, water-filled rooms that required a lot of dead work to load a little coal. The foreman expected the miners to buy him beer and sometimes to offer him outright bribes. Each miner had numerous brass checks with his number on them. When he entered the mine, he hung his check on a board to indicate he was underground, and when he went home he hung it on a different board. If he was killed in the mine, the brass check identified the miner’s body. In the mine, the miner attached a check to each car he loaded, and mules or an electric engine dragged the car to the tipple for unloading. In the tipple, a weigh boss weighed the car and credited the miner with his tonnage. The weigh boss could deduct for slate or other stone in the car or simply cheat the miner by robbing Peter to pay Paul (Henraty 1912). The scales were often dishonest, and miners at the UMWA (1913) District 15 convention in 1913 complained repeatedly that the companies shorted them on their tonnage. The miners wanted to elect their own check weighman to verify the scales and tonnage of their coal. Coal miners earned very little money. In 1913, miners reported that the companies paid them 40 to 60 cents for each ton of coal they loaded (UMWA 1913). This translated into a daily wage of no more than $3.50 (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:22). Mexican miners were paid even less (UMWA 1913:5). From this amount, the company deducted for blacksmithing, blasting powder, oil or carbide for lamps, lamp globes, doctors’ fees, and rent and utilities for company housing. Company men were paid about the same as the miners, with the average daily wage between $3.00 and $4.00 in 1914 (Whiteside 1990:51). Demand for coal was seasonal, and so was work in the mines. In the early twentieth century, miners worked 130 to 195 days a year, and their gross annual wages totaled $300 to $500 (Whiteside 1990:51, 117). The average Colorado coal mining household consisted of 5.1 persons, and the average cost of minimal support for a family that size was $410.76 (Wood 2002:75). Life on a coal miner’s wages was clearly marginal. The Colorado mines were notoriously unsafe, among the most dangerous in the nation—second only to Utah. In the period 1884–1912, 42,898 coal miners perished in mine accidents in the United States. Of that number, 1,708 died in

38

A Terrible Unrest

Colorado mines. Miners died in Colorado coalmines at a rate that was over twice the national average (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:66; Whiteside 1990:74–75). Colorado law required that a company pay compensation for the death of a miner if the company was at fault. The companies, however, especially CF&I, politically dominated Las Animas and Huerfano counties through ballot stuffing, suppression of free speech, and graft (West 1915:16). Almost without exception, handpicked coroners’ juries absolved the coal companies of responsibility for miners’ deaths. For example, in the years 1904–1914, juries picked by Sheriff Jeff Farr of Huerfano County found the coal operators to blame in only one case out of ninety-five (Whiteside 1990:22). The companies did follow an informal practice of paying survivors of the dead according to “the facts and circumstances of each case” (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:34). In 1913, 110 men died in Colorado coalmines, leaving 51 widows and 108 orphans. The companies, on average, paid the survivors $305.40 for each death (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:34). Miners complained that the operators valued their lives less than they did the mules. Joe Morzox worked at the Tabasco Mine. He recounted that the pit boss required miners to haul their own rails to the face and that many of the men did not know how to drive the mules to do the hauling. He remembered, “One man was kicked by a mule and lived only five hours after. The mine boss asked me about the accident and then said he was glad it was not the mule that was killed” (UMWA 1913:4–5). Miners replaced themselves; the companies had to purchase mules. The mines in southern Colorado were located up in canyons that emptied from the mountains down onto the plains. Most of the mines were far too distant for workers to live in established towns such as Trinidad and Walsenburg. The companies owned all the land in the canyons and founded coal camps on that land (Beshoar 1957; Long 1985; Martelle 2007; McGovern and Guttridge 1972). These were gray, gritty, self-contained communities. Coal tipples and other industrial buildings dominated the landscape. Scattered among the industrial buildings were homes, schools, jails, saloons, churches, bathhouses, and hospitals. Sewage ran in open trenches through many of the towns, leading to frequent outbreaks of typhoid (Andrews 2003:429). The company owned and controlled all aspects of life in the camps. The mine superintendent was also the mayor, the school board, the election board, and sometimes the judge. The company dictated what would be taught in the schools, what would be sold in the store, which religions could be practiced, and which movies would be shown. The companies fenced and closed most of the camps (Andrews 2003:430; Wolff 2003:220). Employees and visitors passed through locked gates patrolled by gun-toting mine guards to enter the camps. The guards protected company property, enforced company rules, and bullied workers. They would beat individuals

39

Randall H. McGuire

suspected of union sympathies and send them “down the canyon.” The worst of the guards would accost and molest miners’ wives when their husbands were working in the pits (Long 1985:67; McGovern and Guttridge 1972:110). During our fieldwork, former miners and children of miners who had lived in the camps in the 1920s and 1930s told us stories to illustrate the mine guards’ arbitrary power. In one frequently told story, when guards stopped a miner at the company gate, they saw a pair of new mining boots in the backseat of his car. They asked the miner where he got the boots, and he said it was at a store in Trinidad. When they asked him why he had not purchased the boots at the company store, the miner replied that the company store did not have his size. The guards took the boots and told the miner “now they do.” The company store was the most infamous institution in the coal camps (Andrews 2003:436). The largest companies, such as CF&I, had mercantile divisions that ran the stores in the company camps. The companies expected a profit from these stores, and in 1913, CF&I’s Colorado Supply Company yielded the Rockefellers a 20 percent profit (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:22). In half of CF&I’s camps, the company store was the only store. The isolation of the camps made these stores both a necessity and a means to further exploit workers for the benefit of the company’s bottom line (Bowers 1911). In testimony before the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations in 1915, both Welborn and Bowers denied that CF&I required its employees to shop at Colorado Supply Company stores. Bowers (1915) wrote President Woodrow Wilson and asserted, “No pressure whatever was brought to bear in order to induce them [the miners] to trade at our stores.” However, in a 1911 letter to the manager of the Pueblo steel mill, Bowers wrote of employees who did not shop at the Colorado Supply Company stores: “But in any event their disloyalty is self evident, and a disloyal person when discovered will have no employment in our company.” The stores would advance miners credit against their next check. Given the marginality of the miners’ pay, most miners found themselves owing their soul to the company store. Operators attempted to guarantee profits in their stores through the use of scrip, company-issued currency that could only be used in the company store. Some companies paid a portion or all of the miners’ wages in scrip, while others, including CF&I, advanced credit to their miners in coupons good only at the company store. Two types of housing existed in the coal camps (McGovern and Guttridge 1974:24–25). When the companies first established the camps, the miners built their own housing (Andrews 2003:437). They threw together shacks using packing crates, scrap boxes, corrugated metal sheeting, and flattened tin cans (Figure 2.3). In some cases, miners constructed dwellings from the mud and rock they found in the canyons. They often built their homes in side canyons away from the prying eyes of the managers and guards. The miners bought and sold these

40

A Terrible Unrest

2.3. Miner-built housing in southern Colorado, 1900–1920. Photograph by Otis Aultman. Courtesy, Colorado Historical Society, Aultman Collection, Scan #20010799, Denver, CO.

vernacular dwellings among themselves, but they built them on company land. The owners of the shacks paid a lease fee to the company for use of the land. The company could evict the miners and destroy their houses. Emma Zanetell (n.d.) recounted to Eric Margolis and Barron Beshoar that CF&I dynamited the house her father built in the CF&I town of Sopris in retaliation for his union activities. Over time, the companies replaced these vernacular homes with company-built dwellings. The operators placed the houses in neat rows interspaced with the industrial structures of the mines. The houses were uniformly simple, unadorned, and small. The CF&I built cottages of concrete block for $700 apiece. They rented them to their employees for $2 per room per month and turned a 6 to 8 percent profit on the deal (McGovern and Guttridge 1974:24–25; Wood 2002:70). In 1913 some company houses had electric lights, but almost all lacked running water. A group of houses would share a common outdoor water tap. The CF&I maintained two coal camps up Berwind Canyon. In 1888, one of the companies that would later merge to form CF&I discovered a six-foot seam of coal outcropping in the canyon and established a mine and a camp (Wood 2002:65). By the turn of the twentieth century, over 600 people lived in Berwind,

41

Randall H. McGuire

and the mines were among the most productive in Colorado. By 1913 the town boasted both a Colorado Supply Company store and an independent general store owned by an Italian immigrant, John Aiello (Long 1985:66; Wood 2002:72). The town also contained a school, meat market, jail, and saloon. Down the canyon but adjacent to Berwind was the CF&I town of Tabasco. In 1901 the company sank a mine shaft into the canyon at Tabasco and built 302 coke ovens. The smoke and ash from these coke ovens wafted daily over the communities of Berwind and Tabasco, combining with the oily soot that emanated from the coalmines to color everything a greasy gray. A woman’s life in the coal camps was grueling (Figure 2.4) (Wood 2002). Given the isolation of the camps, women had few employment opportunities. A handful of women in each camp worked as maids or servants for the professional households. Each day women had to haul water, wash clothing, care for children, and prepare meals. They did all these things by hand. It was hard, backbreaking work. The number of men in the camps exceeded the number of women, so many men lived as bachelors. The single men lived in company boardinghouses or in dwellings with other bachelors, or they boarded with families. Women made money by attending to the domestic needs of the bachelors in the camps. Women took in boarders, took in laundry, and prepared meals for men who lived in all-male households. The money women could make from these activities came close to matching the wages of a male miner. But even with the contributions of both spouses, the life of a mining family remained wretched and harsh. The Strike

In 1913, conditions in the mines of southern Colorado were ripe for a strike and for violence. The brutality of mundane life had produced festering dissatisfaction among mining families that grew on a daily basis. Divisions of class, ethnicity, and race had solidified in ways that both unified and alienated people. More important, these divisions bred fear and dehumanized the participants in the struggle. The operators brought in gunmen and machine guns to maintain their control. The miners had valid grievances, and the UMWA moved to organize workers to confront those grievances. Everyone knew the strike would be violent because violent behavior was normal in a coal strike (Fishback 1995). No one anticipated, however, that innocents would die and that class war would spring from the smoking Death Pit at Ludlow. Hundreds of photographs are one of the most compelling legacies of the strike. Lou Dold, a Trinidad, Colorado, photographer, made his living taking and selling picture postcards (Margolis 1994:15). Dold traveled through the strike zone taking photos of miners, company guards, and the Colorado militia. Back

42

2.4. Miner’s family, southern Colorado, 1913–1914. Courtesy, Colorado Historical Society, Trinidad Collection, Scan #x-60427, Denver, CO.

Randall H. McGuire

in his studio he printed the photos on card stock and sold the postcards to those he had photographed. Stuart Mace, a staff photographer with The Denver Times, favored shots of the militia in soldierly poses. Various other photographers also documented the events. Divisions

The social context of coal mining in early–twentieth-century Colorado enÂ�tailed complex interrelationships of class, gender, ethnicity, race, and age. The bourgeoisie, or owners of the mines, were uniformly white and Anglo and lived in Denver or other urban areas outside the state. White, Anglo middle-class managers, administrators, and professionals represented the bourgeoisie in the coal camps. This industrial society of the mines was embedded in a rural society ethnically differentiated between Anglos and Chicanos, with a rural working class of cowboys and field hands, smallholder herders, and farmers and a rural bourgeoisie of large ranchers and merchants. Each of these social groups had different interests in the conflict that would come. The most obvious distinction was the one between working-class miners and members of the bourgeoisie and middle class who owned and ran the mines. This is the classic capitalist contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The members of the working class, however, did not all experience dayto-day life in southern Colorado mining communities the same way. The lives of men and women were quite different, and power relations and exploitation existed within working-class households (Long 1985). Each ethnic group also formed its own community, residentially and through churches, associations, and fraternal organizations (Reckner 2009). Racial discrimination existed, with Euro-American workers discriminating against African American and Chicano workers and the handful of Japanese in the camps largely excluded from union activities. The UMWA has a long history of organizing miners across racial and ethnic lines. As current UMWA president Cecil Roberts stated in an address at the 2000 Ludlow memorial service, “When the top comes down it does not care if you are Black or White.” However, in 1913, UMWA officials, leaders, and organizers were largely Irish and Welsh and culturally distinct from the immigrant, Chicano, and African American rank and file. Racial and ethnic distinctions divided the industrial working class but unified Anglos across class lines against the miners. The Anglos of the local rural society regarded the miners as inferior foreigners. They shared these racist and xenophobic prejudices with the Anglo rural bourgeoisie, the industrial bourgeoisie, and the middle class. In a 1909 letter to John D. Rockefeller Jr., Lamont Bowers (1909) used this xenophobia to justify reducing wages at the Pueblo steel mill: “I always regret cutting the wages of laborers who have families to support

44

A Terrible Unrest

and are trying to pay for homes and educate their children but considering these foreigners who do not intend to make America their home, and who live like rats in order to save money, I do not feel that we ought to maintain high wages in order to increase their income and shorten their stay in this country.” The xenophobic, rural, Anglo bourgeoisie largely sided with management against the strikers. Individuals from the rural, Anglo working class filled the ranks of the mine guards. A small, primarily ethnic-based, petty bourgeoisie of shop owners and tradespeople identified with the miners who were their customers. As tensions grew, the companies brought in more gunmen (McGovern and Guttridge 1974:85–88). Not confident that their own mine guards were a sufficient deterrent to industrial violence, they called on experts. The Baldwin Felts Detective Agency of West Virginia specialized in breaking coal strikes. The CF&I, the Victor-American Fuel Company, and the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company engaged the agency to disrupt organizing and break any potential strike (McGovern and Guttridge 1974:87–88). The Baldwin Felts Agency deployed up to seventy-five agents in southern Colorado. They hired men locally and brought in others from outside the region. Sheriff Farr of Huerfano County deputized them. The agency also brought in at least eight machine guns (McGovern and Guttridge 1974:117–118), one of which they took to the steel mill in Pueblo. There CF&I had mounted steel plating on the sides of a touring sedan to create a homemade armored car. The Baldwin Felts machine gun and a spotlight finished off the “Death Special” (Martelle 2007:96–98). Solidarity

The UMWA leaders had not forgotten their defeat in 1903, and the coalmines of southern Colorado remained a ripe field for organizing. But, as had happened in 1903, the labor struggle began in the northern coalfield (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:74–91). In 1908, UMWA organizers under the leadership of John Lawson won a contract for the UMWA with the major producers in the northern field. The CF&I encouraged the northern operators to abandon the contract, which they did when it expired in 1910. The miners walked out, and the UMWA had a strike that would drag on for five years. Support from CF&I and the VictorAmerican Fuel Company reinforced the northern operators’ resistance to the strike. In the early months of 1913, the UMWA sent organizers to the southern fields to organize a strike and put pressure on the southern operators. Lawson took charge of the strike efforts in Las Animas County, and Adolph Germer, later a founder of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, directed operations in Huerfano County. The union also brought in its most powerful weapon: an eighty-plus-year-old widow known as Mother Jones. Dold photographed her striding through the streets of Trinidad at the head of a demonstration.

45

Randall H. McGuire

The deplorable condition of miners in the southern part of the state made a mockery of Colorado’s laws (Whiteside 1990:57–109). Turn-of-the-century Colorado was a progressive state. In 1893, it became only the second U.S. state to grant women the right to vote. Colorado legislatures in 1899 outlawed scrip and any coercion by companies to control the places their miners shopped (West 1915:68). The first state mining law, passed in 1883, regulated safety and set up a system of state inspections of mines (Whiteside 1990:58–59). State law had allowed miners to elect check weighmen since 1897 (West 1915:64). The state of Colorado passed legislation mandating an eight-hour day in 1905 (West 1915:21– 22). In March 1913 the state legislature passed a comprehensive reform of state mining law that reaffirmed existing provisions and strengthened safety regulations and mine inspections (Whiteside 1990:106–108). Perhaps if the southern Colorado operators had obeyed these laws, the UMWA would not have found such fertile ground for a strike. As the UMWA organizers fanned out in the southern fields, they met with resistance from the operators. CF&I guards jumped organizer Michael Livoda near the Ravenwood Mine and beat him brutally (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:81). Deadly violence began at 8 P.M. on August 15, 1913, when Baldwin Felts agents gunned down UMWA organizer Gerald Lippiatt on the streets of Trinidad (Martelle 2007:14; McGovern and Guttridge 1972:90). The state labor commissioner, who was present in Trinidad that day, wired the governor, warning of “a terrible unrest” (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:91). The UMWA had no machine guns, but the union bought Winchester, Marlin, and Savage repeating rifles to arm strikers (Margolis 2000:44; McGovern and Guttridge 1972:118– 119). During the ten-day war, Dold photographed the rebellious miners with red bandanas tied around their necks and their union rifles in their hands. The Special Convention of District 15 of the United Mine Workers, held in Trinidad, Colorado, convened on August 16, 1913 (UMWA 1913; Martelle 2007:71–75). The memory of Lippiatt’s murder was strong in the minds of the 300 delegates. They had taken great risks themselves sneaking out of the coal camps under the noses of company guards and sheriffs’ deputies. Mother Jones addressed the convention. She charged the miners: “I want you to pledge yourselves in this convention to stand as one solid army against the foes of human labor” (UMWA 1913:20). This they did, voting to strike and drawing up seven demands (UMWA 1913:21–23): 1. Recognition of the UMWA as the miners’ representative 2. A 10 percent increase in the tonnage rate for miners and raises in the day wage scale 3. An eight-hour day for all classes of labor in and around the coalmines and at the coke ovens

46

A Terrible Unrest 4. Pay for all dead work 5. The election of check weighmen in all mines, without interference by company officials 6. The right to trade in any store and the right to choose their own boarding place and doctor 7. The enforcement of the Colorado mining laws and the abolition of the notorious and criminal guard system

With the exception of the call for union recognition and the raise in wages, Colorado mining laws already stipulated these points. The companies led by CF&I acceded to all the demands except recognition of the union. On September 23, 1913, between 8,000 and 10,000 miners, comprising 40 to 100 percent of the miners at various camps, walked out of the pits (West 1915:31). Life in the Strike Zone

The UMWA had prepared for the strike and the needs of the strikers. The union correctly anticipated that the companies would evict strikers from company dwellings and vernacular houses built on company land. The union set up a dummy real estate office in Denver and leased land for twelve tent colonies at the base of the canyons (Beshoar 1957:57–58). Over 1,000 tents had been sent from West Virginia, but they had not arrived in southern Colorado by September 25. On that date, a cold drizzle of sleet, rain, and wet snow soaked the striking families as they wound their way down the canyons carrying everything they owned. The strikers made do with what tents there were and set up their new union communities (Figure 2.5). The union organized each camp democratically, with elected officials resÂ� ponsible for representing the camps, maintaining order, and mediating internal conflicts. The UMWA paid strike pay to all miners who remained in the strike zone: three dollars a day for each man, one dollar per woman, and fifty cents per child. The miners erected tents on wooden frames and organized them in neat rows. The union provided each tent with a cast-iron stove and iron bedsteads. Many miners added on to their tents with wooden doors and windows. Some also dug cellars under their tents that provided a warm refuge from the plain’s winter wind, extra storage and living space, and protection from rifle fire. Each camp had a large community tent that served as a meeting hall, cafeteria, school, and recreation center during the strike. At least some of the camps had telephone and electric lines run into them. The union set up the tent colonies at the base of the canyons in part to intercept strikebreakers brought in by the companies. At word of the arrival of strikebreakers, the women of the camp would go to the railroad siding with bats

47

2.5. Map of strike zone, 1913–1914. Courtesy, Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project.

A Terrible Unrest

and confront them (Long 1985:73). Women went because there was less chance that the company guards would perpetrate violence against them. They would beg, cajole, and threaten the strikebreakers to quit the companies and join the union. The UMWA set up the largest of these tent colonies along the train tracks a mile north of the railroad depot of Ludlow (Beshoar 1942; McGovern and Guttridge 1972:105). On September 23, mining families from Berwind, Tabasco, and the Victor-American mining camp of Hastings trekked into Ludlow. The Ludlow Tent Colony served as the headquarters of the strike in Las Animas County. A second colony called White City, set up on the edge of Walsenburg, was the headquarters in Huerfano County. The strikers laid out a baseball diamond and built stands for it on the other side of the section road from the Ludlow Colony. They also erected an outdoor gymnasium along the south edge of the colony. The Ludlow Colony elected a Greek miner, Louis Tikas, as its leader and a young Welsh woman, Mary Thomas, as official “greeter-singer” (Long 1985:72). Another woman, named Pearl Jolly, also became a leader in the camp. To make extra money she sold Dold’s postcards from her tent (Papanikolas 1982:214). The strikers seemed to overcome the divisions of more than twenty ethnic and racial identities and cooperated in the domestic life of the camp and the strike (Reckner 2009). The companies harassed the strikers in numerous ways. At Ludlow, the Victor-American Fuel Company and CF&I erected giant spotlights on the edge of their properties. These spotlights would sweep the tents all through the night. Company guards routinely harassed strikers and their families when they ventured out of the camps. Company officials and guards publicly proclaimed the strikers to be “dirty foreigners.” Bowers wrote Rockefeller warning of “bloodthirsty Greeks who have just returned from the Turkish wars” among the strikers (quoted in West 1915:146). Company guards randomly fired their weapons over the tents or into the camps. When the Death Special arrived on the scene in October, Baldwin Felts agents drove by the tent camps in the night, firing their machine gun. The union reacted to these molestations by ringing the camps with armed guards. The companies set up their machine guns at the entrances to the canyons to guard their mines. The situation was tense and the strike zone filled with armed men. Violence was inevitable. Violence

The first violent death after the strike call occurred on the second day of the walkout. A group of strikers ambushed and killed a particularly brutal mine guard who had a reputation for molesting miners’ wives (Long 1985:67). Reprisals soon followed (Martelle 2007:81–91). Guards fired into tent camps and on picketers.

49

Randall H. McGuire

Miners dynamited buildings in company camps. A pitched battle erupted at Ludlow between Baldwin Felts agents and strikers (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:115). A few days later, a cowboy was killed by a stray bullet during a shootout between mine guards and strikers near Tabasco. On October 17, the Death Special appeared outside the Forbes Tent Colony south of Ludlow. Shooting broke out and the Death Special’s machine gun raked the camp, killing a miner and wounding and crippling an eighteen-year-old boy. In Walsenburg on October 24, sheriffs’ deputies fired on a crowd of strikers, killing three. The next day, armed men from the Ludlow tent camp, fearing an attack, drove mine guards led by Karl Linderfelt up Berwind Canyon (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:126–134). The battle raged for eight days. The strikers besieged mine guards in Tabasco and Berwind. Albert Felts sent an armored train with Baldwin Felts agents to machine-gun the Ludlow Colony and relieve the siege. The strikers intercepted the train in a running battle, forcing it up Berwind Canyon. Welborn confronted the governor of Colorado and demanded that he call out the National Guard to protect company property and lives in southern Colorado. On October 28, the governor issued the order for the state militia to take control of the strike zone. The Colorado National Guard arrived in Trinidad on November 1 with over 900 men and with artillery (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:137–139). General Chase, the Denver ophthalmologist who had broken the 1903 Cripple Creek Strike, was in command. Chase relieved the besieged company men up Berwind Canyon and issued CF&I company guard Linderfelt a commission as a lieutenant in the militia. He deployed Company K, which consisted primarily of University of Colorado students, to Ludlow. The Ludlow strikers greeted Company K with American flags, a band playing marches, and the hope that the militia would disarm both sides and bring order to the strike (Martelle 2007:126). Relations between Company K and the Ludlow Colony remained civil through the winter, in part because of the goodwill of company commander Philip Van Cise. Dold photographed militia soldiers with an artillery piece, pistols, and a mule. One soldier is seen striking a marshal-like posture while two others smile at the camera and a fourth waves. Mace had better luck posing guardsmen with military bearing. In one of his photographs, a line of soldiers looks appropriately stern and marshal-like on the roof of a train. As the days passed, Chase increasingly demonstrated that he was on the side of the operators. Soldiers entered Ludlow and other camps to search for and seize weapons, and they disarmed mine guards. But many of these same guards soon appeared in National Guard uniforms carrying military weapons (West 1915:110–111). Scattered violence and killings continued on both sides, but no more pitched battles broke out. Lamont Bowers, in response to a letter from President Woodrow Wilson, called Mother Jones “this vile woman” (quoted in McGovern and Guttridge 1972:

50

A Terrible Unrest

2.6. Women’s march, Trinidad, Colorado, 1914. Courtesy, Denver Public Library, x-60493, Denver, CO.

135). Soon thereafter, General Chase declared martial law in southern Colorado, something only the governor had the authority to do. One of Chase’s first acts under martial law was to bar Mother Jones from the strike zone. On January 4, 1914, General Chase deported her from the strike zone. When she returned to Trinidad a week later, Chase had her arrested and interned in the county hospital. Hundreds of women with their children streamed into Trinidad for a march to protest Mother Jones’s arrest (Figure 2.6) (Long 1985:75–76). General Chase confronted them with cavalry on the town’s main street, and he fell off his horse, much to the amusement of the women and children. Climbing back on his steed, he ordered his troops to charge the women. The cavalry drove the women and children through the streets (Martelle 2007:152–155). No one was killed, but this attack on their spouses and children enraged the miners. It took all of the union leaders’ efforts to prevent an attack on General Chase’s headquarters at the Columbia Hotel (Beshoar 1957). Ten weeks later General Chase once again deported Mother Jones to Denver. She returned again, but this time Sheriff Farr intercepted her in Walsenburg and held her in the Huerfano County jail. In her autobiography, Mother Jones wrote that she used a broken bottle to drive rats out of her cell ( Jones 1925).

51

Randall H. McGuire

The strike in Colorado attracted national attention. Members of the U.S. Congress were concerned about industrial strife and its potential to lead to class war. The House Subcommittee on Mines and Mining held hearings on the strike in Denver and at the West Theater in Trinidad (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:177–193). The committee questioned dozens of people, including company officials, union leaders, and Albert Felts of the Baldwin Felts Detective Agency. One of the points revealed in the testimony was that Linderfelt was enrolling Baldwin Felts agents in his militia company. The congressional committee had barely left Colorado when the National Guard attacked the Forbes Tent Colony (Beshoar 1957:154–156; Martelle 2007: 197–202). A railroad crew had found a strikebreaker dead on the tracks nearby. They said he was drunk and had been hit by a train. The militia claimed strikers in the Forbes Tent Colony had beaten him to death. The soldiers tore down the tents and arrested sixteen strikers. They left tent number 30 standing because inside that tent Emma Oberosler Zanetell was recovering from the birth of stillborn twins (Zanetell n.d.). Dold arrived soon after the tents were down and took pictures. In one photo Emma Zanetell’s sisters and brothers are standing in front of tent 30 (Figure 2.7). One’s eyes are drawn to her niece, a little girl named Irene Micheli, wearing a white dress, in the center of the composition. By early spring 1914, the state of Colorado had drained its treasury maintaining the National Guard in the strike zone. The costs of the intervention were driving the state into bankruptcy (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:186–193). At the end of February, the governor removed all but 200 National Guard soldiers from southern Colorado (McGovern and Gutteridge 1972:186). He would continue to remove soldiers until mid-April, at which time he announced that the situation had been turned over to local authorities. Two National Guard companies remained. Company B under the command of Lieutenant Linderfelt was stationed at Ludlow. Although dressed in National Guard uniforms and carrying military-issue rifles, this company was made up primarily of mine guards. Troop A was formed that month when Linderfelt swore in 130 mine guards at the Trinidad armory (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:204–205). National Guard officers took command, but CF&I and the Victor-American Fuel Company clothed, armed, and paid Troop A. The Colorado National Guard in southern Colorado was now little more than a gang of coal company gun thugs (West 1915:124–126). The Massacre and Class War

On the morning of April 20, 1914, families at the Ludlow Tent Colony awoke slowly. The previous day had been the Greek Easter. The Greek miners had put on a party for the event with food, music, and a baseball game. Dold had

52

A Terrible Unrest

2.7. Oberosler family and friends in front of tent at Forbes Tent Colony, 1914. Courtesy, Denver Public Library, x-60448, Denver, CO.

climbed up on a railroad water tower and taken a panoramic picture of the camp a few days before. The skiffs of snow in that picture were gone, but the morning was still crisp and cold. Only a dozen or so guardsmen were in their camp across from the Ludlow depot, but they had a machine gun set up on a hill below a water tank, about a mile south of the colony. This gun, with uniformed soldiers and mine guards striking martial poses, can be seen in a Stuart Mace photograph (Figure 2.8). Lieutenant Linderfelt had awakened his troops early to drill on the machine gun. While the morning was still new, the stage was set for the tragic events that would soon transpire (Beshoar 1957:166–194; Martelle 2007:160–176; McGovern and Guttridge 1972:210–232; West 1915:126–132). National Guard commander Major Patrick Hamrock called the colony at around 9 A.M. and asked Tikas to meet him at the militia camp. Tikas refused but agreed to get together with him at the Ludlow station. Strikers, fearing for Tikas’s safety, drew guns out of hiding and gathered in a railroad cut from which they could cover the depot with rifle fire. No one knows who fired the first shot, but moments later Lieutenant Linderfelt exploded two dynamite bombs as a signal to militia and mine guards to come to his aid. With these explosions the strikers began firing on the machine gun nest in earnest. Mine guards brought down the Baldwin Felts machine gun that had been protecting Hastings and set

53

Randall H. McGuire

2.8. Machine gun at Water Tank Hill, 1914. Photograph by Stuart Mace. Courtesy, Denver Public Library, x-60543, Denver, CO.

it up beside the militia’s weapon. By day’s end, almost 200 soldiers and guards were firing into the camp. Mary Thomas (O’Neal 1971) said that by dusk the canvas tents were so shot up that they looked like lace. Neither side was willing to engage in close combat. They fired back and forth at relatively long distances, often up to a mile, so their bullets had little effect. Two of the armed strikers (Charles Costa and Franj Rubino) and one soldier (Alfred Martin) from Company B died in the combat. On the main highway two miles away, a stray bullet killed hitchhiker Primo Larese (Martelle 2007:222–223). Pandemonium reigned in the camp. Dogs barked, babies cried, and people ran to and fro seeking shelter. Families who had dug cellars under their tents ducked into them. Some women and children clamored down into a walk-in well that supplied the railroad water tank, huddling in the cold water. Louis Tikas and Pearl Jolly ran through the camp trying to get people to safety. With every lull in the machine gun fire, they directed people down the arroyo north of the camp to Frank Bayes’s ranch and safety. Armed strikers took up position at a steel bridge over the arroyo to cover this retreat. Some of the most intense fighting of the day occurred here. The Snyder family huddled in the pit under their tent. Around noon, twelve-year-old Frank Snyder went up into the tent and was

54

A Terrible Unrest

fatally shot. His father, crazy with grief, began running from tent to tent telling people not to flee because the militia was killing children. As the day wore on, the attackers gained strength and the strikers ran low on ammunition. At dusk, the first tent burst into flames. The attackers had the upper hand, and they started to move into the camp. A southbound freight train passed between the bulk of the attackers and the colony, stopping the militia advance. With this interruption in gunfire, most of the rest of the women and children in the camp fled. At about the same time, the armed strikers ran out of ammunition, and Tikas ordered them to the Black Hills east of the colony. Soldiers and mine guards rushed into the camp, spreading the fire from tent to tent. They soon heard the screams of women and children in the cellars under the burning tents. Some of the militia officers began ripping up tent floors and pulling women and children from the pits, but many of the attackers began an orgy of looting, taking anything of value they could find. Louis Tikas heard screams in the camp and ran back to make sure everyone had gotten out. Company B soldiers seized him, the union paymaster James Fyler, and an armed striker named John Bartolotti. The soldiers brought the prisoners to Linderfelt and summarily executed them (Martelle 2007:175–176; McGovern and Guttridge 1972:251). Their bodies lay sprawled by the railroad tracks for three days. Mary Petrucci had spent the day huddled in the cellar beneath tent 1 in the southwest corner of the camp. At dusk, when the tent ignited, she grabbed her baby and two young children and fled from the shelter. Outside the tent, a guardsman confronted her and threatened to kill her. She fled to the cellar under Alcarita Pedregon’s tent. Pedregon, Fedelina Costa, Patricia Valdez, and their seven children had cowered in this pit all day, and there was little room for four more people. Mary and her children crouched on the steps of the cellar while the tent above them burned, sucking the oxygen from their refuge. Mary eventually passed out. The next morning when she awoke, the baby in her arms and her other two children were dead. Of the fourteen women and children in that pit, only Mary and Patricia Valdez survived. The two women stumbled dazed and confused to the Ludlow depot, where the postmistress put them on a train to Trinidad. The bodies of their children and friends lay in the smoking pit for three more days. Finally, agents of the American Red Cross received permission from the National Guard to recover the bodies at Ludlow. A representative of the UMWA and Lou Dold accompanied the Red Cross. On that day, Dold made some of his most compelling images, with masses of burned tents, stoves, and bedsteads spread over a stark plain (Figure 2.9). The National Guard was also taking pictures. In one, a soldier stands in the Death Pit with his white hand sticking up out of the darkness (Figure 2.10) (Margolis 1988). The UMWA and the Colorado Federation of Labor put out a call to arms to all working people in Colorado (Beshoar 1957:183–184). It began: “Organize

55

Randall H. McGuire

2.9. Ludlow Tent Colony after the massacre, 1914. Courtesy, Denver Public Library, x-60483, Denver, CO.

the men in your community in companies of volunteers to protect the workers of Colorado against the murder and cremation of men, women and children by armed assassins in the employ of coal corporations, serving under the guise of state militiamen. Gather together for defensive purposes all arms and ammunition legally available.” Armed miners mustered in Trinidad and took to the hills to attack and destroy mines and company towns. Meanwhile, other armed workers pinned down the National Guard at Ludlow and in Walsenburg. At Walsenburg the battle stretched over several days, and a National Guard officer and two strikers died (Martelle 2007:223–224). In Denver, National Guard units ignored the call to muster, and railroad crews refused to operate trains carrying troops south. Finally, the governor had no choice but to appeal to Washington for federal troops to end the class war. John Lawson, who had resisted calls to radical action before April 20, now aggressively pursued the war. Two days after the massacre, strikers had laid waste to at least six mines and company towns (Martelle 2007:177–197; McGovern and Guttridge 1972:240–249). Guerrilla forces would continue to emerge from the mountains and attack company towns for seven more days, burning and killing (Martelle 2007:222–224). At the Empire Mine, managers, strikebreakers, women, and children huddled in a mine shaft pinned down by rifle fire from strikers. Strikers’ bullets killed the mine supervisor and a company employee, and com-

56

A Terrible Unrest

2.10. Death Pit at Ludlow, 1914. Courtesy, Denver Public Library, x-60482, Denver, CO.

pany guards killed two of the attacking strikers. Strikers wearing red bandanas around their necks rushed the Victor-American Mine at Delagua, killing five mine guards. At four other mines, four company men and one striker died in the fighting. The most intensive attack occurred at Forbes, Rocky Mountain Fuel’s coal camp. Three hundred miners dodged machine gun bullets to attack the camp. They set fire to the barn, and thirty-seven mules died. They threw coal oil on the tipple, scales, boardinghouse, and post office and set them aflame. During the fight, sixty women and children cowered in the mine for safety. Four Japanese miners perished in a burning shack, and seven other company men fell to strikers’ bullets. One of the company men tried to escape on a mine car but was fatally shot, and his body fell on the tracks. That afternoon the first contingent of federal troops reached southern Colorado, and the war ended. Stuart Mace was in Forbes right after the fighting (Figure 2.11). He photographed the burned buildings, the smoldering tipple, and four bodies. Aftermath and the Rockefeller Plan

The massacre at Ludlow invigorated the strike. At the beginning of April, the UMWA had expended the strike fund, and the strike was nearly done. Outrage

57

Randall H. McGuire

2.11. Dead company men at Forbes Mine, 1914. Photograph by Stuart Mace. Courtesy, Denver Public Library, x-61219, Denver, CO.

over the massacre at Ludlow swelled union coffers and continued the strike. Upton Sinclair arranged a cross-country tour of Ludlow survivors, including Pearl Jolly, Mary Thomas, and Mary Petrucci (Beshoar 1957:232–234; McGovern and Guttridge 1972:276–278). The women told the Ludlow story on podiums all across the United States, bringing audiences to tears with their story (The New York Times 1915). President Wilson welcomed them to the White House, but John D. Rockefeller Jr. refused to see them. After the tour, Sinclair (1917) wrote his book King Coal to try to do to the coal industry what The Jungle had done to meatpacking. In May, the UMWA set up a new strikers’ colony at Ludlow. But fund-raising after the massacre only briefly extended the strike. By December 1914 the UMWA was bankrupt, and on December 10 it ended the strike. Many of the strikers had trouble getting work because the companies blacklisted them. A few families hung on in the tent colonies until early 1915. The U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations had not done significant work during its first year, but in 1914 it turned its attention to Colorado and Ludlow. The chair, Francis Walsh, saw the Ludlow events as an opportunity to expose and humiliate the Rockefeller family, and he set out to do just that. The commission held hearings in December 1914 and January 1915 and produced thousands of pages of testimony (West 1915). The individuals who testified included

58

A Terrible Unrest

the Rockefellers senior and junior, company officials, National Guard officers, Colorado state officials, strikers, and strikers’ wives. Walsh was largely successful in his attempts to discredit Rockefeller. Both the commission’s hearing and the widespread publicity about the massacre moved public opinion against Rockefeller. In response to his growing infamy, Rockefeller started the country’s first corporate public relations office and mobilized it in an effort to regain his good name (Gitelman 1988; Marchand 2001:16–17). After the strike ended, Colorado authorities arrested 408 miners, with 332 indicted for murder, including strike leader John Lawson. The trials dragged on until 1920. Most of the miners never came to trial, and all the trials were eventually suppressed at the request of John D. Rockefeller Jr., who wanted to end publicity about the strike. The Colorado National Guard moved quickly after the massacre to court-martial and exonerate 10 officers and 12 enlisted men who had participated in the massacre. The court-martial did find Lieutenant Linderfelt guilty of assaulting Louis Tikas but acquitted him of any criminal charge (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:286–287). None of the mine guards or mine officials was brought to trial. In the end, no one was convicted or punished for any of the crimes of the Colorado Coalfield War. In the fall of 1914, Rockefeller employed Canadian socialist Mackenzie King to conduct a study of industrial relations within CF&I (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:293–311). The events in Colorado had challenged Rockefeller’s perception of industrial relations and his own company’s role in the strike. He deplored the killings of the women and children in the Death Pit, although he always denied any responsibility for them (Gitelman 1988:23). His subsequent public scourging before the Industrial Relations Commission strengthened his resolve for reform. The consequence of this change of mind was the Rockefeller Plan (also referred to as the Industrial Representation Plan or IRP) (Gitelman 1988). In September 1915 he initiated the plan with a tour of CF&I’s eighteen coal camps in southern Colorado. His motorcade stopped first at Berwind and Tabasco. Rockefeller danced with miners’ wives, ate with miners in boardinghouses, and, with Mackenzie King, donned stiff new overalls to go down into the mines. He promised a new regime of partnership and cooperation between CF&I and the workers. The Rockefeller Plan sought to forestall labor unrest and unionization by establishing a company union and improving living conditions in the coal camps. The plan set up a system of joint management-labor committees to discuss health, sanitation, mine safety, recreation, and education. The scheme included elected worker representatives to present labor’s concerns to management and provided for the election of check weighmen in each mine. The plan also initiated a wave of construction in the coal camps, including Berwind. Rockefeller invited the YMCA into each camp and built buildings to house the organization.

59

Randall H. McGuire

Managers eliminated the remaining vernacular housing in the camps and tore down and replaced many existing company houses. Within a few years, the domestic architecture of most of the camps had been completely transformed. At Berwind, the company built the new YMCA at the south end of the camp so it could also serve Tabasco. It also replaced most of the domestic structures in the camp and built a row of show homes at the camp’s entrance. The Rockefeller Plan did not buy the industrial peace Rockefeller had hoped for, however (Beshoar 1957:362–364). World War I brought an increased demand for coal, higher wages in the mines, and nationalization of the U.S. railroad system. After the war, John Lewis consolidated power as the leader of the UMWA, and the union called for the nationalization of the coal industry. With the loosening of wartime controls and a fall in demand, coal companies, including those in southern Colorado, cut wages. In 1919, CF&I workers responded to a UMWA call for a national strike, and CF&I lured them back with higher wages. In 1921 the company took back the wage increase, and the miners of southern Colorado once again walked out of the mines. This time the state forbade evictions from company houses and the construction of tent camps. In 1927 the IWW called for a national strike, and miners in the northern and southern coalfields joined it. In the south, the IWW set up a few tents at Ludlow and held large meetings there. In the north, at Columbine, Colorado, Rocky Mountain Fuel Company guards opened fire on strikers with a machine gun, killing five and wounding twentyfive. The UMWA opposed the strike and even advised the companies on how to combat it. A year later the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company became the first company in southern Colorado to recognize the UMWA as the representative of its workers. Josephine Roche took control of the company after her father died, and she hired John Lawson as her vice president. Roche then invited the UMWA to organize the company’s workers. In many ways, the New Deal of the 1930s finally realized the goals of the Progressive Movement (Chambers 2000; Davis 2000; Litchtenstein 2002). The 1935 Wagner Act effectively outlawed company unions. The act also granted workers the right to unionize and set up a system of regulations and guidelines for union organizing and strikes. This act ushered in the modern practices of federal mediation in labor disputes. In southern Colorado, the miners embraced the UMWA. From the 1930s until the last coalmines closed in 1996, the southern coalfield was a unionized field. UMWA Local 9856 in Trinidad remains active today, even though none of its members currently work in the mines. Since that time the UMWA has organized other workers in southern Colorado, including employees of Las Animas County and health care workers at Mt. San Rafael Hospital in Trinidad (Figure 2.12). The coal industry began a long decline in the 1920s (Long 1991). Other fuels, principally natural gas and petroleum, began to challenge coal’s dominance in the

60

A Terrible Unrest

2.12. UMWA is here to stay, Somerton, Colorado 2009. Photograph by Randall McGuire.

energy market. In the West, demand for the steel rails produced at the Pueblo steel works and the coke to make them declined (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:342). Increasing mechanization of both coal mining and surface strip mining decreased the number of mines and miners. By 1950, pick-and-shovel loading of coal was an oddity in Colorado mines. The number of coal miners in Colorado peaked at 13,117 in 1923, declined to 3,238 by 1953 (Allen 1966:69), and dropped to 2,116 in 2004 (CMA 2005). During the 1920s, CF&I closed thirteen of its mines, leaving only two open in 1930. World War II revived some mines and towns, but by 1950 CF&I was the only coal producer left in southern Colorado. In the 1970s, CF&I operated only the Allen and Maxwell mines west of Trinidad. The company closed Berwind in 1928 and hired a contractor to bulldoze the standing buildings. Widespread ownership of automobiles and improvements in road networks eliminated the isolation of the mines and the need for company towns. The last remaining company town in southern Colorado shut down in 1947. In 1982, CF&I quenched the fires in the last blast furnace at the steel mill in Pueblo. Today, it operates only electric furnaces to melt scrap steel. The plant still produces rails and wire, but with the cessation of steel production from ore the demand for coke ended. The Allen and Maxwell mines produced coal for electric power plants until CF&I closed both mines in 1996. Today, both the northern and southern coalfields of Colorado are silent. Coal production continues on the west slope of the Rocky Mountains and

61

Randall H. McGuire

in Wyoming. Every day long trains of coal cars rumble by Ludlow, carrying Wyoming coal to power plants in New Mexico. Remembering Ludlow In May 1918, Rockefeller and King returned to southern Colorado to take the measure of their reforms (Gitelman 1988:239–244). Once in Colorado they were surprised to learn that the UMWA had purchased the forty acres where the Ludlow camp had stood and paid $6,500 for a monument to be erected on it (UMWA 1917). Rockefeller, King, and their wives arrived at Ludlow the afternoon of May 30 as the union began the dedication ceremony for the monument. Rockefeller and both wives waited in the car while King asked union officials if Rockefeller could attend and speak at the ceremony. The union officials thanked King for Rockefeller’s good intentions, but they feared someone might do him harm. They demurred on an invitation to speak to Rockefeller in his car. King returned to the car, and the chauffer whisked the party away. Since 1918, the United Mine Workers of America has maintained the massacre site as a shrine, and descendants of the strikers and union members make regular pilgrimages to the place. UMWA locals take new members to the memorial to swear them in. The monument also served as a focal point for rallies during subsequent labor actions and strikes. On the third Sunday of June each year since 1918, hundreds of working people have gathered on the windswept plains of southern Colorado to commemorate the Ludlow Massacre. Each year members of UMWA’s executive committee have addressed the memorial service. The service is a ritual act to build and reinforce solidarity among working people. Memory helps build the shared consciousness that unites working people in a community for struggle. As discussed previously, between 1997 and 2004, several hundred striking steelworkers from United Steelworkers Locals 2102 and 3267 in Pueblo, ColoÂ� rado, joined the Ludlow memorial service. They walked out on strike against CF&I to stop forced overtime and regain one of the basic rights for which the Ludlow strikers had died: the eight-hour day. The Ludlow Massacre became a powerful symbol in their struggle. The parent company (Oregon Steel) sought to distance itself from the killings of 1914 by altering the name of its Pueblo subsidiary from CF&I to Rocky Mountain Steel. The company wanted to break the union and therefore deprive the steelworkers of another of the basic rights people died for at Ludlow: the right to collective bargaining. In the spring of 2004, the steelworkers won their strike. The monument to the men, women, and children who died at Ludlow still stands on the Colorado plains. However, not everyone in Colorado supports labor’s struggle or wants the memory of Ludlow preserved. The vandalism of

62

A Terrible Unrest

the monument on May 8, 2003 (discussed in Chapter 1), stunned, shocked, and saddened the union community. Donations from union locals and private individuals poured into the UMWA Local 9856 in Trinidad until the $77,000 necessary to repair the memorial was raised. In November 2003, the statues were removed to California for restoration. That same month Irene Dotson (née Micheli), the girl in the white dress in Dold’s Forbes photograph and one of the last known survivors of the strike, died at age ninety-one. On June 5, 2005, the UMWA and its supporters rededicated the monument with the restored statues. Working people in southern Colorado still struggle for dignity and basic rights. Many of the rights the Ludlow strikers fought and died for, such as the eight-hour day, are threatened in the United States today. Animosity toward union families and their struggles also continues in southern Colorado. Remembering Ludlow remains an active part of working families’ struggle for respect, fair treatment, and a living wage. The events of the Colorado Coalfield War dwell not only in the documents, photographs, and artifacts of the strike but also in the hearts and minds of working people. The photographs of the Colorado Coalfield Strike continue to haunt us today: a silver-haired Mother Jones in a black dress on the streets of Trinidad; uniformed militiamen striking macho poses beside a 75 mm gun; a little girl in a white dress standing with her family in front of their tent; burned-out tents, stoves, and iron bedsteads littering a large field; a man’s body sprawled in an unnatural position on train tracks surrounded by the burned ruins of buildings. The objects the strikers left in the ground also haunt us. The fires that consumed the tent colony transfigured a porcelain doll’s head. The rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns still echoes in a coffeepot riddled with bullet holes. Works Cited Adams, Graham 1966 The Age of Industrial Violence, 1910–1915: The Activities and Findings of the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations. Columbia University Press, New York. Allen, James B. 1966 The Company Town in the American West. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Andrews, Thomas G. 2003 The Road to Ludlow: Work, Environment, and Industrialization, 1870–1915. PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison. 2008 Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Behdad, Ali 2005 A Forgetful Nation: On Immigration and Cultural Identity in the United States. Duke University Press, Durham, NC.

63

Randall H. McGuire

Beshoar, Barron B. 1957 Out of the Depths: The Story of John R. Lawson, a Labor Leader. Golden Bell Press, Denver. Bowers, Lamont 1909 Letter to Mr. J. D. Rockefeller Jr. Binghamton University Library, Special Collections, LM Bowers Collection, Box 28, FF99, Binghamton, NY. 1911 Letter to Mr. J. B. McKennan, Manager, Minnequa Works, Pueblo, Colorado. Binghamton University Library, Special Collections, LM Bowers Collection, Box 28, FF98, Binghamton, NY. 1915 Letter to President Woodrow Wilson, November 6, 1915. Binghamton University Library, Special Collections, LM Bowers Collection, Binghamton, NY. Braverman, Harry 1998 Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. Monthly Review Press, New York. Chambers, John Whiteclay 2000 The Tyranny of Change: America in the Progressive Era, 1890–1920. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ. Chernow, Ron 1999 Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. Vintage Books, New York. CMA 2005

Colorado Mining Facts. Colorado Mining Association, http://www.colorado mining.org/COMiningFacts.html#link2. Accessed April 27, 2006.

Daniels, Rodger 2002 Coming to America. Perennial, New York. Davis, Mike 2000 Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the U.S. Working Class. W. W. Norton, New York. Dublin, Thomas, and Walter Licht 2005 The Face of Decline: The Pennsylvania Anthracite Region in the Twentieth Century. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY. Fishback, Price V. 1995 An Alternative View of Violence in Labor Disputes in the Early 1900s: The Bituminous Coal Industry 1890–1930. Labor History 36(3):426–456. Gitelman, Howard 1988 Legacy of the Ludlow Massacre: A Chapter in American Industrial Relations. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Henraty, Pete 1912 Letter to John P. White. Historical Collections and Labor Archives, Pennsylvania State University, United Mine Workers, District 15 Correspondence, State College.

64

A Terrible Unrest Jameson, Elizabeth 1998 All That Glitters: Class, Conflict, and Community in Cripple Creek. University of Illinois Press, Champaign. Jones, Mary Harris 1925 The Autobiography of Mother Jones. Charles H. Kerr, Chicago. Le Blanc, Paul 1999 A Short History of the U.S. Working Class: From Colonial Times to the Twenty-First Century. Humanity Books, New York. Litchtenstein, Nelson 2002 State of the Union: A Century of American Labor. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Long, Priscilla 1985 The Women of the C.F.I. Strike, 1913–1914. In Women, Work, and Protest: A Century of U.S. Women’s Labor History, ed. Ruth Milkman, 64–85. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. 1991 Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America’s Bloody Coal Industry. Paragon House, New York. Marchand, Roland 2001 Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business. University of California Press, Berkeley. Margolis, Eric 1994 Images in Struggle: Photographs of Colorado Coal Camps. Visual Sociology 9(1):4–26. 2000 “Life Is Life”: One Family’s Struggle in the Southern Colorado Coal Fields. Colorado Heritage (Summer):30–47. Martelle, Scott 2007 Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West. Rutgers University Press, Rutgers, NY. McGovern, George S., and Leonard F. Guttridge 1972 The Great Coalfield War. Houghton Mifflin, Boston. MSHA 2006

Coal Fatalities for 1900 through 2005. U.S. Department of Labor, Mine Safety and Health Administration, http://www.msha.gov/stats/centurystats/coalstats.htm. Accessed April 10, 2006.

Nelson, Daniel 1995 Managers and Workers: Origins of the Twentieth-Century Factory System in the United States, 1880–1920, 2nd ed. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison. The New York Times 1915 Two Women Depict the Battle of Ludlow. The New York Times, February 15, 1915, 1, 7. O’Neal, Mary Thomas 1971 Those Damn Foreigners. Minerva Books, Hollywood.

65

Randall H. McGuire

Papanikolas, Zeese 1982 Buried Unsung: Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Pepper, Jerry 1979 Lamont Montgomery Bowers: A Register of His Papers with a Biography. State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton. Reckner, Paul 2009 Social Difference, Community-Building, and Material Social Practice: Solidarity and Diversity at the Ludlow Tent Colony, 1913–14. PhD dissertation, State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton. Riis, Jacob A. 1890 How the Other Half Lives. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York. Scamehorn, H. Lee 1992 Mill and Mine: The CF&I in the Twentieth Century. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Sinclair, Upton 1906 The Jungle. Doubleday and Page, New York. 1917 King Coal. Macmillan, New York. Slichter, S. H. 1919 The Turnover of Factory Labor. B. C. Forbes, New York. Time 1931 UMWA 1912

1913 1917

Rocky Mountain Gesture. Time, September 7. Nationalities Employed in Mines of Colorado during the Year 1912, and Percentage. United Mine Workers of America, Historical Collections and Labor Archives, Pennsylvania State University, United Mine Workers, District 15 Cor� respondence, State College. Proceedings Special Convention of District 15 United Mine Workers of America Held in Trinidad, Colorado, September 16, 1913. Manuscript on file, Doyle Papers, Western History Collection, Denver Public Library. Contract between the United Mine Workers of America and the Springfield Granite and Marble Company. United Mine Workers of America, Historical Collections and Labor Archives, Pennsylvania State University, United Mine Workers, District 15 Correspondence, State College.

West, George P. 1915 Report on the Colorado Strike. U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, Washington, DC. Whiteside, James 1990 Regulating Danger. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Wolff, Duane A. 2003 Industrializing the Rockies: Growth, Competition, and Turmoil in the Coalfields of Colorado and Wyoming. University Press of Colorado, Boulder.

66

A Terrible Unrest Wood, Margaret 2002 “Fighting for Our Homes”: An Archaeology of Women’s Domestic Labor and Social Change in a Working-Class, Coal Mining Community, 1900–1930. PhD dissertation, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. Zanetell, Emma N.d. Interview with Eric Margolis and Barron Beshoar, transcript on file at the University of Colorado Library, Boulder.

67

Karin Larkin

3

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War

The Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project (CCWAP) strove to complement the written history of the 1913–1914 labor strike in southern Colorado. While the written history provides a thorough description of the events and their larger implications, it does not paint a complete picture of how the events affected the daily lives of the men, women, and children who experienced them. Further, it cannot show the living conditions that led up to the strike or illustrate the strike’s effect on the material conditions of the workers and their families. Such is the nature of history. The archaeology of the CCWAP provides the only means for examining firsthand the daily conditions of life in the coal camps and the strike colony before, during, and after the strike. The project had two main goals: first, to raise public awareness of the coalfield strike and the coal war, Colorado’s rich labor history, and the national and international significance of that history; and second, to gain a better understanding of how the southern coalfield strike was rooted in the coal camps’ material conditions and how the conditions of daily life changed as a result of the strike. To address these goals, project investigators conducted three phases of research: archival studies, field explorations and excavations, and analysis and interpretation, resulting in a variety of outputs. This chapter reviews the research goals,

69

Karin Larkin

methodology, and archaeological fieldwork of the Colorado Coalfield War Ar�chae�ology Project that the authors use in the remainder of the volume. It focuses on six main methodological categories: archival research, determining viability and site identification, site mapping, site testing and feature identification, feature testing and excavation, and oral interviews. Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project Research Questions and Design

Research conducted at the sites of the Ludlow Tent Colony 1913–1914 Colorado Coalfield Strike and war and the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) coal camp at Berwind sought to understand three main questions. First, how were the events of the strike rooted in everyday life, as evident in the coal company camps? Second, how did conditions in the coal camps change as a result of the strike? And third, what were conditions in the Ludlow Tent Colony really like during the strike? To address these questions, project archaeologists had to explore variations among three historical contexts: coal camp deposits predating, and contemporaneous with, the strike; Ludlow Tent Colony deposits; and coal camp deposits dating to the decade after the strike. The research entailed two main comparisons: variation between pre-strike coal camp and Ludlow Tent Colony material culture and variation between prestrike and post-strike coal camp material culture. The Ludlow strikers’ tent colony (5LA1829) and the coal company town of Berwind (5LA2175) provided the contexts needed to address the research questions and objectives of the project. Variation between the pre-strike coal camps and the Ludlow Tent Colony helped us determine how the causes of the strike were rooted in the daily life of the coal camps. Variation between the pre-strike and post-strike coal camp contexts at Berwind demonstrated how, if at all, the strike changed material conditions in the coal camps and the nature of everyday camp life. Analysis of differences between these contexts also involved considering the variation within contexts. For example, the project aimed to explore whether significant differences existed among ethnic, age, and gender groups in their conditions of everyday life in the coal camps and at the Ludlow Tent Colony. In both the Ludlow Tent Colony and the Berwind coal camp, we considered two scales of analysis: that of the community as a whole (i.e., at the Ludlow Tent Colony as a whole and in a coal camp, the town, and possibly the neighborhood as a whole) and that of the individual household (the tent platform or house lot). For example, at Ludlow the privies were communal and probably filled with trash from the colony, whereas at Berwind each house lot had an individual privy containing trash from the individual household. Middens, on the other hand, reflect material from the wider community. The Ludlow mid-

70

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War

den contained material from the entire colony, whereas the middens at Berwind contained material from the immediate neighborhood. Therefore, our analysis had two main, interrelated axes: the household and the supra-household material conditions. The Household

In looking at the household, project archaeologists sought to identify two main factors: the occupants’ ethnicity, religion, or both; and household composition—whether the household was composed of single men or a family. Making these initial identifications permitted researchers to further address issues of ethnicity and gender, discussed in subsequent chapters. In the coal camps we tried to identify ethnicity or ethnic neighborhoods through a combination of documentary research (especially census records), oral histories, and certain classes of artifacts and architectural features, such as hornos (stone bread ovens) (e.g., Wegars 1991). At Ludlow, project archaeologists had to rely primarily on archaeological data to identify ethnicity and religion. Artifacts indicative of ethnicity include religious medallions and certain styles of tobacco pipes. Some embossed bottles may also suggest ethnicity. The identification of ethnicity at Ludlow proved extremely difficult. Beyond ethnicity, a great deal of intrahousehold variation was the result of household composition—whether the house or tent was occupied by single miners, a group of bachelors, or families. At Ludlow it was possible to distinguish between the different kinds of occupation on the basis of the actual size of the tent or tent platform. Very large tents may indicate a barracks of single men. Conversely, very small ones may indicate a single occupant. The artifacts associated with the individual tent platforms also helped inform us about household composition. The presence of toys and baby bottles indicated children. Clothingrelated and personal artifacts, such as certain styles of buttons, shoe parts, jewelry, combs, and similar items, indicated the occupants’ gender. Archaeologists working on twentieth-century logging camps have suggested that artifacts such as decorated ceramics, pressed glass, and fragile glassware may indicate the presence of women (Brashler 1991:64; Franzen 1992:92). This assumption is not unreasonable insofar as these sorts of artifacts suggest the presence of families in an otherwise male environment. Determining whether single men or a family occupied a house was more complicated in the coal camps such as Berwind than at Ludlow. Single men would have stayed in company-run boardinghouses or as boarders with families or widowed women. Some men had their own house or shared a house with other men. We attempted to determine household composition in the coal camps through a combination of historical and archaeological evidence. The

71

Karin Larkin

size of the foundation and the nature of the artifact assemblage, together with census records, maps, and company records, helped illuminate the nature of the household. However, the nature of living conditions at the coal camps made confident identifications much more difficult. Supra-Household Material Conditions

The study of supra-household material conditions by project archaeologists focused on four main areas: the spatial organization of the community, shelter, diet, and consumption. Spatial organization was considered at a community level of analysis. Three main aspects of spatial organization fit the project goals and interests: ethnic/religious segregation, health and sanitation, and defense. Project archaeologists attempted to identify neighborhoods based on groupings of households with similar ethnic or religious affiliations and also on the spatial layout of the community. The presence or absence of such neighborhoods and the material differences between them had the potential to provide information on ethnic segregation, boundary maintenance, and the ways ethnic differences were negotiated during the strike. A second, related issue in looking at spatial organization was health and sanitation. Variation in features such as privies, drains, trash pits, middens, and streets could potentially provide information on the investments mining companies made in the coal camps and whether certain ethnic groups were privileged over others. At Ludlow, the relative standardization of such features may suggest the degree of centralized organization of tent colony affairs. Project archaeologists relied on artifacts and ecofacts to tell us about health. For example, privy soils can yield evidence of particular parasites. Medicine bottles were also a valuable source of information on health, especially when they were embossed. A third issue in looking at spatial organization, one exclusive to Ludlow, was defense. The strikers may have excavated features such as rifle pits (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:217). Such pits could suggest that the strikers were expecting an attack and had an organized plan of defense. We were not able to identify any rifle pits in our excavations. Tent cellars, however, did provide information related to defense. Some historical accounts indicate that the pits were excavated in the month leading up to the attack for purposes of defense. One informant who visited the colony when he was about seven stated that the cellars were created for warmth in winter (Tapai, pers. comm., 1998). Pits could also have been excavated beneath the tents to conceal items such as ammunition and arms from National Guard searches. We know from historical accounts that cellars were used as protection during gunfire. The cellars likely had multiple uses. Archaeological investigation was able to shed light on the functions of these pits,

72

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War

the degree to which their plan was standardized, and whether they constituted a series of individual responses to different problems. The main artifacts that provided information about defense, and about the battle itself, were gun parts, cartridges, and bullets. Cartridges and gun parts disclosed the sorts of weapons possessed by strikers. Bullets, with evidence of having been fired, were probably from National Guard guns, making possible a comparison of the relative armaments of the two sides. The two sides’ military capabilities, in particular weapon types and minimum numbers, were evaluated according to established research in battlefield analysis (Scott et al. 1989). In the analysis of shelter in the coal camps and at Ludlow, researchers considered the construction of the houses and tents, as well as “amenities” such as furnishings, plumbing, and lighting. Project archaeologists looked at the size of the structure, that is, the amount of floor space as reflected in the size of the tent platform or the foundation. This gave us some idea of how many people could have lived there. Through the analysis of architectural features such as postholes and stake holes, nail alignments, and the materials used in constructing foundations and cellars, we were able to ascertain construction differences among different areas of the towns, the degree of standardization in construction, and whether construction improved after the strike. Artifacts such as nails, grommets, and window glass also provided relevant clues in this regard. For example, nail pennyweight is an indicator of, minimally, the intended function of the nail (Fontana and Greenleaf 1962; Sutton and Arkush 1996:164). Furnishings (broadly defined) were also considered part of housing. Artifacts such as stove and lamp parts, washtubs, plumbing and gas hardware, and electrical artifacts provided information about how the structure was heated or lit, how cooking was done, and how water was obtained for domestic labor. These items can inform us about the nature of certain aspects of domestic labor in coal camps and the tent colony and differences in living conditions among different areas of the community. The project considered aspects of diet in the coal camps and the tent colony. Project archaeologists analyzed data from cellars, privies, trash pits, and middens to determine diet practices and differences. At Ludlow, these features provided information at a community-wide level of analysis. In the coal camps, the level of analysis depended on the particular circumstances. For example, in the coal camps, trash pits and privies were often associated with individual house lots, although there were community dumps. However, historical sources also indicate that in some coal camp neighborhoods before the strike, privies may have served as many as ten households. Features at Ludlow likely to provide information on individual tent households were the artifact assemblages associated with the tent platforms, the tent drainage ditches (which likely accumulated trash from the immediate area), and possibly certain stratigraphic contexts of

73

Karin Larkin

the tent cellars (assuming deposition of de facto refuse from the catastrophic abandonment and burning of the colony). To compare differences in diet at the Ludlow Tent Colony, we analyzed faunal remains, plant remains such as seeds (from privy and pit deposits), and artifacts such as bottles, cans, and certain ceramic and tin-ware artifacts from cellars and middens. We had hoped species identification of faunal and floral remains could tell us whether and how the miners were supplementing their diet through hunting and trapping wild animals and gathering plant foods. However, these analyses were incomplete and less informative than we had originally hoped. The formal aspects of bottles and tin cans (e.g., glass color, size, shape, form, closure type, means of opening) provided general information about the original contents. Labeled or embossed cans and bottles obviously provide much more specific information about contents. As bottling was still a fairly local industry in the early twentieth century, bottles have the greatest potential for informing us about local trade networks. Differences in diet, or the lack thereof, among households and between the colony and the coal camps provided information on ethnicity, domestic labor, the dominance of the company store in the camps, and the degree of union support of the tent colony. Certain ceramic and tin-ware artifacts (e.g., coffee- and teawares) are also indicative of diet. These artifacts, along with jars, bottles, and faunal remains, can provide information on how food was stored, cooked, and consumed. For example, butchery marks on bone and the presence of canning jars, condiment bottles, and different kinds of kitchen vessels can all provide data on how food was prepared and cooked. The social role of food and drink service and associated ceramics has been the subject of a considerable literature in historical archaeology. These ceramics are generally seen as part of the household’s presentation of itself to the broader community (Beaudry and Mrozowski 2001; Cantwell and Wall 2001; Claney 1996; Fitts 1999; Goodwin 1999; Overland 2004; Wall 1991, 1999; Yamin 2001), as part of competitive social display or emulation of upper classes (Fitts 1999; Martin 1994), the building of community networks (Burley 1989), demonstration of adherence to a certain cultural worldview (Deetz 1977; Fitts 1999; Leone and Potter 1988; Wall 1999), or the representation of certain political or social beliefs (Shackel 1996). In examining consumption, project archaeologists were fortunate in having access to documents, including catalogs and company store records, that provided prices for many of the artifacts. This permitted us to compare the relative financial worth of different assemblages, in turn allowing insight into amounts of disposable income controlled by different households and how the households chose to allocate their income. In summary, the project sought to examine variation among three different historical communities: coal camps predating, and contemporaneous with, the

74

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War

strike; the Ludlow Tent Colony; and coal camps that date to the decade after the strike. Within each of these communities, the project looks at the interaction among households, in particular ethnic/religious affiliation and household composition; and supra-household material conditions, concentrating on spatial organization, shelter, diet, and consumption. By comparing the pre-strike and post-strike coal camp contexts, it is possible to see how conditions changed through time. By comparing the pre-strike contexts with the Ludlow Tent Colony, it is possible to see why these conditions changed. Archaeological Findings The research design and questions outlined here guided archaeological fieldwork for six field seasons. Each season addressed specific questions. In 1997, project archaeologists excavated a trench at Ludlow and confirmed the presence of intact subsurface deposits. During the 1998 season, emphasis was on defining the precise nature of the known features and on identifying and testing additional features in different areas of the colony. In 1999 the project continued investigation of features identified at Ludlow in 1998, conducted testing to identify additional features, and identified features using a photo overlay technique. A field chief and crew also conducted testing in two areas of Berwind that had the potential to yield deposits significant to the research design. Additional testing at Berwind was also conducted during the 2000 field season. In both the 2000 and 2001 seasons, project leaders concentrated on intensive excavations in two cellars and identifying tent pads located during the 1999 field season at Ludlow. The 2002 field season focused heavily on site layout and public interpretation. In all years we tested the midden area near the arroyo at Ludlow that is in danger of eroding away. Over the five years in which the project excavated at the sites of Ludlow and Berwind, certain goals and methods were employed consistently every year: archival research, feature identification, feature testing, midden testing, Berwind testing, mapping, and oral histories. Each will be discussed below. Phase One: Archival Research

Archival investigations aided in the development of research questions and identifying which data classes would best address the project’s questions. Project archaeologists conducted research using archival sources, such as census records (Wood 2002), newspapers, company publications, government hearings, and oral histories. Secondary accounts also proved a great asset. These accounts discussed written histories of the Colorado Coalfield War of 1913–1914 (Beshoar

75

Karin Larkin

1957; Foner 1980; Gitelman 1988; Long 1991; McGovern and Guttridge 1972), daily life in the southern Colorado coalfields (Allen 1966; Clyne 1999; Deutsch 1987), and general mining history (Laslett 1996). The research into archival and documentary sources addressed two main goals. First, the sources provided historical background on the region. They shed light on extreme events, such as labor strikes, but also on daily life and cultural practices. Second, they provided information that led to a better understanding of the archaeological record. For example, the sources supplied clues to the positioning and layout of structures in both Berwind and the Ludlow Tent Colony. Primary and secondary documents also offered a context for anticipating the presence of certain classes and specific types of material culture and described how individuals might have used the materials. More specific research was geared at finding specific references to events and people and how they related to the archaeological record. For example, primary and secondary sources revealed that Mary Petrucci was an important figure in the events on the day of the massacre (Long 1985; USCIR 1916:8196). References specifically detailed the position of her tent in the Ludlow Tent Colony. Project archaeologists attempted to use this information to identify the position of her tent through survey to develop an understanding of the layout of the colony. Project archaeologists had immeasurable help identifying and analyzing the historical record. Students and scholars working on their own specific research problems added a basic understanding of coal camp life and the strike. These researchers focused on interesting topics the project would have had insufficient time to address, such as gender (Wood 2002), memory (Walker 2003), landscape archaeology ( Jacobson, this volume), foodways (Gray, this volume), and medicine (Horn, this volume). Each of these studies required a look into archival and documentary sources in its own unique way. For example, Jacobson (2006) concentrated on government hearings such as those of the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations (USCIR 1916) to identify specific references to the use of space in the hearings. These references included remarks on features such as tent construction methods, feature locations, and layout of the camps. The inclusion of each individual study in the overall knowledge of the CCWAP has added a more nuanced depth to the understanding of events. Phase Two: Determining Viability and Identification of Appropriate Sites Ludlow

In 1997 a Colorado Historical Society–State Historic Fund (CHS-SHF) minigrant and a Denver University Faculty Research Fund grant supported six weeks of preliminary survey and test excavations at Ludlow. Our aim was to investigate

76

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War

the integrity of the site and to evaluate whether it was viable for archaeological excavations using two main strategies: a dog-leash survey and the excavation of a test trench at the Ludlow site. This test trench exposed burned wood and ash stains that indicated the remains of a tent platform. Dog Leashes. In 1997 we conducted counts of surface cultural material at the Ludlow Tent Colony using one-meter-radius “dog leashes” at ten-meter intervals. A “dog leash” is the circular area within which the artifact count is taken. In 1997 these data permitted us to identify the extent of the actual colony and the trash midden at the arroyo. A more detailed analysis of the data conducted in 1998 provided information on the internal structure of the colony. Project analysts input artifact counts originating from the dog leashes into Surfer to determine artifact concentrations for the Ludlow Tent Colony. The Surfer map was imported into the AutoCAD site map to aid in the determination of test excavation locations under the assumption that high artifact concentrations were related to feature location (Figure 3.1). Mechanical Stripping. In 1998 we also removed the rootmat and disturbed soil from a 210-meter-long by 2-meter-wide strip using a skid loader. After the skid loader had removed the disturbed soil, we shovel-scraped the trench to identify features and artifact concentrations. This trench (Locus 5) confirmed that the tent locations were not going to be represented by massive concentrations of charcoal and burned wood, as we had initially hoped. One likely burned plank floor was identified, but otherwise potential tent locations were indicated by discolored soil and artifact clusters. Berwind

To examine comparative material for Ludlow, we focused on the coal camp of Berwind, located approximately three miles southwest of the Ludlow Tent Colony in a narrow canyon of the same name. This site is located on private land that was recently subdivided, and some owners were beginning to build houses on parts of the old coal camp. Project archaeologists were able to gain permission to map and do limited excavations on the land while it was still owned by the developer. CF&I owned the coal camp of Berwind, which was established in 1890 and occupied until 1928 when the mine was closed down. Then the town was largely depopulated. Project archaeologists mapped the surface remains of the camp, including Berwind, Tollerburg (the town that merges with Berwind to the south), and two canyons that shoot off of Berwind Canyon—Stock and School canyons—and created a site map showing features associated with the different loci identified. We also conducted test excavations in different loci during

77

3.1. Dog-leash density map. Courtesy, Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project.

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War

the 1999 field season to determine whether we could identify pre-strike and poststrike contexts to help address the research goals. We were able to locate two loci that dated to these time periods. The remains of houses and privies are clearly visible at Berwind. Based on these preliminary tests, we determined that enough material did indeed remain—even at the tent colony of Ludlow, which was only occupied for a little over a year. Phase Three: Site Mapping

In any archaeological project, one of the first goals is to create a comprehensive site map to help the archaeologists understand the site as a whole before exploring specific areas in greater detail. Provenience control was established at each site using a hierarchy of designations. This section discusses the types of detailed site maps project archaeologists created for both Ludlow and Berwind, as well as the provenience control used at both sites. Ludlow

Archaeologists established a site grid to map the Ludlow Tent Colony site. A datum was placed at the south-center section of the site and given the grid designation of 500N/500E/100 meters above datum. From this datum we placed a grid based on 30-meter squares across the lot owned by the United Mine Workers of America. We recorded positional data into an AutoCAD map using the software AutoCAD LT. This allowed the basic recording of features as well as excavation data in an analytical format. Dr. Randall McGuire initiated the mapping of the Ludlow Tent Colony site, recording features and excavation units, while Dan Broockmann began the AutoCAD file and continued it through the 1999 field season. Michael Jacobson continued the mapping from 2000 through the finalization of the project. AutoCAD allowed project archaeologists to separate themes—such as each field season’s excavations, different survey blocks, and non-Ludlow features—into discernible features (see Figure 3.2). Elevation Map. During the 2002 field season, an extreme drought retarded the growth of vegetation normally found at the site. The long wild grasses that generally obscure the ground surface did not grow that year, leaving only small square patches of short green grass in apparently depressed areas. These patches generally fell along diagonal lines that corresponded with the orientation of the tent colony. We hypothesized that these areas were the depressed and disturbed deposits of tent cellars, and we applied an alternate survey technique to this hypothesis. Using the Sokkia total station, field crew measured points on the site

79

Karin Larkin

3.2. Site map showing all features tested and excavated at Ludlow, 1998–2002. Courtesy, Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project.

location systematically at increments of every two meters in a block across the site. The elevation measurements were then analyzed using the software program Surfer 8 to map the elevation changes of the site. The resulting map shows a general decrease in elevation from the high point of the site in the southwest area moving north and east. This change is the result of a natural decrease in

80

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War

elevation from the foothills west of the site to the plains east of the site. There was no discernible change in elevation from cultural behavior. There was one crater-like area of abrupt change in elevation; we have described it in project notes and mapping. This feature was either a watering hole for cattle or a reconstructed tent cellar created for a documentary on the Ludlow Massacre. This mapping project gave no definitive identification of tent cellars based on elevation changes. Post-occupational disturbances and depositions may have limited the alterations to elevation in the landscapes. Berwind

Our first objective at Berwind was to survey and map the entire town in order to link areas of the town to different historical periods. Specifically, we wanted to identify areas of the town that dated to before the strike (1890–1914) and areas that dated to after the strike (1915–1931). This is important because many of the questions we addressed dealt with the changes that occurred in coal mining communities as a result of the strike and the Ludlow Massacre. As discussed earlier, we identified specific neighborhoods within the coal camp. The geographic extent of the town required mapping crews to demarcate two separate datums at either end of the neighborhoods. The large distance between the two individual datums necessitated separate grids. Areas were mapped using an EDM recording both vertical and horizontal positioning of points. Areas mapped included natural features such as streams and elevation changes; modern infrastructural features such as roads, terraces, and bridges; and cultural features such as foundations, fence posts, ovens, and privies. Additionally, archaeological test units were mapped (see Figures 3.3–3.7). Provenience Control

Provenience control at both sites consisted of five levels of designation: site, locus, unit, feature, and stratum/level. • Site: Site names and numbers were written on every document and bag. • Locus: The project archaeologists designated loci within each site. At Berwind, these consisted of neighborhoods. At Ludlow, they were arbitrary archaeological work areas. At Berwind, loci were designated with capital letters A–Z, and, as necessary, subdivisions within a locus were designated with numbers; for example, A.1, A.2, and so on. At Ludlow, loci were differentiated through numbers; for example, 1, 2, and so on. • Unit: The basic unit of provenience control was the one-meter square at both sites.

81

3.3. Series of maps for Berwind, including Stock and School canyons and Tollerburg. Map 1 of 5. Courtesy, Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project.

3.4. Series of maps for Berwind, including Stock and School canyons and Tollerburg. Map 2 of 5. Courtesy, Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project.

3.5. Series of maps for Berwind, including Stock and School canyons and Tollerburg. Map 3 of 5. Courtesy, Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project.

3.6. Series of maps for Berwind, including Stock and School canyons and Tollerburg. Map 4 of 5. Courtesy, Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project.

3.7. Series of maps for Berwind, including Stock and School canyons and Tollerburg. Map 5 of 5. Courtesy, Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project.

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War • Feature: Features were designated with a feature number. The numbers ran continuously within each site and from the previous year. We numbered features within features as subfeatures, getting a decimal designation; for example, the larger feature might be 10, while the smaller features within it would be 10.1, 10.2, and so on. • Stratum and level: Within the one-meter squares, natural and cultural strata were designated with a stratum letter. If arbitrary levels were excavated within strata, they were designated with a level number. The surface was designated by an “S” and rootmat by “R.” Below that, they were alphabetical, A–Z.

Phase Four: Site Testing and Feature Identification

The identification of households and their associated features was a central concern for project archaeologists at both Ludlow and Berwind because of our research interests, discussed earlier. As most of the structures at Ludlow were tents, we did not expect substantial architectural footprints, especially since the site has been subjected to cattle trampling for the past eighty years. However, despite the ephemeral nature of the site and the subsequent disturbance, project archaeologists were able to identify partial tent outlines and cellars. We were particularly interested in identifying features to give us an idea of the overall extent and layout of the colony, both as a guide for testing efforts and to provide information on the organization of the colony itself. Over the years, the project leaders used, or intended to use, a number of combined methods to identify the layout of the colony and features within the colony: photographic overlay, remote sensing, hand augering, and test excavations. Photographic Overlay

In 1998, 1999, and 2002 we attempted to overlay negatives of historical photographs of the tent colony onto the current landscape (Deetz 1993; Prince 1988). Our original plan was to identify tent locations. The basic premise of overlaying historical photographs on the current landscape is that one should be able to line up landscape features in a photograph with those in the modern landscape, thus determining the modern location of historical cultural features. This requires a camera with a removable viewfinder so negatives of the historical photographs can be cut to fit the viewfinder. After reassembling the camera with the negative in place, one sees the historical photograph overlaid on the landscape within the view of the camera. Theoretically, it is then possible to look through the viewfinder, line up historical landscape elements with contemporary ones that have remained unchanged, and locate those historical features that have disappeared. Beyond the technical requirements, this technique also requires surviving

87

Karin Larkin

landscape elements to line up with, and knowing the exact location of, the original photographer’s position. Small errors in lining up the image can result in gross errors in the final result. For this technique to work, it is also important that the lens be as close as possible to the original lens. Generally this information is not available, but the archaeologists, in consultation with the curator at the Aultman Studio in Trinidad, were able to identify the probable type of camera and lens used by Lou Dold, who took many of the photographs of Ludlow, including the original aerial shots in 1914. It is unfortunate that many of the colony photos were taken from the west, which means that eastern Colorado forms the backdrop, a landscape not noted for its relief. The useful features in the photos were the Black Hills to the east, the section road to the south of the colony, and the extant buildings of Bayes Ranch to the northeast. The 2002 photos from the ground faced a variety of directions. The photos facing west, north, and south were the most successful, as those directions offered the most relief in the landscape and the most readily identifiable features. Our attempts to use Dold’s photographs were unsuccessful in 1998 because of a number of technical issues, including the fact that the camera lens used that year was incompatible with the one Dold used to take the original photographs. In 1999 the problems were resolved, and a team under the direction of Randall McGuire and Dan Broockmann was able to correlate the historical photographs with an acceptable amount of modern terrain. Through consultation with the curator of the Aultman Museum, we were able to identify the original camera and lens Dold used and a comparable modern lens. 1999 Photo Overlay. In 1999, project archaeologists used a panoramic triptych of the colony taken shortly before the massacre. A slight time interval between the photos is evident in discrepancies in the presence of certain people where two photos overlap. This time interval is not significant, though, as there is little discernible change in the snow on the ground. The photos were taken from an elevated point west of the colony. Of the three parts of the triptych, the southernmost photo was the most promising for lining up the camera, as it showed both the road and the Black Hills. The location and elevation are consistent with a water tower located on the railroad tracks north of the section road. For designation purposes only, the tents were numbered on the photo (Figure 3.8 shows the photograph used). These numbers do not correlate with the original tent numbers of the colony. The camera used was a standard 35 mm Nikon SLR with a removable viewfinder and a 50 mm lens. Negatives of the three photographs of the colony were printed up separately and trimmed to fit the viewfinder. The negatives were

88

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War

3.8. Bird’s-eye view of Ludlow Colony used in photo overlay project. Photograph by Lewis Dold. Courtesy, Denver Public Library, z-193, Denver, CO.

placed in the viewfinder backward to compensate for the reversal of the camera lenses. Once the technical problems of making negatives and fitting them to the camera had been solved, the main problem was setting up the camera in the correct location. For the 1999 season, the fact that the photo was not taken from the ground but from a point that is now empty air compounded the problem, adding a third dimension to the other two. After establishing the approximate location of the tower from the colony panorama and another photo of the tower itself, the project rented a scissor lift with drive controls to get the necessary height. The north-south placement of the camera was easier to judge than the east-west placement or the height. Therefore, the location of the tents on the north-south axis is probably more accurate than the one on the east-west axis. Comparison of the photo with the mapped results suggests that the mapping of the colony using the photo overlay may be compressed on the east-west axis. The placement of the westernmost (closest) tent locations is more accurate than those farther away simply because slight errors, even shifts in the position of one’s eye at the viewfinder, became so much greater with distance. Error also results from parallax, the optical phenomenon that makes railroad tracks seem to converge when viewed over a long distance. There is still the possibility of error in the closest tent locations, but it is a matter of a few meters. The trees in the memorial area also blocked our view of some portions of the site. The team

89

Karin Larkin

was able, with varying degrees of confidence, to map about 40 percent (52 of 132) of the tents identifiable in the photos. Project team members then attempted to ground truth our results through hand-auger regimes and area test excavations. Unless there was a tent cellar identified through augering, identifying tent locations was difficult because they require large-scale area excavations. Until it is possible to test some of the tent locations through such excavation, one means of at least increasing the confidence in the method was to overlay the CAD map generated by the photo overlay with the contour map of artifact distributions generated from the 1997 fieldwork. There does appear to be a correspondence between linear artifact concentrations and the tentatively identified tent rows. Tents 32–34, 41, 42, and 46 lie along an artifact concentration, as do 117, 118, and 120 and 37, 38, and 47. Tents 51, 53, and 54 are associated with a particularly dense and unusual artifact concentration, possibly a communal dining area (CCWAP 2000). It may be that the Locus 1 tent excavated in 1998 lies outside the boundaries of the original colony. However, Tents 37, 38, 47, 51, 53, and 54 are at the fringes of the colony, and their exact placement must be viewed with caution. Archaeologists augered some of the identified tent locations, but this did not reveal conclusive evidence. If there was no cellar or the augering missed the cellar, then test excavations would be most likely to determine whether a tent was in fact present or not. 2002 Photographic Overlay Project. In the 2002 field season, project leaders and crew chiefs decided to attempt the photographic overlay from the ground level within the tent colony. The overall methods were the same. Using multiple images taken within the colony and outside the colony at a lower angle, project members believed we could get increasingly accurate locations of tents and cellars. The team then shot the flags in with the EDM and, once the field season was over, entered them into AutoCAD LT to combine them with electronic site maps. Project leaders used eight photographs of the colony taken at different times, both before and after the massacre. We also assumed the photographs were taken at different locations within the camp based on the background landscape. Field researchers chose the photographs based on the marked natural landscape in the backgrounds, such as ridgelines. Photographs used will be named by their Denver Public Library (DPL) call numbers. We chose nine photographs to test in the field: Colorado Historical Society (CHS) Western History Collection photograph call numbers x-60558, x-60354, x-60483, x-60454, x-60472, x-63219, x-60359, x-60468, and x-60339. The matching of the landscapes from the photographs to those in the present worked with little complication. However, two photographs (x-60468 and x-60339), with the Black Hills as the landscape background, were not success-

90

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War

fully matched to the present-day landscape. The background was not distinct enough to convincingly match the photograph with the landscape from a single vantage point. The photographs we placed with confidence were located in the monument area. They are x-60354, x-60483, x-60454, x-60472, and x-63219. Our confidence was based on nearly complete to complete alignment of the background of the photograph with that in the present landscape. These were based on ridgelines that were closer to the site and that therefore were more distinct and could be located with more certainty than the ridgelines of the Black Hills. Photograph x-60354 we located at N511/E482 facing west. The photo depicted Front Street with a building. The photograph appears to be reversed in the print. This was evident when we examined and compared the tent layout and ridgeline. When the slide was flipped over, it matched up with the ridgeline. The farthest west tent would have been Tent no. 1, Mary Petrucci’s tent, and its position fits with the testimonies. Photograph x-60483 was taken at N512/E434 facing east. The photograph depicted stove ruins and the camp after it was burned. The scene appears to be west-southwest of the monument. The far ridges of the Black Hills are lined up, but the close features are subject to parallax. Test units and Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) should help to ground truth. The Red Cross photo was blocked by the monument and pavilion, and it is questionable how the tent lineup is working. Photograph x-60454 was located at N508/E435 facing east. The photograph depicts the gymnastic set that was set up in the southwest portion of the camp. It is still in the area of photos x-60483 and x-63219. The photo lines up closely with the other features, although there is little ridgeline in the background with which to match it up. Photograph x-60472 was taken at N505/E435 facing east again. The photo depicts the gymnastic set again from a slightly different angle. This time it matched up well with both ridgelines. Features flagged from the images discussed previously and four people in the background are of the same scale as the people from the other picture. From this photograph we were able to estimate where the gymnastic set was located on the site, southwest of the monument and south-southwest of the Death Pit. Photograph x-63219 was taken from N504/E431 facing east. This photograph depicts men and women of the Red Cross standing in the ruins of the colony just after the massacre. Remains include bed frames, pots, pans, washtubs, ovens, barrels, tent frames, and mattress frames. While we could line up the photograph, it was difficult to locate the cellars from the photograph. We could not ascertain the coordinates for photograph x-60359 facing eastnortheast. The photograph turned out to be backward like x-60354. After switching sides, the negative matched everywhere, no matter the position. We flagged

91

Karin Larkin

tent fronts near Locus 13; however, we are not confident about these locations, so we did not record them. Photograph x-60468 facing north also proved impossible to place with certainty. The photograph depicts a well with children standing beside it. The ridge matched up from the photo. However, parallax was an issue in that the people did not match up to buildings, and if the wooden structure was the same for the colony, it was too far north. For this reason we chose not to use this photograph. The final photograph, x-60339 facing east, was also difficult to place. The photograph depicts Main Street with tents. This photo has the same problem as the other Main Street photo. The Black Hills were too indistinct to match up. All in all, five of the nine photographs provided additional information on the camp layout using the photographic overlay project. We were disappointed that the photographs of Main Street did not work out. The Black Hills proved too far away to provide an accurate point of reference. However, the photographs depicting Front Street and the area near the monument provided important location information for the project. Remote Sensing

Historical documentation indicates that a number of the tents had cellars or pits beneath them. The miners used many of these pits as trash pits during the cleanup after the fire and massacre. Throughout the occupation of the tent colony, strikers used the pits for storage, protection, and additional living space. Given these facts, the pits contain a large quantity of various artifacts ranging from bed frames to buttons. During the 1998 and 2002 field seasons, we attempted to identify these deep features using remote sensing techniques, GPR (1998 and 2002), and Cesium (1998) and Proton magnetometers (2000 and 2001). In 1998, Dr. Larry Conyers of the University of Denver surveyed a 50-metersquare block of the tent colony using the GPR and magnetometer. While both remote sensing methods picked up variations in the soil, Conyers reported that they did not appear to be significant. There may be too much clay in the soils in this area for these techniques to be useful, although it is also possible that there were simply no deep features in the sampled area. In addition to Conyers’s aid with the GPR surveys, we enlisted the use of magnetometer surveys. Dr. Peiling Yao of the Colorado School of Mines conducted a magnetometer survey of the Ludlow Tent Colony in conjunction with this project in 1998. The survey was used to identify burned areas or concentrations of metallic items we assumed would be associated with historical features.

92

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War

During the 2002 field season, both GPR and magnetometer tests were attempted again. Students of Conyers surveyed two areas of the Ludlow MasÂ� sacre site using a technique to track hits from the GPR in real time in which possible metal and subsurface anomalies were recorded and examined for patterning. In this process, one person ran the GPR antennae along transects in the blocks while another individual observed the readings and called out possible hits. Other members of the team marked these possible hits with flags that were then mapped. Field supervisors analyzed the maps for concentrations of hits and determined possible features under the assumption that high concentration of GPR hits may coincide with features. This process allowed for realtime identification of possible features without the wait for lab analysis of GPR data. We first investigated the memorial area (Figure 3.2) to identify the locations of tents and cellars. We were primarily interested in identifying the location of a tent that belonged to Mary Petrucci, one of the two survivors of the Death Pit and well represented in the archival history of the Colorado Coalfield War. Through statements in the archival evidence, she locates her tent in the southwest corner of the site, identified as Tent “#1” in the union’s tent numbering system for the colony. Locating her tent would aid understanding of the layout of the colony, as well as link a tent and specific material culture to an individual listed in the history of the conflict. We also tested in this area to test the photo overlays from the 1999 and 2002 seasons. By overlapping different survey techniques, the process of feature identification was refined. After GPR investigation and the identification of possible features, auger testing was used to ground truth the existence of features. Unfortunately, we were never able to confidently identify the exact location of Petrucci’s tent. The second area, measuring eighty-five by thirty meters east-west, was located in the field portion of the site. Again, the goal was to detect features such as tent outlines, tent cellars, and streets or pathways within the colony. Here, field supervisors judgmentally chose to center research in this location to cover the far eastern areas covered in the 1999 photo overlay. Also, with intensive surface excavation conducted in the western area of the site at Locus 13 for two consecutive seasons (2000 and 2001), there had been limited research in the south end of the site. Our field crew and Dr. Conyers’s students conducted GPR analysis tracking hits in real time. We tested the apparent hits in this area using auger testing and surface unit excavation to ground truth the identification of features. Also during the 2002 field season, we applied magnetometer survey to the site for feature identification. Mona Charles of Fort Lewis College conducted the survey using a gradient magnetometer. We centered our survey area on two blocks outside the monument area. The first was an overlap of the 2002 GPR

93

Karin Larkin

survey already discussed. The second area was a 20-meter-wide north-south transect to the north of the first block. We overlapped the magnetometer, GPR, and photo overlay techniques in this section to provide a variety of lines of evidence to help understand the positioning of tents in a very difficult section of the site for locating features. Since magnetometers read variations in magnetic fields often caused by intense heat or metal, we assumed that the effects of the massacre through the fire and the cleanup following the massacre would create features readily identified through magnetometer testing. In addition, by overlapping GPR and magnetometer techniques with the photographic overlay technique, we hoped to correct the photo overlay errors in parallax and gain a more accurate idea of the location of features. The variation in the size and placement of the magnetometer survey block with our site grid is a result of Mona Charles’s specific methods. She ran transects within 20-meter by 20-meter blocks, while our site grid is based on 30-m grid squares. Therefore, the blocks for the magnetometer were plotted using measuring tapes. The difference in size led to a slight deviation in coverage between the GPR and magnetometer surveys, although the majority of the area covered overlapped. We positioned the second block to cover areas not previously surveyed. The overlapping of the photo overlay, GPR, and magnetometer was the primary goal of the 2002 surveys, but as the memorial area of the site is surrounded by metal fencing and is sided by a railroad track running along the west side, we were concerned about contamination of the magnetometer readings in that area. Therefore, we repositioned the survey block judgmentally in a section that had not been covered through previous surveys or excavations. The block’s transect covered a north-south area at the north end of the first colony. We defined features discovered in this area as identifying the normal tent outlines and cellars but also the boundaries between the first and second tent colonies. It would help to determine if there were any features such as privies in the area on the fringe of the colony and with which colony Feature 1 (first tent identified) was associated. For both blocks, any possible features identified through magnetometer were tested using a hand auger. Remote sensing provided a clearer picture of the layout of the site and the location of possible features than originally thought possible because of the ephemeral nature of the Ludlow Tent Colony site. The ephemeral features are not readily visible using pedestrian survey or test pits. Additionally, because of the shallowness of the site, test pits could potentially damage indistinct features such as tent outlines. Remote sensing provided noninvasive investigations and permitted an initial understanding of the layout of the colony that led to future testing and excavation.

94

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War

Hand-Auger Regime

As noted, we tested the possible features identified by the photographic overlay and remote sensing using a hand auger with a six-inch bucket. Each year field crews conducted an auger regime. Each auger test pit was cored to a depth of approximately two meters of sterile soil. The dirt from each bucket was screened through a ¼-inch screen and replaced after the auger hole was completed. Each hole was mapped and recorded if cultural material was present. Project archaeologists determined success by the presence and identification of cultural material, such as artifacts, ash, coal inclusions, or rust. During the 2001 and 2002 field seasons, each hole was mapped and recorded regardless of success. Additionally, field notes recorded any depositional patterns detectable that might suggest possible feature identification. The positioning of auger tests followed both judgmental and systemic sampling strategies. The areas surveyed through photo overlays and remote sensing initially defined the blocks subject to remote sensing. Within these blocks, we employed a systematic sampling strategy, placing tests at increments of approximately two meters. During the 2001 season, influenced by the photo overlay and testimonial sources from the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, project archaeologists attempted to identify the location of Mary Petrucci’s tent. She had provided an account to the commission with a basic description of her tent and its possible location. We presumed that the location of her tent was in an area now fenced in by the memorial. Archaeologists based this location on her testimony that she was close to Tent #58, or what came to be known as the Death Pit. The project matched the Death Pit, which is now marked and memorialized at the Ludlow Memorial, with the photographic overlay during the 1999 season. By linking the testimonial evidence and the photographic overlay, archaeologists made a basic assumption about the position of Mary Petrucci’s tent. In an attempt to identify the location of Petrucci’s tent, project archaeologists placed a total of thirty-three auger holes in the area. Each pair of auger probes was 2 meters apart along several vertical lines. Each vertical line was initially offset from the previous line by 1.4 meters. However, as testing proceeded, the crew made further probes that filled in gaps. The systemic placement of these tests allowed project archaeologists to identify possible feature boundaries before more intensive test excavation was conducted. Unfortunately, we identified little material culture from the original Ludlow Tent Colony in this area. We believe the lack of culture remains within the monument area is a consequence of the construction of the area into a memorial to the massacre. The ground was heavily graded and then graveled, erasing the shallow deposits. Project archaeologists also annually employed a program of judgmental hand-auger testing based on surface indications such as artifact scatters and veg-

95

Karin Larkin

etation changes. This process of judgmental survey was intensified during the 2002 field season because of the aforementioned drought in the region. Project archaeologists tested the rectangular-shaped grassy areas with one to three auger holes placed in random sections of those areas to confirm or reject the identification of a cellar. If the areas appeared to contain cultural deposits, they were further tested using 1-meter by 1-meter test excavations. Five additional cellars were identified during the 2002 field season using the vegetation and were tested through auger holes and test excavations. Phase Five: Feature Testing and Excavation At both Ludlow and Berwind we focused our attention on features that would help address the research questions. Of the twenty-three different loci identified at Ludlow, several produced features significant to understanding the site and the research questions, including two cellars, one possible privy, and several tent outlines. These were excavated either completely or nearly completely. As noted earlier, two areas at Berwind also appeared to date to the appropriate time periods for answering the research questions; one area dated to the occupation prior to the strike, and one postdated the strike. Privies and midden areas were excavated in each of these areas. Ludlow

Test units consisted of one-meter-square units excavated vertically according to stratum. Test units were placed adjoining one another to identify broad patterns linked to features and to allow for the basic identification of tent outlines. Tent cellars required an alternate excavation technique than tent outlines because of their vertical size and boundaries. The surface boundaries identified through test units provided guidelines for the boundaries of tent cellars but did not reflect actual boundaries for the entire depth of the feature. Cellar features were bisected and excavated in halves to keep track of artifact and subfeature locations as well as to provide a stratigraphic profile for the feature. After crews had excavated and mapped the first half of a feature, they removed the second half. In both halves, stratigraphic layers determined the vertical contextual boundaries of recorded excavation. Each stratum was excavated and recorded separately. Feature 74, a large tent cellar, was bisected in both north-south and east-west directions to help in the recording of depositional and artifactual contexts. Within the cellar features, project archaeologists recorded subfeatures and artifacts by quadrant. The eastern quadrants were excavated in the 2000 season, with the western quadrants excavated in the 2001 field season. We profiled the feature’s stratigraphy after excavating the appropriate bisection.

96

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War

Tent Pad Locations—Locus 1 and Locus 13. Two different areas along the west edge of the colony produced tent pad outlines with no associated cellars (Locus 1 and Locus 13; Figure 3.2). These excavations were conducted during different years and were identified using different techniques. Locus 1 was identified in the test trench excavated during the 1998 field season, while Features 99 and 100 of Locus 13 were identified by soil stains and artifact concentrations on the surface. Locus 1. In Locus 1 we excavated a total of 109 square meters to reveal and define a complete tent platform (Figure 3.9) and parts of three adjacent tents to the southeast and northwest and possibly to the north. This locus was instrumental in discerning the orientation of the tent colony on the property, understanding the construction and layout of individual tents, and visualizing the relationship between tents. Data from the surface collections made during the 1997 field season (Figure 3.1) suggested pronounced northeast-to-southwest alignments. The excavation at Locus 1 confirmed this alignment and demonstrated that the tent colony was oriented diagonal to the railroad and section road. In other words, the front of the colony faced toward that intersection. The tent platform identified in Locus 1 was defined by two coal- and clinker-filled ditches to the northeast and southwest, a shallow silt-filled ditch to the southwest, and a linear dark charcoal-flecked stain to the northeast. The ditch was about twelve centimeters deep, straight-sided, and deliberately constructed. Photographs of the tent colony show shallow ditches around some of the tents and reveal that many of the tents had small berms around the edges. These berms presumably helped weigh down the tents, blocked the wind, and provided insulation. We also sampled another shallow (approximately six centimeters deep) ditch with an irregular shape. This feature may represent a shallower silted-in drainage ditch or possibly a drip line from water coming off the side of the tent. In the latter case, however, we would expect to find a drip line to the northeast as well, which was not the case. An additional feature associated with the tent pad construction was a linear concentration of charcoal flecks along with some coal. This may represent a wooden feature, such as a sill or planking that burned in situ. These four features defined a tent with a maximum size of about fourteen feet by sixteen feet, assuming that the shallow irregular-shaped ditch and linear construction lay outside the tent. The project also identified fifteen features inside the tent platform that gave some idea as to the tent’s construction. These features consisted of three posthole/post-mold features, seven small stake holes, four larger stake holes, and an ash-filled feature, probably the remains of a hearth (Figure 3.9). Most of these features had coal and clinker in the fill, suggesting that the posts had

97

3.9. Map of Locus 1, Ludlow. Courtesy, Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project.

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War

been removed rather than decaying in place. It is likely that the tent had been repaired and upgraded during its occupation. For example, most, if not all, of the tents had wood floors installed at some point. In addition, project archaeologists found rows of nails that corresponded to the joists of the tent platform. One interesting set of features was the ash pit and the circle of stake holes that adjoin it to the west. This circle was approximately one meter in diameter. This complex may be the remains of a temporary shelter or windbreak and campfire from the days before the tents were set up at Ludlow or a structure related to cooking within the tent. Additional features to the north, northeast, and southwest suggest the presence of three other structures, one in each of those directions. The feature to the north was a coal- and clinker-filled ditch, while the features to the northeast and southwest were linear stains of dark brown silt loam. There also appear to have been two intersecting rows of stake holes in the southwestern part of the excavation block, one running east-west and the other running roughly northeast-southwest. Locus 13—Features 99 and 100. Features 99 and 100 also represent tent pad outlines excavated by the project during the 2000 field season (see Figure 3.10). Feature 99 is about one meter east of Feature 100. Feature 99 consists of a thin line of concentrated coal, clinker, and ash about twenty centimeters wide. Feature 100 is about forty centimeters wide, with heavy amounts of coal, clinker, and ash. These two features are on the same alignment as the orientation of the tent colony, 40–45 degrees off north. Both features are shallow, only about five to seven centimeters below modern ground surface. The units inside the tent outline produced more artifacts than those outside the outline; however, few artifacts were found overall. Of note were two artifacts. One clothing clip, or tie clip, found was engraved with either a personal name or a manufacturer, “Leonard.” We also located a medallion with the symbol of the Knights of Pythias fraternal organization. Other artifacts primarily included nails (with a few alignments noted) as well as very small pieces of ceramics, glass, and metal. It is unclear exactly how Features 99 and 100 were related. However, we believe they are from the same tent as opposed to two neighboring tents because of their proximity. The features are parallel and about one meter apart. Feature 99, not as wide as Feature 100, is less convincing as a tent outline. However, it is possible that the two features represent two neighboring tents. It is more likely that the coal and clinker concentration defined as Feature 99 is a trench or drip line associated with Feature 100. After completing the areal excavations of Features 99 and 100, we excavated six auger probes to determine whether there may have been a cellar associated with them. The probes did not produce subsurface artifacts, indicating there was probably no cellar in this location.

99

Karin Larkin

3.10. Plan view of Features 99 and 100 in Locus 13, Ludlow. Courtesy, Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project.

Privy Sampling. Our best example of a possible privy excavated at the Ludlow Tent Colony was Feature 70, located along the southern edge of the site. Project archaeologists identified Feature 70, located in Locus 6, as a shallow depression evident on the surface and confirmed it as a feature through an auger test. The cultural deposits in the auger probe were over 1.54 meters deep. Initially, we placed two 1-meter units over the auger test to identify the feature. This feature was excavated over two field seasons, 1998 and 1999. Feature 70, irregular in shape, measured approximately 2.5 meters€by 3.5 meters (Figure 3.11). Archaeologists reached the bottom of the feature at a depth of 2.5 meters below the surface. Feature 70 appears to have been a privy, with the very bottom strata (a thin layer containing small artifacts) being privy deposit. The sheer number of bottle caps in this deposit suggests it was also a place for private drinking (unless the caps were deposited into the privy in a single dumping episode). Overlying the privy stratum was a layered series of refuse deposits. These were capped by a relatively sterile layer that represents either a period of abandonment or at least cessation of dumping or an effort to seal the privy, probably to control the smell.

100

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War

3.11. Feature 70, west profile, Ludlow. Courtesy, Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project.

Dumping resumed with the deposition of a relatively thick layer of refuse. The remaining strata resulted from the natural silting of the privy depression. Cellar Sampling. Two cellars were completely excavated by the project, labeled Feature 73 in Locus 11 and Feature 74 in Locus 12. The cellars had dissimilar construction styles and depositional histories, as discussed later. Each cellar tells a different story of the use and abuse of the Ludlow Tent Colony. Feature 73 represents a single family’s possessions and use, while Feature 74 represents the cleanup effort of the strikers and the Red Cross after the massacre and fire in the tent colony. Feature 73, Locus 11. Locus 11 contains one deep buried cellar, Feature 73. Feature 73 was obviously a tent cellar, given the household artifacts and the feature’s size and shape. The cellar measured 3.5 meters by 1.5 meters and 1 meter deep. Reddening as a result of the extreme heat of the fire clearly delineated the rectangular walls of this feature. Both the artifacts found in the tent and the depositional sequence of the cellar suggest that this feature can be linked to the

101

Karin Larkin

3.12. Feature 73 in Locus 11 stratigraphic profile, Ludlow. Courtesy, Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project.

individual family living there. This feature thus provides a snapshot view of the life of a single family in the tent colony (Figure 3.12). The cellar had a complex depositional sequence evident in the profile of the wall. This profile revealed three distinct cultural strata. Near the bottom of the excavation were artifacts that appeared to have been originally stored in the cellar. They included canning jars, plates, a trunk, and other items that would not have been used on a daily basis in the tent. Overlying this layer in only a few areas of the feature was the wooden plank floor that collapsed during the fire, preserving the cellar contents below. In other areas, personal items from the overlying

102

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War

tent appear to have collapsed into the cellar when the fire weakened the tent’s floor supports. As a result of this collapse, the tent filled the cellar, causing the cellar to collapse into itself. The early and fast deposition in the cellar allowed the walls to be protected from weather and slumping effects, explaining the clear oxidation on the feature’s walls. The collapsed feature appears to have filled the cellar and allowed no major filling by surface refuse during the cleanup after the massacre. The context of the artifacts was not overly mixed and jumbled, and the massacre’s fire is evident through the large amount of burned wood and melted glass. Despite the destruction, personal items were preserved through the fire and post-occupational disturbances. Items related to children—such as toys— and to women—such as clothing and fine china—were uncovered in this cellar context, but there was not an abundance of material. Although this cellar cannot be documented to a specific person or people, it does provide an anonymous material perspective of those who lived in the tent and associated cellar. Feature 74, Locus 12. This feature is also interpreted as a cellar. However, differences between the two cellars (Features 73 and 74) are obvious and require different interpretations. Differences in the stratigraphic sequences, artifact frequencies, and artifact types suggest that this cellar does not reflect a single household but instead illustrates the post-massacre cleanup efforts of the strikers and the Red Cross. This feature also has a complex depositional sequence (Figure 3.13). The three upper strata are shallower and have a bowl shape that levels off into Stratum A. This suggests an eolian deposit of sediments and possible filling by post-strike occupation or from the second group of colony inhabitants. Post-strike activities, such as ranching, and occupation from the second colony on the site likely affected the site formation for these three higher strata. The lower strata also exhibit differences in deposition from those observed for Feature 73. The strata are more uniform and much thicker. The feature’s overall size, shape, and depth signify a larger structure than Feature 73 and could reflect a larger tent structure over the top or subsequent widening to accommodate post-massacre cleanup. The oil drop cloth we found placed on the floor was original to the structure when it was first used as a cellar, suggesting that the cellar was not deepened to accommodate trash during the cleanup. Heavy oxidation at the base of the walls of the feature, about twenty to fifty centimeters from the floor and slumping low in the feature, further supports our hypothesis. The cellar remained open for a period and was subject to weather-induced wall slumping as well as to cultural deposits from trash disposal. Artifact frequencies in this feature suggest a jumbled mix of material. The lower strata are mostly filled with metal associated with architecture. Very little

103

Karin Larkin

3.13. Feature 74 in Locus 12 stratigraphic profile, Ludlow. Courtesy, Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project.

material related to domestic or food usage is present. The frequency of artifacts changes higher in the feature, but food usage is still less abundant than in Feature 73. The low proportion of domestic to architectural goods in Feature 74 suggests a possible single dumping episode of architectural material after the camp had burned and during the subsequent cleanup. Post-massacre, the majority of the colony’s remains would likely have been that of architecture on the surface. The cellars would have acted as readily accessible pits for dumping by the massacre survivors and the Red Cross. The cross-colony refuse associated with Feature 74’s destruction gives evidence of secondary context for the material associated with that feature. The varied materials, composed mostly of cooking (coffeepots, a possible stove, and

104

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War

pans) and bedroom (headboard) items, suggest a domestic context, except that the materials are not complete. The headboard has no associated bed frame and was not primarily deposited from the surface tent. On the other hand, we found a multitude of items that should have been unique in a domestic context. For example, we found three coffeepots and three alarm clocks in the lower layers of the pit, as well as many more cooking items than the average striking family would need. Interpretation of the feature did not alter the basic premise that Feature 74 had acted as a cellar during the strike. After the massacre, the cellar’s size made it a ready trash pit. The vast depth of the cellar was not fully filled by the collapse of the overlying tent, as occurred with Feature 73. Instead, strikers filled the remaining open space with surface refuse from the first colony. We were unable to link the material culture in Feature 74 to an individual family or person. However, this feature allowed us to understand community material culture as a whole as well as the post-massacre cleanup efforts. Midden Sampling. Locus 7, located along the south bank of Delagua Arroyo to the north of the colony, acted as the colony’s trash dump. This arroyo has threatened the context of the midden deposits. Much of the midden has been eroded away as a result of cutting of the arroyo bank. The surviving portion of the midden, approximately 30 meters north-south and 100 meters east-west, has been the subject of intensive testing to recover as much material as possible before it is lost. Initial testing in 1997 positioned individual test units in disparate sections of the surviving area to allow for an overall sample of different parts of the midden. Succeeding field seasons have used adjoining units and trenches to uncover larger sections of the midden. The positioning of these test units and trenches was determined through judgmental sampling based on surface remains. Sampling worked on the assumption that the midden acted as a general trash dump for the entire colony. As such, there may have been horizontal and vertical stratigraphy based on occurrences of deposition. The ephemeral occupation limits the archaeologists’ ability to discern the differences in occurrences of depositions. Archaeologists examined the midden to gain information on consumption habits on a community-wide scale. Units were placed primarily according to surface scatters that suggested depositional activity and variability in artifact and material types. We also heavily tested areas under threat from erosion as a result of the arroyo to acquire information we feared would be lost in the near future. To gain an overall view of the stratigraphy in the middens, we did not map or profile units individually, but we did record profiles of trenches to recognize patterns in midden deposition.

105

Karin Larkin

Table 3.1. Locus 13 group counts and relative frequencies, Ludlow 1998–2002 Group

Count

Relative Frequency (%)

Architecture Food Clothing Other Personal Unrecognizable Total

1,046 5,291 107 21 28 44 6,537

16 82 1 0 0 1 100

Artifacts Recovered at Ludlow

The Ludlow Tent Colony produced a multitude of artifacts from a variety of contexts that helped project archaeologists address the research questions. The four main contexts we focused on were Locus 7, the midden, to gain a community-wide perspective; Feature 73, the cellar, for a household perspective involving personal possessions; Feature 74, to examine the post-massacre cleanup trash disposal pit; and Locus 13, the tent outlines, again for a household perspective but also to examine construction and artifact distribution. For purposes of analysis and discussion, these contexts were categorized into broad groups that reflect function and, secondarily, disposal. The groups were broken down into several categories: food, architectural, personal, clothing, other, and unrecognizable. Trends within these categories within loci are examined next (Conkey 1989; Fontana 1965; Kovel and Kovel 1986; Leone and Potter 1988; Ludlow Collective 2001; Toulouse 1971). Locus 13. Locus 13 contained Features 77 and 78, a partial tent pad outline. Overall patterns presented in Table 3.1 show a high relative frequency of foodstuffs (82%), with architecture (relative frequency 16%) a distant second. The zero percent shown in the other and personal categories really reflects <1 percent. Within the groups, those related to food showed the most interesting patterns. Glass containers were examined in more detail, since they are more durable than cans and therefore easier to analyze. The group was broken up into functional categories related to the function of the particular glass container. The categories of bottle and food serving showed the highest counts, with indeterminate close behind. Canning and cosmetic glass containers were scarce (Figure 3.14). In the architecture category, nails were found in high frequency in Locus 13. This pattern is consistent with expectations of a tent used for residential purposes and one reflecting the material remains from a single family that inhabited the tent.

106

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War Table 3.2. Locus 11 group counts and relative frequencies, Ludlow 1998–2002 Group

Count

Relative Frequency (%)

Architecture Food Clothing Other Personal Unrecognizable Total

617 4,794 36 47 118 65 5,677

11 84 1 1 2 1 100

Locus 11. Locus 11, containing Feature 73 (a cellar), exhibited a very similar pattern to that observed for Locus 13. Again we see a high relative frequency of food-related artifacts (84%), with architecture a distant second (11%). There are few personal items (2%, count 118) and even fewer clothing (1%, count 36), other (1%, count 47), and unrecognizable (1%, count 65) items (Table 3.2). The pattern here, similar to that observed in Locus 13, also reflects the material culture expectations for a habitation dwelling of a single family. The food and architectural categories again offer interesting patterns. ArchiÂ� tectural remains again exhibit a high count of nails (230, r.f. 37%), with furniture (count 115, r.f. 19%), lighting/heating (count 72, r.f. 12%), flooring (count 55, r.f. 9%), and assorted hardware (count 51, r.f. 8%) with the next highest counts. Food groupings followed functional categories as shown in Figure 3.15. Consistent with household remains, food consumption and serving represents the largest category, with containers for food and other items the second highest frequency. When Locus 11 glass categories were broken into functional assemblages, food serving figured prominently (Figure 3.16). The high frequency of indeterminate pieces is a result of the amount and extent of melting that occurred when the feature burned during the massacre. Bottling came in relatively high as well, with canning and cosmetic artifacts in low frequencies. This pattern is again very similar to the one observed in Locus 13, save for the large amount of indeterminate artifacts caused by the melting—Locus 13 exhibited less burning than Locus 11. Locus 12. As discussed previously, the material remains from Feature 74 seem to exhibit a different pattern than those from Feature 73. Table 3.3 shows that counts and relative frequencies for food (count 295, r.f. 60%) are significantly lower than those seen for both Locus 11, the other cellar, and Locus 13, a tent outline. However, the count and frequency for the architecture category are significantly higher (count 124, r.f. 25%). The absence of personal artifacts recovered in Locus 12 also presents an interesting contrast. These dissimilarities

107

Karin Larkin

3.14. Locus 13 glass counts by function, Ludlow. Courtesy, Colorado Coalfield War Archae� ol�ogy Project.

3.15. Locus 11 food group frequencies. Courtesy, Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project.

are not a result of collecting or excavation practices but rather of an actual lack of material. Within the glass material type, bottles represent by far the most abundant functional category (Table 3.4) (Clint 1976; Fike 1982). We are unsure if this represents a specialized activity at the location or a dumping episode, perhaps related to the cleanup effort post-massacre. The lack of canning- and cosmetic-

108

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War

3.16. Locus 11 glass by function. Courtesy, Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project.

related glass material raises questions about the domestic context of this feature’s material remains. Architectural material also presents a different pattern than those seen in Locus 11 and Locus 13 (Table 3.5). Two-thirds of the remains represent hardware (total 61%), while only 1 percent falls into the furniture category. Construction (count 17, r.f. 14%), lighting/heating (count 17, r.f. 14%), and unrecognizable (count 10, r.f. 10%) are similar to each other and to the same categories in Locus 11. These patterns reflect a cleanup episode rather than remains from a single residential family—Feature 74 was used as a trash pit to clean up refuse from the massacre. This is evident in the high percentage of architectural remains that would have been dragged into the pit from surrounding tents. Locus 7. The counts and frequencies for the major artifact group categories in Locus 7—the arroyo midden area—represent a typical midden situation (Table 3.6). The largest frequency represents artifacts related to food (count 412, r.f. 79%), although the count does not reach that seen in Locus 11 or Locus 13. The second highest frequency was related to architecture (count 79, r.f. 15%), although it does not approach the 25 percent seen in Locus 12. Overall Patterns. A comparison of the frequencies in the food, architecture, and clothing categories between Loci 11 and 13 with those seen for Loci 7 and 12 (Table 3.7) reveals marked similarities. We believe both Locus 11 and Locus 13, a tent pad outline, represent in situ household remains from the tent that occupied the site before the massacre. Loci 7 and 12, on the other hand, represent communal remains—one (Locus 7) from a community midden and the other (Locus 12) from a cleanup episode after the massacre. This discussion simply presents some of the artifact frequencies the project discovered. The subsequent chapters build

109

Karin Larkin

Table 3.3. Locus 12 group counts and relative frequencies, Ludlow 1998–2002 Group Architecture Food Clothing Other Personal Unrecognizable Total

Count

Relative Frequency (%)

124 295 30 14 0 30 493

25 60 6 3 0 6 100

Table 3.4. Locus 12 glass artifact counts and relative frequencies, Ludlow 1998–2002 Function Bottle Canning Cosmetic Food serving Indeterminate Lighting/heating Total

Counts

Relative Frequencies (%)

80 0 0 47 49 16 192

42 0 0 24 26 8 100

Table 3.5. Locus 12 architectural remains counts and relative frequencies, Ludlow 1998–2002 Ludlow 5LA1829, Feature 74, Architectural Class

Function

Construction Flooring Unrecognizable Furniture Hardware Assorted Bailing wire Nails Screws Tack Lighting/heating Tools Unrecognizable Total

Counts

Relative Frequency (%)

5 12 3 29 3 43 0 2 17 0 10 124

4 10 1 23 1 35 0 2 14 0 10 100

upon these findings to give much more in-depth and nuanced interpretations of the material culture. Berwind

We conducted testing of the Colorado Fuel and Iron (CF&I) camp at Berwind at the conclusion of the 1997 season through unit testing and surface collection. Field crews initially conducted pedestrian surveys with surface collec-

110

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War Table 3.6. Locus 7 group counts and relative frequencies, Ludlow 1998–2002 Group Architecture Food Clothing Other Personal Unrecognizable Total

Count

Relative Frequency (%)

79 412 23 0 6 0 520

15 79 4 0 1 0 99

Table 3.7. All loci comparisons by frequency Group Food Architecture Personal Clothing Other Unrecognized

Locus 11 Feature 73 (%)

Locus 13 Tent Outline (%)

Locus 7 Midden (%)

Locus 12 Feature 74 (%)

84 11 2 1 1 1

82 16 <1 1 <1 1

79 15 1 4 0 0

60 25 0 6 3 6

tion and artifact counts. This process allowed for a preliminary identification of possible features and the density of possible activities in areas of the town. The dating of collected artifacts also allowed for a basic dating of areas of the town. During the surface collection phase of research, we discovered myriad artifacts and features. The residue of everyday life was littered all over the surface. Our next question was, what lies below the surface? Were there discrete layers that corresponded to certain periods in the areas of town that were occupied both before and after the strike? Were there buried features? Had the privies been sealed with intact deposits? Had the yard areas been significantly affected when the town was destroyed in 1931? Crews tested areas of the site to recognize their archaeological potential for future research and to determine if intact stratigraphy existed below the surface. We excavated 1-meter by 1-meter test units. We chose four areas of the town that represented different time periods, ethnic affiliations, and class associations. In each of these areas, we excavated at least one and as many as three test units. Most of the town’s earlier periods had been destroyed or replaced during the time of the Rockefeller Plan (1915–1930). There were two areas with possible preservation of the period 1900–1915; one was privately owned during the time of excavation and closed to research, and the second was a pre-strike neighborhood (Area K). Test unit excavation confirmed this linkage to the earlier period through artifact dating.

111

Karin Larkin

Archaeologists used the Frijole Hill neighborhood (Area B) as the sample area for the post–coalfield war (1913–1914) period. This time period was established through the styles of standing architecture and artifacts reflecting a period of 1915–1930. The camp seems to have expanded northward during this later period. Frijole Hill’s position near the north end of town coincides with this trend. Test excavation occurred at both neighborhoods during the following two field seasons (1998 and 1999). Test units for both areas consisted of one-metersquare units placed adjacently to follow strata. We placed excavation units in the privy and midden units at each locus to get comparable material for comparison and recorded the remaining architectural foundations. We excavated units stratigraphically. We excavated seven units in the pre-strike neighborhood of Area K in a “J” formation. Area B contained twenty test units within two square blocks. Through unit excavation, we identified privies in the pre-strike neighborhood. We then bisected and excavated the privies by strata. Privies in Area B were lined with concrete and as such were more readily recognized than earlier styles. These privies were tested using bores to identify artifact types and strata changes. We conducted surface collection in Area B to accumulate data on an area under erosion north of a domestic area. Area K represented our pre-strike context. A 1911 map of the town identified nine houses in the area. Much of the region was leveled in 1916 when the junior high school was built in the adjacent area. We identified five remaining structures, a large communal midden area, and one privy that survived this later construction. The houses in this locus were very irregular in placement, shape, and size. The builders also used rough stone boulders acquired from the area. This irregularity reflects the company’s lack of investment in housing for miners. Generally, miners were responsible for building their own houses, which they organized into communities. Pre-strike privies prior to 1910 were lined with wood and filled with archaeological material that dated to the time of occupation. The privy in Area K provided a wealth of material related to daily life, including intact bottles and cans, large portions of plates and other ceramic wares, buttons and other articles of clothing, and construction material. We also found several medicine and alcohol bottles (often these are synonymous). This provides a good cross-section of the material culture for the time period and area. As this profile indicates, the deposition is rich and contains multiple dumping episodes. Area B, located at the far northern extent of the town site, consisted of approximately ten domestic structures laid out in a crescent shape. The houses had substantial concrete foundations and standardized layouts. The area also contained five cement-lined privies that corresponded to the houses and the remains of four brick ovens. In addition, there was a large midden scatter in this area.

112

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War

The privy in Area B differed in both construction and composition from the one in Area K. First, the privies in this locus were cement-lined, a feature that helped contain the waste and prohibited it from seeping into the arroyo and groundwater. The privies in Area K were wood-lined. Second, the privy in Area B consisted of only three strata (including one stratum that contained the bones of a nearly complete single cow skeleton). This privy had obviously been “cleaned out” on a regular basis and upon disuse, leaving few material remains for analysis. The state of Colorado passed an ordinance in the late 1800s that required privies to be cleaned out at least once a week; however, in the coal camps privy cleaning was the residents’ responsibility, and prior to the strike CF&I had no regulation in place to enforce this law. With the institution of the Rockefeller Plan after the strike, the practice of cleaning privies was regulated and taken over by the company to improve sanitation conditions in the camps. The privy in Area B exemplifies the new regulations. By looking at the pre- and post-strike contexts of the Berwind coal camp, we were able to determine what conditions were like before the strike and what changed after the strike with the institution of the Rockefeller Plan. The first trend we noticed was an improvement in sanitation and infrastructure. The changes in privy construction and maintenance discussed earlier certainly reflected improvements. Project archaeologists also found evidence for more extensive use of electricity in homes that date to the post-strike era. It is difficult to say with certainty whether the increased availability of electricity resulted from changes in company policy following the strike or from a nationally growing awareness and shift in practices and technology. We know that all miners’ homes were provided with one porch light, which the company supplied as a result of the Rockefeller Plan, and that houses were wired for electricity. The miners had to pay for usage inside their homes, however. Additionally, home construction and community layout were more standardized in the post-strike context. The changes in layout and construction also reflect CF&I’s investment in housing for the miners. The company began building standardized housing for the miners and their families under the Rockefeller Plan. This trend shows that CF&I did invest more resources in infrastructure and sanitation. Another interesting comparison between pre- and post-strike contexts was seen in the food- and alcohol-related items. Interestingly, alcohol consumption, represented by bottles (including beer, wine, liquor, and patent medicine bottles), indicates a decreased trend in consumption in the post-strike context at Berwind as compared with the pre-strike context. Patent medicine bottles are often believed to indicate covert drinking, especially among women, because of their high alcohol content and the presence of other narcotics in the mixture. Several factors could account for this pattern. First, the Rockefeller Plan prohibited drinking in the camps. Second, this was during the time of prohibition,

113

Karin Larkin

making alcohol harder to acquire. It is also probable that the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act curtailed the use of patent medicines. Interestingly, we found ample evidence for distilleries and beer making in the coal camp, suggesting the use of alcohol despite the regulations prohibiting its consumption. The combination of this evidence in conjunction with the specialized analyses by Jacobson and Wood in this volume offers substantial opportunity to evaluate the effects of the strike and the institution of the Rockefeller Plan on miners living in the coal camps. Overall, it appears that their conditions did improve slightly on some levels. However, it is difficult to attribute these improvements solely to the strike, and one must consider the general changes in popular attitudes during the time in question. Phase Six: Oral History Interviews

Aside from the archaeological excavations at Berwind, we also conducted a series of oral history interviews to learn about the more personal and intimate side of the community. We were fortunate to meet a few people who remembered their childhood at Berwind and other nearby towns. These interviews complement the archaeological research. Our informants have added important information about the artifacts we are finding at Berwind, as well as dimensions to our understanding of daily life in the town. Both oral history interviews and documentary research have helped us identify features in the town, establish the presence and location of ethnic neighborhoods, and understand the micro-geographies of house/yard areas. Project archaeologists conducted a total of eleven interviews with eight informants. The informants were self-selecting. They were either referred to us by friends and relatives or approached us themselves. Surprisingly, our sample ended up being rather diverse. The interviews were taped with the informants’ consent. The most interesting things the informants told us related to the cultural geography of the camp. They helped us identify ethnic neighborhoods and culturally specific features, like the brick ovens. One informant (M) told us that African American miners and their families tended to live up in Stock Canyon and School Canyon. The areas M mentioned correspond to Areas T and U on the archaeological site map. When asked about other ethnic groups, M recalled ethnic areas of the town but could not remember specifically where they were. She did say that she thought the Italians lived near the Catholic Church, which corresponds to Area H on the archaeological site map. Another informant was able to reflect on both the broader landscape of the town and his experiences living there. He came to Berwind with us and pointed out many of the buildings he remembered, including the Protestant and Catholic churches, the YMCA,

114

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War

the high school, the tavern, the company store, and others. As we drove down the canyon, he described where CF&I territory began and told us about a guard shack, where all vehicles going in and out of the camp were searched. One informant (C) told us about an area in Berwind he knew as “Frijole Hill” where “Hispanos lived.” The area C described corresponds to Area B on our archaeological base map. The oral history interviews proved fruitful in informing us about the cultural geography of the community in several ways. First, many informants were able to tell us about the use or function of certain structures or parts of town. Further, all of the informants told us about daily life and activities in their households, giving us a glimpse of specific activities and social relations that were part of their lives. Finally, almost all of the informants mentioned “ethnic” areas of town. Because some of the planned future research on this site will focus on specific ethnic groups or, at the least, will take ethnic identity into consideration, the location of these areas is very important. Of particular interest is the location of the African American settlements. Very little has been written or studied about African American heritage in southern Colorado or even in Colorado in general, which makes the sites up in Stock and School canyons especially important. Our attempts to identify ethnic neighborhoods have been augmented by ongoing census research using manuscript census data. Graduate students gathered records for the town of Berwind from the 1900, 1910, and 1920 U.S. censuses. For example, even a quick overview of the 1900 Census indicates that members of specific ethnic groups tended to live near each other. Because the town of Berwind was situated in a canyon, it is possible, by knowing the towns listed both before and after Berwind in the census, to trace the direction the census taker was moving through the town. By matching these data with our historical and archaeological maps, we should therefore be able to broadly identify the location of specific ethnic neighborhoods. Graduate students also conducted archival research in the photo collections of the Altman Collection in Trinidad, the Mitchell Museum in Trinidad, the Western History Collection of the Denver Public Library, the Colorado Historical Society Archives, and several personal collections. Over fifty photos of the town of Berwind were uncovered as a result of this research. These photos have provided important clues as to what the town looked like during various periods of its existence. The majority of the personal photos date to post-1915, when fairly inexpensive photography equipment became available to the layperson. Several early “official” photos of the town, however, dating between 1900 and 1915, were published in CF&I’s Camp and Plant magazine. Through our oral history interviews and documentary research, we were able to explore the macro-geography of the town as a whole, the establishment of ethnic neighborhoods, and the micro-geographies of households.

115

Karin Larkin

Conclusion The information presented here contributes to a small but growing database of archaeological investigations of company towns in the United States. Little historical information and even less archaeological information are available on life in these towns. Most of the extant documentation comes from the companies themselves or from the architectural firms they hired to design the towns. The use of such firms became common after Ludlow as companies became more concerned about living conditions in their towns. Archaeology can supplement and even correct the available historical documentation. The work at Berwind focused on examining the differences in archaeological material from the pre- and post-strike contexts identified during our survey and excavation in two residential districts. Area K appeared to date to the period of occupation before the strike (ca. 1895–1914) and Area B to the post-strike period (ca. 1915–1931). In each locus a midden and a privy were examined to provide context for both the household and community scales of analysis. This work identified a number of differences between the pre- and poststrike sites at Berwind. There were differences in the architecture between the two areas, with more substantial concrete foundations at Area B (post-strike), but this was one of the factors by which the post-strike site was selected and should therefore come as no surprise. However, research related to changes made after the implementation of the Rockefeller Plan in 1915 supports these findings. There also appear to be substantial differences in sanitation and hygiene. The Area K privy was an earthen, wood-lined hole that was used as a midden upon disuse as a privy, while the Area B privy was concrete-lined and, presumably, regularly cleaned. The archaeological assemblages suggest a significant decline in the amount of liquor bottle glass, probably the result of the post-strike prohibition. Interestingly, this decline in liquor glass was matched by an increase in beer bottle glass. At Ludlow, the project gained more information on the tent colony layout by overlaying a historical panorama of the colony over the current landscape, in conjunction with GPR, auger testing, and excavation. These methods revealed the layout of the colony and exposed several tent pad locations, a possible privy, and two fully excavated cellars. Excavations of these features allowed project archaeologists to better understand the layout, the community, and the lives of strikers in the tent colony. We now know that the colony was laid out on a 45degree angle to the road facing the junction between the main county road and those leading up to Berwind and Delagua canyons. The tents were laid out in a systematic manner that contrasts with the haphazard and hasty manner of construction. Cellars were indeed dug under the tents along the south side of the camp. They were used for storage as well as protection. Upon destruction of the tent colony, the cellars were also used as trash dumps for the surrounding

116

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War

area, as evidenced by the material remains of Feature 74. Feature 73 provided information regarding the life of one family at the tent colony. A comparison of Ludlow with the Berwind site showed some of the ways mining families dealt with conditions in the tent colonies. The most significant differences were seen in the artifacts related to food and drink. The families at Ludlow were forced to rely heavily on mass-produced preserved food, as shown by the number of cans and preserve and condiment bottles recovered at the site. Comparatively few faunal remains were recovered even though preservation conditions at Ludlow are quite good, suggesting that they did not constitute a large part of the diet. Liquor consumption at Ludlow appears to have increased dramatically, while “soft” alcohol consumption (such as beer and wine) declined. It is not unreasonable to assume that as the strike continued, liquor consumption increased in the colony as the strikers combatted boredom and tension. A final notable trend was the decline in patent medicine use at Ludlow, possibly because the United Mine Workers of America was supplying a doctor for the strikers. In conclusion, both Ludlow and Berwind are significant sites that have the potential to contribute important information to our understanding of life in early–twentieth-century company towns in southern Colorado and probably nationally as well, and how that life changed as a result of reforms instituted after the wave of labor violence in the early decades of the century. Ludlow is an important site, as it documents how strikers coped with the brutal long-term strikes that were characteristic of this period. These strikes had a major impact on working and living conditions throughout the United States. Ludlow is the first such strike camp to be archaeologically investigated. Works Cited Allen, James B. 1966 The Company Town in the American West. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Beaudry, Mary C., and Stephen A. Mrozowski 2001 Cultural Space and Worker Identity in the Company City: Nineteenth Century Lowell, Massachusetts. In The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes: Explorations in Slumland, ed. Alan Mayne and Tim Murray, 118–131. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Beshoar, B. B. 1957 Out of the Depths: The Story of John R. Lawson, a Labor Leader, 2nd ed. Colorado Historical Commission and Denver Trades and Labor Assembly, Denver. Brashler, J. 1991 When Daddy Was a Shanty Boy: The Role of Gender in the Organization of the Logging Industry in Highland West Virginia. In Gender in Historical Archaeology, ed. D. J. Seifert. Society for Historical Archaeology, California, PA.

117

Karin Larkin

Burley, D. V. 1989 Function, Meaning and Context: Ambiguities in Ceramic Use by the Hivernant Metis of the Northwestern Plains. Historical Archaeology 23(1):97–106. Cantwell, Anne-Marie, and Diana diZerega Wall 2001 Unearthing Gotham: The Archaeology of New York City. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. CCWAP (Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project) 2000 Archaeological Investigations at the Ludlow Massacre Site (5LA1829) and Berwind (5LA2175), Las Animas County, Colorado: Report on the 1998 Season. Colorado Historical Society, Denver. Claney, Jane P. 1996 Form, Fabric, and Social Factors in Nineteenth-Century Ceramics Usage. In Historical Archaeology and the Study of American Culture, ed. LuAnn de Cunzo and Bernard L. Herman, 103–149. Henry Francis du Pont Museum, Winterthur, DE. Clint, D. K. 1976 Colorado Historical Bottles & Etc., 1859–1915. Antique Bottle Collectors of Colorado, Boulder. Clyne, Richard J. 1995 Life in the Coal Camps of Southern Colorado, 1890–1933. MA thesis, University of Colorado, Boulder. 1999 Coal People: Life in Southern Colorado’s Company Towns 1890–1930. Colorado Historical Society, Denver. Conkey, M. 1989 The Use of Diversity in Stylistic Analysis. In Quantifying Diversity in Archaeology, ed. R. D. Leonard and G. T. Jones, 118–129. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Deetz, J. 1977 In Small Things Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life. Doubleday, New York. 1993 Flowerdew Hundred: The Archaeology of a Virginia Plantation, 1619–1864. University Press of Virginia, CharÂ�lottesÂ�ville. Deutsch, S. 1987 No Separate Refuge: Culture, Class and Gender on an Anglo-Hispanic Frontier in the American Southwest, 1880–1940. Oxford University Press, New York. Fike, R. E. 1982 The Bottle Book: A Comprehensive Guide to Historic Embossed Medicine Bottles. Gibbs M. Smith, Salt Lake City, UT. Fitts, Robert K. 1999 The Archaeology of Middle-Class Domesticity and Gentility in Victorian Brooklyn. Historical Archaeology 33(1):39–62.

118

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War Foner, P. S. 1980 History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Vol. 5: The AFL in the Progressive Era, 1910–1915. International Publishers, New York. Fontana, B. L. 1965 The Tale of a Nail: On the Ethnological Interpretation of Historic Artifacts. Florida Anthropologist 28(3):85–90. Fontana, B., and J. C. Greenleaf 1962 Johny Ward’s Ranch: A Study in Historical Archaeology. Kiva 28(1–2):1–115. Franzen, J. G. 1992 Northern Michigan Logging Camps: Material Culture and Worker Adaptation on the Industrial Frontier. Historical Archaeology 26(2):74–98. Prince, Gene 1988 Photography for discovery and scale by superimposing old photographs on the present-day scene. Antiquity 62(234):112–16. Gitelman, H. M. 1988 Legacy of the Ludlow Massacre: A Chapter in American Industrial Relations. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Goodwin, Lorinda B.R. 1999 An Archaeology of Manners: The Polite World of the Merchant Elite of Colonial Massachusetts. Contributions to Global Historical Archaeology. Kluwer Academic and Plenum, New York. Jacobson, Michael E. 2006 The Rise and Fall of Place: The Development of a Sense of Place and Community in Colorado’s Southern Coalfields, 1890–1930. PhD dissertation, SUNY Binghamton. Kintigh, K. 1991 Tools for Quantitative Archaeology. Keith W. Kintigh, Tempe, AZ. Kovel, R. M., and T. Kovel 1986 Kovel’s New Dictionary of Marks. Crown, New York. Larkin, Karin, Anna Gray, and Michael Jacobson 2003 Archaeological Investigations at the Ludlow Massacre Site (5LA1829) and Berwind (5LA2175), Las Animas County, Colorado: Report on the 2000–2001 Season. Colorado Historical Society, Denver. Laslett, John H.M. 1996 The United Mine Workers of America: A Model of Industrial Solidarity? United Mine Workers of America Centennial Conference, Penn State University Press, University Park. Lehner, Lois 1988 Lehner’s Encyclopedia of U.S. Marks on Pottery, Porcelain & Clay. Collector Books, Paducah, KY. Leone, M. P., and P. B. Potter Jr. (editors) 1988 The Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC.

119

Karin Larkin

Long, Priscilla 1985 The Women of the C.F.I. Strike, 1913–1914. In Women, Work, and Protest: A Century of U.S. Women’s Labor History, ed. Ruth Milkman, 62–85. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. 1991 Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America’s Bloody Coal Industry. Paragon House, New York. Ludlow Collective 2001 Archaeology of the Colorado Coal Field War, 1913–1914. In Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past, ed. Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas, 94–107. Routledge, London. Martin, A. S. 1994 “Fashionable Sugar Dishes, Latest Fashion Ware”: The Creamware Revolution in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake. In Historical Archaeology of the Chesapeake, ed. P. A. Shackel and B. J. Little, 169–187. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC. McGovern, G. S., and L. F. Guttridge 1972 The Great Coalfield War. Houghton Mifflin, Boston. Overland, Orm 2004 Becoming White in 1881: An Immigrant Acquires an American Identity. Journal of American Ethnic History 23(4):132–141.

Prince, Gene 1988 Photography for Discovery and Scale by Superimposing Old Photographs on the Present-day Scene. Antiquity 62(234):112–116. Scott, D. D., J.R.A. Fox, M. A. Connor, and D. Harmon 1989 Archaeological Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Bighorn. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Shackel, P. 1996 Culture Change and the New Technology: An Archaeology of the Early American Industrial Era. Plenum, New York. Sutton, M. Q., and B. S. Arkush 1996 Archaeological Laboratory Methods: An Introduction. Kendall/Hunt, Dubuque, IA. Toulouse, J. 1971 Bottle Makers and Their Marks. Thomas Nelson, New York. USCIR (U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations) 1916 United States Commission on Industrial Relations Final Report and Testimony. Catherwood Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Walker, Mark 2003 The Ludlow Massacre: Class, Warfare, and Historical Memory in Southern Colorado. Historical Archaeology 37(3):66–80.

120

Archaeology and the Colorado Coalfield War Wall, Diana 1991 Sacred Dinners and Secular Teas: Constructing Domesticity in Mid–19thÂ�Century New York. In Gender in Historical Archaeology, ed. Donna Seifert, 69– 81. Society for Historical Archaeology Special Publication 9. 1999 Examining Gender, Class, and Ethnicity in Nineteenth-Century New York City. Historical Archaeology 33(1):102–117. Wegars, P. 1991 Who’s Been Workin’ on the Railroad: An Examination of the Construction, Distribution, and Ethnic Origins of Domed Rock Ovens on Railroad-Related Sites. Historical Archaeology 25(1):37–65. Wood, Margaret 1999 Fighting for Our Homes: An Archaeology of Women’s Domestic Labor and Social Change in a Working Class Coal Mining Community, 1900–1930. PhD dissertation, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. 2002 Moving Toward Transformative Democratic Action through Archaeology. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 6:187–198. Yamin, Rebecca 2001 Alternative Narratives: Respectability at New York’s Five Points. In The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes: Explorations in Slumland, 154–170. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

121

Margaret Wood

4

Building the Corporate Family

Constructing Homes, Families, and the Nation

A year and a half after the tragic events at Ludlow, John D. Rockefeller Jr. embarked on a tour of the coal camps of southern Colorado. Donning overalls, the young Rockefeller visited nearly every camp in the Trinidad area (Figure 4.1). At Berwind he ate with a group of miners in the boardinghouse, visited prisoners in the local jail, and attended a party at which he danced with miners’ wives and daughters (Hogle 1995:93). Rockefeller intended to do more than improve his reputation, which had been sullied by the bloody massacre in 1914. Through close contact with the miners and their families, he wanted to emphasize the underlying philosophy of his new Industrial Representation Plan (IRP). He believed industrial disputes such as those that had raged in southern Colorado occurred because of a lack of communication among owners, managers, and workers (Gitelman 1988). Rockefeller hoped to reestablish “personal relationships” among the parties involved in industry (Rockefeller 1916:7–31). The new corporate structure Rockefeller envisioned was based on the notion that everyone belonged to the corporate family. As in a family, everyone should play their specific role and try to get along. This new corporate philosophy was accompanied by physical renovation of the coal camps, with particular attention paid to the construction and renovation

123

4.1. John D. Rockefeller talking with women. Industrial Bulletin, July 31, 1918:3.

Building the Corporate Family

of workers’ homes. This chapter explores how both management and workers at the Berwind coal camp used landscape, architecture, and material culture in the home to create a set of arguments about the “proper” organization of family, industry, and the American nation. The premise is that the architectural design of domestic structures was intended to foster a particular type of family organization that mirrored the image of the corporate family. Through the construction of detached four-room homes, the company attempted to encourage mining families to conform to the nuclear family ideal. This family type (nuclear) and residential pattern (detached single-family homes) were essential for corporate control. The emerging style of domestic architecture at Berwind was visually reiterated in newly constructed public architecture as well. The stylistic similarities between homes and corporate-funded public buildings conflated the meanings of family and company. Public buildings were used, among other things, for events, activities, and rituals related to citizenship. By linking the company and the nation in these public spaces, Colorado Fuel and Iron (CF&I) hoped to tie patriotism toward the nation with duty to the company. For their part, mining families strategically deployed the symbolic meanings of the homes in which they lived to craft their own definitions of proper family life. Having achieved both the essence and appearance of a true American family, workers at Berwind argued that they were entitled to an American standard of living made possible through higher wages and better working conditions. Mining families at Berwind also manipulated symbolically charged elements of material culture used in their homes, such as home canning jars, to lay claim to patriotism and an American identity. These material assertions were important in a community of immigrants and first-generation Americans who lived in the nativistic political climate of post–World War I America. This chapter deals primarily with the period following the Ludlow Massacre (1915–1930) and discusses the changes brought about by the implementation of the Industrial Representation Plan (IRP). To understand the nature of these transformations, it is necessary to refer to the period before the Ludlow Massacre and the IRP. Thus, comparisons are made throughout the chapter between the period before the IRP (1900–1915) and the period after its implementation (1915–1930). These comparisons are intended to show some of the ways workers and management at Berwind utilized material strategies as they struggled to redefine the shape of industry, family, and the nation-state. Social Engineering: The Industrial Representation Plan and the Companionate Family

During his inspection of the southern Colorado coal camps in 1915, John D. Rockefeller Jr. had put the finishing touches on his great corporate makeover,

125

Margaret Wood

which he claimed would inaugurate democracy in industrial relations and bring about social betterment in the communities under his control. Three years later Rockefeller retraced the route of his 1915 journey to survey the results of his great experiment in corporate and community relations. According to the Industrial Bulletin, a magazine published by CF&I, Rockefeller and his wife, Abby, witnessed complete success of the IRP. They found “employees and company officers working together on terms of harmony and mutual confidence .€.€. and evidence of community and home-like spirit” (Industrial Bulletin [IB], July 31, 1918b:3–4). After stopping at Berwind, the couple moved on to the camp of Sopris, where they participated in a flag-raising ceremony. At a nearby high school, Rockefeller gave a speech entitled “Patriotism and Industry” (IB, July 31, 1918b:5). During the trip, John and Abby Rockefeller were photographed with miners, housewives, children, and women’s groups (particularly Red Cross members, who were involved in the war effort). The events of this trip highlight the convergence of three important sets of relations that were being negotiated and redefined. The organization of industry, the composition of family, and membership in the nation were all in a state of flux. Significantly, these sets of relations were defined not only independently but also in relation to one another. In implementing the IRP, Rockefeller hoped to reorder industrial relations, which he believed had gone terribly astray. At the heart of the philosophy of the IRP was the contention that industrial disputes resulted from inadequate communication between managers and workers. According to Rockefeller, it was not low pay, inadequate worker safety, or exploitive working conditions that led to labor unrest; rather, it was the fact that workers and company managers and owners no longer knew each other personally. This made achieving understanding impossible (Gitelman 1988; Rockefeller 1916:7–31; Selekman and Van Kleeck 1924:28–34). Union representatives had a distinctly different view of relations between labor and capital. Labor leaders emphasized that the two were in an inherently antagonistic relationship because the aim of capital is to maximize profits by minimizing expenditures in the areas of pay, workers’ safety, and other benefits. Rockefeller, on the other hand, believed labor and capital were partners with common interests, each playing its own distinct role in industrial production (Rockefeller 1916). This partnership could be achieved through the mechanisms of the IRP, which mandated that managers and workers work together to discuss disputes. Problems would be solved through conversations, and each party would recognize the other side’s humanity and brotherhood. This would ensure that each side got a fair deal in any dispute (Selekman and Van Kleeck 1924:30). Rockefeller was very selective about the metaphors he used to describe the IRP. While he commonly used the term “brotherhood,” he rarely used the term

126

Building the Corporate Family

“family” (for an exception, see Rockefeller 1916:39). Rockefeller may have consciously sidestepped more explicit kinship terms to avoid accusations of paternalism. Indeed, in many of his early speeches on the IRP, Rockefeller emphatically insisted that the plan was not paternalistic, no doubt aware of the potential drawbacks of the policies of corporate paternalism that were more common in his father’s day. In the early 1890s, the Homestead and Pullman strikes revealed deep unrest and dissatisfaction with paternalistic corporate relations. While capitalists like Andrew Carnegie and George Pullman provided cheap housing and subsidized community entertainment and services for their workers, paternalism meant more than gestures of generosity. It also meant control and intrusion. Rather than resolving industrial conflict, paternalism exacerbated the problems. The central character in the paternalistic corporate structure was the company owner, who acted as a seemingly strict but “benevolent” father with the best interests of his children (workers) in mind. By John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s time, however, this model had proven ultimately ineffective because workers in many instances were unwilling to play the part of subservient and dependent children. By couching his proposals as epitomizing “brotherhood,” Rockefeller may have hoped to avoid the implications of overt power differentials that were inherent in families as well as corporate structures. Union officials, however, were skeptical of what Rockefeller called “brotherhood” or a “partnership.” New expectations regarding family life were being formulated at the same time the IRP was forged (Coontz 1992:133–137; Mintz and Kellogg 1988:107–131; Riley 1995:237). The emerging philosophies about industrial relations and models for family life had a powerful effect on each other. Thus, although Rockefeller carefully chose his metaphors, the parallels between family and company were clear. Around the turn of the twentieth century, a small but influential group of social reformers began to critique the old-style family, which they saw as based on sexual repression, patriarchal authority, and hierarchical organization (Lindsey and Evans 1927). These “experts” sought to facilitate the transition to a new kind of family better suited to modern society and industrial conditions. Dubbed the “companionate family,” this new form of domestic relations involved rethinking the relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children. According to Denver Juvenile Court judge Benjamin B. Lindsey, the ideal marriage was held together by mutual affection and sexual attraction rather than rigid social pressures, financial expediency, or moral duty (Lindsey and Evans 1927). Patriarchal authority, which had deprived women of ultimate decision-making authority in their homes, was to be replaced by a new ideal of negotiation, with shared rights and responsibilities. Children were no longer to be sheltered from the world but rather were granted new freedom from parental control and more latitude

127

Margaret Wood

to express their opinions. Social reformers like Lindsey characterized the companionate family as more democratic than previous forms. In this new model of family life, husbands and wives would be partners. Parents and children would be friends. Disagreements within the family could be overcome if husbands and wives recognized the existence of conflicts and worked out their problems through open communication (Mintz and Kellogg 1988:115). The ideal form of the companionate family sounds ideal indeed, but in practice it brought new possibilities for conflict and confusion. Powerful social conventions dictated that wives remain subordinate to their husbands while still participating in family negotiations. Husbands were expected to consult with their wives but were also expected to make decisions and were ultimately responsible for the family. While the companionate family broke down more explicit forms of patriarchal authority, it also masked the reality that the paramount decisionmaking authority in the home remained invested in husbands and fathers. The similarities between the IRP and the companionate family are striking. Both emphasize what is characterized as a democratization of relations. Both articulate the importance of partnership, shared responsibility, and the existence of distinct but interconnected roles. Both also contend that problems could be addressed most effectively through open communication. New forms of domesticity became a model for emerging strategies of corporate management. Likewise, new forms of family structure mirrored emerging industrial relations. Just as the companionate family ideology masked the reality of power relations within the home, so too did the IRP mask differences in power within the corporate structure. Although some touted the new management program as “practical democracy,” others argued that in practice, very little about the plan resembled democratic relations. U.S. senator Burton K. Wheeler from Montana called the IRP a “snare and a delusion; it is a sham and a fake; it is slavery and tyranny masquerading under the banner of patriotism and brotherhood” (Colorado Labor Advocate, March 1, 1928:1). In a true democracy, the basic theory is that the community has a voice through the mechanism of the vote. Theoretically, each individual in a democracy holds equal power through his or her enfranchisement. Under the IRP, employees of CF&I did have elected representation from within the workforce. While the plan provided a venue to air grievances, it offered no decisionmaking authority for employee representatives or workers (Seligman and Van Kleeck 1924). Ultimately, all decisions were still made by corporate officials who patiently listened to grievances and then proceeded to do as they pleased. No worker sat on a decision-making board. Workers’ committees merely made suggestions or requests to the company. Although it was cloaked in the trappings of democracy, the IRP did nothing to distribute power to workers. Paternalistic

128

Building the Corporate Family

favors such as wage increases granted one day could easily be taken away the next (Seligman and Van Kleeck 1924:385–386). Rockefeller was able to sincerely characterize the IRP as democratic because he had chosen to selectively define democracy and other key terms. For example, Rockefeller had vociferously resisted collective bargaining and unionization of his properties before 1915. By that year, however, he was banding those terms about in corporate board meetings and U.S. Senate hearings, expressing his support for collective bargaining and a company union. This did not mark a radical about-face for Rockefeller; rather, for him these terms had very specific and limited meanings. In the IRP lexicon the “collective” was the company, “bargaining” was getting together to talk, and “union” was the corporate family headed by management. Democratic relations were defined as managers’ willingness merely to interact with workers. Indeed, Rockefeller Jr. publicly characterized his father as one of the most democratic men he had ever met, citing evidence that Rockefeller Sr. made it common practice to talk to workers around his home and had shed a tear at his driver’s funeral (Rockefeller 1916:51). Under this schema, the wielding of power was completely obscured under the guise of democracy. The selective use of terms also cast the corporate structure of CF&I as a quintessentially American institution. The IRP was based on notions of industrial democracy that drew inspiration from the American system of government. The written document outlining the rights and responsibilities of workers and the company was entitled the “Industrial Constitution,” and the IRP was undertaken to create an “industrial republic” (Rockefeller 1916:21). In many ways the IRP’s structure was set up to mimic (superficially) attributes of the branches of the U.S. government (Selekman and Van Kleeck 1924:381–385). By equating the organization of the company with the organization of the United States as a nation, it became difficult to criticize CF&I. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, CF&I capitalized on the crisis and further sought to promote the idea that the interests of the company and those of the nation were one and the same. In 1917 the Industrial Bulletin published an address by President Woodrow Wilson, who encouraged miners to work hard and to think that they were “serving the country and conducting the fight for peace and freedom just as truly and just as effectively as the men on the battlefield or in the trenches” (IB, April 30, 1917d:10). Five months later the company published a statement emphasizing the link between patriotism and hard work: “The nation needs our coal .€.€. therefore .€.€. work steady and to the best purpose. .€.€. [A]ny man who tries to persuade us to quit work or limit production is not our friend or the friend of our country. He is helping the enemy” (IB, September 30, 1917b:3). After the events at Ludlow, the company had frequently been castigated as un-American. Only five years after the massacre, CF&I had begun to successfully

129

Margaret Wood

fuse the idea of company loyalty with that of loyalty to America. By 1920 a CF&I employee could be fired without notice for spreading propaganda disloyal to either the United States or the company (Long 1991:321). “A True American Family”

Notions of proper family life are not benign cultural artifacts. Rather, domesticity is a contested terrain in which specific class, gendered, and even national interests are played out. John and Jean Comaroff, for example, have shown that the household—as both a place and a precept—was a crucial focus in the European colonization of Africa (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992:265–284). Efforts to “domesticate” Africans by encouraging them to take on “typical” European family forms and live in appropriate walled, windowed, and fenced private homes were mirrored in Europe by attempts to “domesticate” the laboring classes, who were cast as “savages” because they did not live up to bourgeois expectations of family and home (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992:265–284). In an even broader sense, some have argued that the nuclear family form and the homes designed to shelter those families were a corollary of capitalism (King 1995). Indeed, both archaeological and historical research has revealed that the “private family home” began to seed itself as the generic social and cultural form in the seventeenth century, just as capitalist relations were establishing a formative foothold in Europe and across the globe ( Johnson 1996). The ideological struggle to naturalize the doctrine of the nuclear family was integral to the middle-class endeavor to secure cultural hegemony. In the United States, the entrenchment of the nuclear family took place in the mid-nineteenth century when native-born members of the white middle class reorganized family life to keep women and children at home, sheltered from the world of work (Coontz 1992:11). These developing middle-class lifestyles and consumption patterns, however, were only possible because of the labor of working-class (and, in some eras, slave) men, women, and children who toiled in factories and fields (Coontz 1992:13; Davis 1981:229). The ideal family and household during this period were thus only a partial reality. Those who were unable to live up to the middle-class ideal were cast as unworthy, uncivilized, or of questionable morals (Edholm 1993). The nuclear family was thus a form of cultural capital, a symbol and manifestation of the social and economic power of the emerging middle class (Davis 1981:228–229). Although the nuclear family was sanctified by the middle class in the nineteenth century, it was not until the 1940s that a majority of white working-class children in the United States lived in households where their mother was a full-time homemaker instead of working beside her husband on the farm, as a domestic, or in a factory or shop (Coontz 1992:157, 1998:xii). Beginning in the

130

Building the Corporate Family

1920s more working-class children went on to high school instead of working in mines, factories, or laundries. Changing age and gender roles were accompanied by changes in residential patterns. Beginning in the 1920s working-class people increasingly tended to live in detached single-family dwellings or apartments occupied by a nuclear family. Extended family members and boarders, previously common components of working-class households, became increasingly rare (Modell and Hareven 1973:468; Skolnick and Skolnick 1986:43). Pressure from social reformers, changes in the national economy, and alterations in American national identity were all instrumental in bringing about these changes in working-Â�class family life. These changes began to take hold at Berwind after the Ludlow Massacre. Household and family reforms were among the favorite projects of ProÂ� gressive-era reformers across the country. Social workers and industrialists alike assumed that the crowded houses and apartments and cacophonous streets in working-class communities were breeding grounds for wickedness, sloth, and political radicalism (Modell and Hareven 1973). The anxiety with which middleclass reformers viewed working-class communities stemmed in part from many of the residents’ immigrant status. Indeed, both social and corporate reformers assumed that it was most working-class people’s immigrant identity, rather than economic necessity, that led them to live in homes that were “not normal,” not nuclear, and not American. Reformers construed women and children working outside the home as evidence of the weakness of working-class families and a manifestation of un-American family values. Prior to the 1920s, most workers in CF&I camps were foreign-born (Wood 2002a:105–106, 344). The company viewed foreigners, whether Mexican, Slavic, or Italian, as wild, “uncivilized” people in need of its guidance. Abundant photographic images from this period exist because local photographers trolled the mining camps, hoping to capture images of foreign interlopers and their exotic appearance (Margolis 1994:4) (Figure 4.2). While the company benefited from the fact that recent immigrants would work for the lowest possible wages and accept the most dangerous jobs, it blamed the workers for the poor conditions of the camps, emphasizing the connection among immigrants, violence, and social decay. Company publications often included tabloid-esque melodramatic descriptions of the perceived chaos in the coal camps. One fine evening a few years ago, an Italian dragged his wife by the hair from their hovel in Starkville, Colorado .€.€. and in the presence of fellow coal miners and a large group of the neighbors’ children, calmly cut her throat with a razor. A few days later, two intoxicated Mexican coke pullers in the same camp .€.€. fought with knives until one, stabbed to the heart, fell in his tracks. The other, after staggering a few hundred feet, died in his blood amidst the

131

Margaret Wood

4.2. Italian mining family, southern Colorado, 1890–1910. Courtesy, Colorado Historical Society, Trinidad Collection, Scan #20004868, Denver, CO.

coal dust and dirt, bottles, tin cans and filth of the street. Naturally these spectacles were not lost upon the children. (Lewis 1905:5939)

Vignettes such as this were taken to typify the family life of foreign-born workers. Violence and aggression ruled the homes and the streets, where children were left to fend for themselves. According to company officials, it was the “foreign” and “uncivilized” element that led to trouble in the community and the workplace. To address this problem, CF&I instituted a series of Americanization and social betterment programs designed to teach foreigners how to live. These programs were aimed at the very root of the “problem” (home and family) and included classes in the English language and also in cooking, sewing, and home decoration. Model homes were established in some camps so workers and their families could tour the facilities to witness how “proper” people lived (Lewis 1905:5945). According to company officials, the dysfunctional nature of foreign families was fostered by the types of houses in which foreign-born workers lived. While CF&I controlled most of the real estate in the coal camps, boardinghouses and small neighborhoods were sometimes owned by outside entrepreneurs. A private boardinghouse owned by a padron (Italian landlord) in Sopris was described in company literature as a den infested with vermin, constructed of crude adobe

132

Building the Corporate Family

4.3. Vernacular housing, Rugby (Las Animas County), Colorado, 1890–1910 (Camp and Plant, January 11, 1902:58). Courtesy, Colorado Historical Society, Trinidad Collection, Scan #20004877, Denver, CO.

brick, with broken windowpanes and little light (Lewis 1905:5939). When company housing was not available, workers sometimes erected their own homes from material they could scavenge (Figure 4.3). The company magazine regularly published pictures of decrepit vernacular homes erected by workers. The title of one photograph of vernacular homes at Berwind reads “Dwelling of Thirty Italians and 500 Goats at Berwind, Colorado” (Camp and Plant [C&P] 1904:318). Editors often juxtaposed images of vernacular housing with those of “modern” housing constructed by CF&I (Margolis 1994:11–14). These photographs served many purposes, but, most important, they supplied mimetic evidence that foreign workers did not know how to live properly when left to their own devices (Figure 4.4). Company officials were troubled by more than the physical structures in which workers lived; they were also deeply concerned about the social content of households. In particular, managers worried about large groups of unrelated people living in the same household. The boardinghouse described earlier was said to be home to thirty-eight Italian miners. After the Ludlow Massacre, company official Lamont Bowers stated with great consternation that “one of the most perplexing and discouraging things we have to contend with is to get some

133

Margaret Wood

4.4. Company housing, Rugby (Las Animas County), Colorado, 1890–1910 (Camp and Plant, January 11, 1902:58). Courtesy, Colorado Historical Society, Welborn Collection, Scan #20005002, Denver, CO.

of the foreign born families to live as we do; their inclination and sometimes their determination is to huddle together with four or five bunks in a room, making a four-room house shelter for fifteen or twenty” (Bowers 1914:127). While these statements are exaggerated, census data indicate that households at Berwind were somewhat larger than the average American household. In 1910 the average U.S. household consisted of 4.54 individuals (Wood 2004:220). At Berwind the average household consisted of 5 individuals (minimum 1, maximum 19) (Wood 2004:220). This trend is explained by the fact that prior to the implementation of the IRP, many mining families at Berwind took in boarders (Wood 2004:220–221). In 1910, for example, 45 percent of households at Berwind had boarders (Wood 2002a, 2002b:66–87). An additional 17 percent of households were all-male households, an arrangement often referred to as “batching” (bachelors). Thus, in 1910, 62 percent of households at Berwind included at least some unrelated people living together. By the early twentieth century, Progressive reformers across the nation had created a name for the practice of taking in boarders—“the lodger evil.” They feared families that took in boarders were subject to social decay. Boarding could destroy families and, by extension, American society (Modell and Hareven 1973:468). For these reformers, it mattered little if biologically related families

134

Building the Corporate Family

lived in close quarters; it was the overcrowding of unrelated people that created social problems. Thus it was social space, not physical space, that was in question. Progressive reformers waged a pitched battle against the “lodger evil” in the ethnic, working-class tenements of cities. These efforts had little effect in the coal camps of Colorado, however. In fact, boarding actually became more common at Berwind between 1900 and 1910 (Wood 2002a:148). Economic necessity, regular layoffs, limited availability of housing, and perhaps ethnic immigration patterns fostered an intensification of boarding at Berwind in the years leading up to the 1913–1914 strike and the Ludlow Massacre. In 1910, 30 percent of all those living in the town were boarders. Nonetheless, by the early twentieth century the middle-class ideal of the lodger-free household was associated with that of the upright, decent, American family (Modell and Hareven 1973). In general, reformers took a two-pronged approach that included both social and physical transformations: changes to the organization of families as well as to the homes in which they lived. They advocated adoption of the model of a true American family—a restricted, exclusive nuclear unit in which women and children were divorced from the world of work (Coontz 1992:13). This social definition of the family was accompanied by expectations of residential isolation for the nuclear family unit. Extended family members and boarders had no place in the true American family. Economically, however, this family structure was impossible to achieve until broader changes in the economy took place. The IRP John D. Rockefeller brought to the coal camps of southern ColoÂ� rado was particular to CF&I, but it also represented an aspect of larger social and economic changes that were occurring nationally. Sometimes referred to as “Fordism,” this new vision of capitalist relations sought to change both systems of production and patterns of consumption (Rupert 2005). In his Highlands, Michigan, automobile plant, Henry Ford introduced the assembly line, instituted a forty-hour workweek, and increased workers’ wages to five dollars per day. The goal of these strategies was not only to regulate production but also to create a class of consumers able to purchase the increasing volume of goods available through mass production. Some scholars have claimed that the development of the detached nuclear family home played a role in this economic process and was seen as complementary to consumer capitalism (King 1995:150). Through this process, workingclass people became homeowners (or, in the case of the coal camps, occupiers of company-owned detached nuclear family houses), and each home possessed a complement of specialized rooms that had to contain appropriate consumer goods (King 1995:150). Ideological factors were equally important. The ownership of small, cheap, yet nonetheless attractive individual bungalows conferred respectability, privacy, and a sense of territorial possession sought by an aspiring working class. For an increasing number of people it became their main symbol

135

Margaret Wood

of home, the psychic fulfillment of the “American dream.” In the second and third decades of the twentieth century, when apartments were considered “communistic,” the vast majority of Americans endorsed the separate single-family house as their ideal (King 1995:151). The next section describes how material culture and changes to Berwind’s landscape and architecture were implicated in the processes described previously. Through the structure of the material landscape at Berwind, CF&I shaped the structure and content of working-class households. These changes had complex and contradictory implications in relations between family members and in relations between the company and its workers. Through material metaphors encased in public buildings and the enactment of rituals surrounding these structures, CF&I encouraged workers to associate loyalty to both family and the community with loyalty to the company. Further, the company emphasized its role as arbiter of American identity through the use of public space. The section also explores how workers used the structure and material content of their homes to forge their own notions of family and to claim an American identity that may have been similar to, yet distinct from, that asserted by corporate interests. “Homes, Not Mere Housing”

In the immediate aftermath of the Ludlow Massacre, CF&I towns were the subjects of intense public scrutiny. Congressional hearings designed to get at the root cause of the 1913–1914 strike revealed that a significant amount of worker discontent resulted from dissatisfaction with living conditions in the camps (Scamehorn 1992:85). An important element of the IRP, which was implemented in 1915, was the improvement and beautification of living conditions in the camps. While miners and their families viewed the IRP with considerable ambivalence, improvements to the community were welcome and were considered one of the plan’s successes (Selekman and Van Kleeck 1924:144). Good living conditions became one of the chief reasons miners chose to work for CF&I, and only a few years after the tragic events at Ludlow, even outsiders were reporting that CF&I camps were the “best kept, cleanest and most modern communities in the area” (Colorado Cooperative Extension Report 1918). In 1924, researchers from the Sage Foundation reported that “the pleasant aspect of many of the camps .€.€. is a demonstration .€.€. of the ambition of the company to provide homes, and not mere ‘housing’ for the miners” (Selekman and Van Kleeck 1924:118). Before the implementation of the IRP, a mix of company and vernacular housing characterized the neighborhoods at Berwind. Vernacular housing usually consisted of impromptu structures constructed from scraps of wood, metal, or rocks workers scavenged from surrounding areas. Rental rates for small pieces of land were considerably cheaper than rental of company-owned homes, mak-

136

Building the Corporate Family

4.5. Map showing footprint of vernacular structures and duplex structures, 1911. State Board of Land Commissioners Plat of Berwind, courtesy, Colorado Fuel & Iron Archives.

ing vernacular construction a somewhat attractive option for some workers and their families. Workers also may have built their own homes during housing shortages, when demand for coal was high and adequate housing was not available for large numbers of workers (Scamehorn 1992:83). In addition, vernacular housing provided more independence from the company. In 1911, 39 percent (n=24) of the houses at Berwind were of vernacular construction. These houses appear to have been somewhat flexible “works in progress.” Maps of the community showing the footprints of these structures reveal a variety of house types (Figure 4.5) (State Board of Land Commissioners [SBLC] 1911). Some are square, while others roughly resemble an asymmetrical rectangle. Rooms appear to have been added as needed, and the homes probably grew and contracted over time. House numbers assigned to the buildings indicate that while some vernacular housing was designed for single families, as many as five distinct households may have occupied some of the longer structures. A similar pattern in vernacular housing was found in early–nineteenthÂ�century Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, where workers constructed their own homes (Shackel 2000). Each domestic site excavated at Harpers Ferry for this period exhibited very different house floor plans, construction materials, and eclectic ceramic types (Lucas and Shackel 1994). Paul Shackel has argued that a lack of imposed order and paternalism eventually came to haunt those who tried to manage labor in Harpers Ferry. Workers in the armory factory there defied attempts to regulate and control the production process (Shackel 2004:47). In addition to the vernacular housing that was common at Berwind in the years prior to implementation of the IRP, there was abundant company-built

137

Margaret Wood

housing. These houses were more standardized and “modern” than the vernacular housing; however, even company homes showed considerable variability. In 1911, 61 percent (n=38) of the homes at Berwind were built and owned by CF&I (SBLC 1911). Camp superintendents were responsible for the construction and upkeep of the houses, and they built homes based on a limited number of two-, three- and four-room floor plans provided by the company (C&P, April 9, 1904:314–315). They were also free to add porches and entryways or to make other changes to the structure (Selekman and Van Kleeck 1924:120). One of the most popular alterations was to attach two three-room houses by a central wall and add a second story, thereby creating a two-story duplex (see Figure 4.5). In 1911, 34 percent (n=13) of company houses at Berwind were duplexes constructed in this manner (SBLC 1911). Miners’ families thus had a variety of housing possibilities: vernacular or company built, single-family or multifamily dwellings. In the years before the implementation of the IRP, miners also had options regarding the social content of their households. In 1910, 45 percent of households took in boarders, and an additional 17 percent of households consisted of groups of men “batching” together (Wood 2002a:148). When formal boardinghouses (2 percent) are included, a total of 64 percent of households at Berwind consisted of unrelated people living together. Even when people lived in singlefamily dwellings, they often used those structures in “unconventional” ways; in other words, they used their houses to shelter more than the nuclear family. Despite much public hand-wringing, CF&I did little before the implementation of the IRP to alleviate housing problems. The company was loath to invest in community upkeep and development when it was not clear how long a mine would be productive (Scamehorn 1992:83). By widely publicizing what corporate officials considered substandard vernacular housing in the company’s publications, CF&I officials shifted the blame for substandard housing onto the largely immigrant population. According to this line of thinking, the social problems in mining camps could be attributed to uncivilized foreigners who clearly did not know how to live properly. Further, company publications, which boasted of “model” company-built homes, often depicted those structures from a distance, obscuring the fact that many of the houses were multifamily dwellings (see Figure 4.4). While these homes were referred to as “modern,” the vast majority did not have electricity, indoor plumbing, toilets, or even a sink pump. In a flurry of activity between 1915 and 1920, major renovations were made to Berwind as part of the IRP. Two new school buildings, a community clubhouse (YMCA), a bathhouse, two churches, a mine office, and numerous new homes were constructed. The number of houses in the town increased from sixty-two in 1910 to ninety-four in 1916. At the same time, old buildings, particularly vernacular structures, were torn down. By 1921 all vernacular structures

138

Building the Corporate Family

4.6. Plan of four-room square house, 1904. Camp and Plant Magazine 5, no. 13 (April 9, 1904):315.

had been eliminated, as had most of the duplex structures (Selekman and Van Kleeck 1924:122). Vernacular structures were replaced by single-family dwellings, constructed from cinder blocks in a four-room, single-story plan. These dwellings usually consisted of a central chimney, hipped roof, and front porch (Figure 4.6). By 1916, 86 percent (n=81) of all houses in Berwind were four-room square homes. While many were newly constructed, several older clapboard single-story fourroom square homes were retained and renovated. The four-room square became the predominant house type at Berwind and at most CF&I camps (Figure 4.7) (Scamehorn 1992:93).

139

Margaret Wood

4.7. Row of four-room square homes at Berwind, 1915. Courtesy, Denver Public Library, Denver, CO.

The four-room square housing plan offered privacy while minimizing the space in each house. Each of the new homes had 672 square feet of space (Wood 2002a:163). This contrasted starkly with the duplex structures that had boasted over 810 square feet of space on each side. The reduction in total square footage may have been a ploy to discourage boarding. In the interiors, privacy became a priority, with each room ideally serving an individual function. Each house had a kitchen, a family room, and two bedrooms. The particularized use of space in the homes was further reinforced by the construction of special-use facilities such as bathhouses. This new use of household space can be contrasted with the use of interior space before the implementation of the IRP, when kitchens served as washrooms and living rooms often served as bedrooms for boarders at night. Archaeologists working in other industrial communities have noted the ways corporate managers consciously manipulated the order and organization of worker housing (Mrozowski, Ziesing, and Beaudry 1996; Pappas 2004; Shackel 1996). In Lowell, Massachusetts, Stephen Mrozowski, Grace Ziesing, and Mary Beaudry (1996) demonstrated that the regularity of room size and layout in the interior of boardinghouses created an atmosphere of egalitarianism that also facilitated corporate control. Likewise, California logging camps constructed

140

Building the Corporate Family

4.8. Bar chart showing household composition at Berwind, 1910 and 1920.

in the 1950s were organized to reinforce paternalism and fictive kin relations among workers, managers, and the corporation (Pappas 2004:162). In Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, home spaces were transformed in the mid-Â�nineteenth century as a more rigid order was imposed on the landscape. Both work and home spaces were reorganized to create a more efficient and compliant workforce (Shackel 1996). The construction of four-room square homes at Berwind did not dictate the social composition of households, yet it clearly had an effect (Figure 4.8). While nuclear family households comprised only 25 percent (n=39) of homes in 1910, by 1920 nearly 60 percent (n=70) of households were exclusive nuclear family units. In contrast, in 1910 almost 45 percent (n=68) of households took in boarders; by 1920 only 6 percent (n=15) of households did so. The practice of “batching” also declined sharply, from 17 percent (n=27) in 1910 to just 5 percent (n=6) in 1920. The trend clearly leaned toward privileging the nuclear family and

141

Margaret Wood

4.9. Four-room square home with fence and yard, 1920s. Courtesy, Bessemer Historical Soci� ety, Pueblo, CO.

toward residential isolation of that social unit. In the case of Berwind, it is not clear if this pattern was a result of company policy or if mining families themselves preferred this arrangement. Residential isolation was further facilitated by the placement of four-room square homes on the landscape. Each identical home was placed in the center of a lot. Outhouses, coal sheds, and chicken coups were laid out in each yard in a uniform fashion. The landscape became marked by corporate efficiency, consistency, and redundancy. The delineation of space was further emphasized by the construction of wire fences held in place with sturdy iron posts (Figure 4.9). A fence surrounded each home, defining yard areas and personal family space. As was the case with the emerging bungalow suburbs across the nation, a private, fenced family yard was considered essential to the definition of the nuclear family home (King 1995:150). These fences gave a physical and geographic shape to the definition of the nuclear family. It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of fence building in the IRP. It was one of the earliest projects undertaken under the plan, and Rockefeller specifically mentioned it in numerous speeches (Rockefeller 1916:21, 45). Indeed,

142

Building the Corporate Family

the Industrial Constitution stipulated that fences surround each home, both old and new (Rockefeller 1916:73). Before the institution of the IRP at Berwind, only the homes of the superintendent and the doctor were fenced (SBLC 1911). The space outside workers’ homes, by contrast, was unmarked and undivided. Management saw the indistinct physical boundaries between homes as symptomatic of the indistinct social boundaries that were characteristic of households at Berwind. Defining yards through the use of fences was intended to promote a desire to care for the houses and to instill pride among residents (Selekman and Van Kleeck 1924:120). While the company was certainly interested in protecting its investments, there was more to the fencing program than simply encouraging neatness among employees. As the community was increasingly regimented into small single-family homes, the outer limits of which were defined by fences, the distinction between nuclear family and “other” was emphasized. This residential pattern limited contact between workers, thereby fostering a sense of individual rather than collective identity. In addition, although the miners did not own their homes, the fences defined “symbolic” private property. In some limited way, each worker controlled his home and the space around it. Although the company maintained the title to the homes, it sought to give residents a sense of property ownership and the associated values. As households were reorganized into exclusive nuclear family units, people began to participate in practices that naturalized what was assumed to be the enduring nature of the nuclear family. They did this by using nature itself. Each year residents spent hours fostering the growth of flowers and vegetables in their yards. They adorned their homes with pots of blooming flowers, and neat rows of vegetables were cultivated in backyards. Fences were emblazoned with brilliant blooms from the lush vines that entangled themselves on wire lattices. At the height of the growing season, committees would tour the camp and award cash prizes (provided by the company) to the best gardens (IB, October 31, 1917c:15). These practices wrapped the socially constructed residential and social unit of the nuclear family in the cloak of Mother Nature, thereby reinforcing the notion that the nuclear family was a product of nature. The architectural and residential changes in the community had greater implications than the mere psychological effects produced through the division of homes and yards. The isolation of nuclear families in private homes also promoted new gendered economic relations. Before the IRP reorganized the community, as mentioned previously, women could earn a substantial proportion of the family’s income by taking in boarders (Wood 2002a:184). Employment opportunities for women in isolated camps were virtually nonexistent, but boarding was one way a woman could supplement her spouse’s income. After managers implemented the IRP, however, taking in boarders became a far less

143

Margaret Wood

common practice, meaning far fewer women were contributing cash to the household economy. Miners’ wages rose significantly after 1915, and subsidized housing helped to compensate somewhat for the loss of women’s income (Wood 2002a:346). Families, however, were more than ever completely dependent on the income of a single wage earner—the miner. As mining families became a less diversified economic unit, they were more vulnerable to the whims of corporate policies and, from the company’s perspective, were easier to control. The decrease in women’s monetary contributions to the household also probably reinforced the already existing patriarchal authority within mining homes. While democratic “companionate marriage” may have been held up as an ideal, power was not equally distributed within the household but rather was importantly vested in gender and in men’s wage-earning privilege. The hierarchical ordering of men over women that was reinforced through the new social relations within households naturalized the patriarchal authority the company held over the workers at Berwind. By building certain kinds of domestic structures and encouraging nuclear family residential patterns, the company was crafting a microcosm of the corporate relations it was hoping to create. Just as the nuclear family unit was characterized by gradations of power, with a husband/father in the position of primary authority, so too was the company organized through a hierarchy of decision-making and economic authority. Just as the hierarchy of the family was obfuscated through the ideology of the companionate family, so too was the hierarchy of the corporate family obfuscated through the ideology of industrial democracy and the IRP. Fenced yards and four-room single-family dwellings supported the ideology of uncontested family relations. Identical individual homes came together to form the unified corporate family. The physical and cultural landscape at Berwind united all workers into the CF&I family. In 1916, Rockefeller erected a massive camp clubhouse (YMCA) at Berwind that was designed to be the social heart of the corporate-based community (Figure 4.10) (IB, October 31, 1916:14). It occupied one of the highest points of land in town and was situated at the entrance to the community at the mouth of Road Canyon. Anyone coming into or going from Berwind passed its substantial three-story concrete buttressed walls. The clubhouse was by far the largest nonindustrial structure in town and had been constructed at a cost of $15,000; the majority of the funds were donated by Rockefeller (IB, October 31, 1916:14). Although Rockefeller vociferously denied that the IRP was paternalistic in any sense, he did not hide the fact that he subsidized the cost of construction in all of the communities (IB, April 30, 1917b:4). Indeed, company president Jesse Welborn presided over the clubhouse’s dedication ceremony, proudly handing over the keys to the new building. This facility—which included a bowling alley, barbershop, billiard room, basketball court, soda fountain, and meeting rooms—

144

Building the Corporate Family

4.10. YMCA featuring similarities to domestic architecture, 1920s. Courtesy, Bessemer His� torical Society, Pueblo, CO.

was managed by the YMCA, an organization that received over $8 million in donations from Rockefeller Jr. in the early 1920s (Selekman and Van Kleeck 1924). Special events held at the clubhouse included dances, boxing matches, movies, and concerts. At Christmas, 600 people crowed into the assembly hall to watch pageants performed by schoolchildren (IB, January 31, 1918a:18). The strategic placement of the clubhouse on a prominent landform at the entrance to the community was intended to emphasize the importance of community relations. Archaeologists who study the strategic use of space have often argued that the placement of certain structures, such as plantation great houses and churches, on elevated areas can reinforce the authority of certain individuals or institutions. This use of space has also been shown to facilitate the control of others through direct observation (Delle 1998; Epperson 2000; Shackel 1994). At Berwind, the placement of the clubhouse was a more subtle statement about the practice of power couched in the language of family and community. The clubhouse’s architectural style mirrored the style of the homes in the community (see Figures 4.9 and 4.10). Like the workers’ homes, the clubhouse was made of concrete, was symmetrical, simple, and had a low-pitched hipped roof. Also like the workers’ homes, the clubhouse had a front porch that served as a gathering place. By using materials and styles similar to those used in houses, the company created a larger version of the home in the community clubhouse

145

Margaret Wood

where members of both the community and the corporate family could meet. More than a shared geographic location defined the community. The family identity that was fostered in the clubhouse owed its existence to the company that had created both the building and the community itself. Although the CF&I worked diligently to avoid overt claims to control over the community, its authority was always present. Only three months after the clubhouse dedication, a new mine office was completed immediately next to the clubhouse. At the same time, a new home for the camp superintendent was built immediately across the road. Soon thereafter, most of the junior managers moved to the surrounding neighborhood. The clustering of the mine office, clubhouse, and the superintendent’s home, as well as the Corwin School (named after the company surgeon), created something that approximated a town center. Through the association of corporate facilities, management housing, community recreation facilities, and educational facilities, CF&I created a clear reminder that it constituted the heart of the community. Recreational and educational facilities were gifts from the company to its employees. The most important message conveyed through this juxtaposition was that the community and the company were one and the same. All of the good feelings, the sense of belonging, and the creation of common identities fostered through interactions in the community clubhouse were grafted onto the company. Positive identification with the community translated into identification with and loyalty to the company, which was reinforced through the kinds of activities organized at the clubhouse. Basketball and baseball teams were formed every year, and teams from Berwind competed with teams from other CF&I camps. Baseball, the American national pastime, was by far the most popular team sport, and hundreds of people attended games held at the diamond on the outskirts of the camp (Figure 4.11). The company sponsored these teams and reported on them in its magazine. These activities blurred the lines between work and leisure, company and community. The clubhouse was not only a location for cementing loyalty to CF&I through the conflation of personal and corporate relations; it was also the site where patriotism to the nation was manipulated to ensure that workers were loyal to the company. The company encouraged its employees to improve themselves by becoming U.S. citizens, offering Americanization classes in citizenship, American history, and English at the clubhouse (Pan 1994). The assumption was that if workers were more “American,” they would conform willingly to the needs and desires of the company. During World War I, the clubhouse was used for a variety of patriotic activities, including Red Cross meetings and classes in food preservation. The America First Society met regularly at the clubhouse. The society was a nationalistic state-funded organization whose members were supposed to oppose enemies of liberty and promote a unified nation with one

146

Building the Corporate Family

4.11. Berwind baseball team near the clubhouse, 1922. Photograph by Margaret C. Wood.

language and one flag. In 1917, over 600 people attended an event to honor the men of the camp who had enlisted for military service (IB, October 31, 1917d:19). At the end of the war, similar festivities honored the soldiers’ return. Even after the war, the clubhouse continued to be the location of patriotic spectacle, especially on the Fourth of July. As the largest building in town and the only structure substantial enough to host mass meetings, the clubhouse became the locus of patriotic activities. It was here that community members worked to achieve citizenship and displayed their dedication to the country. Other large gatherings, such as union meetings, were not allowed at the clubhouse despite workers’ efforts to arrange gatherings there. In the clubhouse the community, the company, and the nation became one: a nested hierarchy of families. The new architecture and landscape at Berwind represented a form of material culture over which John D. Rockefeller Jr. and CF&I officials held sway. In this sense it most obviously reflected the version of social life the company was attempting to create. Within the spaces and places created by the company, however, mine workers’ families created versions of family and nation that served their own purposes.

147

Margaret Wood

An American Standard of Living

It would be a mistake to assume that the families of mine workers were somehow forced into nuclear family households against their will. The ideal of a “family wage” had been a rallying cry for organized labor since the mid-nineteenth century (Glickman 1997). There is also no indication that mine workers preferred to live in households with boarders or other unrelated people. Rather, economic necessity was probably an important reason boarding was so common. When new subsidized individual family homes were made available, miners’ families may have jumped at the opportunity. Leases for the newly built homes may have limited or banned boarding (Lewis 1925:174). Whatever the reasons, mining families at Berwind quickly embraced the nuclear family bungalows. In doing so, they were able to grasp the powerful cultural capital inherent in the nuclear family and claim a “true American” identity. Changes in Berwind’s social and physical structure occurred during a period of hyper-patriotism and anti-foreign sentiment. The Red Scare swiftly followed World War I, which had seemingly proven U.S. social, cultural, and technological superiority. Fear and loathing of all things foreign were palpable. Any foreign identity brought suspicions of radicalism and Bolshevism. President Wilson founded the Committee on Public Information, which encouraged people to spy on their neighbors. Jingoism encouraged by national policy incited violence on a local level as mobs lynched, castrated, and burned those suspected of being radicals (Luebke 1974:4–11). Americanization crusades used intimidation and threats of violence to encourage workers to abandon ethnic identities and immigrant roots in favor of a more unified American identity. Among the groups considered most suspicious were labor unions and immigrant workers who appeared to have Bolshevik tendencies. These social trends put great pressure on the workers at Berwind. In the early 1920s it was clear that the emerging forms of nationalism demanded conformity. In an interesting twist, however, organized labor and workers retooled what appeared to be the self-evident superiority of the United States and used it to their own ends. In 1925 John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), published a book entitled The Miner’s Fight for American Standards. In this volume Lewis attempted to out corporate interests that claimed to be quintessentially American. He began to reshape and control the debate by measuring Americanism according to a socially determined “American Standard of Living” (Glickman 1997). Experiences in Europe during the war had shown that Americans had a vastly superior standard of living compared with Europeans. All Americans, it seemed, were entitled to a certain standard of living defined by their ability to consume. According to Lewis, this standard of living distinguished Americans socially, morally, and ethically from residents of other nation-states. If this was the case, he questioned, how could Americans

148

Building the Corporate Family

allow the country’s mine workers to live in run-down shacks in rural communities? That was un-American. This tactic was not meant to shame the American public into action as much as it was designed to play on their sense of hubris and superiority. Essential to winning higher wages, safer working conditions, and better homes were arguments about the workers’ ethnic and national identity. The CF&I had long been able to avoid paying higher wages or improving living conditions by claiming that its workforce was made up mostly of foreigners who did not know how to live well even when provided with adequate facilities. This argument became more difficult to sustain after implementation of the IRP, as workers displayed their willingness to live in detached nuclear family households that conformed to middle-class expectations. By embracing the isolated nuclear family structures, workers laid claim to an American identity that entitled them to an American standard of living. No longer could they be defined as a foreign untamed “other.” Working-class families at Berwind, however, were not merely buying into middle-class values. Unlike middle-class domesticity, which reduced family life and gender roles to issues of morality, the working class used family structure and gender roles to raise questions about larger issues involving industrial justice and social democracy. They justified unionism on the basis that it made a dignified life possible for families. Likewise, working-class people at Berwind had distinct views of what it meant to be an American—perspectives that differed from corporate definitions of Americanism and democracy. Even when workers at Berwind went on strike again in 1927, led by the more socialist-leaning Industrial Workers of the World, marchers paraded behind the American flag and sang patriotic songs. When members of the American Legion snatched a flag from the striking workers, strike leader Mika Sablich exclaimed, “We are American citizens as well as the rest of you and we have the right to fly our flag. We will fight for that flag” (Denver Evening News, October 27, 1927:1). Clearly, the strikers were willing to stand behind the nation, but it would be America as they defined it, which was distinct in many respects from the ways corporate interests defined it. Household Activities and American Identity

Today, on the scrubby, weed-choked landscape that was once the bustling coal camp of Berwind, it is easy to see the outlines of the houses that once sheltered mining families. In 1999, in association with the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project, I conducted excavations in two neighborhoods at Berwind: one occupied before the IRP (1900–1915) and one built as part of the IRP (1915– 1929). The latter neighborhood was occupied until 1929, when the town was

149

Margaret Wood

Table 4.1. Vessel counts and percentages of artifacts excavated from midden in Berwind neighborhood built as part of the Industrial Representation Plan (IRP)

Number (% of total assemblage)

Total (% of total assemblage)

Glass 69 (19%) Food-related Medicine/health/hygiene 31 (9%) Household-related 5 (1%) Recreation (alcohol) 0 General container (unrecognized) 46 (13%) 151 (43%) Metal Food-related 29 (8%) Medicine/health/hygiene 1 (.2%) Household-related 7 (2%) Recreation (alcohol) 0 General container (unrecognized) 5 (1%) 42 (12%) Ceramic Food-related 135 (38%) Medicine/health/hygiene 0 Household-related 7 (2%) Recreation (alcohol) 10 (3%) General container (unrecognized) 8 (2%) 160 (45%) TOTAL

353 (100%)

closed and destroyed by CF&I. The objective of these excavations was to explore the everyday lives of mining families and the ways their experiences changed after the Ludlow Massacre and the implementation of the IRP. Material culture excavated from these areas revealed interesting patterns in the use of everyday objects and the symbolic content of women’s work as the nature of home, family, and national identity was transformed. The neighborhood built after implementation of the IRP consisted of six four-room square house foundations and the ruins of their associated outbuildings. We excavated twenty 1-meter test units in a sheet midden associated with the structures. The feature was relatively shallow and consisted of three layers extending to a depth of 0.35 meter below the surface. Artifacts indicated a mean date of 1917; however, layer B contained a bottle base with a patent date of 1919, giving this level a terminus post quem of 1919. The presence of a Coke™ bottle produced after 1924 and a hinged lid medicine tin suggests that material on the surface primarily dated to the mid- to late 1920s. We excavated a total of 353 vessels from this feature, including 151 glass vessels, 160 ceramic vessels, and 42 metal vessels (Table 4.1). When each of these

150

Building the Corporate Family Table 4.2. Counts and percentages of food-related vessels excavated from Berwind neighborhoods that dated before and after the 1915 implementation of the IRP Food consumption/service Food preparation Food storage General container Total

Neighborhood Occupied after IRP (1916–1930), number (% of food-related assemblage)

Neighborhood Occupied before IRP (1900–1915), number (% of food-related assemblage)

111 (48%) 53 (23%) 66 (28%) 3 (1%) 233

215 (53%) 125 (31%) 43 (11%) 22 (5%) 405

material types is broken down into functional group categories (food-related, medical health/hygiene, household-related, recreation), the numerical importance of food-related items becomes (not surprisingly) apparent. Sixty-six percent (n=233) of all vessels were utilized in activities involving food. Food-related artifacts included material used in food consumption/service (e.g., plates, serving dishes), food preparation (e.g., mixing bowls, tin cans, pans, measuring cups), and food storage (e.g., home canning jars, crocks). Forty-eight percent of the assemblage was used in food consumption/service activities, 23 percent in food preparation, and 28 percent for food storage. These numbers become meaningful when compared with the same breakdown for artifacts excavated from a midden in the neighborhood occupied before the IRP (pre1915) (Table 4.2). The primary difference between these two assemblages is that over time, food preparation items became less prominent (8% decrease), while food storage items became more important (17% increase). When broken down by material type, certain functional categories of artifacts clearly account for this pattern (Table 4.3). Among the metal artifacts, tin cans, which were classified as food preparation items, were more abundant in the neighborhood that dated before the IRP. Conversely, zinc jar lids, which were classified as food storage items, were more numerous in the neighborhood that dated after the IRP. In the grouping of glass artifacts, jar lid liners (food storage) were also more abundant in the later neighborhood. An increase in stoneware storage crocks accounts for the larger number of ceramic food storage items in this neighborhood as well. Overall, the pattern seems to suggest an intensification of activities related to home canning (Figure 4.12). This trend can be explained in part as a pragmatic strategy to save money. As mentioned previously, mining households at Berwind after 1915 were completely dependent on the wages of a single wage earner. Although wages in the late 1910s and early 1920s were higher than they had been in previous years, the cost of living had risen sufficiently to absorb almost all the benefits of the wage increases (Wood 2002a:346). In addition, regular wage cuts and layoffs loomed as

151

Margaret Wood

Table 4.3. Food-related vessels by material type from Berwind neighborhoods occupied before and after the 1915 implementation of the IRP

Neighborhood Occupied after IRP (1916–1930), number (% of food-related assemblage)

Glass Food consumption/service Food preparation Food storage General container

15 (6%) 28 (12%) 24 (10%) 2 (0.8%)

Metal Food consumption/service 1 (0.4%) Food preparation 16 (7%) Food storage 12 (5%) General container Ceramic Food consumption/service Food preparation Food storage General container Total

95 (41%) 9 (4%) 30 (13%) 1 (0.4%) 233

Neighborhood Occupied before IRP (1900–1915), number (% of food-related assemblage) 36 33 17 11

(9%) (8%) (4%) (3%)

0 78 (19%) 2 (0.4%) 0 179 (44%) 14 (3%) 24 (6%) 11 (3%) 405

a constant threat for most families at Berwind. Given the tenuousness of employment and earnings, mining housewives probably embraced home canning as a way to cushion their families against the exigencies of the fickle labor market. Economic necessity and socially marginal identities, however, only partially explain this pattern. The trend that is apparent at Berwind contrasts starkly with the findings of Paul Mullins (1999), who excavated African American sites in Maryland that date to the same time period. On a series of sites, Mullins noted a relative dearth of home canning jars but an abundance of mass-produced tin cans (Mullins 1999:178). He attributed this pattern to a decrease in home food production as a result of African Americans’ desire to participate in consumer citizenship. While the trend pointed out by Mullins does not hold for the assemblage at Berwind, his observations about the socially meaningful, sometimes even symbolic consumption of material culture can lead us to a contextually specific understanding of what may have been happening at Berwind. During World War I women were encouraged to grow and can their own food. Women’s efforts in home food production and conservation were essential to the war effort. By supplying food for their families, women eased the demand on national food resources needed to supply troops overseas. The CF&I Industrial Bulletin regularly ran articles on food preservation and home canning, perpetuating the patriotic aspects of this work: “Everyone who creates or cul-

152

Building the Corporate Family

4.12. Home canning–related items.

tivates a garden helps, and helps greatly, to solve the problem of feeding the nation, and .€.€. every housewife who practices strict economy puts herself in the ranks of those who serve the nation” (IB, April 30, 1917e:10). Government campaigns to promote home canning included slogans like “We Can Can Vegetables, and the Kaiser Too” (Strasser 1982:23). In 1917, fifty women at Berwind (40% of all women there) attended a training session on home canning hosted by the Colorado Agricultural College (Cooperative Extension Service) (IB, October 31, 1917f:20). The company encouraged workers in the coal camps to transform their yards, recently enclosed with fences, into large vegetable gardens (IB, April 30, 1917e:14). During the war years, women across the country were asked first and foremost to give up their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons to the trenches and battlefields of Europe. In the coal camps, however, most men stayed home to mine the coal that fueled the military machinery. Women in the camps, many of them immigrants and first-generation Americans, exhibited their loyalty to the nation through participation in activities construed as patriotic. Paramount among these activities were food preservation and economic living, although Liberty Bond drives and involvement in Red Cross activities were also important. In the context of a community and a nation gripped by jingoism and nativism, where everyone’s motives were suspect—especially those considered foreign or

153

Margaret Wood

potentially radical—overt participation in these patriotic activities helped assert and prove an American identity. Across the country, canning was a common wartime activity, but most women quickly abandoned it after the fighting stopped. Women at Berwind, by contrast, continued to put efforts into home canning even after the war had drawn to a close. Strata dating after 1919 contain the heaviest concentration of home canning–related items. Women at Berwind intensified their home canning in this period despite the fact that the cost of food available in tin cans dropped after the war (Colorado Industrial Commission 1924). This suggests that there was more to this activity than mere economy. In addition to the pragmatic and economic reasons for home canning, women in this neighborhood may have continued canning in part because of its associations with American-ness and patriotism. These immigrant and first-generation American women may also have continued canning because of its association with modern methods of housekeeping. For the women of southern Colorado, the process and technology of home canning were modern and were introduced by Cooperative Extension agents who served the nation’s rural areas in the late 1910s and early 1920s. Other modern “scientific” housekeeping equipment found on the site included thermometers, food weighing scales, and measuring cups. While at first these items might not seem striking, their presence in this context is important. Before the implementation of the IRP, CF&I had labored with little success to get the women to attend cooking and housekeeping classes. With much consternation, company officials reported time and again that their efforts were thwarted by immigrant women who refused to accept the authority of home economics experts and insisted on maintaining their households in their own way. In the neighborhood that dated from before the implementation of the IRP, no labor-saving or modern kitchen devices were found. After the implementation of the IRP, women were apparently more willing to adopt some modern housekeeping methods, thus minimizing the differences between themselves and other Americans. While these kinds of activities and the use of certain objects of material culture may have allowed mining families to assert a generic modern American identity, the social relations built around that work might have allowed them to finesse and manipulate the meanings of American-ness. The process of home canning is often a cooperative effort among women. Archaeologist Leslie StewartAbernathy, for example, has found that oral history informants who were shown home canning jar artifacts excavated from a twentieth-century farmstead in the Ozarks spoke about the objects in the context of “shared experiences of women raising vegetables and processing them on hot stoves in the summer, and hence we would say they proclaimed social solidarity” (Steward-Abernathy 1992:115). Home canning includes several stages that often involve collective effort. Pressure cookers, necessary for efficient home canning, were rather expensive,

154

Building the Corporate Family

and it was not unusual for women to purchase such items together or to share them with other households ( Jensen 1986:211). In addition, the work related to home canning is sudden and intense. When crops come in, food needs to be preserved and processed within relatively short periods. Women often pooled labor for this time-sensitive work or traded canned goods when they were finished canning to provide their households with more varieties of food. Sara Deutsch and Joan Jensen have documented such incidences of women’s laborsharing practices in nearby northern New Mexico in the early twentieth century (Deutsch 1987:56; Jensen 1986:211). While home canning had the effect of linking households with the nation through claims to a common American identity, it also had the contradictory effect of creating social relations that were cooperative rather than individualistic, values that could have easily been construed as communistic and un-American. Women participated in this work in particularly complex ways. They used it to fit into society but also to broaden the definition of what an American could be and what the nation’s social relations could look like. In this way, they used this material culture both to conform to dominant expectations and to forge their own definitions of Americanism and family. Conclusion

In her book Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life (2000), Judy Attfield argues that the things that make up everyday life are created with a specific end in view—whether to fulfill a particular task, make a statement, objectify moral values, express individual or group identity, denote status, demonstrate technological prowess, exercise social control, or flaunt political power. Material culture at Berwind, including the homes and everyday objects, was clearly used in all these ways. Despite the reasons behind their creation and design, material objects are multivalent. Their meanings may change over time and may also vary based on the social position of the observer (Miller 2001:1–16). It is difficult, then, to clearly classify patterns in material transformations at Berwind as unambiguously representing social control or resistance, accommodation or tactic. For example, do the four-room square houses represent a victory for the workers who demanded better housing during the 1913–1914 strike, or were they part of a larger strategy to control workers? Did these homes and nuclear families give workers new leverage to substantiate their demands, or were they sites at which more complete patriarchal domination was imposed on women? Were workers complying with expectations of “proper” American family life, or were they forging their own views of family and nation? The answer to all these questions is probably “both.” As interpreters of the past, we would like history to occur in neat, clear, even moralistic packages that fit into clearly

155

Margaret Wood

defined narrative structures. The fact remains, however, that human actions are often contradictory, and we need to allow room for ambivalence and historical indeterminacy in our reconstructions of the past. Likewise, we need to approach material culture with an eye toward the multiplicity of meanings that may be associated with a physical entity, like the home or even a canning jar, that is charged with moral, social, and political implications. What is clear, however, is that in the early twentieth century strong parallels existed between emerging forms of corporate structure and emerging forms of family relations. The troubling thing about this is that each was accompanied by powerful ideologies that professed equality, brotherhood, and democratic ideals that masked the reality of hierarchical, patriarchal, and paternalistic relations. As the family became a model and a mirror for corporate relationships and, conversely, corporate relationships became a model for the family, each reinforced and naturalized the other. In the years immediately following 9/11, which bear a striking resemblance to the post–World War I period, family has again become a central issue in the definition of the nation-state. While the terms of the debate are somewhat different, America’s well-being has been linked to the perpetuation of what has been dubbed the “traditional family.” While historians have argued that the socalled traditional family is more a myth than a reality, the heterosexual nuclear family “norm” has been a potent rallying cry for those who seek to codify the definition of family and nation in a single unified fashion. The changing form, meaning, and content of homes at Berwind reveal a set of arguments about the proper nature of the social order, and ultimately the nation, that is based on the fundamental structure of the family. Workers’ houses in particular were signs in concrete and clapboard of the relations within them and of the ties that radiated outward from them. These houses, however, were multivalent, and the meanings of home, family, and nation were to some extent “up for grabs.” As both a physical and a social entity, the households at Berwind were integral to the transformation of social relations between men and women, workers and the company, citizens and the nation-state. Acknowledgments. A Dissertation Improvement Grant from the Wenner Gren Foundation generously funded this research. The Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project also provided kind support. Many thanks, as always, to my advisers and friends, Lou Ann Wurst, Doug Armstrong, and Randy McGuire. Works Cited Attfield, J. 2000 Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life (Materializing Culture). Berg, Oxford.

156

Building the Corporate Family Bowers, L. M. 1914 The Great Strike in Colorado. Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, 127. Camp and Plant magazine (C&P) 1904 Housing Number issue 5(4). Colorado Cooperative Extension 1918 Agents Annual Report, Las Animas County, CO. Colorado Industrial Commission 1924 Eighth Annual Report of the Industrial Commission of Colorado, 1923–1924. State of Colorado, Denver. Colorado Labor Advocate 1928 Senator Wheeler’s Comments on IRP 6(20):1. Comaroff, J., and J. C. Comaroff 1992 Ethnography and the Historical Imagination. Studies in the Ethnographic Imagination. Westview, Boulder. Coontz, S. 1992 The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. Basic Books, New York. Coontz, S. (editor) 1998 American Families: A Multicultural Reader. Routledge, London. Davis, A. 1981 Women, Race and Class. Vintage Books, New York. Delle, J. A. 1998 An Archaeology of Social Space: Analyzing Coffee Plantations in Jamaica’s Blue Mountains. Plenum, New York. Deutsch, S. 1987 No Separate Refuge: Culture, Class and Gender on an Anglo-Hispanic Frontier in the American Southwest, 1880–1940. Oxford University Press, New York. Edholm, F. 1993 The View from Below: Paris in the 1800s. In Landscape: Politics and Perspectives, ed. B. Bender, 139–167. Berg, Oxford. Epperson, T. W. 2000 Panoptic Plantations: The Garden Sights of Thomas Jefferson and George Mason. In Lines That Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class and Gender, ed. J. A. Delle, S. Mrozowski, and R. Paynter, 58–77. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Gitelman, H. M. 1988 The Legacy of the Ludlow Massacre: A Chapter in American Industrial Relations. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Glickman, L. B. 1997 A Living Wage: American Workers and the Making of Consumer Society. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.

157

Margaret Wood

Hogle, J. T. 1995 The Rockefeller Plan: Workers, Managers and the Struggle over Unionism in the Colorado Fuel and Iron, 1915–1942. PhD dissertation, University of Colorado, Boulder. Industrial Bulletin magazine (IB) 1916 YMCA at Berwind 2(1):14. 1917a Berwind Baseball 2(5):12. 1917b Final Obstacle Removed 2(4):4. 1917c Garden Awards Announced 3(1):15. 1917d Appeal from President Wilson 2(4):10. 1917e To Gardeners and Housewives 2(4):10. 1917f Canning Classes Swat at Cost of Living 3(1):20. 1918a Christmas Pageant at Berwind 3(2):17. 1918b A Visit and a Return 3(4):3–9. Jensen, J. M. 1986 Canning Comes to New Mexico: Women and the Agricultural Extension Service 1914–1919. In New Mexico Women: Intercultural Perspectives, ed. J. M. Jensen and D. A. Miller, 201–226. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Johnson, M. 1996 An Archaeology of Capitalism. Blackwell, Cambridge. King, A. D. 1995 The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture. Oxford University Press, New York. Lewis, J. L. 1925 The Miner’s Fight for American Standards. Bell, Indianapolis. Lewis, L. 1905 Uplifting 17,000 Employees: The Human Story of Workers Who Were Led by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company from Conditions of Drunkenness and Dirt to Well-Ordered Living—a Local Betterment Effort Reaching 70,000 Men, Women and Children in Four Commonwealths. In The World’s Work, 5939–5950. Doubleday Page, New York. Lindsey, B. B., and W. Evans 1927 Companionate Marriage. Boni and Liveright, New York. Long, P. 1991

Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America’s Bloody Coal Industry. Paragon House, New York.

Lucas, M., and P. A. Shackel 1994 Changing Social and Material Routine in Nineteenth-Century Harpers Ferry. Historical Archaeology 28(4):27–36. Luebke, F. C. 1974 Bonds of Loyalty: German Americans and World War I. Northern Illinois University Press, Dekalb.

158

Building the Corporate Family Margolis, E. 1994 Images in Struggle: Photographs of Colorado Coal Camps. Visual Sociology 9(1): 4–26. Miller, D. 2001 Home Possessions: Material Culture behind Closed Doors. Berg, Oxford. Mintz, S., and S. Kellogg 1988 Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life. Free Press, New York. Modell, J., and T. Hareven 1973 Urbanization and the Malleable Household: An Examination of Boarding and Lodging in American Families. Journal of Marriage and the Family 35:467–479. Mrozowski, S. A., G. H. Ziesing, and M. Beaudry 1996 Living on the Boott: Historical Archaeology at the Boott Mills Boarding House, Lowell, Massachusetts. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst. Mullins, P. 1999 Affluence and Race. Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York. Pan, D. 1994

Peace and Conflict in an Industrial Family: Company Identity and Class Consciousness in a Multi-ethnic Community, Colorado Fuel and Iron’s Cameron and Walsen Coal Camps, 1913–1928. MA thesis, University of Colorado, Boulder.

Pappas, E. I. 2004 Fictive Kin in the Mountains: The Paternalistic Metaphor and Households in a California Logging Camp. In Household Chores and Household Choices: Theorizing the Domestic Sphere in Historical Archaeology, ed. K. S. Barile and J. C. Brandon, 159–176. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Riley, G. 1995 Inventing the American Woman: An Inclusive History, vol. 2. Harlan Davidson, Wheeling, IL. Rockefeller, J. D., Jr. 1916 The Colorado Industrial Plan, Including a Copy of the Plan of Representation and Agreement Adopted at the Coal and Iron Mines of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. Unpublished report. Rupert, M. 2005 Fordism. In The Cold War: An Encyclopedia. Garland, New York. Available at http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/maxpages/faculty/merupert/Research/Fordism/ fordism.htm. Accessed May 9, 2006. Scamehorn, H. L. 1992 Mill and Mine: C.F. & I. in the Twentieth Century. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.

159

Margaret Wood

Selekman, B., and M. Van Kleeck 1924 Employees’ Representation in Coal Mines: A Study of the Industrial Representation Plan of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. Russell Sage Foundation, New York. Shackel, P. A. 1994 Town Plans and Everyday Material Culture: An Archaeology of Social Relations in Colonial Maryland’s Capital Cities. In Historical Archaeology of the Chesapeake, ed. P. A. Shackel and B. J. Little, 85–96. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC. 1996 Culture Change and the New Technology: An Archaeology of the Early American Industrial Era. Plenum, New York. 2000 Craft to Wage Labor: Agency and Resistance in American Historical Archaeology. In Agency Theory in Archaeology, ed. J. Robb and M. Dobres, 232–246. Routledge, London. 2004 Labor’s Heritage: Remembering the American Industrial Landscape. Historical Archaeology 38(4):44–58. Skolnick, A. S., and J. H. Skolnick 1986 Family in Transition, 5th ed. Little, Brown, Boston. State Board of Land Commissioners 1911 Platt Map of Berwind. State Board of Land Commissioners, Denver. Stewart-Abernathy, L. 1992 Industrial Goods in the Service of Tradition: Consumption and Cognition on an Ozark Farmstead before the Great War. In Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology: Essays in Honor of James Deetz, ed. A. Yench and M. Beaudry, 101–126. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL. Strasser, Susan 1982 Never Done: A History of American Housework. Pantheon Books, New York. Wood, M. C. 2002a “Fighting for Our Homes”: An Archaeology of Women’s Domestic Labor and Social Change in a Working-Class, Coal Mining Community, 1900–1930. PhD dissertation, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. 2002b Women’s Work and Class Conflict in a Working-Class, Coal Mining Community. In Dynamics of Power, ed. M. O’Donovan, 66–87. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Carbondale, IL. 2004 Working-Class Households as Sites of Social Change. In Household Chores and Household Choices, ed. K. S. Barile and J. C. Brandon, 210–232. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

160

Sarah J. Chi cone

5

From Shacks to Shanties

Working-Class Poverty and the 1913–1914 Southern Colorado Coalfield Strike

The Ludlow Massacre thrust the brutalities of labor conflict and the realities of working-class poverty into the American consciousness. The well-publicized reforms that followed the strike successfully focused national attention on “improvements” made to miners’ lives and the new relationship forged between management and labor in the early twentieth century but did little to change the lived experience of southern Colorado coal miners. Framed as a measurable outcome and objectified as a generalized condition, poverty in the United States has relied on a consistent recycling of prejudices, characterized by shifting blame and ensuing responsibility. Whose fault is it, and who is responsible for correcting the problem? Blame oscillates between the poor themselves and the structures of the system; public policies routinely outline poverty as either a cultural (Lewis 1968) or an economic challenge and the poor as either deserving victims of the “system” or undeserving drains on society. These rotating dichotomies contribute to the ineffective and normalizing effects of public policies that systematically neglect the interests and conditions of America’s working families. Contemporary Western definitions define poverty based on a measure of its materiality, whether absolute, as in the poverty line, or relative, rooted in

161

Sarah J. Chicone

comparative disadvantage (Iceland 2003:5). This falls short and objectifies the social relationships involved in poverty’s production. As anthropologist Maia Green (2006:1124) has suggested, “[T]he quantification of poverty permits [its] homogenization .€.€. across time and space.” Strict quantification limits the historicity of specific social relations, events, and circumstances that contribute to poverty’s production. In short, these approaches characterize poverty as a discrete category; but as Maia Green (2006:1124) further contends, “poverty is not a ‘thing’ to be attacked.” We need to move past current definitions and focus on the multiple social relations and ideological influences that create poverty as a project of difference. Poverty is a process. As such, it is a series of dialectically related influences, actions, and outcomes—defined in this case by the changing relationship between associated ideologies and materiality. Poverty is not limited to a theoretical project or defined by a specific materiality; instead, it is socially, economically, and historically contingent. Despite its connection and susceptibility to ideological influence, I do not mean to suggest that poverty is an exclusively conceptual paradigm; it is also grounded in materiality. Poverty results in real material consequences outside the social relations that use it to define the other. Reliance on solely materialist definitions, however, runs the risk of denying poverty’s existence. If, for example, we recovered all this “stuff ” and the dominant ideology holds that those designated as poor by social norms were not supposed to have had a lot of “stuff,” then archaeologists have traditionally had one of two conclusions. Either these folks were not as poor as we had first thought, or no wonder they were poor— they were spending money on all this stuff they did not need. Archaeology needs to move beyond a direct comparison of material culture against historically established ideologies (Karskens 2001; Mayne and Murray 2001; Yamin 1998, 2000, 2001) and beyond the demonstration of socioeconomic indicators based on a structural view of class (Beaudry et al. 1988; Bragdon 1988; Miller 1980, 1991; Potter 1992; Schmitt and Zeier 1993; Spencer-Wood 1987). Archaeological sources inform on material conditions. By its nature, archaeology looks at the materiality of the working poor, but beyond confirming its attributes—which is not a remarkable undertaking—it connects it to associated ideologies. Archaeological inquiry must make room for diverse interests without dehumanizing the working poor or denying their existence. Instead of comparing materiality against itself or against a dominant ideology of poverty, we should seek to account for the influence of materiality on ideology and of ideology on materiality. We need to allow for multiple negotiations by competing interest groups. Within the circumstances of the 1913–1914 southern Colorado Coalfield Strike, this explains how reconfigured relationships between labor and capital following the strike altered popular constructions of working-class poverty without effecting lasting change.

162

From Shacks to Shanties

The ways different interest groups frame, act upon, and exploit poverty are as essential to its production as is its associated materiality. This illuminates poverty’s role as a constitutive project of social difference (Katz 1989) and its successful mobilization in projects of othering. In the case of the 1913–1914 southern Colorado Coalfield Strike these groups include, among others, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I), the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), and striking miners and their families. As national and international rhetoric seeks to define and reduce poverty’s consequences, anthropology has the potential to refocus attention on the social processes at work in poverty’s production, to call into question its quantification and the homogenization of its effects and outcomes (Green 2006:1124). This chapter explores emergent historical narratives of working-class poverty and the role they play in shaping contemporary ideologies and public policy by focusing on the variety of housing accommodations before, during, and after the 1913–1914 southern Colorado Coalfield Strike. It examines both the materiality and ideology as they relate to stale and repetitive myths about the poor and their relative positions in the characteristically Western cycle of blame and responsibility. The analysis begins with this statement: striking coal miners were poor. This is a loaded assumption given what frames contemporary definitions and imaginings of “real” poverty. I will not quantify my position with absolute designations, nor do I feel it necessary to launch into an explanation of historically relative comparisons. Instead, taking a closer look at materiality and ideology, we can see how competing interest groups invested in the events of the 1913–1914 southern Colorado Coalfield Strike mobilized working-class poverty within the rhetoric of the conflict and used shelter in the process of social transformation. Both the UMWA and CF&I directly mobilized housing in the ideological battle waged during the dispute in mirrored attempts to frame the strikers as either deserving or undeserving poor. Shelter at Berwind: Ideology and Materiality The Colorado Coal and Iron Company (CC&I) first developed the mine at Berwind in 1888. When CC&I consolidated with the Colorado Fuel Company in 1893, camp management came under control of CF&I. Consistent with the nature of extractive industries, miners and their families initially had few housing options. Settlements exploded along the countryside and just as quickly faded back into the landscape, as natural resources were characteristically exhausted (Figure 5.1). At many of the mines operated before CF&I’s consolidation, workers were “allowed” to build their own homes “according to old world ideas of sanitation and beauty” (CF&I 1904:308). These constructions were often obligatory,

163

Sarah J. Chicone

5.1. View of abandoned residential buildings, Berwind, 2006. Photograph by Claire Horn.

with few alternatives available for immediate shelter. Despite having supplied the labor and capital for construction, miners built vernacular houses on leased land, which meant families had less than a week to vacate their homes if given notice to do so by the company: “This lease may be terminated by the lessor at any time by giving three days’ notice in writing of such termination” (Bessemer Historical Society, Exhibit XVI Lease). The success of southern Colorado’s coalmines spurred rapid growth and the need for additional accommodations. CF&I and its competitors answered the call by constructing and subsequently renting out homes to their workers. Employees could rent houses from the company or from “private individuals who were authorized by the Company to build and rent houses as an investment” (CF&I 1904:308). Beyond the company homes and the vernacular housing miners built for themselves, single men also had the option of rooming with families, in larger boardinghouses, or with other single men in an arrangement called “batching” (see Wood, this volume). Vernacular Housing

The immigrant miners’ vernacular housing punctuated the ideological constructions of poverty in southern Colorado. Mining companies frequently high-

164

From Shacks to Shanties

lighted these often rustic accommodations as examples of foreign ignorance and poverty (see Wood, this volume). By contrasting vernacular and company-built housing, CF&I sought to buttress mainstream ideologies of the working poor. The company drew heavily on imaginings of the slum that developed during the second half of the nineteenth century and emphasized the pathology of the environment. The 1902 Annual Report of CF&I’s Sociological Department suggested: The home the miner constructs for himself is often wretchedly inferior. The “company houses,” on the other hand, are four to six room cottage[s], well planned for comfort and convenience, often furnished with water connections, and rents at a reasonable price. (Bessemer Historical Society, Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, Annual Report of the Sociological Department, 1902:43)

The images reproduced in Camp and Plant (Figure 5.2) illustrate CF&I’s supposition that the poor quality and construction of vernacular housing—“unsanitary” and “dilapidated,” “dobe” and “tin can” shacks—made these homes less desirable than those supplied by the company. Despite the company’s paternalistic endeavor to improve its bottom line with a “fair return of six to eight percent on their investment” (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:24), some within the company noted that “the only way to keep some of the foreigners .€.€. was to let them build their own shacks” (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:23). These homes came to symbolize what needed to be changed within the immigrant community: The evolution of the miner’s home from the early days of the industry up to the present forms an interesting chapter in the history of the wage earner’s advancement financially, socially and intellectually. .€.€. The effects of improving housing conditions on the social, moral, and intellectual development of the mining community scarcely can be overestimated. It is one of the most powerful factors in the Americanization of alien families and their education in American ideals and standards of living. (CF&I 1919a:9)

For the recent immigrants, however, this vernacular architecture may have served as a strong symbol of independence in a proscribed environment or as a desperate attempt to maintain a sense of identity within an otherwise unfamiliar landscape. Conversely, in some instances a lack of viable alternatives and the inability to afford the rent of the more substantial company houses forced families into folk housing. During the hearings of the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, the testimony of Mr. J. C. Osgood of the Victor-American Coal Company hints at such a suggestion: [T]here is another class of houses at our mines that we have nothing to do with and that we have tried to do away with, but without success. There are

165

Sarah J. Chicone

5.2. Early cabin at Berwind, published in Camp and Plant with the caption “the sort men build for themselves” (Camp and Plant 1904:318). Courtesy, Bessemer Historical Society, Pueblo, CO.

certain of the foreigners who want to build their own shacks. We have absolutely refused to give them ground for them; and then we found we could not retain their services, for they felt they were being deprived of their liberty. So at most of our mines they are built on a portion of land that is hidden away. We found that we had to let them have the ground, and they build these shacks, which are just shacks like those you see in squatter’s quarters in any large town, around the outskirts of Chicago and New York, and in Colorado. They are made of bits of waste material and usually with dirt floors, and are often occupied by the sheep or the goats that go in with the family. They say that this is the way they live at home, and they are going to live that way here. (Commission on Industrial Relations 1916:6436)

The archaeological survey conducted at the former CF&I company town of Berwind, Colorado, has been able to date certain districts within the community to early pre-1913–1914 coal strike occupations. It located a singular architectural style in these early neighborhoods; the Berwind survey sited six small structures constructed of unshaped local stone and soft mud-based mortar. As examples of vernacular housing, the structures averaged three by six meters, significantly smaller than the company-owned houses in Berwind. This folk housing would

166

From Shacks to Shanties

have been strikingly similar to, if not inclusive of, the structure depicted in Figure 5.2. Archaeological evidence further substantiates the existence of this type of housing in CF&I camps (see Wood, this volume) and indicates an approximate size for vernacular features of this type in Berwind. What is of particular interest is CF&I’s cyclical emphasis on “improving” workers’ living conditions by providing company-built housing. The changes to vernacular dwellings following the 1913–1914 strike, though significant, were not unique. John D. Rockefeller Jr. (quoted in Margolis 1994:13) described what he saw on his 1915 tour of southern Colorado: Up to date these [homes] have largely consisted of little hovels, built by the residents, who are all Italians, on company land which is rented at a nominal figure. These houses are thirty years or more old. When one tenant leaves, he sells his house to the next tenant. It has been impossible heretofore to dislodge the tenants who thus secured homes for the least possible sum and are living just about as in their native land. .€.€. [T]he importance of doing away with these shacks was generally recognized.

Rockefeller’s words recall earlier efforts by CF&I to do away with vernacular housing. There was a preoccupation with transforming employee lodging nearly ten years before the 1913–1914 strike. The April 9, 1904, issue of Camp and Plant was dedicated to camp housing and fastidiously contrasted vernacular “shacks,” “dugouts,” “unsanitary cabins,” and “unsanitary huts” with newly constructed company houses. As Eric Margolis (1994:14) suggested, this kind of rephotography sans miners and their families was “a transition from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft, from company to society, from the ‘home’ you built yourself to the ‘house’ you rented from the coal company.” Labor unrest in the case of the 1913–1914 strike appears to have refocused attention back on the living “conditions” of miners and their families. The companies in part blamed labor discontent and deviant employee behavior on the pathology of the environment, similar to the popular imagination that characterized the late–nineteenth- and early–twentieth-century slum. For example, critics of poverty’s pollution nationwide implied a negligence of household duties; as a result, middle-class reformist opinions regarding the pathology of the slum environment directly influenced popular perceptions related to the morality of the working class. The reality of experience may have been much different from the one-sided view offered by reformers. Further, improvements to and reconsiderations of urban slums were not made exclusively in response to increased urban planning and the call to alleviate urban congestion (Ward 1989:94). Similarly, changes in housing opportunities were not made solely in response to the companies’ concerns over employee deviance; local residents’ very real needs and wants undoubtedly affected negotiations of regional housing opportunities.

167

Sarah J. Chicone

Despite the emphasis placed on vernacular housing both before and after the strike, the right to property ownership was not a contested union demand. The UMWA did not focus on the inadequacies or injustices associated with vernacular housing. Instead, it concentrated its attention on company-owned and -sponsored amenities. The contested shortfalls of company-sponsored housing affected local populations; the fact that companies did not generally allow miners to own their own homes, however, had a similarly undeniable impact. During the Commission on Industrial Relations investigation into the 1914–1913 strike, Commissioner John B. Lennon asked Dr. Eugene Gaddis, former superintendent of social work for CF&I’s camp system, about the effects of such private property limitations: Commissioner Lennon: Now, what effect upon the home life of people do you believe is exerted by the fact that they can not own their own homes in these closed camps; that they must live in apartments that are provided by the company . . . ? Dr. Gaddis: In the first place it makes the camp population, a very large percentage of it, entirely transient. .€.€. [I]f you see a person who has been in the camp three or four years, why they are pioneers. It keeps the people on the move, and not having their own homes they are dissatisfied. They are there simply enduring the situation as they are. (Commission on Industrial Relations 1916:8509)

By suggesting that miners had chosen substandard housing, the company could exonerate itself from providing its employees with updated accommodations. These ignorant immigrants, CF&I reasoned, did not deserve costly improvements. In addition, the company rationalized that vernacular housing was so shoddy that anything it provided, no matter how inadequate, would be better. By razing all folk housing after the strike, CF&I set out to symbolically remove poverty from its camps, along with the inferior accommodations. Company Houses

Company-sponsored housing differed from vernacular construction in both layout and composition. Before the strike, the company designed plans for twoto six-room dwellings (CF&I 1904:310). Initially, they were either wood frame or concrete block construction, costing the company around $700 for a typical four-room dwelling (Clyne 1999:34). The 1904 issue of Camp and Plant described the domestic amenities: “The interiors are furnished with good wood work, have lath and plaster walls, proper provision for good drought in chimneys and opportunities for baths. Many of the houses are papered, have curtains on the windows as well as roller shades and are fitted up with substantial furniture” (CF&I 1904:310) (Figure 5.3).

168

From Shacks to Shanties

5.3. Cement block housing exhibiting the popular four-room plan, Berwind. Courtesy, Bessemer Historical Society, Box: pictures, FF: Berwind homes, Pueblo, CO.

The collective carried out excavations of a midden and a privy in the Berwind housing district, project Area K, located on the southern end of town on the east side of the road (see Wood, this volume). This neighborhood is datable to a pre-strike occupation of the community, given its abandonment as a domestic area prior to the 1916 construction of a school at the same location. The homes were of wood frame construction and included L-shaped houses, four-room squares, and a variation of a three-room plan, ranging in size from 62.4 square meters, or 672 square feet, to 75 square meters, or 810 square feet (Wood 2002:160). Excavations were also conducted among company-owned housing in an area of the town datable to Berwind’s post-strike occupation, project Area B. A general expansion of the camp following the strike, distinguished by the construction of new homes, delineates the area. This residential district is located in the far northern end of the town (see Wood, this volume). The area consists of ten domestic structures, five cement-lined privies, and the remains of three outdoor brick ovens. There are significant differences between the two loci. At first glance, comparisons between the pre- and post-strike occupations seem to provide evidence of

169

Sarah J. Chicone

improved company-sponsored housing amenities following the strike. Regularly cleaned cement-lined privies replaced the simple dirt facilities of the pre-strike era. Similarly, the visible remains of concrete foundations in Area B could be used to suggest the construction of substantial post-strike homes; this, compared with the lack of surface remains in Area K, may indicate a more provisional construction of wooden structures. Such conclusions, however, continue to perpetuate the ideological constructions of working-class poverty upheld by CF&I. Company-sponsored improvements attempted to continually pull laborers out of their “self-imposed” misery. According to official company rhetoric, the deprivation that plagued these communities was a result not of boundaries imposed by the company but of the actions of individual miners and their poor living habits. This neglected the limitations faced by miners and their families because of a system of both closed camps (camps entirely owned and run by the company) and open camps (camps, like Berwind, that allowed a few company-approved outsiders to conduct business). Within the accommodations made by the company, some of CF&I’s management maintained that the housing needs of newly arrived immigrants did not extend beyond those provisions available in the “old country.” There was a pervasive belief that immigrant miners did not know any better, did not need any better, and therefore were not entitled to any better. No clearer is this sentiment visible than in a 1909 correspondence from CF&I vice president Lamont Bowers to John D. Rockefeller Jr., justifying a 10 percent reduction in wages at CF&I’s Minnequa steel plant: “I always regret cutting the wages of laborers who have families to support and are trying to pay for homes and educate their children but considering these foreigners who do not intend to make America their home, and who live like rats in order to save money, I do not feel that we ought to maintain high wages in order to increase their income” (Binghamton UniÂ�versity, correspondence from Lamont Bowers to J. D. Rockefeller, Box 28, FF96). Despite the company’s claims that it offered reasonably priced, efficient housing, prior to the strike, CF&I president Jesse Welborn implied in a speech to the executive committee on December 27, 1909, that many of the miners did not require improvements in housing, which were consequently supplied at great cost to the company. They could, and in fact did, get along just as well with less spacious accommodations: “It has been found that the small two room so-called shacks accommodate a great many of our miners better than rooms in larger and more expensive houses and the revenue per month is $3.00 or $36.00 per year on each house, the cost of which is $110.00” (Denver Public Library, Patricia Long Collection, Welborn 1909:1). Beyond contradictory statements embedded in private discussions, CF&I publicly highlighted company-sponsored improvements in housing both before

170

From Shacks to Shanties

and after the strike. Initial advancements over vernacular construction were realized in the pre-strike lodging the company offered at Area K. These accommodations revealed what the company heralded as significant improvements in shelter above immigrant folk housing. Beyond this, however, post-strike changes included even “newer” and more “improved” housing, representative of the type found at Area B. Post-strike construction advanced the company’s benevolence, publicly extolling its interest in immediate conditions. The reality was more complicated, as poor working and living conditions persisted. When viewed dialectically in concert with ideological constructions of working-class poverty, a much richer conclusion emerges. In spite of the company’s paternalistic endeavor under the facade of philanthropic service to its employees, CF&I was interested in the bottom line. Miners rented company housing at a published rate of two dollars per room per month. Charges were automatically subtracted from the employee’s wages, along with a one dollar hospital fee and deductions for smithing, powder, fuses, coal, and outstanding store accounts (Bessemer Historical Society, CF&I payroll records, 1914). Notwithstanding the suggested rate of two dollars per room per month, the reality likely varied among the camps. Miners attending a special convention of District 15 of the UMWA levied complaints about what they considered unacceptable housing conditions in the period leading up to the 1913–1914 strike. “We are charged $8.00 a month for a two-room house that is no better than a stable” (Delegate Obeza, quoted in Hasenbalg 1999:35). “[W]e are charged $2.25 a room per month for houses not fit to live in” (Delegate Madona, quoted in Hasenbalg 1999:36). Many, but not all, were of the opinion that company housing was neither reasonably priced nor particularly accommodating. Dr. Gaddis acquiesced during his testimony to the Commission on Industrial Relations: “Considering the rental, which is $10.50 per month for a house of four rooms, with electric light and water in addition, there are few who do not speak with approval of their relations with the company in regard to housing accommodations” (Dr. Gaddis, in Commission on Industrial Relations 1916:8536). According to a CF&I internal report (Bessemer Historical Society, Report on Industrial Relations in CF&I, 1924:75–76), by 1924 the company owned a total of 1,643 houses in all four mining districts in southern Colorado. The company rented the houses out for two dollars per room per month; new houses with “modern” facilities were rented at a rate of twenty-five dollars per month. The two dollar per room rate did not include electricity for lights, heat, modern conveniences, or a cement basement. Fewer than 20 percent of the houses had inside water connections or were equipped with a sink. Instead, water was available from outdoor hydrants. All the houses had free electricity for their front porches and garages; power was also free for half a day two times a week for

171

Sarah J. Chicone

ironing. However, the company added an extra charge of fifty cents per machine per month if residents wanted electricity for personal appliances. Even following the strike, profit seemed to be the underlying motive for CF&I’s altruistic endeavors. The company needed to “reeducate” the “ignorant immigrants” so they could understand why they “required” the modern housing accommodations at the increased rate of twenty-five dollars per month. CF&I had trouble renting these deluxe accommodations at prohibitive rates to miners. In line with this reasoning, it is not surprising that the Report on Industrial Relations suggests that “[t]he willingness to pay is largely a question of the standards of living to which the workers are accustomed and is a factor of no small influence. .€.€. [T]he problem of better housing facilities .€.€. appears to be first an educational task to create a desire for more modern conditions on the part of the workers and their families” (Bessemer Historical Society, Report on Industrial Relations in CF&I, 1924:74 [emphasis added]). The company publicly touted the virtues of its betterment plans, both before and after the strike. CF&I took advantage of every opportunity to report the time and energy it spent on improvements; this can be seen again and again in the pages of Camp and Plant (1901–1904) and the Industrial Bulletin (1915–1920), including this entry from the January 3, 1916, edition of the Industrial Bulletin. Many new houses have been erected, and in some of the camps the Company has gone to considerable expense in removing quarters which were regarded as unsanitary or inadequate, and erecting model dwellings in their stead. The sum of $57,205.37 has been expended during the year in this way, and the policy will continue. (CF&I 1916:10)

Despite the company’s official stand, continued grievances by miners necessitated some sort of rationalization. CF&I accomplished this by shifting responsibility. It seemed reasonable to the company to suggest that it provided efficient housing, beyond the needs of the employees. Therefore, if there were complaints regarding housing conditions, they were easily attributable to the poor habits of the miners and their families. In regard to Berwind, the annual inspection of camp conditions suggested that “in several parts of the community the employees’ premises were found to be in untidy and unsanitary condition” (CF&I 1919b:3). When viewed broadly, the company’s rationalization is consistent with general ideological constructions of working-class poverty that routinely blame the poor for their dependency. The working class is, in this case, made undeserving. Consider this alongside British anthropologist Maia Green’s (2006:1119) suggestion that the U.S. approach to poverty “is informed by an ideology of individual economic responsibility in which failure to achieve, and hence poverty, is viewed as a failure and thus as the responsibility of the individual, a kind of rational

172

From Shacks to Shanties

5.4. Open sewage system at the former CF&I company town of Sopris. Courtesy, Colorado Historical Society, MSS 1057, Box 12, Denver, CO.

choice.” If poverty is then an earned result based on the failings of the individual, it is easy to engineer public policy that neglects that individual. A section on hygiene in CF&I’s Sanitary and Sociological Bulletin claims that “[b]oards of health are not altogether to blame for filthy streets and alleys; the individual is mostly responsible” (CF&I 1913:3). It was easier for company officials to redirect the cause of deteriorating living conditions onto “ignorant” immigrants, both before and after the strike. In reality, miners and their families were confined by the conditions perpetuated by the company, including outdoor privies and open sewage systems that dominated conditions well beyond the “improvements” initiated after the conclusion of the 1913–1914 strike. Figure 5.4 illustrates an open sewage system at the former CF&I town of Sopris, Colorado. Circumstances placed miners at the mercy of the company, which not only provided the housing but also controlled the lease. The CF&I lease stated: “The lessee also agrees to keep said premises, as far as he is able, in a healthful condition, and will keep the same free of all rubbish” (Bessemer Historical Society, Exhibit XVI Lease). Despite the limitations placed on them by their environment and the remoteness of their communities, mining families worked very hard to maintain cleanliness. Women and men waged a daily battle against the dust and grime of the coalfields.

173

Sarah J. Chicone

We worked very, very hard to keep that place clean. There were always trains going through and when they went by the smoke and dust would be terrible. We would have to scrub the floors with Borax. We had no rugs. My mother had Lye and hot, hot water. Of course we would have to heat that water on the coal stove so we would have to carry in the coal, carry out the ashes, carry in the water, and then when we were done, carry out the water. She would get down and scrub the floors. (Interview, Marion DeBono, in Wood 2002:211)

Both before and after the strike, the company encouraged the external beautification of individual homes. CF&I sponsored yearly garden competitions among individual lots, with monetary prizes of as much as ten dollars for firstprize winners in 1917 (Figure 5.5). With the continued seasonality of coal production, southern Colorado miners and their families frequently moved from one company town to another. Some may have seen the time and investment necessary for garden competitions in a home not owned by the miners as an avoidable expense. Nevertheless, by encouraging improvements at the miners’ expense and essentially redirecting responsibility for general upkeep to renters, the company could in effect redirect blame for any subsequent deterioration of company-supplied housing. There was a common mantra to the discourse on company and vernacular housing. Both the UMWA and CF&I employed the same rhetoric in their efforts to emphasize the base living conditions of miners, the company in terms of vernacular housing and the union in terms of company housing. “Shack” was a frequent moniker used by both groups to stress the inadequacy of facilities. Both the UMWA and southern Colorado coal companies invoked parallel images of squalor in support of their distinctive strategies. This is supported by the previously cited testimony concerning vernacular housing and the following statements regarding company-owned housing. Here is a statement from Dr. Gaddis: [M]any of [the] miners[’] families are living in hovels, box-car shacks, and adobe sheds that are not fit for the habitation of human beings. .€.€. The CF&I now own and rent hovels, shacks, and dugout[s] that are unfit for the habitation of human beings and are little removed from the pigsty make of dwellings. And the people in them live on the very level of a pigsty. .€.€. Frequently the population is so congested that whole families are crowded in the one room; eight persons in one small room. (Commission on Industrial Relations 1916:8492)

During the Commission on Industrial Relations investigation into the events of the 1913–1914 southern Colorado coal strike, Chairman Francis Walsh questioned UMWA treasurer Edward Doyle regarding statements made relative to

174

From Shacks to Shanties

5.5. Berwind House #249 first-prize winner, 1924. Courtesy, Bessemer Historical Society, Box: pictures, FF: Berwind homes, Pueblo, CO.

inadequate company-sponsored housing: “The next paragraph contains a statement that these strikers had lived in hovels like hogs. What basis of fact is there for that statement?” (Commission on Industrial Relations 1916:6959). Doyle responded: I presume he has based that on written statements upon statements made by miners. I have heard myself miners make statements in the convention about the terrific conditions that they lived under, the terribly bad condition of the shacks. They called them shacks. They were such that the wind used to blow the snow in through the cracks, and when there was no snow the sand would blow in. They [the miners] said they had to burn up an awful lot of coal to attempt to keep warm .€.€. that in some instances they would have to burn more coal than would pay for a decent house, if there [were] one to be had. (Commission on Industrial Relations 1916:6959)

In sum, competing groups similarly highlighted both company-sponsored and vernacular housing to emphasize miners’ poverty—whether it was forced poverty (and subsequently a “deserving” poor) at the hands of a detached employer, as in the case of company housing, or poverty as a product of ignorant and degenerate immigrant miners (an “undeserving” poor), as in vernacular housing. The two groups upheld the same housing as examples of both working-Â�

175

Sarah J. Chicone

class prosperity and working-class poverty—suggesting that the materiality was more complicated than what either group maintained. Boarders

Apart from the vernacular housing and company-owned dwellings described previously, miners were also able to rent rooms in boardinghouses (Figure 5.6) and in private homes, or they could live in a single household with other, usually unrelated men, a practice called “batching” (see Wood, this volume). Women would provide meals and other domestic services for their boarders and would sometimes work for all-male households, providing similar services. A lot of miners were single and they didn’t have anybody to cook for them. Many families took in boarders. My mother had five boarders that stayed with us. She had to pack their lunch in the morning and they had to pay us. She had to do that and wash their clothes on a washboard. .€.€. [T]here were also bigger boarding houses where boarders could live. There was the Berwind hotel that was really more like a boarding house than a hotel. .€.€. There were some Italian people who ran a boarding house too. (Interview, Bob Lee, in Wood 2002:271–272)

The high number of boarders (nearly one-third of the total population) living in Berwind in 1910 suggests that miners were reluctant to pay the full rate for company-provided housing (see Wood, this volume). They necessarily supplemented their income and their rent by subletting rooms. There were limited opportunities for women to contribute to the family earnings within the isolated communities of the coal camps; taking in boarders was one way they could supplement their husbands’ paltry wages. The nature of company-controlled communities both before and after the strike limited the opportunities for shelter at Berwind. This discussion has opened the dialogue to include the impact ideological constructions of working-class poverty had on the materiality of poverty. Their subordinate relationship to the company and their reliance on company-sponsored housing disadvantaged miners and their families in very tangible ways. They were limited to that which was provided in a particular context, whether it was company-supplied or vernacular housing—that is, vernacular housing necessitated by a scarcity of options or through the specific act of maintaining cultural identity and independence in an increasingly regulated environment. Furthermore, company-supplied housing was routinely neglected by both the company and the miners. After the strike, advancements in company housing and the razing of vernacular construction were indicative of the “significant” strides CF&I was taking toward creating a better living and working environment for its employees.

176

5.6a and b. Interior (a) and exterior (b) views of a boardinghouse at the CF&I company town of Rouse, circa 1915. Courtesy, Bessemer Historical Society, Box: pictures, FF: Rouse/buildings, Pueblo, CO.

Sarah J. Chicone

These improvements, though widely heralded, were largely cosmetic and further limited housing options. Miners became even more dependent on the company for accommodations. Planting a few trees and erecting some fences went a long way toward championing CF&I’s human relations policies but did little to alleviate poverty’s production, beyond its symbolic eradication. Institutional practice continued to disadvantage miners and their families, as can be seen in the company’s pattern of shifting blame and responsibility for the upkeep and subsequent deterioration of housing. Ideological constructions of poverty were intimately tied to living conditions and what was made available to immigrant employees. The UMWA’s Temporary Tent Colony at Ludlow: Ideology and Materiality

Leaving their homes in the canyons behind, striking miners and their families made their way through the cold, rain, sleet, and snow toward the UMWA’s tent colony at Ludlow. The union established a number of tent communities across southern Colorado; Ludlow was one of the largest, with 200 tents housing roughly 1,200 miners and their families. The union had temporary housing shipped in from former strike zones out east, supplemented with locally purchased supplies. The tent encampments served a dual purpose. The union used the settlements to highlight the miners’ miseries while at the same time painting a picture of stability and control on the part of militant labor. Miners were poor, but the union contended they were still respectable, ordered, and, most important, deserving. As was the case before the strike, the kinds and availability of shelter during the strike limited miners as well. The UMWA controlled both camp layout and construction. Residency in the strike zone was a critical component underlying qualifications for strike benefits. As a result, strikers were limited—this time by the union—to the types of shelter that were available. Rule 4 of the General Rules Governing the Distribution of Strike Relief stated, “[W]here strike relief is paid, no one shall be entitled to the same unless he be a member of the organization, a respondent to the official strike call and a resident in the strike zone complying with all the rules and laws of the organization” (Denver Public Library, Edward Doyle Collection, September 19, 1913). Edward Doyle later reiterated this fact in a statement he issued on October 14, 1913, to union Locals 1388 and 1668, in which he insisted “that in a reasonable time they take up their abode in the strike zone, or forfeit their right to strike benefits” (Denver Public Library, Edward Doyle Collection, October 14, 1913). The housing provided by the union came in the form of canvas tents (Figure 5.7) averaging 3.05 meters by 4.27 meters, or 10 feet by 14 feet, resulting in an

178

From Shacks to Shanties

5.7. The only tent not destroyed in the Ludlow Tent Colony (photo published in The Denver Post). Note the wood planking on the tent’s interior walls. Courtesy, Colorado Historical Society F# 36,019, Denver, CO.

estimated general living area of 13.02 square meters, or 140 square feet for a single household. Miners later reinforced the simple canvas construction with wood planking and floors. Once the tents were erected, strikers unloaded all their possessions, supplementing the space within the structures by excavating cellars beneath the wood planked flooring. The cellars served a variety of functions and provided some privacy under the collective circumstances of the community. Cellars may have augmented the storage of household items; offered protection against raids and other provocations by the National Guard, company thugs, and Baldwin Felts representatives; and provided additional insulation against what turned out to be the worst winter Colorado had seen in thirty years (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:157). Different individuals throughout the colony constructed cellars presumably to serve diverse functions; as such, variations in design and size are visible archaeologically (see Jacobson, this volume). Features 73 and 74 excavated at the Ludlow site are representative examples of this variation. Feature 73, located in Locus 11, included a cellar approximately 1.5 meters north-south by 3.5 meters

179

Sarah J. Chicone

east-west and reaching a total depth of 1.0 meter. It exhibited a consistent rectangular shape. Feature 74, located in Locus 12, had a depth of over 2.0 meters and measured 4.5 meters east-west by 2.0 meters north-south. General tent construction is visible within the archaeological record. Feature 73 shows a high level of oxidation on the floors and walls of the excavated cellar, indicative of the eventual destruction of the original colony in April 1914. Fire appears to have weakened the wood planked floor supports; this caused the items in the tent to collapse into the cellar below, preventing subsequent refuse from being deposited in the cellar during the cleanup of the colony. Outside of the evidence of the wood planked flooring, visible from the collapse of Feature 73’s tent, an oil drop cloth was discovered lining the bottom of Feature 74, creating a makeshift floor and providing a barrier to the soil. Deep, straight-sided, deliberately constructed ditches surrounded tent outlines. Miners may have constructed these ditches to redirect runoff or as ancillary components of small hillocks that would have been used to weigh down the sides of the tents and provide additional insulation. An example of one twelve-centimeter-deep ditch was uncovered in association with a tent platform in Locus 1. Adding to the minimalist construction of the canvas tents, winter compounded the strikers’ hardships. A record storm in December 1913 blanketed southern Colorado in four feet of snow, causing the destruction of a number of tents under the weight of the above-average snowfall (Figure 5.8). It can be assumed from this discussion of shelter at the company-run community of Berwind that miners and their families did not have carte blanche freedom when it came to housing. Not only were they limited by their income, the amount of rent they could afford, and whether it was necessary to supplement that income with boarders, but they were also limited by the types of housing, sanitation, and resources available within a particular community. Striking miners were similarly limited at Ludlow, not only by the conscription of their residence in order to receive the three-dollar-a-week strike benefit, the additional dollar a week to support a wife, and the fifty cents per child, but also by the absence of alternative accommodations. The union, in turn, was able to paint strikers and their families as deserving poor to a national audience. The union used working-class poverty as a mantra of sympathetic enticement: “crime and pauperism will forever disappear with industrial justice” (UMWA 1915:4). In an article published in the United Mine Workers Journal following the strike, political and union activist Eugene Debs pointed to the continued disparity between workers and owners: “[A]s long as the few own the sources of wealth, the machinery of production and the means of life, the many will be condemned to work for them as the miners of Colorado and Montana work for Rockefeller, with the result that the few pile up millions

180

From Shacks to Shanties

5.8. Looking east down a residential street in the Ludlow Tent Colony, circa 1913–1914. Courtesy, Denver Public Library, CHS.X60350, Denver, CO.

and billions and rot in luxury and self-indulgence, while the millions that are robbed riot and rot in poverty and filth” (Debs 1915:6). Conclusion

Before the strike, miners were poor and faced material consequences because of this poverty. They were limited in real ways, extending to the kinds and availability of housing. In all instances, by drawing on popular imaginings of poverty at the turn of the twentieth century and relying on the tenets of capitalism, CF&I redirected responsibility and subsequently blamed the conditions endured by its employees on its employees. By providing the right kinds of tools, the benevolent employer left it up to its “free” laborers to make their own decisions. If conditions were truly unbearable, it was up to the miners to leave and seek employment elsewhere; if they only played their cards right and took advantage of what the company offered, they did not need to live in poverty. The company worked hard to frame its employees as “undeserving,” as unresponsive to the generous gestures of their benevolent employer. Nevertheless, decisions were not free; wages and the kinds and availability of goods and services limited miners and affected their materiality.

181

Sarah J. Chicone

The union worked hard to reframe the miners in the minds of mainstream America as “deserving” poor and victims of exploitative corporate policies. The UMWA had specific ideas about how to portray southern Colorado’s working poor to a national audience, what aspects of that poverty to emphasize, and who to blame. The union repositioned all responsibility squarely on the company’s shoulders. So where does this conversation leave us? Was it the miners’ fault that they were poor, or was it the company’s fault; were they deserving or undeserving? Was their poverty solely a result of individual shortcomings or corporate neglect? Can we measure their poverty by the materiality of their possessions? Either-or explanations of poverty fall short by ignoring the complex social relations at work in its production. Simple dichotomous explanations are dangerous. Designations of deserving and undeserving confuse the issue; those in a position to enact effective aid become entangled in the discourse on worthiness, losing sight of the forest for the trees. The focus shifts; policies concentrate on reestablishing merit instead of addressing poverty. By seeking to locate blame in either the individual or the system, the resolution of the strike resulted in the razing of “shoddy” housing but did not address the social relations still at work in the coalfields of southern Colorado well after the dust had settled at Ludlow. What resulted was a symbolic eradication of poverty with the very public polishing of its materiality. Because poverty does not directly translate into a specific materiality, this gesture by the company did little to change the lived experience of southern Colorado coal miners. That is why corporate policy and rhetoric intent on redirecting blame continued well into the 1920s, which did not address the problem but continued to perpetuate recycled myths about the working poor. Against a backdrop of increasing economic inequality in the United States, the need to move the archaeological analysis of poverty beyond the urban slums of the big coastal cities to include the persistent segment of America’s working poor is great. Archaeology has much to offer as it challenges the homogenizing effects of static definitions of poverty and teases out the social relations that make certain people subject to its effects (O’Connor 2001:15, in Green 2006:1112). A successful archaeological study of working-class poverty demands the reanalysis of recycled prejudices that continually manifest themselves in paternalistic public and corporate policies. As was emphasized in Chapter 1, there is a need to foster archaeology for nontraditional (working-class) audiences, one I suggest we should mobilize within contemporary politics. According to social historian Michael Katz: Public policy is often made on self-interest and sold on myth. This is one reason why history is important. Without historical analysis it is hard to see the

182

From Shacks to Shanties recurrent connections between welfare policy and strategies of social discipline or to appreciate the stale, repetitive, and self-serving quality of myths about the poor. .€.€. History serves, too, to undercut any lingering notions of the inevitability of progress or improvement in the lives of the poor. .€.€. Welfare .€.€. is a historical product, the accretion of layers over time. (Katz 1983:239)

I conclude this chapter by returning to the present, to the abandoned coal towns and boarded mines that dot the southern Colorado landscape. They serve as quiet reminders for those who seek their stories. The work by the collective has moved these stories beyond the rural communities and postindustrial landscape of southern Colorado, beyond the occasional tourist in search of the historic battlefield. Our work continues the long battle forged by America’s laboring poor as it seeks to contextualize working-class poverty at the dawn of a new century. Works Cited Beaudry, M., J. Long, H. M. Miller, F. D. Neiman, and G.W. Stone 1988 Words for Things: Linguistic Analysis of Probate Inventories. In Documentary Archaeology in the New World, ed. M. Beaudry, 43–50. Oxford University Press, Cambridge. Bessemer Historical Society, CF&I Archives, Pueblo, CO Exhibit XVI Lease 1902 Colorado Fuel and Iron Company’s Annual Report of the Sociological Department, 43. 1914 Colorado Fuel and Iron Company payroll records, Berwind, Org. Box 1106. 1924 Report on Industrial Relations at CF&I, 75–76. Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY Lamont M. Bowers Collection, Box 28, FF 96. Bragdon, Kathleen J. 1988 Occupational Differences Reflected in Material Culture. In Documentary Archaeology in the New World, ed. M. Beaudry, 83–91. Oxford University Press, Cambridge. CF&I 1904 1913 1916

Housing Number. Camp and Plant 5(13) (April 9):303–328. Hygiene. Bulletin, Sanitary and Sociological 11(1):1–3. The Company’s Social and Industrial Betterment Policies. Industrial Bulletin ( January 3):10. 1919a Workman’s Homes Models of Comfort. Industrial Bulletin (April 30):9. 1919b Conditions at Berwind. Industrial Bulletin (August 30):2–4.

Clyne, Richard J. 1999 Coal People: Life in Southern Colorado’s Company Towns 1890–1930. Colorado Historical Society, Denver.

183

Sarah J. Chicone

Commission on Industrial Relations 1916 Final Report and Testimony. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. Debs, Eugene V. 1915 Open Letter on Poverty. United Mine Workers Journal (August 26):6. Denver Public Library Edward Doyle Collection WH126, Box 1, FF3, Statement issued by Edward Doyle, October 14, 1913, to Union Locals 1388 and 1668. Edward Doyle Collection WH126, Box 1, FF45, Policy Committee Representing Colorado Mine Workers United Mine Workers of America, September 19, 1913. Patricia Long Collection, WH 1138, Box 2, FF31, J. Welborn 1909:1. Green, Maia 2006 Representing Poverty and Attacking Representations: Perspectives on Poverty from Social Anthropology. Journal of Development Studies 42(7):1108–1129. Hasenbalg, Ann 1999 The Ludlow Massacre and Social Movement Theory. MS thesis, University of Colorado, Denver. Iceland, John 2003 Poverty in America: A Handbook. University of California Press, Berkeley. Karskens, Grace 2001 Small Things, Big Pictures: New Perspectives from the Archaeology of Sydney’s Rocks Neighbourhood. In The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes: Explorations in Slumland, ed. Alan Mayne and Tim Murray, 69–88. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Katz, Michael 1983 Poverty and Policy in American History. Academic Press, New York. 1989 The Undeserving Poor. Pantheon Books, New York. Lewis, Oscar 1968 La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty—San Juan and New York. 1st Vintage Books ed. Vintage Books, New York. Margolis, Eric 1994 Images in Struggle: Photographs of Colorado Coal Camps. Visual Sociology 9(1):4–26. Mayne, Alan, and Tim Murray (editors) 2001 The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes: Explorations in Slumland. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. McGovern, George S., and Leonard F. Guttridge 1972 The Great Coalfield War. Houghton Mifflin, Boston. Miller, George L. 1980 Classification and Economic Scaling of 19th Century Ceramics. Historical Archaeology 14:1–41. 1991 A Revised Set of CC Index Values for Classification and Economic Scaling of English Ceramics from 1787–1880. Historical Archaeology 25(1):1–25.

184

From Shacks to Shanties O’Connor, Alice 2001 Poverty Knowledge:€Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Potter, Parker J. 1992 Middle-Range Theory, Ceramics, and Capitalism in 19th-Century Rockbridge County, Virginia. In Text-Aided Archaeology, ed. Barbara J. Little, 9–24. CRC Press, Ann Arbor, MI. Schmitt, Dave N., and Charles D. Zeier 1993 Not by Bones Alone: Exploring Household Composition and Socioeconomic Status in an Isolated Historic Mining Community. Historical Archaeology 27(4): 20–38. Spencer-Wood, Suzanne M. (editor) 1987 Consumer Choice in Historical Archaeology. Plenum, New York. UMWA 1915

Unemployment, Pauperism, Crime. United Mine Workers Journal (September 9):4.

Ward, David 1989 Poverty, Ethnicity, and the American City 1840–1925: Changing Conceptions of the Slum and the Ghetto. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Wood, Margaret 2002 “Fighting for Our Homes”: An Archaeology of Women’s Domestic Labor and Social Change in a Working Class Coal-Mining Community 1900–1930. PhD dissertation, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. Yamin, Rebecca 1998 Lurid Tales and Homely Stories of New York’s Notorious Five Points. Historical Archaeology 32(1):74–85. 2000 An Interpretive Approach to Understanding Working-Class Life, vol. 2, Tales of Five Points: Working-Class Life in Nineteenth-Century New York. John Milner and Associates, West Chester, NY. 2001 Becoming New York: The Five Points Neighborhood. Historical Archaeology 35(3):1–135.

185

Mich ael Jacobson

6

Landscapes of Hope and Fear

A Study of Space in the Ludlow Strikers’ Colony

During the 1913–1914 strike, strikers and their families, along with the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), established a new community on the plains of southeastern Colorado. This community offered more than shelter to strikers and their families. It was also a symbolic expression of what miners and their families wanted in the establishment of place and home in the coal camps. The strike became a struggle for miners to develop the material and social conditions that would give them a larger voice in negotiating community in the coal camps. This chapter examines the issue of community development in a conflicted landscape, specifically the landscape created by the struggle of the Colorado Coalfield War of 1913–1914. By 1910, the harsh conditions in the coal camps had disenfranchised the miners and their families. The coal companies held virtually total control over the material conditions in the camps. Managers constructed the spaces within the camps; regulated the activities occurring in them; and, by restricting consumer choice and limiting wages, forced workers to purchase goods from company stores. These conditions hindered miners’ and their families’ ability to engage with the symbolic expression of place or to develop the material means to escape from these conditions. The mine owners’ power over the daily practices

187

Michael Jacobson

of miners and their families, along with the latter’s inability to define their own community, created for miners what Edward Relph (1984) has described as a sense of placelessness, or alienation from place. The miners’ and their families’ marginalization resulted from more than their lack of voice in the establishment of meaning in space. Their distancing from place led to the need for miners and their families to create a new community in which they had a voice in social practices and material conditions. The UMWA’s entrance into the southern fields offered an alternate voice to that of the coal companies. The union, in its demands and establishment of strikers’ colonies, offered a path for the development of a community for miners based on class consciousness. The success of such an approach was founded on the union’s promotion of spatial and community organization that encouraged solidarity. The Ludlow strikers built the Ludlow Tent Colony as a material critique of capitalist and industrial practices. The Ludlow Tent Colony and its surrounding landscape acted as the stage for the conflict between the strikers and capitalist authorities such as the coal companies, mining guards, and the Colorado National Guard. The activities, the placement of features and structures, and the meanings established in this landscape created for the union and the striking families a duality of both optimism and fear in response to the settlement of a new community and the violent backlash it caused. To understand the circumstances of the Colorado Coalfield War of 1913– 1914, this chapter explores the use of space as the material expression of mediation and strategy. It answers the question of how the union directed the organization of material features and social practices to create stability and community among the strikers. To accomplish this, the chapter first identifies the basic organization of the Ludlow strikers’ colony using both historical evidence, such as historical photographs, and archaeological testing and excavation. Next, it discusses the methods the union used to assert an optimistic tone within the striking community by describing the way union leaders used public spaces and the activities within them to create community and solidarity during the strike. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the material expression and experience of violence in the strike zone. The union promoted a high level of optimism within the community, but the violence and intimidation from those outside the striking community presented a constant threat to the stability and lives of the strikers and their families. Archaeological information supplemented by photographic and documentary evidence provides the data needed to establish that the union disciplined the strikers and their families through everyday public practices. These public interactions developed a working-class identity that encouraged solidarity despite an environment hostile to working-class organization.

188

Landscapes of Hope and Fear

Theoretical Background Material culture’s connection with ideology and power has been widely recognized in historical archaeology (Burke 1999; Eagleton 1991; Leone 1984, 1999; McGuire 2002; McGuire and Paynter 1991; Thompson 1967, 1974). The definition of ideology used in this study is derived from Randall McGuire’s (2002) and Heather Burke’s (1999) interpretation of ideology as a representation of reality constructed by those with power, either social or economic, to promote and protect their power over others. Those with power may imbue aspects of culture, such as ritual, with ideology, since it works to naturalize inequalities by equating them with everyday beliefs. Outside the dictates of tradition, ideology gains more success in disciplining populations when materialized, especially through landscapes and the direction of material practice (Burke 1999; Johnson 1996; Leone 1984; Leone and Hurry 1998; Littman 1998; McGuire 1991; Orser 2006; Tarlow 1999; Van Wormer 2006). These views of landscape provide entry points into discussions of ideology, power relations, and community and identity formation. However, the studies have often relied on the use of permanent architecture for their interpretation, emphasizing long-term structures, designs, and layouts as shaping and disciplining practice over time. Such perspectives are limited in informing on short-term or transitory sites, such as the Ludlow strikers’ colony. These sites, especially those related to conflict, rely less on tradition or discipline over time and more on the negotiations of identities and meanings that exist in a state of flux or fluidity. In conflicts and habitations of short duration, meanings change on a daily basis and need to be managed to create socially meaningful acts (Baxter 2002; Buchli 2000; Gillespie and Farrell 2002; Taska 2005). Each activity becomes increasingly meaningful without the repetition of time and ritual to make the meanings unconsciously understood. Studies of such conflicted landscapes need a theoretical perspective that addresses the construction of meaning on a daily basis as well as both intimate and public scales to interpret the meanings held in such a fluctuating and ephemeral context. To recognize the complex processes of identity development and overall experience in the coalfields, this study uses Keith Basso’s (1997) concept of a sense of place, which he defines as an active engagement with a place or landscape. Such a relationship with space moves beyond the unconscious assumptions and directives established by dwelling to a recognition of the inherent meanings emplaced in the landscape. This forces the participant to question or support the definitions and meanings held in space by either following or resisting the defined actions. In the case of the Colorado Coalfield War, strikers’ and their families’ alienation from the coal camps forced them to question their relation to the spaces within the coal camps and, ultimately, to the communities inside

189

Michael Jacobson

the camps. The establishment of the strikers’ colonies, most notably Ludlow, allowed them to create, negotiate, and redefine the meanings held in space and reorient their own sense of place and community. Following the entry point established by Basso’s definition of a sense of place, a phenomenological perspective developed by Yi-Fu Tuan (1977), ChrisÂ� topher Tilley (1994), and Julian Thomas (1996) adds to the interpretation of the connection between the union’s establishment of material space in the Ludlow strikers’ colony and the development of solidarity within the striking community. Landscape studies using a phenomenological approach allow a means for the study of experience using material culture. Experience is the foundation for understanding as a person gains knowledge through her or his experience with other people, communities, or material culture by using physical senses to explore the world and identify its characteristics (Casey 1997, 1999; Thomas 1996; Tilley 1994). The body is the foundation for experience, creating the initial perception of the world as we experience the physical world through our body and senses (Casey 1997:21). These experiences provide a subjective and valued relation to the world. The mind interprets the information gathered through bodily actions (Tuan 1977:12), classifying information into ready-made categories directed by cultural values, and through self-interpretation (Rodaway 1994:4; Toren 1999:7). Phenomenology recognizes that interpretation and the development of meaning occur moment by moment. All understanding is fluid, as previous knowledge, past experience, and traditional and structured social values converge in a moment to shape the interpretation of an experience’s meaning. Experience provides knowledge, but only when this knowledge is applied to predefined meanings does experience lead to understanding (Ingold 1992). People explore a preexisting world, interpreting and relating meanings for their own needs. A sense of place is part of this process in that it is an intimate experience with the social values and meanings emplaced in material culture and community practices. As backgrounds and experiences differ for each individual, perceptions of space also differ. Different people hold various perceptions of meanings in places. Even within an individual, interpretations of meanings can change depending on time and context (Buchli 2000:4–5). People and groups must negotiate meaning to develop a common understanding and unified sense of place in order to establish community. The negotiations of the meanings emplaced in the landscape shape and are shaped by the social relations inherent in communities and as such are subject to power and ideology. Those with power have the opportunity to use ideology to dictate the basic rules for social discourse using persuasion, material or social access, and even violence. The material world is the stage for such a discourse. Whoever controls the material world through access to resources has the ability to define meanings

190

Landscapes of Hope and Fear

held within material (McGuire and Paynter 1991). Texts, maps, images, architecture, and objects materialize ideology in landscapes, directing the bodily experience and perceptions of people interacting with the landscape (Gilchrist 1994; Mrozowski 1999; Purser and Shaver 2008; Smith 2007; Tilley 1994; Voss 2007). This process assumes an inherent relationship of power, but such a process is necessary for the development of community structures. Style and aesthetics help establish a unified understanding of meaning in material items. People are able to comprehend established meanings in material culture only when they have knowledge of the symbolism emplaced by material aesthetics (Barrett 1994; Driscoll 1992). Aesthetics materialize the social categories defined by ideology by setting standards of meaning, taste, and value in material objects and directing people’s reaction to objects. Material characteristics such as texture, appearance, and odor meet with the basic physical senses, but the interpretation and understanding of these senses are subject to cultural criteria (Morphy 1994). Memory of past experiences and of social values and cultural categories helps one interpret the meanings held in material culture. Memories structure people’s relationships with their surroundings and the interpretations of their experiences. The merging of style and memory develops into understanding and identity. By determining the appropriateness of aesthetic styles, cultural and ideological authorities can standardize definitions and meanings and eventually regulate and discipline the viewer’s practices and experiences with material. Social authorities dictate the appropriateness of styles in fulfilling social expectations, such as in art and spatial design (Orser 2006; Voss 2007). The definition of what is appropriate and moral creates an expectation for style and practice (Reckner and Brighton 1999). It is through daily practice and social dictates that aesthetic standards become normalized (Bourdieu 1987). Audiences subjected to the ideology will gauge a material’s aesthetic quality in reference to these standards. In controlling the aesthetic standards and meanings held in material culture, powers influence people’s experience with objects. With the entrenchment of meanings, people become disciplined in their practices and experiences with material culture. The inherent relations of power within the interpretation of experience must not lead to a binary definition of such relationships as merely dominance versus resistance, especially concerning landscape studies. There is a discourse with those who hold control over the meanings held in the landscape and the audience interpreting the imposed perspective (Barrett 1994:89; Driscoll 1992). Besides misreading the meaning emplaced by the producers of space, audiences can accept, reject, or modify the meanings held in places (Delle 1999; Littman 1998; Taska 2005). The production and reaction to landscapes create a dialectic with both producers and audiences reacting and either fulfilling or rejecting the

191

Michael Jacobson

expectations of the other. This dialogue creates a spatial struggle over the meanings held in space. Stephen Driscoll (1992) uses the term “fields of discourse” to show the relations between ideologies displayed in space and the audience reading them. For Driscoll, a field of discourse establishes space as the arena for power relations in establishing rule and the subalterns’ reaction to established power. Driscoll recognizes that elites infuse ideology and messages into space and architecture to promote their power and influence. He also recognizes that the audiences of these spatial messages, specifically non-elites, do not necessarily accept the elite’s message unquestionably but instead participate in a spatial dialogue by either following or ignoring the behavior dictated by the message. The exchange is spatial rather than verbal in that it is the performance of behavior that displays the approval or denial of elite influences. With fields of discourse, the common person may not be stating the message, since it is found in the stylistic aspects of architecture, but she or he does have the choice not to follow or perform the asserted ideals. By recognizing the existence of ideological controls and the ability of the landscape to influence and discipline populations, people establish a critical sense of place and involve themselves in a spatial struggle. The daily practice of experience and the negotiation of interpretations of such experience mean that people do not necessarily initiate a sense of place in moments of resistance; instead, a sense of place is a part of mundane experience. One cannot just jump into a sense of place, but one practices a sense of place at some level, all the time cognizant of one’s setting and the relations of power involved in seeing such an environment, no matter how subtle such practices may appear. Ideology, memories, and aesthetics work on a daily basis to shape perception of space and people’s relation to the meanings held in the landscape. Underlying this sense of place is an emotional performance of the interpretation of experience, which is tied to ideological manipulation through the establishment of morality. Colorado’s southern coalfields have been an emotional landscape since their settlement. During the 1913–1914 strike, this landscape became increasingly conflicted as strikers attempted to create a new community. Throughout the landscape, people established meanings and definitions and refined and entrenched those meanings through their interpretation of experiences and memorialization of events. In the Ludlow strikers’ colony, the United Mine Workers of America attempted to direct experience and the perception of realities by defining socially acceptable cultural meanings and materializing such meanings in space. By establishing spatial layouts and directing social practices, the union attempted to create its own vision of a working-class community. This ideal was not monolithic; instead, it was influenced by the audiences of such a spatial statement. Coal company officials, Colorado’s National Guard, the public, the

192

Landscapes of Hope and Fear

strikers, and their families witnessed and participated in this landscape and determined the success of the union’s spatial message. Organization of the Ludlow Colony The Ludlow strikers’ colony was a small community in which people performed daily tasks and formed community relationships. It was up to the UMWA to put a central design to this community to ensure its success during the strike. For union officials, organization was not just necessary for the efficiency of daily tasks, such as dispersing strike benefits and providing food and shelter. The regulation of space also promoted solidarity and community formation and improved public perceptions of the union’s cause. An implied social order within the colony was based on the spatial organization the union used to support family and community activities. The tent acted as the basis of such support. Families established their households in tents after being evicted from company housing. Daily actions for both the individual and the colony were initiated in the tent. In this way, the tent established order for the household. The union supplied the strikers with tents (U.S. House of Representatives 1914:212–213), stoves, and bedding (U.S. House of Representatives 1914:261) to help strikers establish the basic setting of a household. However, for the union, household activities mattered relatively little; instead, the organization and placement of these households took priority, since the placement established community by developing practices and social relations in and around the household tents. The arrangement of tents provided an arena for the growth of a social community in the colony while also establishing general order. With approximately 150 tents (USCIR 1916:6812), a system of identification within the camp was required for organization. A striker’s wife, Mary Petrucci, stated that such a tent ordering system existed and noted that she lived in Tent no. 1, which was adjacent to Tent no. 58 (USCIR 1916:8193). The cellar under Tent 58 became a symbol after the Ludlow Massacre. Survivors of the massacre named the tent cellar the “Death Pit” because two women and ten children died there. From the statements provided by the union and the strikers, there does appear to have been a central plan for organizing the colony. However, there are no maps or descriptions detailing street names or the patterning of the tent numbering system. Information on the overall organizational structure of the colony comes from an integrated analysis of multiple data sets, including photographs and material features. Photographs have provided insight into the layout of the colony. PhotoÂ�graphs of the colony support the existence of tent identification, with the presence of numbers painted on the fronts of tents (Figure 6.1). The numerous photographs

193

Michael Jacobson

6.1. Striking families standing in front of tent with “No. 3” printed on it. Photographer unknown. Courtesy, Denver Public Library, x-60354, Denver, CO.

depicting numbered tents suggest it was a widespread and organized program within the colony. To reinforce the tent numbering system, tents were lined up side by side with streets running between them. According to Mary Petrucci’s testimony (USCIR 1916:8192), the union wanted such a system of organization to maintain enforcement of order and control in the colony. The system also maintained the union as the main authority in the establishment of place in the colony. Photographic overlays conducted by the Colorado Coalfield War ArchaeÂ�olÂ� ogy Project in 1998 (Broockmann 2000; Walker 2002:19), 2001, and 2004 helped establish the organization of the colony. During the project’s 1998 season, the northwest portion of the colony was established using one of Lou Dold’s photographs with a bird’s-eye view (Walker 2002:19). The photograph, taken from a railroad water tower directly west of the tent colony, offered a general placement of the location of features and boundaries (see Figure 3.8). During the 2001 season, the project used photographs taken from among the tents and matched them with the modern landscape, specifically hills and foothills in the background, to establish the locations of tents. The method helped identify the positions of features located in the southwestern portion of the colony. This area held the Death Pit, gymnastic sets, a large community tent, and other household tents. I followed this with another photographic overlay in 2004 to determine the layout of streets in the colony. Many photographs contained the names of streets, such as Front Street, Main Street, North Main Street, and Second and

194

Landscapes of Hope and Fear

6.2. Map of Ludlow Colony with approximate location of streets.

Third streets. By positioning these photographs with the use of a photographic overlay, I was able to analyze the locations of photographs to determine if there was a pattern or an alignment suggesting the presence of streets in the colony. As Figure 6.2 shows, there does appear to have been a pattern to the position of photographs that corresponded to the locations of streets. The two most photographed streets, North Main Street and Front Street, had an identifiable alignment and confirmed the presence of an organized space. There were five streets within the colony: Front Street, Main Street, North Main Street, Second Street, and Third Street. These paths appear to run southwest to northeast at about a 45-degree angle off the county road running along the colony’s south end, with tents in rows running along the streets. Front Street ran along the county road south of the colony and acted as its southern perimeter. The next street to the north was Main Street, which acted as the main path running through the center of the colony. North Main Street was the most photographed street and acted as a second main street for the strikers. Second and Third streets acted as the northernmost streets, with less traffic than the other streets.

195

Michael Jacobson

The layout of tents, identified using archaeological testing, confirms an alignment between major features, such as cellars and tent platforms. The positions of excavated features from across the site show an orientation of about 45 degrees off of true north (CCWAP 2000; Walker 2002). The artifact counts acquired from the surface of the site identify the activity centers within the colony and confirm an offsetting of the colony of 45 degrees (CCWAP 2000:17). The artifact concentrations, along with the orientation of features, suggest an alignment of activity off both the railroad and the county road. The photographic overlay and field testing confirm the presence of an organized landscape in the Ludlow strikers’ colony and suggest the methods for the union’s implementation of such organization. Based on the archaeological and historical evidence, the majority of movement within the colony occurred in the southern portion. The union’s headquarters, a large meeting tent, and the union’s doctors’ tent were located in the southern portion of the colony, along with recreational facilities such as gymnastics bars. The placement of such public areas in the southern end of the colony made it a more publicly open area than the colony’s northern section. It is also where photographers spent most of their time. There is little definitive photographic coverage and no large community spaces in the north end of the colony. The midden and the probable presence of privies north of the colony suggest a private and closed nature of the colony’s north end, likely because that portion of the colony was dedicated to private practices and housing. An organized camp helped stabilize an already unstable association of strikers. Spatial organization directed strikers to come together on a daily basis in public acts for both basic and social needs. Union leaders used recreation and mundane acts to control the experiences of the strikers and their families. This influence over the strikers’ experiences worked to shape their interpretation of meanings held in the developing colony. The direction of experience helped create a common background and, in turn, a common understanding of the material culture and meanings held within the Ludlow strikers’ landscape. Creating Optimism

The UMWA did not create the strikers’ colonies from nothing. The union had knowledge of the use of space in the coal camps before the strike, while the strikers and their families had experienced the spatial practice and corporate communities found in the camps. This spatial structure guided the settlement of the strikers’ colonies, with the colonies acting as ideological rejections of the coal camps. There was a distinct difference in the goals for the two types of communities. In the coal camps, managers’ primary goal was to promote efficient coal production, while the union’s aim was to create a home for strikers and

196

Landscapes of Hope and Fear

their families and a material representation of the union’s ideologies and values. Even with these differences, both communities shared the same basic difficulties involving settlement and community practice. On a basic level, the acquisition of resources such as fuel, water, and food proved a concern in such an isolated area. On a larger and more complex level, differences in identities such as gender and ethnicity acted as divisive threats to the cohesion of community and solidarity. Whereas CF&I established a corporate community that dictated a new identity through spatial layouts and practices that placed the company as the central authority, the union used established identities and practices to develop an organized and unified community. The UMWA’s spatial promotion of practices through the layout of the colony helped protect identity expression internally and subsumed these practices under the guise of solidarity. By encouraging the practice of public activities in union-established spaces, the union adopted these activities as its own and took power and influence from subgroups within the colony. The result was that these spatial practices were no longer divisive but instead created the foundation of a common identity and community solidarity. Solidarity through Recreation

With the transitory nature of the strike, union leaders had to assert their ideology without tradition or long-term discipline. The union realized the power of recreation and amusements in developing solidarity and community, which in turn worked to put its ideology into practice. Union officials established open and public spaces in conjunction with recreational activities throughout the colony to promote shared community experiences. This lessened individual and ethnic ownership of activities and made the union the central authority in sponsoring and encouraging such practices. The initial step in establishing recreational activities was the construction of public space. The placement of the structures providing services—such as the union headquarters, the doctors’ tent, and the union store—in one central area in the southern end of the colony acted to stage daily interactions between strikers and their families. A large community tent was the most prominent of these architectural features. Union leader John Lawson stated that this tent was supposed to act as a central community space by housing a school, religious services, and community dinners. He admitted, however, that because of the inability to hire a teacher or acquire services, the colony did not meet its goals in developing such activities (U.S. House of Representatives 1914:219). In designing and directing the colony’s spatial layout, the union created a stage for strikers to construct their own practices and, in living their daily lives, to develop a community out of public interactions.

197

Michael Jacobson

6.3. Baseball game near Ludlow Colony. Photographer unknown. Courtesy, Denver Public Library, x-60457, Denver, CO.

Strikers and their families initiated community relations within union public spaces by simply performing mundane activities. By cooking, playing music and sports, and taking part in traditional activities, strikers and their families attempted to continue their private identities on a public scale. Such activities promoted security in home and identity. Margaret Dominiske’s description of music throughout the colony placed the practices of specific ethnic groups in the open and public spaces and as moves to increase solidarity (USCIR 1916:7379). While the companies disapproved of variant activities in order to secure a corporate community, the union absorbed these practices and encouraged them as its own to promote solidarity. Differences diffused with the sharing of experience and practice by all. The development of material features in the colony’s landscape allowed for an arena of cultural practices that encouraged a common shared experience among strikers and their families and, the union hoped, a common identity. By constructing gym sets and a baseball field, the union encouraged the playing of sports, which encouraged community participation through teams and common activities. The most visual sport was baseball, as the union sponsored the playing of games by pushing for the construction of a field (Figure 6.3) and setting up games, specifically the game played on Greek Easter in 1914 (O’Neal 1971:130). Baseball was useful in bringing people together and presenting an American identity (O’Neal 1971:130). By playing baseball, different groups could

198

Landscapes of Hope and Fear

6.4. Celluloid film frame from Ludlow strikers’ colony midden. Photograph by Michael Jacobson.

share in an experience not controlled by one ethnic or other social group, while those who did not play in the games could share in community and social practices as spectators. Other activities, such as moving picture shows, added to shared experiences. A celluloid frame excavated in the colony’s midden indicates the presence of picture shows during the colony’s habitation (Figure 6.4). Liz Cohen (1990) has described 1920s Chicago movie audiences as heavily involved in the showing of silent films. They provided commentaries and discussions of the events occurring on-screen. Ludlow audiences probably acted the same way. In actively engaging with films and with other audience members, strikers and their families developed social relations not just in association with the films but with the community as a whole. This shared activity among strikers would have created a common experience in which they could negotiate differences and develop a collective identity. Photography and the Visualization of the Colony

Outside of recreation, the photograph was the most successful venue for promoting a strong community to both the strikers and the general public. Union leaders strategically used photographs taken by themselves and one outsider, Lou Dold, to promote an image of families and a unified community in

199

Michael Jacobson

the Ludlow Colony (Wood 2002). During the strike, Dold made and sold picture postcards of both the National Guard and the strikers. In the composition of his shots, Dold worked to meet his clients’ expectations by putting them in favorable poses. The union and the strikers used Dold’s photographs along with their own to express to themselves and outsiders a message of solidarity, community, and family. The photos displayed a model community that attempted to humanize the strikers and their families. Families became the face of the strike, making it a struggle over home and community rather than an industrial conflict. Such a perception opened a dialogue with the public concerning the harsh conditions in the coal camps without portraying an image of the strikers as fighting strictly for wages or threatening the U.S. capitalist structure. The union always positioned itself as working within the system, and these images encouraged this perception to ease the public’s concerns. To reinforce this image of family and community, union officials and unionand striker-sponsored photographers paid close attention to the composition of their photographs. The union pushed for a humanized landscape. Of the 130 photographs of the Ludlow strikers’ colony analyzed for this study, 119, or 92 percent, include people as either the photograph’s main subject or in the background. The majority of colony photographs with people show them in groups or in family units. Portraits do exist of single people, but they represent a small number in the collection of Ludlow Colony photographs, about 6 percent (n=8) of the total photographs analyzed. The union relied on collective action and solidarity and therefore discouraged the highlighting of individuals. There is no recognition of the industrial or labor aspect of the miners’ lives in the colony photographs (Wood 2002). Strikers and their families were fighting for changes in the overall community, not just in labor relations, and a focus on labor would have hurt their message. Photographers positioned strikers in community practices, including cooking, food procurement, and recreation. In such settings, the union rejected the perception that the strikers were violent. The union asserted to the public that the Ludlow Colony was composed of families, not revolutionary immigrant bachelors. Through the layout of the colony and the production of photographs, the union directed the perception of space held by strikers and the public. Internally, such perceptions led to the enforcement of the union’s ideology of community and the development of a new identity for strikers and their families. Externally, union leaders asserted an image that met the public’s expectations of a stable community. These negotiations and directions in space projected an optimistic and self-sufficient population. However, the realities of the strike were less positive. In reaction, the union and the strikers needed to shape space to meet their defensive needs.

200

Landscapes of Hope and Fear

Fear and Violence Strikers and their families supported the union’s ideals and optimism. Mary Petrucci claimed that her time in the colony was the happiest period in her life (USCIR 1916:8192), and Margaret Dominiske offered supportive and idealistic descriptions of ethnic practices in developing community solidarity (USCIR 1916:7379). Mary Thomas O’Neal (1971) stated that the striking community was united despite the violence and hardships it faced. In spite of this optimism, the Ludlow Colony did have critics. Union officials attempted to use colony space to ease these critiques. However, the normal practices of strikes during the early 1900s involved violence, harassment, and abuse. The strike of the Colorado Coalfield War of 1913–1914 was no exception; rather, it was a model of such conflict. Violence in the strike zone was a mundane aspect of life for those in the area. Retribution killings occurred throughout the strike, as did verbal assaults and beatings. The National Guard’s entrance into the strike zone in October 1913 did not end the violence but instead added to the tension. Officers and troops used their authority to control and harass the strikers and their families inside and outside the strikers’ colonies. Such violent practices resulted in the reshaping of the landscape. Optimism offered hope, but space was also designed to meet the realities of fear. In comparing the views of space between the National Guard and the strikers, the emotional and ideological conflict between the two becomes apparent. Viewing the Ludlow Colony and the National Guard

In their daily interactions with the strikers, National Guard members often developed hostile views of space within the Ludlow Colony. Representations from National Guard officers, such as Gen. John Chase and Maj. Patrick Hamrock, portrayed the colony as disorganized and chaotic. They saw the strikers as savage immigrants who had no understanding of American morality. This view of the colony resulted in a level of fear held by the Guard toward the strikers and the colony. This fear of place added to the tension that ultimately resulted in the climactic attack of the Ludlow Massacre. Much of the National Guard’s hostility toward the strikers and the strikers’ colony originated from the officers’ identification of the colony as disorganized. They claimed the lack of organization was the result of immigrant savagery that was too irrational to understand capitalist ideals. Hamrock stated, “[T]he women and children were no more than dogs, or they would not be striking and living in tents” (USCIR 1916:6941). In describing the events of April 20, 1914, the National Guard’s report on the Ludlow Massacre asserted:

201

Michael Jacobson

In such a way does the savage blood-lust of this Southern European peasantry find expression. In this connection we find also that without exception where dying or wounded adversaries, whether soldiers or civilians, had fallen into the hands of these barbarians they were tortured or mutilated. It is shocking to think of our Colorado youth defending their state and exposed to practices of savagery unheard of save in the half-believed tales of the Sicilian Camorra. (Ludlow Report 1914:16–17)

Such statements played into public stereotypes of immigrant labor as irrational, un-American, and immoral. Much of the National Guard’s distrust of strikers was centered on the Greek strikers, whom the Guard perceived as pushing the other strikers to more violent reactions (USCIR 1916:6364). The Greeks, all single (USCIR 1916:6355), did have an authoritative role in the colony, but it was the image of the Greeks as Balkan War veterans that added to the tension, as the Guard saw them as trained in violence. Officers stated that the Greeks and other strikers hoarded weapons in preparation against capital interests in the strike zone, specifically the coal camps (Ludlow Report 1914:10–11; USCIR 1916:7312). Their plan to destroy the camps went against the ideals of capitalist production and security in the economy. However, as the miners were immigrants, they were not to blame, according to some Guard officers (Ludlow Report 1914:24). It was the coal companies that hired immigrant laborers and failed to educate them in American and capitalist values, resulting in the violence of the strike. The National Guard’s fear of the strikers was reflected in its descriptions of the material features found in the colony, specifically rifle pits. As a feature, rifle pits provided the National Guard with the most definitive evidence of defense within the colony. The testimony offered by members of the National Guard in hearings of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. ComÂ�mission on Industrial Relations, as well as in their own reports (Chase 1914; LudÂ�low Report 1914), repeatedly asserted the existence of rifle pits within the LudÂ�low Colony. However, there is no documented support for the existence of rifle pits outside of the National Guard testimony; strikers, union officials, and outside observers of the strikers’ colony did not acknowledge their presence. ArchaeoÂ� logical testing and excavation have not definitively confirmed the existence of rifle pits. Albert Felts, of the Baldwin Felts Detective Agency, testified to the existence of rifle pits in the Forbes Colony (House 1914:389). In his testimony, he stated that the National Guard discovered these pits only after the destruction of the colony. Ammunition located around these features suggested their use as rifle pits. However, he identified cellars under the tents as rifle pits despite the lack of any ammunition around the pits. The pits’ presence in the Forbes Colony did lead guardsmen to assume they existed in the Ludlow Colony as well, although

202

Landscapes of Hope and Fear

Felts denied the existence of rifle pits there. Lt. Col. Edward Boughton (USICR 1916:6367) and Capt. Philip Van Cise (USCIR 1916:7328) both testified to the presence of rifle pits in the Ludlow Colony, implying central planning on the part of the union for defending the colony. Lt. Karl Linderfelt gave the clearest description of the rifle pits in the Ludlow Colony in his account of the events of the Ludlow Massacre. He stated that during the fighting on April 20, 1914, he entered the Ludlow Colony in an attempt to save women and children trapped in tents and cellars but was fired upon from rifle pits in the colony (USCIR 1916:6894). He also stated that the rifle pits were located mostly on the south and east sides of the colony (USCIR 1916:6892). Given such descriptions of their existence and location, rifle pits should be a definitive presence in the archaeological record of the Ludlow strikers’ colony. Project archaeologists have not identified any rifle pits. According to Felts’s description (U.S. House of Representatives 1914:389) of the rifle pits identified in the Forbes Colony and the supposedly heavy firing during the Ludlow Massacre, there should be a scattering of spent cartridges. Based on the accounts of National Guard troops and mine guards, archaeologists should expect to find a pit with a primarily defensive use defined by a large presence of arms and ammunition. Only one feature could possibly fit the descriptions of National Guard members, although it does not appear to have had an aggressive purpose. Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project archaeologists excavated a shallow pit feature (Walker 2002:44), Feature 71, that could have acted as a rifle pit. Its orientation is similar to that of Features 73 and 74, suggesting a tie with the overall layout of the colony. Feature 71 has a keyhole shape with measurements of 3.0 meters east-west and 1.5 meters north-south. It is smaller than the excavated tent cellars of Features 73 and 74, with Feature 73 at 2.0 meters northsouth and 4.0 meters east-west and Feature 74 at 2.5 meters north-south and 4.0 meters east-west (Walker 2002:44). The presence of domestic items—such as faunal remains, bottle glass, earthenware ceramics, porcelain, tin can fragments, evaporated milk cans, and a two-sided record fragment—suggests the feature was related to household activities (Walker 2002:44–45). The artifact evidence of Feature 71 does not suggest a primarily defensive use for the feature, as one .30 caliber center-fire with head stamp of “.30 W.R.A. Co. WCF” is the only artifact related to firearms or ammunition found in the feature (Walker 2002:45). No other feature excavated on the site even remotely matches the descriptions National Guard officers provided for rifle pits. As archaeological testing could not definitely confirm the existence of rifle pits and the historical record has no confirmation of their existence outside of the National Guard officers’ testimonies, it appears the officers had an incomplete and biased view of the colony. The National Guard perceived the Ludlow Colony as more dangerous than it actually was. The rifle pits in the Forbes

203

Michael Jacobson

Colony probably gave hints of similar features in the Ludlow Colony. The guardsmen stated that they had no knowledge of tent cellars prior to the massacre (Ludlow Report 1914:25), and any hints provided by earthworks related to colony construction, along with traces of movement in and out of tent cellars during the massacre, might have suggested to the National Guard that such features were of a purely defensive nature. However, no feature in the Ludlow strikers’ colony seems to have acted as strictly a defensive structure. The National Guard had a limited view of the material reality present in the Ludlow strikers’ colony. Although the guardsmen engaged with strikers on a daily basis and conducted daily searches, their experience during the strike was a hostile one. Some National Guard officers viewed the strikers as a threat (Ludlow Report 1914). According to these officers, the strikers were so culturally different that they were irrational and unpredictable and therefore dangerous. This negative definition of the strikers became materialized in the National Guard’s view of space within the Ludlow strikers’ colony. Strikers’ View of the Conflict

The Ludlow strikers had a similar dynamic view of space in the strike zone as did the National Guard. The strike zone was a varied landscape with feelings of belonging and alienation located in places across the region. Most strikers saw their colonies, especially Ludlow, as the only true safe havens in the strike zone; the towns and plains outside the colonies were out of their control, places where they were vulnerable to attacks and harassment. The varied relationships strikers had with the different guard companies, the public, and local ranchers and townspeople determined the meanings emplaced in the landscape and led to a contested sense of place. The Ludlow strikers were subject to the outside pressures of mine guards and the Colorado National Guard. Strikers met with constant threats and assaults outside the colonies. In one event, Lieutenant Linderfelt and his troops rounded up a group of strikers south of the Ludlow depot and lined them up against a brick wall with a cannon aimed at them. The troops forced the men to stand under this threat for three hours (U.S. House of Representatives 1914:1506–1507). Men were beaten if they left the colony, and women were verbally assaulted. One National Guard member propositioned Mary Petrucci after the troop forced her husband to do manual labor in the Guard’s camp (U.S. House of Representatives 1914:774). Another striker’s wife, Pearl Jolly, testified that “[f]inally it got so that every one of the women who went out of the grounds they would meet with insults, abuse, [be] called vile names, anything that was possible” (USCIR 1916:6349). These assaults and acts of intimidation attempted to isolate the strikers’ families by limiting their movements outside the colony.

204

Landscapes of Hope and Fear

Those who attempted to avoid such harassment became prisoners to the safety of the colony and reliant on the protection of collective solidarity. National Guard Company B, under the leadership of Lt. Karl Linderfelt, was involved in most of the violent clashes with strikers and their families. Linderfelt’s sympathies were clearly with the coal companies. His responsibility as a mine guard, sheriff ’s deputy, and Guard officer was to protect company property, specifically the CF&I camps of Berwind and Tabasco. He saw the strikers as the cause of violence and asserted that they should be deported from the strike zone, as had been done during the 1903–1904 strike (USCIR 1916:6813). General Chase described Linderfelt as “an experienced soldier and an inexperienced sociologist” (Ludlow Report 1914:8). Chase and other officers recognized the bitterness and hatred between the strikers and Company B and encouraged such antagonism by leaving Company B in the field after the rest of the Guard was removed in March 1914 (Ludlow Report 1914:8–9). Chase thought that by keeping such a feared National Guard company in the field, the strikers would be hesitant to attack coal company property. The strikers materialized their hatred of Linderfelt and Company B in the landscape including and surrounding Berwind Canyon. Company B was stationed in the camp of Cedar Hill at the base of Berwind Canyon. This position led to the canyon’s involvement in much of the conflict in the Ludlow vicinity; in fact, the canyon became the center of violence and conflict in that vicinity from the initiation of the strike. The Battle of Berwind from October 26 to 28, 1913, marked the first major encounter between the strikers and Linderfelt and the rest of the mine guards who would become Company B (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:130–131). The strikers’ goal in this attack was to destroy CF&I property and disrupt mining production. For the duration of the strike, strikers tracked the movements of Company B inside and outside Berwind Canyon to help plan their defense. Company B’s station at Cedar Hill was unobservable from the strikers’ colony (Ludlow Report 1914:13). However, Water Tank Hill, a rise south of the colony and east of Cedar Hill, allowed observation of both the Ludlow strikers’ colony and the guard station. Linderfelt worked to keep Water Tank Hill free of strikers. He viewed miners on Water Tank Hill as picketers (USCIR 1916:6885). This view probably has merit, as the position of the hill allowed strikers to directly watch any strikebreakers entering or leaving the canyon and gave them the opportunity to harass and intimidate the strikebreakers. However, Company B maintained control over Water Tank Hill for its own observation post because it had a direct line of sight to the Ludlow Colony. Through repeated drilling, the Guard posed an intimidating presence in the landscape. It was from Water Tank Hill that Linderfelt based Company B’s attack on the Ludlow Colony during the Ludlow Massacre.

205

Michael Jacobson

The spatial perceptions each side held of the other determined their relationship. The National Guard saw the Ludlow Colony as disorganized and the strikers as violent, so it defined the strikers as a threat to the social structure. The strikers saw the violence and harassment conducted by the National Guard, specifically Company B, as creating a violent situation. The strikers’ and their families’ relationship with the National Guard directed where they saw safe and threatening space, as well as their strategies against the companies and the National Guard. Colony Defense With the destruction of the Forbes Colony on March 10, 1914, the Ludlow strikers’ optimism collapsed. The violence and intimidation perpetrated by Company B and other outside forces had led to violence becoming mundane, especially outside the colonies. However, the strikers had always perceived the colonies as safe. The attack on the Forbes Colony ended this belief, and defense of the colony now took precedence over the development of community. As strikers and their families faced harassment and violence at the hands of company guards and the National Guard, defense of home became a central aspect in the design of the Ludlow strikers’ colony. Through the layout of the colony and material features, such as tent cellars, strikers created a sense of protection and defense from the harsh social and natural environments. Perception as Control and Defense

The first defense was the control of perception. The 1913–1914 strike was a conflict in labor relations that was fought as much in the arena of public opinion as it was in the strike fields. In this struggle, the control of perception allowed the union to promote a specific image to the public and to create a defensive posture that limited the public’s ability to observe activities the union did not want outsiders to see. The Ludlow Colony’s location in the strike zone allowed a visual presence for anyone moving through the landscape and also allowed strikers to observe the movements of outsiders through that same landscape. The UMWA used spatial layouts to resolve its ideological struggle between the public and the strikers. The offsetting of the tents at a 45-degree angle in relation to both the county road and the railroad was a purposeful action by the union to direct the observations of outsiders, such as members of the National Guard, company guards, and the general public. From the county road, outsiders could only see the perimeter tents, limiting their perception of activities and practices inside the colony. The strikers labeled the southern end of the colony “Front Street,” showing their intent to make it a showcase for the public. The

206

Landscapes of Hope and Fear

placement of the doctors’ tent, union headquarters, and the large community tent in this open section also meant the most public and community-based areas of the colony could be viewed by the general public. As the colony was a symbol of a new community, its services and community spaces needed to be visible not just to the strikers but also to the critical public. With this spatial design, the union recognized and promoted the benefits of the colony to portray a successful image of the striking community. The perception of the colony as a symbol became a note of contention in the fight for public approval. The National Guard used the location of the Ludlow Colony to justify its assertion that Ludlow acted as a picket line (Chase 1914:8). This idea added to the Guard’s belief that the strikers were antagonistic. According to National Guard officers, strikers positioned themselves within the landscape to witness movements in the region and plan their strategies accordingly. Union organizer John Lawson denied such accusations, stating that the colony’s location was based on the availability of land for lease, the close proximity of strikers to their former homes in the coal camps, and the accessibility of resources such as coal and water (U.S. House of Representatives 1914:214). Archaeological evidence provided by the orientation of features and the positioning of tents in the colony suggests that the National Guard’s view of the colony’s strategic potential was correct, but it was important more for a defensive stance than for an aggressive attack on others in the area. Beyond the roads, the angle of the colony allowed a direct view of the mouths of Berwind Canyon to the southwest and Delagua Canyon to the west of the colony. The ability to observe the landscape aided in the defense of the colony by allowing people to watch the canyons, the Ludlow depot, and the militia camp directly southwest of the colony. Strikebreakers could be stopped and confronted, while materials and people could be hidden in cellars or other storage facilities before the National Guard entered the colony. The Ludlow Colony went beyond the requirement of shelter for the strikers and their families by meeting the symbolic and defensive needs that are essential during a strike. It was a materialized picket line that worked more powerfully than a line of people by promoting an image to the public. The orientation of the colony directed public perceptions of strikers’ activities and practices. It also directed the view of strikers toward the surrounding landscape in a defensive manner. Besides the direction of observation, strikers took a more direct approach to protect their families, developing tent cellars or pits under the tents that acted to protect the families and their possessions. These cellars represented a further attempt to continue the colony’s optimism despite the violence: they hid the household while preserving its stability.

207

Michael Jacobson

Tent Cellars

Tent cellars acted as a center for household activities and were the sole method of protection for most of the strikers. Strikers did not design the cellars to perpetrate violence against the National Guard. In an intimidating environment, the tent cellars established a place of security for women and children. The two company-owned machine guns (USCIR 1916:6830), the constant harassment by searchlights (U.S. House of Representatives 1914:317), and CF&I’s armored car, dubbed the “Death Special” (USCIR 1916:6354), posed an ever-present threat and intimidated striking families. The canvas tents provided little protection from either company bullets or the harsh winter of 1913–1914. Hiding items and people in the privacy of the cellars provided a sense of safety and stability for the strikers. The most important items protected by the cellars were the striking families themselves. Pregnant women expressed a sense of security in their preference for giving birth in the cellars rather than the surface tents (USCIR 1916:8188). Children often slept in the cellars, and their parents instructed them to hide there if the colony were under attack (USCIR 1916:8188). This belief caused many families to dive into cellars during the National Guard attack on April 20, 1914. Margaret Dominiske sought shelter in a neighbor’s cellar to avoid the bullets (USCIR 1916:8186). Mrs. Costa, one of the victims of the massacre, objected to Mary Petrucci’s suggestion that they leave the cellar for a safer location, feeling they were as secure as possible (USCIR 1916:8194). For strikers and their families, the cellar was the foundation of defense, especially if the security of the striking community failed. Historical and documentary evidence provides limited descriptions of the methods of construction for the tent cellars. Historical photographs suggest that cellars were not uniformly constructed. These photographs, along with statements from individuals such as Mary Petrucci, provide the details that are available regarding tent cellar construction. Large piles of earth can be seen in overall views of the colony, indicating which tents had cellars. These piles of earth tend to be on the western side of the tents and may have provided windbreaks during the winter. Timbering on the ground and shallow ditches surrounding the tent platform added to the sanitation and the establishment of household space (Larkin et al. 2005:47, 91–102). The strikers constructed platforms for the tents that also covered cellars. The cellar under Tent no. 58 exemplified most of the cellars in the colony (Figure 6.5). According to Mary Petrucci, it had earthen stairs leading from the front of the tent to the base of the cellar, six feet below the surface (USCIR 1916:8193–8194). Wood timbers were placed above the cellar, providing a floor for the tent and covering for the cellar. This covering allowed for basic sanitation,

208

6.5. Death Pit following the Ludlow Massacre with evidence of construction methods. Photograph by Lewis Dold. Courtesy, Denver Public Library, x-60481, Denver, CO.

Michael Jacobson

and it also hid stored materials and people from the surface. With the National Guard’s lack of knowledge of the cellars (Ludlow Report 1914:25), any prohibited goods, ammunition, and items for private use were protected. In analyzing the construction of tent cellars archaeologically, archaeologists compared two tent cellars excavated by the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project (Larkin, Gray, and Jacobson 2002:34–41, 50–55). These cellars, identified as Features 73 and 74, provide examples of two different types of tent cellars based on their size. Feature 73 was a shallow feature in comparison to Feature 74 and was likely used for storage. Feature 74 was much deeper and larger than Feature 73 and might represent a living space. In comparing the depositional patterns of both, we can see how their size and use led to differences in their deposition and their construction. Because of its size and shape, Feature 73 had a high level of preservation and information from which archaeologists could interpret practices related to its occupants. Archaeologists were able to identify the location of cellar walls through the presence of oxidation. The heavy oxidation on the walls of Feature 73 (Larkin, Gray, and Jacobson 2002:38) shows the intensity of the fire that destroyed the colony. The fire also destroyed the timbering of the tent’s floor, probably leading to the collapse of surface material into the cellar. Excavators found a bed frame in the center of the feature, most likely having fallen into the cellar directly from the floor above. Archaeologists found other surface artifacts, such as clocks, glass, cooking vessels, and other items related to daily life, apparently from the collapse of the surface tent into the cellar (Larkin, Gray, and Jacobson 2002:45). The early and fast collapse into the cellar protected the walls from weather and slumping effects. Feature 73 was relatively shallow, at ninetytwo centimeters deep, compared with Feature 74 (two meters deep). The supposed collapse of surface artifacts into Feature 73, along with its shallow depth, suggests that the occupants used the cellar for storage rather than as a living space. The massacre’s fire could be seen as providing a Pompeii-like preservation inside the cellars. However, the site became disturbed through post-occupation practices, as exemplified through the depositional history of Feature 74. With a depth of about two meters, it had a different depositional history than the shallower Feature 73. Feature 74’s increased depth (Figure 6.6) made it more vulnerable to disturbances immediately following the massacre during the resettlement of the Ludlow strikers’ colony. Strikers and their families moved the surface remains of the original colony into the abandoned tent cellars. The result was a collection of material remains from multiple households in one tent cellar. This disrupted any contextual information related to the occupants of Feature 74’s associated tent. The intrusive fill and refuse deposited in Feature 74 disturbed contextual information on the cellar, but it did aid in the identification

210

Landscapes of Hope and Fear

6.6. East-west cross-section, Feature 74. Courtesy, Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project.

of the cellar’s construction methods. Whenever possible, archaeologists identified cellar walls and floors by the presence of oxidized or burned soils. However, the depth of the feature hindered oxidation at its lower portions. At the lower depth, the transition between fill and refuse deposits and the sterile soil matrix marked the cellar’s boundary. The identification of the cellar’s boundaries aided in understanding the cellar’s construction. Archaeologists could not identify any masonry or outside materials used in the construction of the feature (Larkin et al. 2005:53). It appears that strikers constructed the cellar solely by excavating it into the earth. The overall feature exhibited a keyhole shape, with a set of steps cut into the ground to the feature’s east side, a method Mary Petrucci described as also present in the Death Pit (USCIR 1916:8193). Oxidation on the lower portion of the floor and the cuts from twenty to fifty centimeters from the base of the feature imply that this was the feature’s original shape at the time of the massacre. There was no constructed floor other than an excavated dirt floor. No timber, stone, or other material was present for use as a floor covering. An oil-drenched cloth covered almost the entire floor of the feature. However, its position on the

211

Michael Jacobson

6.7. National Guard cross-section of Death Pit. Courtesy, Denver Public Library, Denver, CO.

floor did not definitively suggest whether its occupants used it as a floor covering or as a covering for the ceiling of the cellar to keep dust down. Very few artifacts were associated with the feature floor, suggesting little to no primary context for remains in the cellar (Larkin, Gray, and Jacobson 2002:54). For the most part the walls, except for the steps in the east section of the cellar, were vertically straight to the floor. Wood timbers found along both the north and south walls were oriented vertically along the walls, suggesting a system of support for the cellar roof similar to that detailed in the National Guard’s cross-section of the Death Pit (Figure 6.7). The historical accounts of cellar roof construction, by people such as Mary Petrucci, and the evidence from historical photographs coincide with the mixed nature of the deposits above the cellar floor. Burned and charred timbers and wood boards were in a collapsed pattern, with wood boards mixed and overlapping. Fill in the gaps between boards matched the natural surface layers. There were signs of oxidation of the soil between the boards as well, suggesting the occurrence of a fire. Photographs show and historical descriptions detail that timber floors in tents were used for covering tent cellars. Historical photographs specifically show dirt fill used to help support portions of timber floors (see Figure 6.5). This fill would have come from the excavation of the cellars and any other earthwork construction and would be from the same matrix as the natural

212

Landscapes of Hope and Fear

deposits on the site. With the fire, the floor associated with Feature 74 burned and collapsed, likely bringing with it some of the fill supporting the floor into the bottom of the cellar. The parallels between the cellar roof/tent floor construction of Feature 74 and the descriptions of the Death Pit suggest there may have been some standardization of construction of tent cellars within the colony. Yet this standardization may have stemmed from the general situation of construction within the colony. The strikers were miners with knowledge of specific mining and tunnel excavation methods, and they likely worked with limited resources for constructing the cellars. There was a design and order in the cellars’ construction, implying planning rather than expedient construction. The violence of the strike led to feelings contrary to the earlier optimism felt within the colony. The colony was a symbolic reaction to company spaces in the camps as the union gave strikers and their families a larger voice in the construction of community. However, when a larger audience within the National Guard and among the outside public critiqued the union’s message of community and place, the negotiation of space involved something more than just the harsh conditions in the coal camps. The struggle centered on the creation of a working-class community surrounded by the limits of an isolated region and violent harassment. If the strikers remained unified and content in their new community, then the structure of American ideology and the social reality it produced became increasingly threatened. The more hostile members of the National Guard, especially the former coal company guards in Company B and higher-ranking officers such as General Chase and Major Hamrock, saw themselves as the guards of a social order under threat. They used searches, harassment, and violence to defeat the union’s optimism and, ultimately, to cause the strike to fail. Conclusion

During the Colorado Coalfield War of 1913–1914, the Ludlow landscape was conflicted and contested in daily practice. No aspect of community or spatial development was unquestioned; instead, people were actively involved in a sense of place. This sense of place resulted in the redefinition of space and the meanings held within that space. The meanings in each locale changed depending on people’s experiences. Even the Ludlow train depot changed from a neutral center to a place of danger and violence. The UMWA directed this redefinition of place through the formation of the strikers’ colonies, specifically the one at Ludlow. Union organizers built up new communities out of those established in the coal camps. In altering the meanings held in social space, they reshaped the nature of discipline and practice the

213

Michael Jacobson

miners and their families carried from ethnic traditions and the corporate community found within the camps. The union replaced the harsh authoritarian rule of industrial paternalism in the coal camps with a seemingly more equitable relationship within the community. Optimism was the foundation of practice in the Ludlow Colony. By building a community based on strikers’ and their families’ requests, workers dictated the social and community uses of space. They felt that a new structuring of social and labor relations would carry from the strikers’ colonies into the coal camps. The colonies worked to show that workers and their families had the ability to construct their own communities without authoritarian help. The colonies materially showed strikers, their families, and sympathizers within the public that workers and their families did not need the company as much as the company needed them. The union reestablished a shared identity among strikers and their families by using space to direct experiences. The union pushed for solidarity, realizing it needed it to keep the strike going. In both the layout and the definition of space within the colony, the union influenced daily practices, making them more social and shared by others in the colony. The result was that practices that were usually private and intimate or held by certain groups became shared and open to all groups, leading to a shared experience and identity. This shared identity merged with the union’s assertions of class struggle and developed into class consciousness among the miners. The questioning of class within the strikers’ community did not go unheard, as the coal companies, the Colorado National Guard, and the public were witness to the community practices in the Ludlow Colony. The basis of such attacks against the union and the strikers was fear—the fear of outsiders and of the destabilization of the capitalist system. The National Guard, in its daily interactions with the strikers, defined them as savage immigrants unable to understand the complexities or benefits of a capitalist economy. They were un-American and, as such, immoral. The violence practiced by both sides increased the tension in the region and ultimately led to the Ludlow Massacre. The strikers’ optimism kept the strike going and increased their success, but such achievements threatened the beliefs held by the National Guard and the coal company owners. This threat developed into an intense fear and hatred of the strikers and the colony that was answered only with its destruction. Works Cited Barrett, John C. 1994 Defining Domestic Space in the Bronze Age of Southern Britain. In Architecture and Order: Approaches to Social Space, ed. Michael Parker Pearson and Colin Richards, 87–97. Routledge, London.

214

Landscapes of Hope and Fear Basso, Keith H. 1997 Wisdom Sits in Places: Notes on a Western Apache Landscape. In Senses of Place, ed. Steven Feld and Keith H. Basso, 53–90. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, NM. Baxter, R. Scott 2002 Industrial and Domestic Landscapes of a California Oil Field. Historical Archaeology 36(3):18–27. Bourdieu, Pierre 1987 Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Harvard University Press, Boston. Broockmann, Daniel 2000 Computer Mapping and Photogrammetrie in the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeological Project. Senior honors thesis, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY. Buchli, Victor 2000 An Archaeology of Socialism. Berg, New York. Burke, Heather 1999 Meaning and Ideology in Historical Archaeology: Style, Social Identity and Capitalism in an Australian Town. Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York. Casey, Edward S. 1997 How to Get from Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time: Phenomenological Prolegomena. In Senses of Place, ed. Steven Feld and Keith H. Basso, 13–50. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, NM. 1999 The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. University of California Press, Berkeley. CCWAP—Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project 2000 Archaeological Investigations at the Ludlow Massacre Site (5LA1829) and Berwind (5LA2175), Las Animas County, Colorado: Report on the 1998 Season. Colorado Historical Society, Denver. Chase, John 1914 The Military Occupation of the Coal Strike Zone of the Colorado National Guard, 1913–1914: Report of the Commanding General to the Governor for the Use of the Congressional Committee. Exhibiting an Account of the Military Occupation to the Time of the First Withdrawal of the Troops in April, 1914. Colorado Historical Society, Denver. Cohen, Lizabeth 1990 Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Delle, James A. 1999 The Landscapes of Class Negotiation on Coffee Plantations in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, 1790–1850. Historical Archaeology 33(1):136–158.

215

Michael Jacobson

Driscoll, Stephen T. 1992 Discourse on the Frontiers of History: Material Culture and Social Reproduction in Early Scotland. Historical Archaeology 26(3):12–25. Eagleton, Terry 1991 Ideology: An Introduction. Verso, London. Gilchrist, Roberta 1994 Gender and Material Culture:€The Archaeology of Religious Women. Routledge, New York. Gillespie, William, and Mary M. Farrell 2002 Camp Settlement Patterns: Landscape-Scale Comparisons of Two Mining Camps in Southeastern Arizona. Historical Archaeology 36(3):59–68. Ingold, Tim 1992 Culture and the Perception of the Environment. In Bush Base: Forest Farm Culture, Environment and Development, ed. E. Croll and D. Parkin, 39–56. Routledge, London. Johnson, Matthew 1996 An Archaeology of Capitalism. Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Larkin, Karin, Anna Gray, and Michael Jacobson 2002 Archaeological Investigations at the Ludlow Massacre Site (5LA1829) and Berwind (5LA2175), Las Animas County, Colorado: Report on the 2000–2001 Season. Colorado Historical Society, Denver. Larkin, Karin, Mark Walker, Michael Jacobson, and Anna Gray 2005 Archaeological Investigations at the Ludlow Massacre Site (5LA1829) and Berwind CF&I Coal Camp (5LA2175), Las Animas County, Colorado: Final Synthetic Report. Colorado Historical Society, Denver. Leone, Mark 1984 Interpreting Ideology in Historical Archaeology: Using Rules of Perspective in the William Paca Garden in Annapolis, Maryland. In Ideology, Power and Prehistory, ed. Daniel Miller and Christopher Tilley, 25–35. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 1999 Ceramics from Annapolis, Maryland: A Measure of Time Routines and Work Discipline. In Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism, ed. Mark P. Leone and Parker B. Potter Jr., 195–216. Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York. Leone, Mark P., and Silas D. Hurry 1998 Seeing: The Power of Town Planning in the Chesapeake. Historical Archaeology 32(4):34–62. Littman, William 1998 Designing Obedience: The Architecture and Landscape of Welfare Capitalism, 1880–1930. International Labor and Working-Class History 53 (Spring):88–114. Ludlow Report 1914 Ludlow: Being the Report of the Special Board of Officers Appointed by the Governor of Colorado to Investigate and Determine the Facts with Refer-

216

Landscapes of Hope and Fear ence to the Armed Conflict between the Colorado National Guard and Certain Persons Engaged in the Coal Mining Strike at Ludlow, Colo., April 20, 1914. Denver Public Library, Western History and Genealogy Department, Denver. Margolis, Eric 1988 Mining Photographs: Unearthing the Meaning of Historical Photos. Radical History Review 40:33–49. McGovern, George S., and Leonard F. Guttridge 1972 The Great Coalfield War. Houghton Mifflin, Boston. McGuire, Randall 1991 Building Power in the Cultural Landscape of Broome County, New York. In The Archaeology of Inequality, ed. Randall McGuire and Robert Paynter, 102– 124. Basil Blackwell, Oxford. 2002 A Marxist Archaeology. Percheron, Clinton Corners, NY. McGuire, Randall, and Robert Paynter (editors) 1991 The Archaeology of Inequality. Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Morphy, Howard 1994 Aesthetics across Time and Place: An Anthropological Perspective. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 4(2):257–260. Mrozowski, Stephen A. 1999 The Commodification of Nature. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 3(3):153–166. O’Neal, Mary Thomas 1971 Those Damn Foreigners. Minerva, Hollywood, CA. Orser, Charles E., Jr. 2006 Symbolic Violence and Landscape Pedagogy: An Illustration from the Irish Countryside. Historical Archaeology 40(2):28–44. Purser, Margaret, and Noelle Shaver 2008 Plats and Place: Transformation of 19th Century Speculation Townsites on the Sacramento River. Historical Archaeology 42(1):26–46. Reckner, Paul, and Stephen Brighton 1999 “Free from All Vicious Habits”: Archaeological Perspectives on Class Conflict and the Rhetoric of Temperance. Historical Archaeology 33(1):63–86. Relph, Edward 1984 Place and Placelessness. Books Britain, London. Rodaway, Paul 1994 Sensuous Geographies: Body, Sense and Place. Routledge, London. Smith, Angele 2007 Mapped Landscapes: The Politics of Metaphor, Knowledge, and Representation on Nineteenth-Century Irish Ordinance Survey Maps. Historical Archaeology 41(1):81–91.

217

Michael Jacobson

Tarlow, Sarah 1999 Landscapes of Memory: The Nineteenth-Century Garden Cemetery. European Journal of Archaeology 3(2):217–239. Taska, Lucy 2005 The Material Culture of an Industrial Artifact: Interpreting Control, Defiance, and Everyday Resistance at the New South Wales Eveleigh Railway Workshops. Historical Archaeology 39(3):8–27. Thomas, Julian 1996 Time, Culture and Identity: An Interpretive Archaeology. Routledge, New York. Thompson, Edward P. 1967 Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism. Past and Present 38:56–97. 1974 Patrician Society, Plebeian Culture. Journal of Social History 7:382–405. Tilley, Christopher 1994 A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths, and Monuments. Berg, Oxford. Toren, Christina 1999 Mind, Materiality, and History: Explorations in Fijian Histography. Routledge, London. Tuan, Yi-Fu 1977 Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. U.S. House of Representatives 1914 Conditions in the Coal Mines of Colorado: Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Mines and Mining. 63rd Cong., 2nd session. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. USCIR (United States Commission on Industrial Relations) 1916 United States Commission on Industrial Relations Final Report and Testimony. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. Catherwood Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Van Wormer, Heather 2006 The Ties That Bind: Ideology, Material Culture, and the Utopian Ideal. Historical Archaeology 40(1):37–56. Voss, Barbara L. 2007 Image, Text, Object: Interpreting Documents and Artifacts as “Labors of Representation.” Historical Archaeology 41(4):147–171. Walker, Mark 2002 Archaeological Investigations at the Ludlow Massacre Site (5LA1829) and Berwind (5LA2175), Las Animas County, Colorado: Report on the 1999 Season. Colorado Historical Society, Denver. Wood, Margaret 2002 “Fighting for Our Homes”: An Archaeology of Women’s Domestic Labor and Social Change in a Working-Class, Coal Mining Community 1900–1930. PhD dissertation, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY.

218

Amie Gray

7

Material Culture of the Marginalized

The history of the southern Colorado coalfields is a complex one involving social interactions among established residents, Anglo-Americans, Hispanos, African Americans, Asians, and newly arriving immigrants from Europe and Mexico. By studying the material culture of immigrants and “in-between peoples,” we can begin to examine their experiences in America and the cultural negotiations that occurred in their lives. The negotiation of culture through the use of the objects of daily life is of interest in this study. Analysis of the use of objects in “facilitating judgment, classification, and self-expression” provides insight into the construction of an individual’s cultural identity (Beaudry, Cook, and Mrozowski 1991:154). Immigrants had to maneuver between their native cultures and the culture of America. With the Americanization movement specifically targeting immigrant groups, they were under consistent pressure to conform. As a result, their material culture should reflect the cultural negotiations of the times and provide an entry point for discussion about the daily lives of mining families in southern Colorado. In this research, the twentieth-century immigrant experience is situated within the social history of race in the United States to explore the meaning of “whiteness” as it relates to citizenship. Census data for the coal camps in Berwind

219

Amie Gray

Canyon are presented, which document the number of immigrants and marginalized American citizens living and working in the camps. These were the people the Americanists targeted for social reform. The results of census research in Berwind Canyon and a detailed ceramic analysis of a household at the Ludlow Tent Colony are presented and interpreted as they relate to the experience of immigrants and marginalized Americans in southern Colorado. Social Reform, Race, and Citizenship

The United States has had many periods in its history in which its citizens have redefined what it means to be American. The large influx of immigrants into the United States around the turn of the twentieth century, for example, stimulated social discourse on the topic of cultural and racial differences between the new immigrants and “Americans.” Native-born Americans reacted in multiple ways to the presence of these foreigners. Some embraced the newcomers, while others feared their intrusion. Regardless of its response to the millions of immigrants, the American public had to wrestle with its own identity and what it meant to be American. Between the years 1880 and 1920, the United States experienced its largest wave of immigration from Europe. Twenty-three million immigrants entered the country, constituting approximately one-third of the entire U.S. population (Gerstle 1997:525). Immigration peaked between 1910 and 1914, with most of these immigrants Southern and Eastern Europeans (Schneider 2001:57). Immigrants came to America for different reasons. Some were escaping warravaged homelands and intended to stay, while others came to the United States temporarily, to earn money for their families back home. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, repatriation of Balkan peoples may have been as high as 89 percent. According to historian Gary Gerstle, for Greek boys “migration to America was not a sharp break from their way of life, but rather a transatlantic version of accustomed journeys within well established regional labor markets” (1997:535). Another wave of immigration, or rather migration, came from Mexico. Many migrants came to the United States to escape the social, economic, and political uncertainties that culminated in the Mexican Revolution in 1910. The northern migration of Mexicans into the American Southwest had long been established prior to the cession of this land to the U.S. government in 1848 (Sanchez 1990:251). Hispano-American citizens living in southwestern states and territories, such as southern Colorado and New Mexico, had more cultural similarities with Mexico than with Americans from the north (Deutsch 1987). By 1900, over 100,000 people who claimed Mexican descent or birth were living in the United States. Like Southern and Eastern Europeans, many Mexicans were

220

Material Culture of the Marginalized

“sojourners” who viewed the United States as the land of opportunity from which they would take what they could and return to their homeland richer for their efforts (Sanchez 1990:251). The American public’s response to these immigrants was mixed. Earlier waves of immigrants had mostly consisted of people from Northern and Western Europe. They had values and customs similar to those of the Anglo-Saxon stock that formed the foundation of the elite in America. In contrast, immigrants from Mexico and Southern and Eastern Europe were very different from their predecessors. They had different cultural practices and ideals. Importantly, because many of these sojourners were uninterested in acquiring U.S. citizenship, they were perceived as a threat to the democratic process (Hill 1919:610–611). As a result of all these differences, this new wave of immigrants from Mexico and Southern and Eastern Europe became the target of Americanization efforts across the United States; conversely, they also drew the attention of Restrictionists who argued that the United States had to prevent too many undesirable immigrants from entering the country ( Jaret 1999:11; Schneider 2001:55). Many Progressive-era (1880–1920) reformers advocated that immigrants be trained to think and act like Americans (Boswell 1916; Hill 1919; Huebner 1906; Kellor 1916). These Americanists included educators, politicians, and concerned citizens. The Americanization movement reached a heightened frenzy with the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and the subsequent entry of the United States into the conflict (Gerstle 1997:530). In 1910, just over 1 percent of immigrants were “undergoing any systematic training in the rudiments of Americanization”; however, by 1919 over 50,000 organizations were involved in educating immigrants to be Americans (Hill 1919:610–613). Among these agencies, there were multiple definitions and goals of Americanization and different methodologies about how best to reach the immigrants. In 1919, Howard C. Hill published the results of a survey of the AmeriÂ� canÂ�iÂ�zation movement conducted for the American Council on Education. The purposes of this survey were to describe the types of organizations involved in the movement and to determine their effectiveness. According to Hill, agencies that participated in the Americanization of immigrants fell into three categories: private and voluntary, states and municipalities, and industrial (Hill 1919:613). These categories provide a useful framework within which to discuss Americanization. Private and voluntary agencies included social and civic organizations largely run by concerned citizens, such as public schools, churches, fraternal orders, patriotic and social clubs, and chambers of commerce (Hill 1919:613). The results of the survey suggested that these agencies, which were run by native-born Americans, were most effective in teaching immigrants how to be Americans (Hill 1919:615).

221

Amie Gray

Many social reformers believed it was imperative to change the immigrants’ behaviors, customs, and ideals to raise their standard of living for the good of all Americans. Grover G. Huebner, an educator, wrote in 1906: “Americanization” is assimilation in the United States. It is that process by which immigrants are transformed into Americans. It is not the mere adoption of American citizenship, but the actual raising of the immigrant to the American economic, social, and moral standard of life. Then has an immigrant been Americanized only when his mind and will have been united with the mind and will of the American so that the two act and think together. (1906:653)

Public schools were one of the strongest tools of the Americanization movement because they were effective in Americanizing the children of immigrants. The parents of schoolchildren were then educated by the lessons in AmeriÂ� can culture their children learned at school (Huebner 1906:194). After immigrant children were put into public schools and developed relationships with American-born children, they became custodians of American standards within their families (Boswell 1916:204–205). In industrial settings, where large numbers of immigrants lived relatively segregated from native-born Americans, schools were vital to teaching American customs and values. According to Huebner, public schools were the “greatest Americanization force in the coal fields” (1906:195). Schools forced children of different nationalities into mutual relationships that encouraged social solidarity. The children learned English and American traditions and history, which led to the assimilation of their minds and wills. Schools prepared children for industrial labor by training their minds to think originally and inventively, teaching them to strive for efficiency, and teaching them that manual labor was not inferior (Huebner 1906:196–197). Prior to 1914, very few states had agencies devoted to Americanization. Instead, social and civic organizations worked in conjunction with government agencies to promote the teaching of American values and customs. Women’s clubs, such as the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), and labor unions furthered the goals of Americanization. Those goals were different for immigrant men and women. Initially, men were targeted because once they were naturalized citizens, they would have the right to vote. They therefore needed to be educated in the rights and duties of citizenship. Women, however, could not vote until 1920; as a result, the woman’s role in the home, not her citizenship, was the focus of the Americanization movement. Women were “urged to maintain the new American standard of living in diet, hygiene, and infant and child care and to be mindful of [their] crucial role in producing a second generation of ‘true Americans’â•›” (Barrett 1992:1012–1013).

222

Material Culture of the Marginalized

Women’s organizations were particularly involved in educating immigrant women through classes that taught cooking, sewing, and “household arts.” If the immigrant women could not come to classes outside the home, the women’s clubs came to them. Ultimately, the goal of these organizations was to teach the immigrant women English and, secondarily, to give them the skills to act as Americans (Boswell 1916:206; Hill 1919:621–622). According to Helen V. Boswell, chair of education for the Federation of Women’s Clubs, government organizations—including the U.S. Bureau of EduÂ� caÂ�tion, the National Americanization Committee, and the U.S. Bureau of NaÂ�turÂ� aliÂ�zation—turned to women’s clubs for help with teaching immigrants English and the basic principles and duties of citizenship (1916:205). Boswell asserted to her followers that to reach the immigrant women, “domestic educators” must “carry the English language and American ways of caring for babies, ventilating the house, preparing American vegetables, instead of the inevitable cabbage, right into the new home .€.€. because, once [you] start these foreign women in the paths of learning your task is not difficult; they believe in you, and after a little while will break away from their hide-bound traditions and will become plastic in your moulding” (1916:206, 208). Women were considered to be naturally imbued with virtues and values; as a result, their position as cultural diplomats was assumed with ease. According to George F. Sanchez, “Americanization ideology was infused undeniably with the traditional American belief in an exalted role of motherhood in shaping the future citizenry of the republic” (1990:255). Consequently, women became the leaders of, and provided the vision for, corporate and government agencies involved in Americanization (Barrett 1992:1012). The call for industry to take an active role in the Americanization of immigrants came early in the Progressive Movement’s history. The workplace was the place where many new immigrants learned what it meant to be American, since they spent most of their waking hours there (Barrett 1992:1003). As Boswell made the case: The sign language in factories; the foreign language and the padrone in the labor camps, villages and colonies scattered throughout cities; several million non-citizens and non-voters living and working under laws in the making of which they have no voice, of which they have little knowledge, of which they sometimes have little respect; thousands of naturalized voters, but with no real American contact or American understanding, marshaled and voted in companies by American bosses—all these conditions, now prevalent and typifying our failure to assimilate our immigrant population, are not chargeable to industry. But industry is the force in American life which has the remedy chiefly in its control. (1916:207)

223

Amie Gray

While some industries resisted, others worked actively to Americanize their employees (Huebner 1906:674). Industrial managers learned quickly that it was in their best interest to teach their immigrant workers English and American customs because that education made the workers more efficient and productive (Hill 1919:634). By 1919, over 800 industrial plants had their own programs or were working with other organizations, such as the YMCA, to teach immigrants how to be Americans (Barrett 1992:1003). In 1901, John Osgood started the Sociological Department at Colorado Fuel and Iron (CF&I) to facilitate social reform in his steel mills and coal camps (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:10). As coal camps became established, the coal companies began to encourage the assimilation of immigrants into American culture by making it company policy that they do so (Wyckoff 1999:216). The Sociological Department “was to transform all miners into a community of ideal American miners” (Deutsch 1987:95). The department established programs and classes for the workers and workers’ families to instruct them in American culture. Free kindergartens, night schools for adults, cooking schools, libraries, and social clubs were instituted in the CF&I coal camps (Lewis, Camp and Plant 1901:1). To promote its work, the Sociological Department began publishing Camp and Plant in 1901. Camp and Plant was circulated among all CF&I holdings in Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming to keep workers informed of activities in the different locations (Lewis, Camp and Plant 1901:1). The twelfth issue of Camp and Plant, “Social Betterment in the Rocky Mountains,” stated the Sociological Department’s mission: It is hoped that education and improved environment may be the means of bringing about brotherly love and the application of the Golden Rule. That the rich and the poor, the illiterate and the educated alike may be made to realize our social conditions and to unite in an effort to help one another and conscientiously to aid in teaching, and to abide by the teachings of true Christianity, the foundation of all Sociological thought and Social Betterment in the Rockies as well as elsewhere. (Lewis, Camp and Plant 1902:182)

Richard Warren Corwin directed the predominately female staff of CF&I’s Sociological Department. Corwin believed the greatest hope for Americanizing the immigrants was through their children (Deutsch 1987:97). Historian Rick J. Clyne has suggested that “the goal was to instill in the children a much stronger and more uniform sense of ‘American’ values than those held by their immigrant parents” (1999:89). Their young, malleable minds would readily accept American customs and values, and kindergarten teachers would eventually gain the trust of the mothers. Once trust was established and immigrant homes were

224

Material Culture of the Marginalized

opened to reformers, true change would occur. By accessing the homes, the Sociological Department attempted to instill American values in the current and future labor force. Any discussion of labor and Americanization during the early twentieth century requires an examination of the role of labor unions as a socializing force. In 1906 Huebner singled out the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) as the most notable union in the Americanization movement. He stated that trade unions had a profound effect on the assimilation of immigrant men into American society. Before the UMWA entered the coalfields, where over 90 percent of the workers were foreign-born and over half could not speak English, interethnic tension made Americanization impossible. By fighting for better working conditions, increased wages, and shorter work hours, the UMWA provided immigrants with the opportunity to obtain the “American standard of life” (Huebner 1906:201–202). According to Huebner, unions taught immigrants self-government and respect for public interest. By organizing and fighting for common goals, immigrants learned to set aside their cultural differences, thereby creating solidarity. Unions reinforced American values by asserting that every man had the right to work and that the men should have some control over that endeavor. By changing labor practices, unions enabled immigrants to adopt the American social and “moral” standard of living. Perhaps most important, unions required immigrants to declare their intent to become citizens before joining (Huebner 1906:204–205). While Americanization may not have been a stated goal of the United Mine Workers of America or other unions, the unions certainly affected the process of becoming American for those who joined them. For the educators, women’s clubs, and industries involved in AmericanizaÂ� tion, their efforts were a social duty owed to U.S. immigrants. Their goals were to educate immigrants and their children “in the understanding and use of the English language, in a comprehension of the fundamental ideals and meaning of American life, citizenship, and institutions, and in a genuine allegiance to the principles upon which the government of the United States is founded” (Commissioner of Education Philaner Priestly Claxton, in Hill 1919:627). Despite the numerous agencies devoted to Americanization, their extensive reach, and their diligence, the success of the movement at the time was debated. At the same time Americanists were arguing for social reform, nativists were working to restrict immigration from specific countries. As historian Charles Jaret (1999:20) has argued, nativists believed immigrants from Asia, Mexico, and Southern and Eastern Europe lacked the “qualities needed to be good citizens in a democratic republic” because they could not overcome their undemocratic heritage or their immigrant experience. As a result, immigrants were perceived as a threat to the political order, the economic system, and social and cultural

225

Amie Gray

components of the American way of life ( Jaret 1999:20–22). The nativist position came from a belief in innate racial characteristics. Prescott F. Hall, secretary of the executive committee of the Immigration Restriction League in Boston, wrote that American values and principles were based on the intellect and disposition of Nordic races (1921). These races were characterized by “individual initiative, love of personal liberty, and a certain chivalry and sportsmanship.” By 1914 the majority of immigrants to the United States were not members of Nordic races but rather were “Alpine, Mediterranean, and Asiatic.” According to Hall, these races differed from Nordic races in that they were predisposed to centralized authority and dependence on government, and in war they were subservient and lacked morality. Different customs and ideals, coupled with these racial characteristics, prevented the Americanization of these immigrants. Hall argued for excluding “the black, the brown, and the yellow altogether; as to the white, favor the immigration of Nordic and Nordicized stocks” (1921:191–193). During the Progressive era the “contours of citizenship” were redrawn through immigration policy (Sheridan 2002:4). The racism expressed by Hall is central to the immigrant experience in the United Sates. The history of race theory and racism in America is complicated and beyond the scope of this study. A brief discussion of how racism affected the Americanization of immigrants, however, is necessary because race and citizenship are historically intertwined. Immigrants’ success in attaining an American standard of living often required more than an understanding of the fundamental ideals and meaning of American life. According to Gerstle it was a myth that, first, immigrants wanted to “shed their Old World ways to become American”; second, that Americanization “melted” immigrants into a single race, culture, or nation; and finally, that they experienced “emancipation from servitude, deference, and other Old World constraints” by becoming American (1997:525). Many of the principles that were the foundation of Americanization were formed by middleand upper-class Anglo-Americans and were not necessarily shared by workingclass Americans, much less immigrants. “Americanism was, in fact, a contested ideal,” stated historian James Barrett. “There were numerous understandings of what it meant to be an American, divergent values associated with the concept, and so many ways that an immigrant might ‘discover’ America” (1992:997). A person’s race was one of the most limiting factors in his or her experience in America, regardless of whether the individual was an immigrant or nativeborn. Perceptions about race were a product of American history. “Whiteness could become such a forceful metaphor,” historian Orm Overland has suggested, “because an identity as white had a long history of confrontations with Native Americans and Africans as well as with non-British Europeans” (2004:132). Race had been used as the basis to restrict or deny the legal rights of Native Americans

226

Material Culture of the Marginalized

and African Americans for hundreds of years prior to the mass immigration of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. According to historian Philip S. Foner, “For most of our history, American citizenship has been defined by blood as well as political allegiance. Both definitions can be traced to the earliest days of the republic, when the nation was created committed to liberty, yet resting, to a considerable extent, on slavery” (1998:38). Debates about race and citizenship began in earnest following the emancipation of slaves after the Civil War. Historian Claire Sheridan has stated that after the Civil War and preceding World War I, “[T]he internal and external boundaries of citizenship were drawn more tightly as America negotiated its identity by deciding whom to include and whom to exclude” (2002:4). It was not until 1870 that African Americans were recognized as citizens. As waves of Irish, German, and then Southern and Eastern Europeans entered the United States, native-born Americans struggled with the meaning of “white.” While Americanizers were busy socializing immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century, political debate focused on whether Southern and Eastern Europeans were “fit to join the ‘American race’â•›” (Barrett and Roediger 1997:6). “Race and national origin fused to deny the possibility of certain groups .€.€. ever becoming American,” according to Sheridan, and in response, “these groups struggled to prove their whiteness in order to claim eligibility for citizenship” (2002:4). The status of Southern and Eastern Europeans as “in-between people” is contingent on a specific period in history when their racial “fitness” was debated, particularly because they were eventually accepted as white. James R. Barrett and David Roediger have stated that “[t]he story of AmeriÂ� canization is vital and compelling, but it took place in a nation also obsessed by race. For immigrant workers, the process[es] of ‘becoming white’ and ‘becoming American’ were intertwined at every turn” (1997:6). Barrett and Roediger have argued that immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, in particular, were “in-between peoples.” These immigrants were constantly pitted against African Americans by employers in the workplace, by society in the media, and in the communities where they lived: “[I]f the world of work taught the importance of being ‘not black,’ it also exposed new immigrants to frequent comparisons and close competition with African Americans. The results of such clashes in the labor market did not instantly propel new immigrants into either the category or the consciousness of whiteness” (Barrett and Roediger 1997:10). Rather, many of these immigrants responded by turning to their immigrant communities for support, thereby developing networks that gave them the resources to skirt mainstream white America: Both eager embraces of whiteness and, more rarely, flirtations with nonwhiteness characterized these immigrants’ racial identity. But to assume that

227

Amie Gray

new immigrants as a mass clearly saw their identity with non-whites or clearly fastened on their differences is to miss the confusion of inbetweeness. The discussion of whiteness was an uncomfortable terrain for many reasons, and even in separating themselves from African Americans and Asian Americans, immigrants did not necessarily become white. Indeed, they were often curiously indifferent to whiteness. (Barrett and Roediger 1997:17)

The early twentieth century was also a pivotal time in the construction of identity among Latinos in the United States. Historians of Chicano laborers in the western United States have studied race by comparing Latinos with Southern and Eastern Europeans. Their experiences were significantly different. “Eastern and Southern Europeans, although branded as racially inferior in the early twentieth century, lost the burden of racial inferiority relatively quickly, while for Chicanos it grew more onerous” (White 1986:409). As with Native Americans, most Latinos in the early twentieth century were not immigrants. They had been “inhabitants of conquered or ceded lands” and as the result of political events became citizens of the United States (White 1986:398). The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War in 1848. This treaty granted all Mexican citizens living within the newly expanded U.S. borders American citizenship. The American Southwest, including present-day southern Colorado and New Mexico, became part of the United States. Many Anglo-Americans objected to Mexicans gaining automatic U.S. citizenship (Sheridan 2002:4). Nativists responded by questioning the racial fitness of former Mexican nationals and recent Mexican immigrants. In states such as California, where Mexicans had long resided and an elite class had established itself, they were accepted as white by Anglo-Americans. In contrast, racist beliefs altered the political history of a state when New Mexico’s population, according to Foner, was considered “â•›‘too Mexican’ (that is, too Indian) for democratic self-government”; as a result, statehood was delayed until 1912, when enough “white” people were living there (1998:78). Negative stereotypes of Mexicans “affirmed American identity for all whites as white” while at the same time defining citizenship as white (Sheridan 2002:25, original emphasis): “Mexicans’ racial inferiority explained their seemingly permanent status as a laboring class and naturalized that status. The term ‘dirty Mexican’ referred to more than hygiene; it fused race and class and discredited the notion that Mexican Americans could become contributing members of civil society” (Sheridan 2002:7). Negative racial attitudes toward former Mexican nationals were rekindled in the early twentieth century when the United States and Mexico were again in conflict. Political tensions eventually erupted in 1914. President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for approval to invade Mexico the day of the Ludlow Massacre, April 20, 1914 (Wilson 1979:471–472).

228

Material Culture of the Marginalized

Prior to the war, Mexicans had been migrating to the United States for many years. Their migration was aided by the development of a transportation system initially established to transport coal from Mexico to the United States. The railroad opened the way for Mexican laborers to seek better working and living conditions in the United States (Calderon 2000:24; Sanchez 1990:251). Mexican immigrants quickly found communities in the United States because of family ties and cultural similarities within established Latino communities. As with Southern and Eastern Europeans, Chicanos migrated between their villages and economic areas such as mines and fields (Deutsch 1987:4). The Coalfields of Southern Colorado and the Thirteenth Colorado Census (1910)

The workforce in southern Colorado’s coalfield was ethnically diverse. When the mines were first opened, they were worked predominately by Irish, Scottish, and Welsh miners. In 1888, four-fifths of the miners were English speakers. In the 1903 strikes, Japanese, Mexicans, African Americans, and Southern and Eastern Europeans replaced the English-speaking miners (Scamehorn 1910:35). By 1910, 70 percent of CF&I’s 14,000 employees were non–English speaking. The UMWA reported that twenty-four languages were spoken prior to the 1913 strike in the southern fields (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:52; Whiteside 1990:48). Americanization efforts in Berwind Canyon in southern Colorado began in earnest with the establishment of CF&I’s Sociological Department. Mexican women were specifically targeted by Americanists because of their roles in homemaking and child rearing. Americanists established programs “explicitly for the purpose of changing their cultural values.” Anglo-Americans viewed Mexican women as having the “most potential to either advance [their families] into the modern, industrial order of the United States or inhibit them from becoming productive American citizens” (Sanchez 1990:250). Families in southern Colorado and New Mexico were structured based on extended family ties with central leadership. Extended families joined together, living in complexes to raise livestock and grow crops cooperatively (Deutsch 1987:18–19). Americanization efforts failed to change the culture and values of Hispanic women because the movement presented an idealized version of American values that were not truly attainable by people of Mexican descent. “In reality, what was achieved turned out to be little more than second-class citizenship,” wrote historian George Sanchez, because “the government and industry were never interested in raising the status of ‘Mexicans,’ and as a result, they did not effectively support the reform movement” (1990:260). In the mining camps of southern Colorado, Southern and Eastern Europeans and Latinos lived and worked side by side, along with Anglos, African Americans,

229

Amie Gray

Asians, and British immigrants. According to the thirteenth Colorado census in 1910, first- and second-generation Southern and Eastern Europeans made up the majority of the population in Berwind Canyon, followed by “white” Americans, Latinos, and then African Americans. The census was used to determine how many “Americans” lived in the canyon prior to the Ludlow Massacre and how many were actually what historians Barrett and Roediger (1997) called “inbetween people.” An American is defined as a citizen born in the United States to two native-born parents. By asserting that under these criteria a person is an American, it is argued that becoming American is a process that constitutes a matter of degrees and entails time spent in the United States. With each passing generation, immigrant families become more American, often adopting the cultural traditions and values of their new country. As such, a citizen born into a family with one immigrant and one American parent is less culturally American than a citizen born to two native-born parents. Latinos and African Americans in Berwind, while meeting these criteria, experienced being American very differently than their Anglo counterparts. They were legally American citizens, yet in many ways the dominant culture treated them as second-class citizens. Latinos and African Americans had contentious roles in the labor disputes that plagued the coalfields of southern Colorado. In many cases, both groups had been brought into the coalmines to replace miners on strike and were thus often viewed with suspicion and distrust by immigrants and Anglos in the camps (Deutsch 1987:94). Like immigrants and their children, Latinos and African Americans in Berwind Canyon experienced America as inbetween people. For the marginalized people in the coal camps of southern Colorado, citizenship was a contested ideal. The first step in establishing the number of Americans and in-between people in Berwind Canyon was to count them using the demographic data in the thirteenth Colorado census. All persons born to two native-born parents were counted as American. This population was isolated and then identified by their “color or race,” surnames, and place of birth as listed in the census, following the method Richard Nostrand used in his study of Hispano borderlands in the United States (1980:384). In 1910, a total population of 2,106 lived in the coal camps of Berwind, Tabasco, and Tollerburg. Of the population in the canyon, 54 percent were citizens of the United States, and 24 percent had two native-born parents. Twentysix percent of the citizens were from families with at least one immigrant parent. Just under half of the citizens in Berwind Canyon were third-generation immigrants, Anglo-Americans, Latinos, or African Americans. The total number of American citizens in the canyon was 1,142, or 54 percent of the population. Of the American citizens in the canyon, 7 percent were naturalized and 47 percent were native-born. The number of native-born citizens

230

Material Culture of the Marginalized

7.1. Percentage of persons with two native-born parents, residents of Berwind, Tabasco, and Tollerburg, 1910.

with two native-born parents was 498, or 24 percent of the entire population. Of the population of native-born persons with two native-born parents, Latinos numbered 42 percent, and 13 percent were African Americans. Combined, African Americans and Latinos outnumbered Anglo-Americans (Figure 7.1). If the numbers of first- and second-generation immigrants, including Southern and Eastern Europeans, were combined with African American and Latino citizens to represent the number of in-between peoples, they would represent 89 percent of the entire population of Berwind Canyon, the overwhelming majority. During the 1913–1914 strike, many of the residents of Berwind lived at the Ludlow Tent Colony, and the material culture of these in-between peoples is at the core of this research. Archaeology of the Marginalized Household items are of particular interest because they embody the private and public negotiations of individuals as they maneuver through their social fields. The household artifacts commonly used to discuss ideology include, but are not limited to, architecture, parlor furniture, clocks, and tableware (e.g., Beaudry, Cook, and Mrozowski 1991; Glassie 1985; Leone and Shackel 1987). Ceramic studies, for example, have proven useful in discussing foodways and dining traditions. Since dining was both a private and a public event, the ceramics used during such occasions had social meanings. The discussion that follows explores some of these meanings. The studies discussed are concerned with marginalized people’s use of material culture to mediate status in a variety of social and geographic contexts. Robert Fitts (2000) examined archaeology at the household level and looked at material culture from a biographical viewpoint. Diana Wall (1991, 1999; Cantwell

231

Amie Gray

and Wall 2001) studied the ceramic assemblages of working-class and middleclass households in Greenwich Village, New York, to explore their consumer patterns. These two studies are used for comparison in the discussion that follows. By studying the objects used in their daily practice, scholars can determine the degree to which Americanizers were successful in instilling American traditions and values within this population of marginalized people. Many miners dug cellars beneath their tents for protection from stray bullets and the weather as well as for storage. The damaged possessions were pushed into the cellars, and the features were filled with dirt after the destruction of the tent colony so the strikers could set up new tents. Consequently, the cellars contain household possessions that were destroyed during the fire and provide a glimpse into the strikers’ material lives. The ceramics from Feature 73, a tent cellar, are used in this study (5LA1829; Larkin, Gray, and Jacobson 2003). Of the features excavated to date, Feature 73 provides the most comprehensive glimpse into a household at Ludlow (Figure 3.12). Given the stratigraphic sequences of both the soil and the in situ artifacts in this cellar, it arguably contains the cultural material of one household, although the upper strata may contain some material from other tents. When the miners and their families were evicted from their homes in the coal towns, they did not know if they would return. As a result, they transported as many of their belongings as possible to the UMWA tent colonies (O’Neal 1971:96–100). Thus, the artifact assemblage from Feature 73 includes the full range of household items, from furniture to personal effects. The material culture from this cellar enables some discussion of the household’s demographics. The number and variety of shoes and food-related artifacts removed from the feature suggest the presence of at least one adult man and woman and a few children, from infant to preteen (5LA1829; Larkin, Gray, and Jacobson 2003). According to the 1910 census data from Berwind Canyon, households ranged from two to ten members. The people who lived at Feature 73 were likely immigrants or marginalized Americans, considering that many of the strikers came from Berwind, where 89 percent of the residents were in-between people. The inhabitants of the tent that overlay Feature 73 used ceramics or tableware as they performed many of their daily activities. Ceramics, as a centerpiece of social life, embodied the pressure to conform to American ideals as prescribed by social reformers in the coal camps and across the nation. An examination of vessel ware, decorations, and forms enables a discussion of the behavior and ideals of the people who used this material culture. However, this discussion would be merely descriptive without some point of reference as to how other marginalized people used material symbols to negotiate their positions. A biographical and archaeological investigation of an Italian immigrant in the early 1900s conducted by Robert Fitts is presented here for

232

Material Culture of the Marginalized

comparison. Fitts looked at multiple household items or classes of material culture to determine how one particular Italian immigrant, Michael Peete, reacted to the pressure to Americanize by mediating his experience through consumption. Archaeological data were gathered from Peete’s property, and biographical information was gathered from his autobiography (Fitts 2002:1). Michael Peete was born in 1869 in a mountainous part of Italy that had few residents. As Peete remembered it, the family’s house in Italy was a small stone building with no formal dining area. When Peete moved to Harlem, New York, in 1885, he only brought one trunk and some cash (Fitts 2002:2). Peete’s household in Jamaica, New York, included his wife, three children, and occasionally his brother and sister (Fitts 2002:4). Peete was very socially active in his community. He was involved in local government and in teaching other immigrants civics. “Peete strongly believed that Italians should embrace their new country, learn the customs, and become naturalized citizens, but not abandon their Italian roots” (Fitts 2002:4). Peete wanted to appear American, and his residence had certain elements of typical middle-class American homes. When entering Peete’s house, the first room would have been a parlor with all the requisite material symbols. Middleclass parlors displayed an assortment of objects that conveyed certain meanings to those who experienced them in social situations. Items such as needlework, plants, vases, art, and figurines adorned pianos and other furniture in the parlor. The figurines and paintings often portrayed historical events (Fitts 2002:7). Peete’s parlor had a mantel clock and porcelain figurines, part of the Victorian fetish for knickknacks. Peete’s use of the parlor accoutrements suggests that he was actively engaging in consumption of culturally laden goods to negotiate his position in his community. Peete showed an understanding of American values and his desire to be a U.S. citizen by creating a parlor in his home (Fitts 2002: 6–8). In addition to parlors, both social and familial dining were important contexts in which symbols were displayed and social positions negotiated. As such, the tableware from Peete’s household is of particular interest for this study. In genteel dining in the early 1900s, individual place settings were emphasized; settings consisted of a variety of plates, bowls, and silverware, each serving different functions. Typically, food was parceled first into separate dishes for each item and then into separate dishes for each guest. Most middle-class families had two sets of dishes, one for formal meals and the other for family dining. Porcelain was used for formal occasions, while matching white granite and printed earthenwares were for daily use. Formal dining was a segmented experience (Fitts 2002:8). The ceramic assemblage from Peete’s household was a blend of American and Italian styles. In keeping with the segmented dining of the era, dinner plates dominated the collection, although there were also eight bowls,

233

Amie Gray

six bakers, and two soup plates. The vessels were decorated with simple flower designs or were plain whiteware; thus, one set displayed American values and the other displayed Italian values (Fitts 2002:9–10). Fitts asserted that Peete manipulated symbols and images that represented America to convey his fitness to be an American. At the same time, Peete maintained cultural traditions that reaffirmed his identity as an Italian, but he did so in his private space. This study examines the manipulation of material culture by marginalized people and provides a foundation for examining the material culture at the Ludlow Tent Colony site, specifically the ceramics from Feature 73. Field crews recovered a total of 2,221 ceramic sherds from Feature 73 during the 2000 and 2001 field seasons. The ceramics were sorted in stages by ware, decoration, form, and finally for fragments that refit together. Sherds were divided into four categories of ware based on their physical composition: porcelain, stoneware, ironstone, and whiteware. The sherds were sorted correspondingly, and vessels were mended when possible. If vessels could not be mended, their physical characteristics were compared to historical advertisements in Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalogs (1897 [1968], 1902 [1969a], and 1908 [1969b]) and collectors’ guides to ceramics ( Jasper 1996) to determine their forms. Determining vessel forms is important because vessels’ size and shape suggest their potential uses during food-related activities. Table settings were elaborate during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and contained numerous distinctive vessels, each with its own purpose. Any vessel can be used in multiple ways in a household context, it is true. However, examining vessel forms as they relate to foodways and consumption enables discussion of human behavior, and, after all, the actions of the people who used these ceramics in their social lives are of interest here. The number of vessels in the household was ascertained by establishing the minimum number of individual vessels present in the collection. Feature 73 contained a minimum of 120 individual ceramic vessels, 30 of which were mended to determine their exact sizes and shapes. Sixty-four percent of these vessels were whiteware (n=77), 17 percent were porcelain (n=20), 13 percent were ironstone (n=16), and 6 percent were stoneware (n=7). Of the 120 vessels, 66 were decorated (55%). Forty-five percent of the whiteware (n=33), 95 percent of the porcelain (n=19), and 63 percent of the ironstone (n=10) were decorated, while only one stoneware vessel was decorated. Nearly all the porcelain vessels were decorated, while less than half of the whiteware vessels were decorated. The decorated vessels (n=66) were divided into categories based on the technique of the applied design. Vessels with a combination of techniques made up 40 percent (n=26) of the ceramic assemblage. Two vessels were hand painted. One was a single sherd, representing approximately one-eighth of a flow blue breakfast plate. Eight percent of the decorated vessels (n=5) had a transfer print

234

Material Culture of the Marginalized

design. Vessels with decal designs made up 18 percent (n=12), while molded relief and gilded vessels each comprised 14 percent (n=9) of the assemblage. To establish the location and production dates of the vessels, back stamps, or maker’s marks, were analyzed when possible. Back stamps are the most reliable method of determining the lines of tableware and their manufacturing history. Ceramic manufacturers used back stamps or marks to label vessels they produced. In many cases, back stamps identified the line of tableware and were thus specific to the decorations and forms of vessels. Potters reused their design patterns on different sets of tableware, and rival potters copied their competitors’ designs (Lehner 1988:6–8). As a result, design patterns alone provide insufficient information to determine the manufacturing history of vessels. When designs are viewed in conjunction with vessel forms, however, the manufacturers and dates of production can be determined. In the absence of back stamps, this is the most reliable method of determining manufacturing history. The tableware and teaware assemblages from Feature 73 contain twentyfive distinct back stamps, indicating production dates spanning approximately the years 1880 to 1914 (Table 7.1). The mean date of first production of the back stamps is 1899, and the median date is 1900. Figure 7.2 illustrates the fact that the known range of production dates of eight of the back stamps is clustered between 1896 and 1904. This clustering of dates suggests that the vessels were purchased between these years and that the occupants of Feature 73 were not recent immigrants but rather arrived in the United States sometime around 1896. The ceramics that dated earlier may represent vessels acquired upon arrival or soon after. They may also have been purchased secondhand or been given as gifts. Back stamps indicate that the ceramics found in this feature were produced by eighteen pottery manufacturers located in at least four countries. Ten potters were located in the United States (New York and Ohio), three were in England, two were in Japan, and one was in Bavaria. The location of production is unknown for two of the vessels, although back stamps are present. The majority of the ceramics with marks came from East Liverpool, Ohio, which is not surprising because American potters dominated the U.S. market after the turn of the twentieth century. Ohio potters produced quality tableware less expensively than their European counterparts (Majewski and O’Brien 1987). Some of the vessels were made by the same pottery manufacturer yet were from different lines of tableware. Two vessels have back stamps from J€&€G Meakin potteries in Hanley, England, and were first used in 1890 (Kovel and Kovel 1986:11). A third vessel was made by Charles Meakin potteries, and a fourth was labeled as ironstone china from Alfred Meakin. The back stamp from Alfred Meakin potteries was first introduced in 1897 (Kovel and Kovel 1986:12). The 1897 and 1902 Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalogs carried Meakin lines of pottery.

235

Amie Gray

7.2. Production ranges of back stamps.

The 1897 catalog carried a 55-piece set of Alfred Meakin pottery for $9. The set included six each of dinner, breakfast, pie, and sauce plates. Additionally, the set came with six individual butters, six teacups, six tea saucers, one open eightinch vegetable dish, one covered vegetable dish, one twelve-inch platter, one sugar bowl, one cream jug, one pickle dish, one slop bowl, one covered butter dish, and one sauce boat. In the 1897 catalog, decorated and plain sets of J€&€G Meakin tableware were sold as sets and as open stock. A 100-piece set of J€&€G Meakin pottery sold for $11.50, and a decorated open stock platter sold for 55 cents. By 1902, however, decorated Meakin tableware was only available in sets. Meakin pottery was not listed in the 1908 Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog. The vessels with Meakin back stamps were heavy-bodied and were likely platters or bakers. The vessel forms are indeterminate, however, because the sherds could not be associated with any of the known vessels. The tableware assemblage contains numerous vessels made by Homer Laughlin potteries in East Liverpool, Ohio. At least five different back stamps from Homer Laughlin are present. Fourteen sherds have some segment of a Homer Laughlin mark but not enough to discern the line of tableware with which they are associated. Three back stamps indicate the line of tableware and

236

Lehner 1988:63

ca. 1905–1909 4

Jasper 1996:26

J & G Meakin

“Ironstone China”

“J & G Meakin”

ca. 1890

J & G Meakin

“J & G Meakin, Hanley, England”

ca. 1912 ca. 1897

Homer Laughlin (East Liverpool, OH)

1

1

2

1

1

1906–1920s 1 1900 +/–

ca. 1900–1916

Alfred Meakin (England) “Royal Ironstone China” “Alfred Meakin”

“Hom”

“Homer Laughlin Hudson” Homer Laughlin (East Liverpool, OH)

Homer Laughlin (East Liverpool, OH)

continued on next page

Kovel and Kovel 1986:11

Kovel and Kovel 1986:12

Lehner 1988:247

Jasper 1996:94 Lehner 1988:247

Jasper 1996:101

Lehner 1988:246

Gates and Ormerod 1982:83

“Angelus”

1

1

Jasper “Genesee” 1996:107–111; Lehner 1988:247

May 1902 Plant #4

ca. 1890–1900

Homer Laughlin (East Liverpool, OH) “Homer Laughlin” 1900 +/– 2

“Homer Laughlin 52N” Homer Laughlin (East Liverpool, OH)

East Palestinian Pottery Co. (OH)

Harker Pottery Co. (East Liverpool, OH)

“Iris E.P.P. Co.”

“Stone China” “HP Co.”

Gates and Ormerod 1982:44; Lehner 1988:135

1

Reference

“East Liverpool Potteries” East Liverpool Potteries (East Liverpool, OH) 1901–ca. 1907 2

ca. 1903

Count

Gates and Ormerod 1982:196; Lehner 1988:292

Buffalo Pottery (Buffalo, NY)

“Buffalo Pottery”

Date

DE. McNicol & Smith (East Liverpool, OH) “Semi Porcelain” “M&S” ca. 1895–1907 1

Manufacturer

Stamp

Table 7.1. Feature 73 teaware and tableware ceramic back stamps

Lehner 1988:328

ca. 1900 1

1

(England)

(Bavaria)

“England” impression

“Made in Bavaria”

( Japan)

( Japan)

“Made in Japan”

“J”

“Hand Painted”

1

“C.P. Co.” “Superior”

1

2

2

1

“15” in a diamond

“T.S.T” ca. 1901 Taylor, Smith & Taylor (East Liverpool, OH) 1

Sevres China Co. (East Liverpool, OH)

Gates and Ormerod 1982:267; Kovel and Kovel 1986:6

Lehner 1988:415

1

Kovel and Kovel 1986:12

“Sevres”

ca. 1896–1912

1

Reference

Gates and Ormerod 1982:217; Kovel and Kovel 1986:73

Ohio China Co. (OH)

“St. Louis” “O.C. Co.” “Minerva”

ca. 1880–1904

1

Count

“Dresden White Granite” ca. 1905 Potter’s Co-Operative Co. 1

Mellor, Taylor, & Co. (England)

“Warranted Stone China” “Mellor, Taylor, & Co.” “England”

Charles Meakin

“Charles Meakin”

Date

Manufacturer

Stamp

Table 7.1—continued

Material Culture of the Marginalized

include “Hudson,” “Angelus,” and “Genesee.” In keeping with the practice of genteel segmented dining, each of these lines consisted of at least eighty distinct vessel forms ( Jasper 1996:98). The Hudson line has an embossed edge that is scalloped and is decorated with a floral design. Gilded fans and embossed stippling along the scalloped edges of vessels characterize the Angelus line of tableware. The Genesee line is plain with solid shapes and subtle designs, and the edges of vessels are not scalloped. These sets, first introduced in 1900, were very common and readily available to consumers ( Jasper 1996:94–111). The ceramic assemblage from Feature 73 contains a variety of vessel forms, which will be discussed in relation to the social activity to which they corresponded. The stoneware vessels (n=7), with the exception of one, are jugs associated with the storage of alcohol. The lone exception is a small crock from Liverpool, England, that may have contained food such as jam or clotted cream. The feature also contained two chamber pots. The remaining assemblage is divided into tableware and teaware. Tableware

The tableware includes individual settings and serving vessels (Figure 7.3). The individual settings consist of plates and bowls. Drinking vessels are discussed under teaware. The plates were subdivided into plates and soup plates. Plates were identified based on their rims and, when possible, their bases. Few of the plates were mended. The assemblage contained twenty-seven plates and two clearly identifiable soup plates. Unfortunately, because so few plates could be mended, the number of plates does not accurately reflect the diversity of the styles of plates that were likely present. At least three breakfast or bread plates have been identified by the rim diameter. One of the small breakfast or bread plates had a gilded “S” on its rim. This plate is similar to one found in the midden on the edge of the arroyo to the north of the tent colony, used by the strikers as a trash dump. The plate from the midden was made of porcelain and had the letters of the alphabet along its rim. The sherd from Feature 73 may not have been the same vessel form as the one from the midden, although the pattern is identical. The assemblage included a matching set of four oyster bowls and six bowls of indeterminate size and style. No other vessels consistent with segmented dining, such as individual bone or butter dishes ( Jasper 1996), could be identified. The assemblage of serving vessels consisted of bowls, platters, one pitcher, one baker, and a set of salt and pepper shakers. Nine platters and eight serving bowls were identified. Three of the serving bowls were nappies, deep bowls of various diameters. Platters were determined by the absence of a foot along the base of the vessel in conjunction with a rather shallow side leading to the rim. The number of platters is likely inflated because they share these same

239

Amie Gray

7.3. Relative frequency of tableware vessel forms.

characteristics with bakers. While platters tend to be oval in shape and bakers are round, the actual shape of many of these vessels is not clear because many of the rims were scalloped with irregular edges. The tableware in Feature 73 is not consistent with the dining practices of middle-class Americans, which emphasized selfhood through individual portions and place settings (Fitts 2002:8). The number of platters and serving bowls suggests that multiple prepared foods were served “family style” during meals. The predominance of plates (and possible soup plates) with correspondingly few bowls is not in keeping with the segmented dining of the era. According to Robert Fitts, the ceramic assemblage at the Peete household had a similar percentage of plates, soup plates, bowls, and serving vessels and represented Peete’s adherence to Italian foodways (2002:9). The tableware seems better suited to dining practices common to areas such as modern-day Tuscany, Italy, where meals are communal events. According to Jane Newdick and Lynn Rutherford (1997), plates with deep centers and broad rims are preferred in Tuscany because they are versatile and can hold a variety of dishes ranging from stews to salads. While Tuscans eat bread with every meal, they are more likely to place the bread on the table rather than on a plate, preferring to use smaller plates for antipasti instead. Salads and pastas are served in large bowls from which diners serve themselves. Large bowls are used not only for food service but also for preparing the meals. Small bowls are the perfect containers for olive oil, cheese, and condiments. Tuscan dishes are served straight from the oven to the table in the same vessels in which they were cooked. To summarize, the Tuscan dining experience is an informal event that emphasizes

240

Material Culture of the Marginalized

the communal experience of sharing food rather than formal dining etiquette (Newdick and Rutherford 1997:8–14). As in Tuscany, the household at Feature 73 had an eclectic assemblage of tableware. Eight distinct sets of vessels are present, six of which are decorated. A set of four oyster bowls and two matching plates is undecorated. Oyster bowls are heavy-bodied vessels with a pronounced ring base or foot. Four plates made by the East Palestinian Pottery Company in East Palestine, Ohio, have a rose decalcomania design with embossing and gilding near the edge of their rims. The back stamp on these vessels identifies them as “Iris,” a line first introduced in 1905. Two plates have one thin transfer print band on their rims. Two platters, also from the East Palestinian Pottery Company, have a floral decal and are embossed along a scalloped rim. The remaining two sets contain assorted vessel forms. The first set includes four plates, one platter, a nappy, and a sugar bowl. This set is embossed along a scalloped rim and has a forget-me-not transfer print pattern. The second set with multiple forms consists of three plates, one saucer, and a platter. These vessels have gilded fans on their rims. While the assemblage of tableware has a variety of patterns, some of the sets share design elements that have similar themes and are a near match. The three sets with floral designs have similar delicate flowers in the same locations on each of the vessels. The differences between the designs are visually subtle and might go unnoticed by dining guests. The sets with different vessel forms may have been supplemented with the other pattern to replace broken vessels. If the presence of a floral pattern instead of particular design attributes were emphasized, then these decorated vessels would match, meeting some of the criteria for genteel dining. Teaware

The teaware from Feature 73 provides a glimpse into the household’s social practice. The assemblage contains twenty-six cups, four demitasse, eleven saucers, one pitcher, two teapots, one creamer, and two sugar bowls. Fourteen of the cups are whiteware, seven are ironstone, and five are porcelain. Nearly all the porcelain (n=4) and ironstone (n=5) cups are decorated. In contrast, only two of the whiteware cups are decorated. Four undecorated, small, straight-sided demitasse vessels were recovered from the cellar. Eight of the saucers are whiteware and three are porcelain. Three of the whiteware and all of the porcelain saucers are decorated. Many of the vessels in the assemblage of teaware have matching counterparts. In all, there are nine different sets of vessels. One whiteware pitcher has a decal design of a bunch of grapes and has two corresponding cups. Two porceÂ�lain cups have one matching saucer and are decorated with gilded bands near their

241

Amie Gray

rims. The cups have “Made in Bavaria” back stamps. A porcelain cup with a floral decal design has a matching breakfast plate. An ironstone cup matches a vessel of indeterminate shape, and both have a floral decal pattern. Two additional whiteware cups have the same embossing. Finally, there are three matching cups and three matching saucers. The saucers have back stamps from Homer Laughlin. Diana Wall (1999) studied the ceramic assemblages of working-class and middle-class households in Greenwich Village, New York, to explore their consumer patterns. She compared the teaware from a working-class family with that from a middle-class family. Both households had plain, paneled “Gothic” wares that were similar to their tableware. The two households differed in that the middle-class family had a second set of decorated porcelain teaware. Wall attributed the diversity in teaware to its use in different social settings: morning and afternoon tea. Morning tea was a family affair, while the afternoon tea was a venue for socializing with community members. She suggested that middle-class women had more investment in displaying their status through teaware because they tended to be isolated from their peers and thus had few opportunities to assert their gentility. On the other hand, for lower-class women, sharing tea may have been a way to create and affirm social bonds. Rather than assert their status through decorated porcelain teaware, working-class women created community by using plainwares that did not elicit competition (Wall 1991:79). In contrast to the teaware from the working-class family in Wall’s study, two sets of vessels for serving tea were removed from Feature 73. The first set is hand-painted Japanese porcelain and consists of a teapot and a creamer (Figure 7.4). This set has a floral design with gilded accents. The second set is whiteware with subtle embossing along the rim and base, and it includes a teapot and a sugar bowl. The assemblage contains an additional sugar bowl that is green with white dots covering the vessel. The final vessel is represented by one oval lid from a child’s tea set. The decorated, hand-painted teaware and the child’s tea set invite the conclusion that the household recognized the importance of serving tea. Furthermore, the practice of serving tea was reproduced among the children, as evidenced by the presence of a miniature tea set. While the inhabitants of Feature 73 clearly possessed the material culture that symbolized tea traditions, they did not necessarily use that culture for tea. The set of demitasse cups suggests that they consumed espresso or coffee, at least occasionally. According to Mary Thomas, a survivor of the massacre, she and her neighbors regularly shared coffee (O’Neal 1971). The household at Feature 73 conveyed the residents’ civility by using finely decorated vessels, but they did so on their own terms. They used their fine teawares to convey symbols of gentility while maintaining their cultural preference for coffee. Through their daily practice, the residents of Feature 73 met the social requirements of their new environment and retained their cultural values.

242

Material Culture of the Marginalized

7.4. Hand-painted Japanese porcelain. Photograph by Amie Gray.

The teaware from Feature 73 is as eclectic as the tableware. The teaware is comparable to the tableware in that the decorated vessels have floral designs that are similar and therefore interchangeable. The clustering of manufacturing dates of vessels with back stamps indicates that the inhabitants of Feature 73 had been in the United States for at least a few years. The ceramic assemblage suggests that this household was aware of the practice of using matched sets in genteel dining and that its members engaged in that practice. However, they did so in their own way. These households interpreted the symbols of genteel dining from the perspective of marginalized Americans. The people who lived at Feature 73 used their material culture to convey the symbols they perceived as important by emphasizing the mere presence of decoration. Interestingly, most of the decorated vessels were recovered from below the charred floorboards in the cellar of Feature 73. During the final excavation of the cellar, it was noted that many of the vessels, including the Japanese teaware, were associated with metal hardware and wood fragments, suggesting that they were stored for safekeeping in a piece of furniture. This particular teaware was excavated from the lowest strata of the cellar. In contrast, most of the plainware was removed from the strata above the charred floor. The molded teaware was

243

Amie Gray

excavated from the upper strata, which suggests that the occupants of Feature 73 used this set during their tenure at the tent colony. Two noticeable exceptions to these trends include decorated platters and the demitasse set. Decorated platters were removed from the strata above the charred floorboards. This is not surprising, however, because all the platters removed from the cellar were decorated. The demitasse set was excavated from strata below the floorboards, which suggests that these vessels had a high enough cultural value that they were stored for safekeeping. The positions of vessels in the cellar support the conclusion that the household mostly used plainware in its daily practice while reserving decorated vessels and the demitasse set for special occasions. In Robert Fitts’s study of the ceramics in the Peete household, he found a similar dichotomy, reflecting the behavior of white middle-class Americans. The Peete household possessed two sets of tableware, one for intimate family meals and one for entertaining guests (Fitts 2002:9). The residents of Feature 73 were constrained by a lack of space in the tent in which they lived, and they had to choose which vessels to use and which to store. The fact that they chose to store their decorated and matched sets reflects the value they placed on those objects, which was likely informed by both cultural tastes and the expense of the vessels. Conclusion

The Ludlow Tent Colony, as an archaeological site, is unusual. The archaeological context was created on April 20, 1914, by the fire that swept through the tent colony. In many ways, the site contains the record of a specific event, the battle that became known as the Ludlow Massacre. But in many more ways, the site contains the records of people’s lives. The site is composed of individual features that contain the material culture of households and thus is the ideal context in which to conduct analysis at the micro-scale. In general, archaeologists have access only to those items that have been lost or discarded. Because the ceramic assemblage from Feature 73, arguably, represents the entire collection of tableware and teaware from one family, it provides a set of data that is very rare in archaeological sites. The archaeological data from the Ludlow Tent Colony have much to offer scholars interested in the experiences of coal miners and their families during the early twentieth century. The ceramic assemblage from Feature 73 and the research presented here can be used to form a baseline for comparison of features across the colony site and those in other contexts, such as coal camps in the region. These comparisons would allow us to examine variations and similarities among households at the tent colony, thus assisting discussions about their individual experiences. Additionally, comparisons can be made between this one

244

Material Culture of the Marginalized

household and ceramics assemblages from Berwind and other coal camps where data have been collected. Such analysis would facilitate examinations of material differences among people in the camps before and after the strike. The results of this research suggest that the residents of Feature 73, who, as evidenced by the production dates of their ceramics, were not recent immigrants, were aware of the middle-class values that prescribed elaborate matched table settings and formal teawares. Yet they only incorporated the elements that were useful in their particular situation. They selected vessels with decorations that did not match, according to middle-class standards. Instead, the ceramic ensemble was united by a floral theme informed by cultural aesthetics. The assortment of vessel forms suggests that dining was a communal event in keeping with the foodways of Southern and Eastern Europeans, Latinos, and African Americans (Deutsch 1987; Newdick and Rutherford 1997). This household’s tableware diverges from middle-class aesthetics, yet the family’s teaware tells a different story. Since they had two sets, one with elaborate decoration and the other rather plain, the household was able to use this particular material culture in different settings, as appropriate. The family could convey civility by using the hand-painted Japanese porcelain when circumstances warranted. By having and using a second, less elaborate set, family members were able to affirm their familial bonds and their relationships with friends in their community (Wall 1991:79). The community at the Ludlow Tent Colony, for all its cultural differences, shared the common experience of being perceived as foreign by the dominant Anglo-American population. Mine operators used the conception of strikers as “dangerous foreigners” to rally Anglo-American support and justify mistreatment of the strikers by the National Guard (O’Neal 1971). Despite language barriers and distinct cultural traditions, the people at Ludlow banded together in solidarity to effect change. Their fight for labor rights should be viewed as part of a greater struggle for U.S. citizenship (Long 1989:171). The in-between people in the coal camps of southern Colorado incorporated some of the symbols of middle-class America into their daily practice, yet they did so according to their own logic, a logic predicated on their individual experiences. Their cultural citizenship informed their behavior and the choices they made in terms of consumption. They were citizens of their cultures first and citizens or aspiring citizens of the United States second. The goals of this research have been to describe the complex social climate of the early twentieth century and to situate the miners and their families within that history. Race and the politics of race determined how people experienced America, particularly those who were in between. The material culture of the people who lived at the Ludlow Tent Colony embodies this experience. The examination of the ceramics from a particular feature containing the material

245

Amie Gray

remains of one household at the Ludlow Tent Colony has facilitated this discussion of social meaning as constituted in a seemingly disorganized collection of dining and teaware as it relates to the particular experience of being marginalized. Works Cited Barrett, James R. 1992 Americanization from the Bottom Up: Immigration and the Remaking of the Working Class in the United States, 1880–1930. Journal of American History 9(3): 996–1020. Barrett, James R., and David Roediger 1997 Inbetween Peoples: Race, Nationality, and the “New Immigrant” Working Class. Journal of American Ethnic History 16(3):3–42. Beaudry, Mary C., Lauren J. Cook, and Steve A. Mrozowski 1991 Artifacts and Active Voices: Material Culture as Social Discourse. In The Archaeology of Inequality, ed. Randall H. McGuire and Robert Paynter, 150–191. Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Boswell, Helen V. 1916 Promoting Americanization. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 64:204–209. Calderon, Roberto R. 2000 Mexican Coal Mining Labor in Texas and Coahuila, 1880–1930. Texas A&M University Press, College Station. Cantwell, Anne-Marie, and Diana diZerega Wall 2001 Unearthing Gotham: The Archaeology of New York City. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Clyne, Rick J. 1999 Coal People: Life in Southern Colorado’s Company Towns, 1890–1930. Colorado Historical Society, Denver. Deutsch, Sarah 1987 No Separate Refuge: Culture, Class, and Gender on an Anglo-Hispanic Frontier in the American Southwest, 1880–1940. Oxford University Press, New York. Fitts, Robert K. 2002 Becoming American: The Archaeology of an Italian Immigrant. Historical Archaeology 36(2):1–17. Foner, Philip S. 1980 History of the Labor Movement in the United States, vol. 5: The AFL in the Progressive Era, 1910–1915. International Publishers, New York. 1998 The History of American Freedom. W. W. Norton, New York. Gates, William C., and Dana E. Ormerod 1982 The East Liverpool, Ohio, Pottery District: Identification of Manufacturing and Marks, ed. Ronald L. Michael. Society for Historical Archaeology, California, PA.

246

Material Culture of the Marginalized Gerstle, Gary 1997 Liberty, Coercion, and the Making of Americans. Journal of American History 84(2):524–558. Glassie, Henry 1985 Artifact and Culture, Architecture and Society. In American Material Culture and Folklife, ed. Simon Bronner, 47–62. UMI Research Press, Ann Arbor. Hall, Prescott F. 1921 Immigration and the War. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 93:190–193. Hill, Howard C. 1919 The Americanization Movement. American Journal of Sociology 24(6):609–642. Huebner, Grover G. 1906 The Americanization of the Immigrant. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 27:191–213. Jaret, Charles 1999 Troubled by Newcomers: Anti-immigrant Attitudes and Action during Two Eras of Mass Immigration to the United States. Journal of American Ethnic History 18(3):9–39. Jasper, Joanne 1996 Turn of the Century American Dinnerware: 1880’s to 1920’s. Collector Books, PaÂ�duÂ�cah, KY. Kellor, Francis A. 1916 Americanization: A Conservation Policy for Industry. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 65:240–244. Kovel, Ralph, and Terry Kovel 1986 Kovels’ New Dictionary of Marks: 1850’s to the Present. Crown, New York. Larkin, Karin, Anna Gray, and Michael Jacobson 2003 Archaeological Investigations at the Ludlow Massacre Site (5LA1829) and Berwind (5LA2175), Las Animas County, Colorado: Report on the 2000–2001 Season. Colorado Historical Society, Denver. Lehner, Lois 1988 Lehner’s Encyclopedia of U.S. Marks on Pottery, Porcelain & Clay. Collector Books, Paducah, KY. Leone, Mark P., and Paul A. Shackel 1987 Forks, Clocks, and Power. In Mirror and Metaphor: Material and Social Construction of Reality, ed. Daniel Ingersoll and Gordon Bronitsky, 45–61.€University Press of America, Lanham, MD. Lewis, Laurence A. (editor) 1901 Camp and Plant: A Weekly of the Sociology Department Devoted to News from the Mines and Mills of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. Denver. 1902 Camp and Plant: A Weekly of the Sociology Department Devoted to News from the Mines and Mills of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. Denver.

247

Amie Gray

Long, Priscilla 1989 Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America’s Bloody Coal Industry. Paragon House, New York. Majewski, Teresita, and Michael O’Brien 1987 The Use and Misuse of Nineteenth-Century English and American Ceramics in Archaeological Analysis. In Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, vol. 11, ed. Michael Schiffer, 97–209. Academic Press, San Diego. McGovern, George, and Leonard F. Guttridge 1972 The Great Coal Field War. Houghton Mifflin, Boston. Newdick, Jane, and Lynn Rutherford 1997 The Tuscan Table. Ebury, London. Nostrand, Richard L. 1980 The Hispano Homeland in 1900. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 70(3):382–396. O’Neal, Mary T. 1971 Those Damn Foreigners. Minerva, Hollywood, CA. Overland, Orm 2004 Becoming White in 1881: An Immigrant Acquires an American Identity. Journal of American Ethnic History 23(4):132–141. Sanchez, George F. 1990 “Go After the Women”: Americanization and the Mexican Immigrant Women, 1915–1929. In Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women’s History, ed. Ellen C. Dubois and Vicki L. Ruiz, 250–263. Routledge, New York. Scamehorn, H. Lee 1910 Mill and Mine: The CF&I in the Twentieth Century. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Schneider, Dorothy 2001 Naturalization and United States Citizenship in Two Periods of Mass Migration: 1894–1930, 1965–2000. Journal of American Ethnic History 20(1):50–82. Sears, Roebuck & Co. 1968 1897 Sears, Roebuck & Co Catalogue, ed. Fred L. Israel. Chelsea House, Philadelphia. 1969a The 1902 Edition of Sears, Roebuck Catalogue No. 111. Bounty Books, New York. 1969b Sears, Roebuck & Co. 1908 Catalogue No. 117: The Great Price Maker, ed. Joseph J. Schroeder Jr. Digest Books, Northfield, IL. Sheridan, Claire 2002 Contested Citizenship: National Identity and the Mexican Immigration DeÂ�bates of the 1920s. Journal of American Ethnic History 21(3):3–35. 13th Census Colorado 1910 Vol. 27, Las Animas, 1–182.

248

Material Culture of the Marginalized Wall, Diana 1991 Sacred Dinners and Secular Teas: Constructing Domesticity in Mid–19th-Century New York. In Gender in Historical Archaeology, ed. Donna Seifert, 69–81. Society for Historical Archaeology Special Publication 9. 1999 Examining Gender, Class, and Ethnicity in Nineteenth-Century New York City. Historical Archaeology 33(1):102–117. White, Richard 1986 Race Relations in the American West. American Quarterly 38(3):396–416. Whiteside, James 1990 Regulating Danger: The Struggle for Mine Safety in the Rocky Mountain Coal Industry. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Wilson, Woodrow 1979 Address to Congress on the Mexican Crisis, April 20, 1914. In Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 29: 1913–1914, ed. Arthur S. Link, 471–472. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Wyckoff, William 1999 Creating Colorado. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.

249

Claire H. Horn

8

“Thou Shalt Not Dose Thyself”

Proprietary Medicine Use at the Ludlow Tent Colony

Strikers’ Demand #6: “We demand the right to trade in any store we please, and the right to choose our own boarding place and our own doctor.” McGovern and Guttridge 1972:102

In 1913 the coal miners of southern Colorado drew up a list of seven demands to be presented by their union, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), to the mining companies. The sixth of the seven demands encompassed the frustration miners and their families felt over their employers’ intrusion into all aspects of home life—a lack of choice in where to live, where to shop, and where to obtain medical services. While early–twentieth-century mining companies had an interest in keeping workers relatively satisfied, the deskilling of the work and a ready force of new immigrants made workers fairly expendable. In isolated mining camps, the employer could, and often did, exert a high degree of control over workers’ lives, including their health care. The archaeology, documentary evidence, and oral histories associated with Ludlow and the nearby coal camp of Berwind provide an opportunity to examine the material remains of health care in the early twentieth century. During the Progressive era, middle-class reformers became interested in working-class health issues. Advances in the understanding of disease transmis-

251

Claire H. Horn

sion created a new imperative for civic sanitation, since epidemics that incubated in cities’ crowded tenements could spread to other neighborhoods. Through improved sanitation and medical treatments, the ravages of diseases such as tuberculosis and typhoid fever could be greatly reduced. Much has been written about the efforts of Progressive reformers to change the health and hygiene habits of the working class (Duffy 1997; Engs 2001; Hoy 1995; Kraut 1994; Rosner and Markowitz 1997; Tomes 1998). During the first decades of the twentieth century, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) adopted many of the health-related programs initiated by reformers in urban areas. Often, CF&I’s programs relied heavily on proscriptive literature and lectures intended to educate workers on how to keep a clean home and thus avoid sickness. As Robert Fitts (1999:39) has noted, however, proscriptive literature can be a poor indicator of what a group’s actions actually were as opposed to what the authors hoped for or railed against. Historical archaeologists have used health-related artifacts to analyze different attitudes toward health according to race, ethnicity, class, and occupation (Bonasera and Raymer 2001; Cabak, Groover, and Wagers 1995; Franzen 1995; Hautaniemi 1994; Howson 1992). Eric Larsen (1994) used four proprietary medicine (or patent medicine) bottles recovered from Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, as a stepping-stone to investigate the nineteenth-century ideal of motherhood. Excavations at isolated work camp sites have produced proprietary medicine vessels similar to those found at Ludlow, including liniments, painkillers, and laxatives at logging camps in northern Michigan (Franzen 1995), at a dam construction camp in California (Maniery 2002), and at a coal mining town in Iowa (Gradwohl and Osborn 1984). As the medical profession was strongly opposed to the use of proprietary medicines, these vessels provide an opportunity to examine how workers made their own choices about health care, even in a restrictive setting. Workers and their families made their own decisions about when to make use of professional physicians’ services and when to treat illnesses at home with proprietary medicines or home remedies. Despite doctors’ warnings against them, proprietary medicines remained in use at the Ludlow Tent Colony and in Berwind, both before and after the 1913–1914 strike. These products, often containing alcohol and narcotics, were popular throughout the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century. Archaeologists recovered a variety of proprietary medicine vessels from both the Ludlow and Berwind sites. The use of proprietary medicine at these sites provides a window into the materiality of health in the early–twentieth-century United States. Health Reform in the Progressive Era Health in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries became tied to a number of other issues, ranging from fear of immigrants and overcrowded

252

“Thou Shalt Not Dose Thyself”

slums to home decor. Despite increased medical knowledge about the causes of disease, holdovers from previous belief systems persisted. With the advent of indoor plumbing, the old concerns over miasmas translated into a new fear of sewer gases (Hoy 1995:106). At the same time, many in the middle class began to equate physical health with morality (Hoy 1995:89–91). The germ theory of disease was developed in the 1870s, but public understanding of the concept filtered slowly through U.S. culture. Many misconceptions persisted alongside the new theory. Debates occurred within both the medical profession and the growing civic health professions over the origins of disease: specifically, whether some immigrant groups brought disease with them or whether the unsanitary conditions in which many immigrants lived caused disease. While it had been proved that diseases such as tuberculosis were not passed hereditarily, many in the middle and upper classes believed some immigrant groups were more predisposed to contracting disease, either through “racial” weakness or unclean cultural practices (Engs 2001:166–167). These immigrant groups usually lived in areas such as tenements, where contagious diseases spread easily. By 1890 new methods of preventative medicine were becoming widespread, including municipal sanitation, immunization, quarantining the sick, and eradicating disease carriers such as flies and mosquitoes (Engs 2001:174). Concern over these problems in sanitation became wedded to concerns over the new waves of immigrants from outside the traditional areas of Western and Northern Europe. Civic crusaders deduced that the new immigrants needed instruction in civic and personal cleanliness. While Progressive-era reformers were sometimes contemptuous of and condescending toward the working class, advances in civic hygiene (e.g., building and renovating sewage systems, purifying drinking water) undoubtedly saved lives. At the turn of the twentieth century the three leading causes of death were tuberculosis, pneumonia, and influenza. By 1920 the leading cause of death had moved from these infectious diseases to chronic heart disease (Engs 2001:166; Leavitt and Numbers 1997:7). Acceptance of the idea that tiny organisms, invisible to the naked eye, caused disease led health officials to urge stringent standards of cleanliness in the home. The health commissioner of Providence, Rhode Island, expressed the view in 1902 that most Americans believed dirt itself carried disease and that “everything decaying and offensive to the sense of smell was dangerous” (quoted in Hoy 1995:106). For Progressive-era health reformers, all surfaces in the home should be both washable and washed often. Reformers urged the working class, especially immigrants, to clean up their homes (e.g., Kittredge 1911). This cleaning involved not only a greater use of soap and water but often a change in home decoration. Many health reformers railed against Victorian-era decorating tastes, which typically included upholstered

253

Claire H. Horn

furniture, carpets, heavy drapes, cloths draped over furniture, and dozens of ornamental knickknacks. At this time in the United States, middle-class tastes in household decoration had moved away from the Victorian sensibility toward the more spare Mission or Colonial Revival styles (Cohen 1982:293), often leaving social reformers appalled to find the more opulent Victorian styles of decoration still popular in working-class homes. The belief that dust in the house carried disease meshed well with the new aesthetic, allowing reformers to criticize the decorating style of the working class under the rubric of civic health. Urban tenements in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were often centers of infectious disease as a result of overcrowding and landlords’ inattention to water supply or sewage disposal (Bonasera and Raymer 2001:49; Byington 1974:54–55; Cassedy 1991:102; Yamin 2001:11–12). As populations increased, contagious diseases swept crowded areas of the United States. Epidemics of cholera and yellow fever swept U.S. cities in the early to mid-nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, tuberculosis had become a great concern (Kraut 1994:24–30; Levitt, Drotman, and Ostroff 2007:4–7). Absentee landlords of tenements typically filled their rental properties with as many paying renters as possible while making the bare minimum investment in sanitary infrastructure. Nevertheless, it was mainly the inhabitants of tenements, often working-class immigrants, who bore the brunt of censure for poor sanitation (Howson 1992:154; Yamin 2001:12). During this period, an uprising of evangelical Protestantism linked a physically fit body to a morally fit individual (Engs 2001:109). It followed, then, that a lack of physical fitness or personal cleanliness was also tied to moral degeneracy. Stringent housecleaning and personal cleanliness were not easy to accomplish in urban tenements. A Guide to the United States for the Italian Immigrant (Carr 1911:47) instructed readers to “[b]athe the whole body once every day. .€.€. Buy only fresh meat and fresh fish. Do not buy bread and cake at dirty bakeries. .€.€. Select a milk man who has clean hands, clean clothes, clean wagon, clean cans, clean bottles. .€.€. Do not forget that dirty milk may kill the baby.” While these were good suggestions, such admonitions ignored the difficulties immigrants and workers may have had obtaining enough water to bathe the whole body daily or finding completely clean bakeries and milkmen. A 1911 U.S. Senate investigation of immigrant working-class housing in several cities found that soap and clean water were neither cheap nor easy to obtain (reported in Hoy 1995:97). Social reformers, often educated middle- or upper-class women, created settlement houses in urban areas (Spencer-Wood 1994:188). There they lived in the tenements and proposed to change the habits of the working class by example. Settlement workers came to understand the logistical difficulties involved in cleaning within tenement environments. As a result, many settlement workers and other social workers concluded that low wages, poverty, and poor hous-

254

“Thou Shalt Not Dose Thyself”

ing conditions were to blame for poor health among the immigrant working class more than any preferred living conditions of the workers themselves (Davis 1971:82–83; Duffy 1997:423; Duke 1915; Hoy 1995:109). Suzanne Spencer-Wood (1994:197, 1996:411) has argued that settlement workers should not be viewed as instruments of working-class oppression, since no one was coerced to join in settlement house activities and as settlement workers had to fit their programs to the needs of neighborhood inhabitants. However, social welfare work became more complicated when the programs were initiated by an industrial employer and were aimed at workers in isolated work camps. In CF&I’s coal camps in the early years of the twentieth century, the company’s settlement workers did have a nearly captive audience. Industrial employers often held their workers, especially immigrant workers, in disdain. One CF&I manager, Lamont M. Bowers, was quoted in 1909 as saying that the immigrant miners lived “like rats” in order to save money to take back to their home countries. Bowers argued that if the company paid more, the workers would just hoard the extra money and leave more quickly (Long 1991:242). It was more convenient for industrial employers to criticize the sanitary habits of the working class than to raise wages or install new sanitation infrastructure. Company Programs and Propaganda

At times, CF&I introduced policies to improve conditions in the camps, as well as advocating general hygiene and cleanliness. Evidence of CF&I’s programs can be found in the company’s publications, first Camp and Plant and the Sanitary and Sociological Bulletin and later the Industrial Bulletin. These plans ranged from the establishment of model houses and kindergartens in the early years under John C. Osgood to visiting nurses and garden competitions in the Industrial Representation period. Overall, CF&I’s programs emphasized the adoption of middle-class behaviors among the workers and were often aimed at the women of the camps. In the early 1900s, CF&I’s Sociological Department provided classes in domestic science to miners’ wives and daughters. During these early years the company also constructed model homes, based on urban settlement houses, to demonstrate proper methods of housekeeping to its employees (Camp and Plant [C&P] 1902:177–180). Company literature explicitly stated that the model homes were intended to function in this role: “[T]he kindergarten teachers are in a true sense, social settlement workers and conduct in the afternoon clubs and classes, mothers’ meetings and all those forms of social effort which have become a recognized form of settlement work” (Report of the Sociological Department [RSD] 1904:31). Company doctors were expected to do “sociological work” in the camps as well (RSD 1905).

255

Claire H. Horn

In addition to the social work conducted by the company’s kindergarten teachers and doctors, CF&I intended to educate the workers and their families through the company magazine, Camp and Plant, and a series of pamphlets titled Sanitary and Sociological Bulletins. Following the prevailing Progressive-era practices, common themes in CF&I’s proscriptive literature involved avoiding the spread of disease through cleanliness of the home and of one’s body. The bulletins were small (normally two to four pages) and intentionally avoided difficult vocabulary. Each bulletin contained a heading instructing teachers to present the material to their students, and doctors to their patients. In keeping with current notions of personal hygiene and civic responsibility, a 1904 Bulletin stated: “As every person is injured by poor sanitation and benefited by good hygienic environment, it is hoped all will co-operate in this effort to improve his surroundings. Boards of health are not altogether to blame for filthy streets and alleys; the individual is mostly responsible” (Sanitary and Sociological Bulletin [SSB] 2[1], July 1904:3). However, while the individual was generally seen as responsible for his or her own health, the company in some cases emphasized its position of power. In a discussion of turning men away from the saloon, giving industrial training to boys, and teaching women to be better homemakers, the Sociological Department stated that the work “cannot all be done by the public school nor yet by the church, nor by the men themselves. Much of it must be done by the great corporations controlling the coalfields, for they have the means and control the situation” (RSD 1905:12). Under the Sociological Department, CF&I’s proscriptive literature was aimed mainly at the women of the camps. For both the physical and moral health of the population, women would have to work harder. The Sociological Department presented clean habits in the kitchen as an important step to ensure good health in the early years of CF&I’s proscriptive literature. The Bulletin presented the surgical operating room and the scientific laboratory as models for kitchen sanitation (SSB 1905a, 1906). A sanitary kitchen was to be maintained through a more thorough cleaning program than is likely employed in most modern kitchens. According to the Bulletin, all fixtures and furniture were to stand far enough from the walls that they could be washed on all sides. All shelves were to be open, with an explanation that more dust might settle on the contents, but the housewife would not be able to hide dirty items and would be reminded by her husband to clean (SSB 1905a, 1905b). In the kitchen and the rest of the house as well, CF&I’s Sociological Department warned the housewife to avoid excess ornamentation for reasons of health. The model kitchen had very restrained decoration. For example, a 1905 Bulletin instructed homemakers that only a washable curtain should be used in the kitchen or any other part of the house (SSB 1905b). By 1907 the department was presenting an ideal washable window curtain called “the Minnequa

256

“Thou Shalt Not Dose Thyself”

Curtain,” after CF&I’s Minnequa Hospital. The Bulletin argued, “Window curtains are necessary but there is no excuse for them to be unsightly, filthy and dangerous” (SSB 5[1], September 1907:1). The Minnequa Curtain was composed of four pieces of fabric hung on two curtain rods, so the upper window could be opened for ventilation while the lower window was still covered. The ethos of individual and family privacy was to be maintained without ignoring hygiene. A quote from the conclusion of “The Minnequa Curtain” highlights the link drawn between outmoded interior decoration and an irresponsible attitude toward the health of family and community: Readers, who will kindly curtain a window after the suggestions contained in this bulletin will give up using the unsightly and noisy roller shades; will wonder why they thought silk and lace essential to window draperies and be ashamed that they ever considered the dust and dirt catching plush and velvet hangings ornamental. Don’t use a curtain that keeps out air. Don’t use a curtain that collects and retains dust. Don’t use a curtain that cannot be washed. Don’t sacrifice health for misguided taste. (SSB 5[1], September 1907:3)

The appeal to better taste was also presented without the emphasis on health. A 1908 issue of the Bulletin encouraged employees’ wives to be more economical and forsake the “cheap furniture, ugly rugs, plush curtains .€.€. sofa pillows .€.€. very ugly and cheap vases and bric-a-brac” (SSB 6[3], November 1908:3). Working-class divergence from middle-class notions of good taste was presented as a problem to be corrected for its own sake, as well as for the sake of health. In the years immediately prior to the 1913–1914 strike, the Sociological Department’s budget had been cut, and many of the programs were eliminated. Frank Hearne, CF&I’s president after Osgood’s removal, continued many of the welfare programs. After Hearne’s death in 1907, the new president, Jesse Welborn, and the new Rockefeller-appointed chair of the board of directors, Lamont Bowers, had far less interest in welfare programs. The Sociological Department remained in existence until 1914, but many programs were scaled back or eliminated after 1907 (Weed 2005:281; Wolff 2003:220). The emphasis on cleanliness and sanitation decreased in the early 1910s, with the Sanitary and Sociological Bulletin turning more toward issues of workplace safety, including several issues on workplace first aid, the use of mine rescue breathing apparatus, and treatment of burns and electrical injuries (SSB 1911, 1912, 1913). However, the company still paid some attention to clean habits in the home. A 1912 issue of the Bulletin warned that table forks were particularly unhygienic utensils that should be sterilized by boiling water, steam, direct flame, or chemical immersion to kill germs that lurked between the tines (SSB 10[4], December 1912). For women in the mining camps, already faced with the challenge of hauling enough water from communal pumps to keep their

257

Claire H. Horn

houses and families clean, this imperative on cleaning forks must have seemed overwrought. On the eve of the Ludlow Massacre, the Sociological Department warned employees that “[h]uman life is too precious to be menaced by our own or our neighbor’s dirty hand” (SSB 11[6], February 1914:2). CF&I’s extravagant admonitions seem insincere, as the company’s hired thugs were more of a tangible menace to workers and their families than dirty hands. The Sociological Department was disbanded as part of company restructuring after the 1913–1914 strike. Following the deaths of women and children in the Ludlow Massacre, John D. Rockefeller Jr. took steps to improve the company’s image in the public eye. The Industrial Representation Plan (IRP) was a more subtle way to subvert the union’s appeal in the workplace (Long 1991:311–312). The IRP included management-labor committees, such as the Committees on Health and Sanitation, which made annual inspection visits to the mining camps. Other social work formerly conducted by the Sociological Department was turned over to an independent organization, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) (Weed 2005:281). In this new era of management-employee relations, the company literature expressed the view that proper sanitation would only be achieved through the combined efforts of employer and employee: Not much will be gained if the management paints the house, kalsomines the rooms and repairs an occasional leaky roof if the tenant neglects to sweep her rooms, or throws dish-water and kitchen refuse just outside the back door, where flies may breed and carry disease and discomfort to herself and others; nor will it do much good for a tidy housewife to attempt to keep a clean back yard and clean rooms if a leaky hydrant is permitted to produce a perpetual duck pond near her rear door for the children to track in mud over her recently scrubbed floors. (Industrial Bulletin [IB], January 21, 1921:12)

As this quote illustrates, the employee side of the sanitation obligation continued to be the responsibility of the women of the camps. The Industrial Bulletin returned occasionally to the topic of cleanliness in the kitchen, as shown in a small insert (Figure 8.1) urging the wife to practice cleanliness in the kitchen and instructing her to present her habits honestly to her husband (IB 5[4], August 18, 1920:6). In many ways, CF&I moved from a paternalistic concern with the welfare of employees that had started under Osgood to a more “strictly business” emphasis on workplace safety. This concern for workplace safety started after the Primero, Delagua, and Starkville mine disasters in 1910. Dramatic mine explosions led the state legislature to push for more regulation, which the mining companies hoped to avoid through demonstrating self-regulation. Dr. Richard Warren Corwin, director of the Medical Department and former director of the

258

“Thou Shalt Not Dose Thyself”

8.1. “Hints on Health” (Industrial Bulletin, CF&I August 8, 1920). Courtesy, Bessemer Historical Society, Pueblo, CO.

Sociological Department, seems to have single-handedly kept the flame lit for company paternalism while the rest of CF&I’s management moved away from it. Corwin attributed continuing rates of what he saw as preventable sickness among CF&I’s employees to “willful disobedience” of the laws of health (Report of the Medical Department [RMD] 1918:11). As he moved more toward a position in favor of eugenics, Corwin stated: “Men are like children in school. Some can learn. Others cannot be taught: they are mentally deficient” (RMD 1919:7). The

259

Claire H. Horn

8.2. Mary Skrifvars (left), CF&I visiting nurse (CF&I 1917). Courtesy, Bessemer Historical Society, Pueblo, CO.

working men and women of southern Colorado’s coal camps would not have been pleased to be regarded as balky children by the company’s medical staff. In 1916, CF&I hired five “women medical and social workers” to serve as nurses in the camp dispensaries. A photo in a 1917 CF&I publication (Figure 8.2) shows one visiting nurse apparently administering medicine to a child while the mother and grandmother look on approvingly (IB, January 31, 1917:19). Visiting nurses took the place of the Sociological Department’s kindergarten teachers as settlement workers in the camps. In addition to caring for sick patients and

260

“Thou Shalt Not Dose Thyself”

attending camp doctors, the duties of CF&I’s visiting nurses consisted of “teaching members of the families the importance of personal hygiene, the value of pure water, properly selected foods, fresh air, sunlight and ventilation” (RMD 1917:12). There is no record of whether the miners and their families appreciated these lessons in personal hygiene and the importance of fresh food and water. In other settings across the country, however, similar suggestions were not appreciated. Nikki Mandell (2002:121) recounts the reaction of factory employees in Maine to a welfare worker’s lectures on hygiene: “Months after her arrival a group of workers marched into her office and informed her they were as clean as she and had no intention of submitting to her inspections.” Southern Colorado workers would likely have reacted similarly to the idea that they did not know how to keep themselves and their homes clean. In fact, keeping a house and its inhabitants clean in a mining town presented a number of challenges. Living Conditions at Ludlow and in the Coal Camps of Southern Colorado We do not believe that more repulsive looking human rat holes can be found in America than those of Berwind Canyon, before the strike. Rev. Eugene Gaddis, quoted in West 1915:76

Sanitation in a company town was entirely up to the property owner’s discretion. In a mining camp, resource extraction is the reason for the town’s existence, and the company knows that sooner or later the resources will be exhausted or unprofitable and the town will be closed (Fishback 1992:157–158). The main concerns of camp sanitation included bringing in clean water and food, as well as disposing of wastes (sewage and garbage). In southern Colorado, company towns particularly faced the challenge of water scarcity in the dry climate, with water needed for both the mines and the homes. CF&I’s investment in camp sanitation changed over time, with the company’s economic situation and the waxing and waning of its corporate welfare systems. Keeping house in a coal camp was hard work for the women and children. Coal dust from the breakers and other mine workings made housekeeping particularly difficult (Clyne 1999:81; Long 1991:43; Wood 2002a). Priscilla Long cited a Women’s Bureau report from the early 1920s on the condition of women living in coal communities: “A veil of dust envelopes the region, covering the homes and home premises with a black deposit” (quoted in Long 1991:43). Margaret Wood collected oral histories from former southern Colorado coal camp inhabitants that reported some of the challenges (2002a). Through the first two decades of the twentieth century, houses in CF&I’s coal camps did not have running water. Women and children hauled water from communal pumps

261

Claire H. Horn

for household cleaning, washing clothes full of coal dust, and bathing (Clyne 1999:81; Long 1991:43; Wood 2002b:74). Women waged a constant battle to keep their homes and families clean. At Berwind, sanitation systems were fairly simple, in keeping with a rural setting in the early twentieth century. Mapping and excavations conducted by the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project found either stone-laid or cementlined privies associated with each house in Berwind Canyon. While communal pumps were most common in the camps, residential areas constructed in later years were associated with pipes for running water (Larkin et al. 2005). From Berwind’s start as a coal camp in 1881 until the initiation of the Sociological Department in 1902, CF&I exerted the minimum effort toward workers’ housing and sanitation. In these early years, miners often built their own houses using available materials (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:23–24). Aside from locating privies, archaeologists found no extensive sanitation features for this occupation period (Larkin et al. 2005:164–165). Company publications from this time period do discuss sanitary improvements made in the camps, such as this statement from 1901: “Outbuildings have been removed, and others destroyed; cess-pools filled and cleaned, water supplies improved, and buildings renovated. Homes in the new camps are workmen’s model dwellings” (HR 1901). Despite the improvement in water supplies, in a bulletin on the prevention of typhoid CF&I recommended that its employees boil all drinking water (RMD 1903). During the Sociological Department’s tenure, there is little evidence of any substantial improvements in camp sanitation. CF&I’s publications show an emphasis on hygiene education rather than investment in camp infrastructure. In 1910 the Medical Department’s annual report stated that water sources for the coal camps were being monitored, with problems corrected when necessary, and that houses had been repainted inside and out (RMSD 1910). However, when the Reverend Eugene Gaddis, former head of the Sociological Department, testified before the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, he condemned the coal camps’ sanitation. Dr. Gaddis testified that company doctors frequently found miners’ houses unfit for occupancy and that camp superintendents were unwilling to make changes, since sanitation was not directly connected to the work of the mines (West 1915:74–75). Even by the company’s own admission, sanitation was not given a high priority. By Gaddis’s testimony, it was severely neglected. As CF&I’s management strove to correct the bad public image following the Ludlow Massacre, significant improvements were finally made in camp sanitation. A 1915 survey of CF&I’s mining camps found that some camps had decent water supplies while others were deemed “murky” and “far from wholesome.” Sewers were absent from the camps, although with sufficient slope, drainage was good (YMCA 1915). CF&I’s publications listed a number of improvements

262

“Thou Shalt Not Dose Thyself”

to camp sanitation, including testing camp drinking water sources (IB, February 21, 1921:1), constructing cement-lined privies (IB, July 31, 1917:5), banning hogs from camps (IB, June 5, 1917:5; January 10, 1918:7), fencing house yards (IB, April 30, 1919:9), and instituting regular trash collection (Larkin et al. 2005:171). Sanitary toilets, or cement-lined privies, were brought into use in the camps by 1917 (IB, July 31, 1917). Frequently cleaned cement-lined privies would have prevented human waste from contaminating the groundwater and the canyon’s creek. Archaeologists found cement-lined privies in the post-strike neighborhood of Berwind, along with plumbing pipes that may have been bringing water into or closer to the miners’ houses (Larkin et al. 2005:173). By the 1920s, company policy called for weekly cleaning of the privies (Larkin et al. 2005:158). While this practice was unfortunate for the archaeologists studying the remains of the Berwind coal camp, it would have been a welcome improvement for the camp’s inhabitants. Water sources continued to be somewhat suspect. The 1915 YMCA survey of camp conditions had determined that Berwind had a good water source from a mountain stream, filtered through a tunnel. However, the stream ran dry in the summer, and the camp’s pumps would be shut down until the tunnel filled up again (YMCA 1915:21). Other camps were less fortunate in their water supplies, according to this report. In the camps near Trinidad, Colorado, the YMCA found that Primero’s and Sopris’s water sources were of poor quality and Morley’s was contaminated by a ranch near the intake, while Segundo’s, Frederick’s, Berwind’s, and Tabasco’s were fairly good (YMCA 1915). Still, in 1921 the Medical Department recommended that employees boil all water for drinking, cooking, and dishwashing (RMD 1921:12). Communicable diseases such as typhoid continued to be a problem in CF&I’s camps. CF&I’s Medical Department

In the event of sickness or injury, CF&I provided both camp physicians and a hospital in Pueblo. CF&I began sending company doctors to the coal camps in 1882. Prior to 1920, medical services were provided with a mandatory $1.00 per month deduction from miners’ paychecks. In 1920 the deduction was increased to $1.50 per month (IB, April 27, 1920:4–5). According to company policy at the time of the 1913–1914 strike, the paycheck deduction covered all ailments except “confinement, venereal diseases and fight bruises” (C&P 1[8], February 1, 1902:108). With a miner’s average annual income at nearly $700 in 1911 (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:22), the $1.00 per month would amount to 2 percent of that income. The medical deduction was an additional expense, along with other mandatory company charges for blacksmithing, explosives, rent, coal for use in the home, and often higher prices for food and supplies at the company store.

263

Claire H. Horn

In addition to doctors’ offices in each of the mining camps, CF&I maintained the Minnequa Hospital in Pueblo, where patients were sent when their cases were too severe for the camp doctors to handle. The hospital was constructed in 1902 (HR 1902), with additional facilities such as a contagious ward, pathological lab, and nurses’ home added to its lakeside acreage over the following years (RMD 1906, 1908; RMSD 1913). Dr. Corwin, the head of the Medical Department from 1881 until his death in 1929, took great pride in keeping the hospital up-to-date with medical advances (RMD 1902–1929). However, the structure of the company physician plan created a divide between the workers and the physicians. The main contradiction of a company doctor plan is that the physicians’ salaries are paid through workers’ paycheck deductions, while the physicians are actually hired and directed by the company management. This situation creates a high potential for conflict for company physicians, between the ethical medical responsibility for patients’ health and the physicians’ desire to keep their jobs or advance their careers (Draper 2003:44). In his 1915 testimony before the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, Rev. Eugene Gaddis was critical of medical provisions in the coal camps before the strike. According to Gaddis, CF&I provided doctors with insufficient funds to maintain the health of camp residents. Doctors were left with the choice to deny care, pay for care from their own pockets, or charge patients beyond the official fees (West 1915). The UMWA hired Dr. Ben B. Beshoar to treat strikers in Las Animas County during the 1913–1914 strike (Beshoar 1957:xii). Although no records appear to exist for illnesses suffered by tent colony occupants, it is reasonable to expect that some classes of injury and illness, such as industrial accidents and illness related to bad water, would have abated in the strikers’ colonies. Other complaints, particularly those of chronic disease, would have persisted. One Ludlow inhabitant recalled years later that it had been fortunate that no major outbreaks and no deaths from disease occurred at Ludlow during the strike (O’Neal 1971:121). Proprietary Medicine Use at Ludlow The glass recovered from the Ludlow Tent Colony can be divided into three main categories: vessel glass (bottles, jars, tableware), non-vessel glass (mainly flat glass), and glass that is unrecognizable, often melted beyond recognition. Large amounts of glass at the site were melted by the fire that destroyed the camp. Excluding tableware and decorative pieces, the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project recovered 210 identifiable glass vessels from the Ludlow site. Two stoneware whiskey bottles are included in the alcohol container count, since they are functionally the same as glass whiskey bottles. The total count includes 45 containers classified as medicinal or health-related, mainly composed

264

“Thou Shalt Not Dose Thyself” Table 8.1. Amounts of identifiable glass vessel types at Ludlow Vessel Type (non-tableware) Medicinal/health (proprietary medicines, bitters, other medicinal) Alcohol (beer, whiskey, wine*) Food preparation/consumption (milk, condiments) Hygiene/cosmetic (dentifrice, perfume, cosmetics, shoe polish) Food storage (canning jars) Soda Writing (ink) Total

Number (percent) 45 48 30 21 45 19 2 210

(21) (23) (14) (10) (21) (9) (1)

* Includes two stoneware whiskey bottles.

of proprietary medicine vessels. Medicinal vessels (21%), food storage (21%), and alcohol (23%) are the three largest categories of identifiable vessels (Table 8.1). Of the 45 medicine bottles, 20 were identifiable by brand. The largest number of identified medicine bottles was Hamlin’s Wizard Oil, with a total of 9 bottles. Five other brands have been identified: Angelica Bitter Tonic, Aceite Mexicano, Davis Vegetable Pain Killer, Fratelli Branca bitters, and Santal de Midy. In addition, archaeologists recovered 3 generic bitters bottle, 22 generic pharmacy bottles, and 1 small pill bottle with the embossed text “Farmacia Arciducale di G. Prodam Fiume.” This bottle may represent an imported item from the border region of present-day Italy and Croatia. The Croatian city of Rijeka was known as “Fiume” prior to World War I, when it fell under the control of Venice (Goldstein 1999).1 Contexts

Project archaeologists delineated twenty-three loci across the site of the Ludlow Tent Colony on the basis of surface observation and remote sensing (Saitta 2007:66). Table 8.2 illustrates the spatial distribution of proprietary medicine containers across the site. The largest numbers of identifiable medicine bottles were recovered from deep features, where the bottles were more protected from the camp’s destruction and later decades of cattle trampling. Archaeologists recovered the highest concentrations (59%) of medicine bottles from two features: a privy in Locus 6 and a tent cellar in Locus 11. Only four medicine bottles were found in the other completely excavated tent cellar, in Locus 12. Six medicine bottles were found in Locus 7, the camp midden. Archaeologists recovered most of the remainder in or near tent platform locations (Loci 1, 3, 13, and 15). Archaeologists recovered one remaining generic pharmaceutical bottle in an area excavated on the basis of Ground Penetrating Radar readings. The function of this area (Locus 2) has remained indeterminate.

265

Claire H. Horn

Table 8.2. Proprietary medicines by locus at Ludlow Proprietary Medicine Type 1 2 3 6 Aceite Mexicano Angelica Bitter Tonic Bitters bottle Farmacia Arciducale di G. Prodam Fiume Fratelli Branca Milano Bitters Hamlin’s Wizard Oil Davis Vegetable Pain Killer Santal de Midy Generic pharmacy bottle Total

Locus 7 11

12

13

15

Total

– – – –

– – – –

– – – –

4 1 – –

– – – –

– – – 2 – – 1

– – 1 –

– – – –

4 1 3 1

– – – – 1 1

– – – – 1 1

1 – – – – 1

– 9 2 – 2 18

1 – – 1 4 6

– – – – – – – 7 3 9 4

– – – 1 3 5

– – – – 1 1

2 9 2 2 22 46

Excavators recovered the largest number of medicine bottles from a privy pit located in Locus 6. This privy contained the greatest variety of proprietary medicine vessels found at the site, including Aceite Mexicano, Angelica Bitter Tonic, Hamlin’s Wizard Oil, and Davis Vegetable Pain Killer. In addition to the medicine bottles, this feature contained a large number of tin cans and bottle caps. Project archaeologists have interpreted the stratigraphy of this feature as two strata of primary deposition with a thin layer of clean soil between, apparently intentionally deposited, possibly to seal the privy deposits and control odor. On the basis of the deposits recovered from this feature, project archaeologists have concluded that the pit was used for trash disposal during the occupation of the Ludlow Tent Colony (Larkin et al. 2005:54). In addition to the privy feature, archaeologists excavated two tent cellars in entirety. The two cellars were markedly different in artifact composition and deposition history. Feature 74, located in Locus 12, was a deep pit feature. The lowest deposits in Feature 74 consisted of artifacts originally located in the cellar, topped by remains of the tent. These deposits were covered by more generalized fill, apparently from the cleanup of the tent colony (Larkin 2005:86– 87). Excavators recovered only three generic medicinal bottles and one small embossed pill bottle. Feature 73, located in Locus 11, was a shallower pit feature. The condition of the deposits in Feature 73 has led project archaeologists to conclude that the lower layers were deposited as the tent burned and fell into the cellar. The lowest stratum appears to consist of the contents of the cellar, including a large number of canning jars. This stratum was covered by the remains of the tent and its contents when the tent burned and collapsed into the cellar. Since Feature 73 was a shallower cellar, it was apparently not used for cleanup after the camp’s destruction (Larkin 2005:69–76). Excavators recovered nine unidentified medicinal and bitters bottles from this feature.

266

“Thou Shalt Not Dose Thyself”

The tent colony’s trash midden (Locus 7) was located north of the camp, along the edge of Delagua Arroyo (Larkin et al. 2005:58). Project archaeologists excavated forty-nine square meters of the midden over six field seasons. A total of six proprietary medicine bottles were recovered from the midden, including one Santal de Midy bottle and bottle fragments, including a bottle seal for Fratelli Branca bitters. Archaeologists recovered smaller numbers of identifiable medicine bottles from the shallower sheet midden in other areas of the site. Excavators unearthed eight medicinal vessels from surface deposits associated with tent platforms. Locus 13 was a large excavation area (152 m2) that encompassed four possible tent pad features2 (Larkin et al. 2005:88–92). One Santal de Midy bottle and four unidentifiable medicinal or bitters bottles were recovered from this area. Two medicinal bottles were recovered from Loci 1 and 15, both areas identified as surface tent outlines (Larkin et al. 2005:41, 102). Archaeologists recovered fragments of one Fratelli Branca bitters bottle from Locus 3, the site of a dense surface scatter, likely associated with a tent platform. Although the Ludlow Tent Colony did include elements such as a dispensary, a union office, and a large group kitchen, the site’s main function was residential. With the exception of the camp midden, archaeological investigations appear to have coincided with these residential areas. Archaeologists identified three main depositional contexts in the excavations at Ludlow: deliberate trash disposal during occupation of the tent colony, materials directly deposited during the tent colony’s destruction, and areas of shallow sheet midden that may relate to both these actions, as well as to cleanup after the destruction of the tent colony. Higher amounts of medicine vessels recovered from the privy may indicate a desire to use and dispose of proprietary medicines out of view. Alternatively, these higher numbers could also reflect better vessel preservation in the privy. The surface deposits have been trampled by cattle, while much of the cellar deposits suffered the effects of fire. Comparisons with Berwind

Project archaeologists identified a total of forty-three proprietary medicine bottles from the artifacts excavated at the coal mining camp of Berwind (Table 8.3). Berwind was one of the camps closest to Ludlow, and many Ludlow inhabitants came from Berwind after CF&I evicted them from company housing. Field crews recovered the majority of these bottles from two areas of the camp, designated as Areas B and K. Through documentary research, Margaret Wood (2002a:348) identified Area B as a residential area constructed after the 1913– 1914 strike and occupied through the abandonment of the camp in 1931. The Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project conducted excavations in midden

267

Claire H. Horn

Table 8.3. Medicine bottles recovered from Berwind, by area Medicine Sloan’s Liniment Aceite Mexicano Fratelli Branca Milano Bitters Dr. W. B. Caldwell’s Syrup Pepsin Hamlin’s Wizard Oil Dr. S. Pitcher’s Castoria Pierce’s Favorite Prescription Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup Hood’s Sarsa Parilla Dr. Kilmer’s Swamp-Root Kidney, Liver and Bladder Cure Hirsch’s Malt Whiskey for Medicinal Use Ginger beer (stoneware bottles) Generic pharmacy bottle Total

Area K

Area B

Area A

Area H

– – 3 – 1 2 1 1 1 1

– 2 1 1 – – – – – –

1 – – – – – – – – –

– – – – – – – – – –

– – – – 6 10 1

– – 1 1

2 2 17 31

areas and privies in Area B. Wood (Wood 2002a:169) identified Area K as occupied from approximately 1900 to 1916, then razed for the construction of a new school building. As these neighborhoods could be attributed to periods before and after the 1913–1914 strike, they became key loci of excavation at Berwind. Archaeologists recovered a total of thirty-one medicinal vessels from the twenty one-meter-square units excavated in the pre-strike neighborhood, Area K. Two stoneware ginger beer bottles were included in the medicinal bottle count, as the contents were considered medicinal and the bottles were functionally the same as glass bottles. These vessels account for 13 percent of the total glass vessels for this excavation area. Only ten medicinal vessels were recovered from Area B, the post-strike neighborhood, comprising 9 percent of the total number of glass vessels in this section. Two medicine vessels, a Sloan’s Liniment bottle, and an unidentified corked medicinal vial were recovered from limited excavations in Areas A and H (Larkin et al. 2005:119–129). Only three of the medicine brands present at Ludlow were also found in Berwind: Aceite Mexicano, Fratelli Branca, and Hamlin’s Wizard Oil. ArÂ�chaeÂ� ologists recovered eight other brands, as well as two ginger beer bottles and twenty-four unidentified pharmacy bottles. While Hamlin’s Wizard Oil was the most common medicine type found at Ludlow, only one Hamlin’s bottle was recovered from the excavations at Berwind. The most commonly occurring brand at Berwind was Fratelli Branca, makers of Fernet-Branca bitters. Berwind was one of the few CF&I towns to have an independent general store in addition to the company store. This store was run by an Italian named John Aiello, who had a hand in attracting other Italians to Berwind (Wood 2002a:107–108).

268

“Thou Shalt Not Dose Thyself”

The 1915 YMCA report on CF&I’s coal camps found that at least 50 percent of Berwind’s population was Italian (YMCA 1915:19). Aiello may well have imported the Italian bitters for his customers. Proprietary Medicines

Before the discovery and wide acceptance of the germ theory of disease, most physicians and patients in the United States saw the human body as a complete system in which good health could be maintained by proper regulation of bodily “inputs” and “outputs” (Estes 1988:3). The causes of infectious diseases were unknown, and some diseases, such as tuberculosis, were so prevalent they were believed to be hereditary (Duffy 1997:418–419). From this point of view, claims that one remedy could cure many ills were believable. For example, an 1874 ad for Perry Davis Vegetable Pain Killer proclaimed the product was a cure for “Bruises, Cuts, Burns .€.€. Dysentery or Cholera or any sort of Bowel Complaint .€.€. Coughs, Colds, Canker, Asthma and Rheumatic difficulties” (Herskovitz 1978:14). Many proprietary medicines acted as laxatives, which conformed to the popularly held belief that cleaning out the digestive system would help restore health (Estes 1988:5; Whorton 1993). Other common ingredients in proprietary medicines were alcohol and narcotics. These ingredients created addictions and perhaps temporarily relieved pain, but they eventually created problems for the industry with the growing temperance movement. Proprietary medicines were widely used throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States, and the bottles are regularly recovered from archaeological excavations dating to this time period (e.g., BaugherPerlin 1982; Bell 1987; Fitts 2002; Hardesty 1994; Hill 1982; Mullins 1999; Rogge et al. 1995). The greatest numbers of proprietary medicines found at both Ludlow and Berwind were general painkillers and bitters (Table 8.4). Both Hamlin’s Wizard Oil and Davis Vegetable Pain Killer were marketed as generalized analgesics. One Hamlin’s ad proclaimed: “There is no Sore it will Not Heal, No Pain it will not Subdue” (Kaufman 1981:42). Charles Hanson (1990:7) noted that in frontier Canada at the turn of the twentieth century, Davis Vegetable Pain Killer was used as an external liniment for pain and was also seen as “useful for coughs, chills, frostbite, fever and other ailments requiring an internal remedy.” Early on, the medicine contained opium in 77 percent alcohol, although the opium was removed in the 1880s (Estes 1988:7; Herskovitz 1978:13; Wilson and Wilson 1971:31). Aceite Mexicano, produced by the Hausman Drug Company in nearby Trinidad, Colorado, may have been a painkiller, but its intended use is uncertain. Bitters were alcohol with herbs or extracts added. One well-known bitter, Hostetter’s, had a 39 percent alcohol content (Kaufman 1981:41). According

269

Claire H. Horn

Table 8.4. Varieties of medicinal compounds at Ludlow and Berwind Medicine Type Brand General painkillers Cure-all tonics Bitters Cough and cold Laxative Teething “Women’s complaints” Kidney, bladder, and venereal disease Kidney and bladder Unknown

Davis Vegetable Pain Killer Hamlin’s Wizard Oil Hirsch’s Malt Whiskey for Medicinal Use Hood’s Sarsa Parilla Angelica Bitter Tonic Fratelli Branca Milano (bitters) Generic bitters Dr. W. B. Caldwell’s Syrup Pepsin Dr. S. Pitcher’s Castoria Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup Pierce’s Favorite Prescription Santal de Midy Dr. Kilmer’s Swamp-Root Aceite Mexicano Farmacia Arciducale di G. Prodam Fiume Generic pharmacy bottle

Total

Pre-Strike Berwind Ludlow

Post-Strike Berwind

– 1 2

2 9 –

– – –

1 – 3

– 1 2

– – 1

– –

3 –

– 1

2 1

– –

– –

1 –

– 2

– –

1 – –

– 4 1

– 2 –

17

22

6

29

46

10

to Julian Toulouse (1971:62), herbs were added to alcohol and the concoction was dubbed medicinal bitters by manufacturers in the 1700s to avoid the higher tax rates for alcohol. For many, bitters were a way to consume alcohol without frequenting saloons. Some bitters advertised as an aid in the prevention of disease; for example, the Fernet-Branca bitters, produced by Fratelli Branca of Milan, were billed as an “Anti-Cholera and Tonic” (Fike 1987:163). Rex Wilson (1981:23) cites a number of complaints for which different bitters were presented as cures: “dyspepsia, constipation, diarrhea, cholera, liver complaint, malaria, nervous headache, and overindulgence.” Regarded today as cures for nothing other than sobriety, bitters could in effect promise to cure anything. Archaeologists found bitters bottles at Ludlow and in Berwind’s pre-strike and post-strike neighborhoods. Project archaeologists found two cure-all tonics in Berwind’s pre-strike neighÂ� borÂ�hood: Hirsch’s Malt Whiskey for Medicinal Use and Hood’s Sarsa Parilla. Little is known of these products, although from the name alone Hirsch’s seems likely to have been another way, like bitters, to consume alcohol under the thin disguise of medicine.

270

“Thou Shalt Not Dose Thyself”

Aside from general painkillers, cure-alls, and bitters, the medicinal vessels from Ludlow and Berwind covered a number of ailments. One, Pierce’s Favorite Prescription, was marketed for “those chronic weaknesses and complaints of females” (Fike 1987:177). A popular contemporaneous product, Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound, was promoted as a cure for a range of “female complaints” from menstrual cramps to infertility. Dr. W. B. Caldwell’s Syrup Pepsin was marketed for coughs and colds. Two products found at Ludlow and Berwind were particularly marketed for children: Dr. S. Pitcher’s Castoria, a laxative (Fike 1987:177), and Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, for teething, “wind colic,” sour stomach, and constipation (Fike 1987:231; Howson 1992:149–150). Dr. Kilmer’s Swamp-Root was advertised as a cure for kidney and bladder complaints, while Santal de Midy was promoted for kidney, bladder, and venereal diseases (Fike 1987:179). Appeal of Proprietary Medicines to the Inhabitants of the Ludlow Tent Colony

Although they were increasingly denounced by the medical profession, proprietary medicines remained popular through the early twentieth century. The 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act allowed the government to prosecute proprietary drug manufacturers for intent to defraud, causing them to scale back their extensive claims and remove narcotics and opiates from their products (Engs 2001:154; Kraut 1994:221; Whiteside 1997:29). One reason frequently proposed for high proprietary medicine and bitters use was explicitly the desire for the alcohol and narcotic content (Blocker 2006:229; Toulouse 1971:62). However, not all proprietary medicines contained alcohol and narcotics, and not everyone took them for those reasons. Other reasons that have been proposed for nonprescription medicine use—particularly among the immigrant working class—are the relative lack of physicians in city tenements and isolated work camps, lack of money to pay physicians, a learned mistrust of physicians, attractive advertising from proprietary medicine manufacturers, and ethnic religious or medical traditions (Blea 1991:129–130; Deutsch 1989:47; Howson 1992; Kraut 1994:113; Ragucci 1981; Whorton 1993:18). As discussed earlier, medical care was available to miners and their families both in the CF&I coal camps and at Ludlow. Money may have been an issue, either where ailments were outside the range provided for by company services or where physicians may have demanded additional payment (as indicated by Gaddis’s testimony). Mistrust of company physicians, or at least a disinclination to bring an outsider into the home, may have played a greater role in home treatment of illness among southern Colorado’s coal mining families. Oral testimony has indicated that southern Colorado’s miners and their families depended on a

271

Claire H. Horn

Table 8.5. One week’s occurrences of illness and injury in CF&I camps, as reported in Camp and Plant Camp

Illness or Injury

Berwind

Mrs. Vincenzo Perrino: died of apoplexy (stroke). Mrs. Frank Tamporelli: sick of typhoid John Roberts: severely injured in mine Peter Kerr: finger smashed in mine, amputated H. S. Nones, weighboss: indisposed W. P. Belote, head mine clerk: resigned because of bad health. William Kelly, manager of the Colorado Supply Company store in Gallup: fell and broke a rib George Collier (child): crushed between two cars, died next day; his classmates took up a collection for flowers. Mrs. Louis Smith: took son Herbert to hospital for throat treatment. A. E. Johnson, store manager: sick Conductor DeWitt: tonsillitis. Peitro Phillipi: engulfed in slack and suffocated Ignacio Mura: arm crushed, taken to hospital. Tony Sasso: opened a pop bottle full of oil, top burst off and severed an artery in his hand Mrs. W. L. Patchen: quite sick. Miss Frances Brunelli: sore hand from needle wound. Richard Sellers: found dead in bed

Brookside Coal Basin Coal Creek Gibson, NM Primero

Redstone Rockvale Rouse

Source: C&P 3(5), February 4, 1903:104–107.

variety of herbal remedies and home cures, as well as the services of the company doctor (Clyne 1999:54). The commonplace nature of illness and accidents in the early 1900s is evident in some of CF&I’s publications. The “Weekly Column” in Camp and Plant included a section on injuries, illness, and deaths, along with lectures, visits, marriages, and other events. Excerpts (Table 8.5) from the February 1903 issue are typical and give a more personal image of health in the camps. In this single week’s report, injury or loss of life occurred in nine CF&I mining camps. No more particular notice was given to the death of young George Collier than to H. S. Nones feeling indisposed. Incidents of infectious disease and industrial accidents were hardly unique to the mining camps of southern Colorado. The United States was entrenched in an era of laissez-faire capitalism. Ideas about workplace safety and worker compensation were in their infancy in the early 1900s (Asher 1987:19; Sellers 2007). CF&I’s Medical Department listed the types of cases treated in its annual reports from 1901 through 1913 (Figure 8.3). These reports show that the greatest numbers of cases treated were for constitutional, digestive, and respiratory complaints. The number of cases of surgery for various reasons was also relatively high. In looking at the specific illnesses or injuries under these headings, the top complaints treated by company doctors were rheumatism (12.2%); constipation (10.0%); bronchitis (9.4%); biliousness, or stomachache (6.1%); cephalalgia, or

272

“Thou Shalt Not Dose Thyself”

8.3. Number of illnesses and injuries treated at CF&I steelworks and mining camps.

headache (5.2%); eczema (4.9%); and coryza, or the common cold (3.7%) (HR 1899, 1901, 1902; RMD 1903–1909, 1916–1929; RMSD 1910–1915). The first five ailments together comprised just over half the total illnesses treated in the years 1909–1914. While the listings do not separate coal miners from steelworkers, over the years 1901–1913 the reports do break down cases by location, with an average of 48.2 percent of the cases treated at coalmines, 48.8 percent treated at the steelworks, and the remainder treated at Minnequa Hospital. Rheumatism was the most common complaint treated by CF&I’s Medical Department during the years 1901–1913. Today, rheumatism is regarded as a general term for pain in the muscles and joints that may be caused by a number of other problems. The nature of coal mining work in the early twentieth century created a high likelihood of muscle and joint pain. Miners worked long shifts, breaking coal out of the face with picks and loading it into mine cars. If the coal vein was short, miners might work stooped over or lying on their side, since mining involves removing as much coal as possible with as little rock as possible (Long 1991:26–28; McGovern and Guttridge 1972:19–20) . The presence of general painkillers, such as Hamlin’s Wizard Oil and Davis Vegetable Pain Killer, at Ludlow and Berwind shows that the miners were making use of the company’s medical services and self-treatment for their occupational aches and pains. The second most common case type treated by CF&I’s medical staff was constipation. As a result of overconsumption of refined and processed foods,

273

Claire H. Horn

constipation was a common complaint in the early twentieth century. Another cause was the incredible popularity of laxatives, which if taken consistently (manufacturers urged consumers to take them on a daily basis) can make the digestive system incapable of functioning on its own, thus reinforcing the need for the laxative (Whorton 1993:13). In light of the high number of constipation cases and the great popularity of laxatives in this time period, it is rather surprising that only one confirmed laxative bottle, Dr. S. Pitcher’s Castoria, was found at Berwind and that none were found at Ludlow. Possibly, herbal home remedies were used instead. Other complaints, such as headache, stomachache, and the common cold, might have been treated with the general painkillers, tonics, and bitters found at the two sites. Initially, it seemed surprising that cases of lung problems were not higher among the coal miners employed by CF&I. Black lung (medically termed coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, or CWP) was often discredited by the industry at this time. However, physicians did describe the difficult breathing found among coal miners as asthma, bronchitis, emphysema, and coal miners’ consumption (Derickson 1998:6–8). Cases of bronchitis averaged nearly one-tenth of all cases treated during the years 1901–1913. Another reason more cases of respiratory ailments are not listed is likely that once a miner’s breathing was so bad that he could not work, he would lose his job and the company’s medical services. When coal miners were too disabled to work in the mines, in the early twentieth century they may well have ended up in the poorhouse. In a 1902 arbitration in the Pennsylvania anthracite region, the county almshouse director estimated that 70 percent of the inmates were former coal workers and that many of them suffered from “miners’ asthma” (Derickson 1998:38). Proprietary Medicine Marketing

While the science of the times had shown that proprietary medicines generally provided no benefit to sick people (other than dulling pain with alcohol and narcotics), health reformers had to realize that proprietary medicine advertising was extremely effective. Advertisements promised that one medicine could treat a variety of ills, such as an ad for Hamlin’s Wizard Oil that promised the compound would cure “Rheumatism, Lame Back, Headache, Neuralgia, Toothache, Earache, Sore Throat, Diphtheria, Catarrh, Inflammation of the Kidneys and All Painful Afflictions” (Fike 1987:193). For a woman managing a household on a limited budget, the promise that one bottle could treat such a variety of ills might be attractive. Some advertisements worked within the ideology of medical practice, while others promoted their own ideology—for example, the stunning success of laxative makers in arguing that good health depended on regular cleaning of the bowels. A decade after the medical profession had discarded

274

“Thou Shalt Not Dose Thyself”

the concept of autointoxication, or poisoning by undigested food in the bowels, the ailment was still referred to regularly in laxative advertisements (Whorton 1993:3) and in CF&I’s records of cases treated (HR 1899, 1901, 1902; RMD 1903– 1909, 1916–1929; RMSD 1910–1915). Some advertising suggested that physicians warned against proprietary medicines not because the medicines were ineffective but because the doctors wanted all the business for themselves (Whorton 1993:18). The miners of southern Colorado would have received mixed messages from different sources regarding the use of proprietary medicines. While CF&I’s publications occasionally spoke out against these products, advertisements touted their benefits. In 1910, CF&I’s Ten Commandments of Tuberculosis Sunday (SSB 7[8], April 1910) banned the use of patent medicines as commandment number six. A survey of the United Mine Workers’ Journal in the mid-1910s found frequent advertisements for such proprietary medicines as Peruna (or Pe-RuNa) (for cattarh, cattarh of the eye, and “hot weather”) and Hostetter’s Stomach Bitters (for “Stomach, Liver or Bowel Weakness, such as Poor Appetite, Sick Headache, Indigestion, Constipation, Biliousness”) (United Mine Workers Journal 1916, 1917, 1918). In addition, the fact that proprietary medicines were sold in drugstores supported the impression that they were actual medicines. Ethnicity and Health Care

In addition to the appeal of advertisements, patent medicines may have fit well with the medical traditions miners and their families, both immigrant and native-born, brought with them to the coal camps and the Ludlow Tent Colony. Southern Colorado’s coal mining camps consisted of an ethnically heterogeneous population, similar to that of contemporaneous urban tenements. In addition to Anglo- and African Americans, a variety of immigrant nationalities and ethnicities have been documented in southern Colorado coal camps: Italians (mainly from southern Italy), “Austrians” (i.e., from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, including Hungarians, Slovenes, Croats, Bohemians, Serbians, Bosnians, Ruthenians, Moravians, Slavs, Tyrolese, and others), Turks, Greeks, MacedoÂ� nians, Montenegrins, Bulgarians, Russians, Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, Poles, Spaniards, French, Dutch, Danish, Germans, Japanese, Koreans, Irish, Welsh, English, Scots, and “Mexicans” (generally Hispanics from Colorado and New Mexico) (Clyne 1999:45–46; Deutsch 1989:89; Doyle 1912). Senator Helen Ring Robinson noted at least twenty-two nationalities at the Ludlow Tent Colony during her visit in 1913 (Long 1991:290). According to company records, Italians and “Austrians” were the two largest ethnic groups in the coal mining camps in the 1910s, with Italians by far the largest group (Clyne 1999:46), particularly at Berwind (YMCA 1915).

275

Claire H. Horn

In the mining camps there are indications that the medical traditions of the different groups became intermingled. One former miner, August Andreatta, recalled that immigrants brought traditions of home remedies from their various home regions and also learned from those already in the camps what plants in the southern Colorado landscape could be used for new remedies. Home remedies recalled by camp inhabitants included chamomile and other herbal teas, wild sage tonic, and mixtures involving combinations of garlic, whiskey, wine, and lard (Clyne 1999:54–55). Immigration historians have not extensively studied immigrants’ attitudes toward health. However, Italian immigrants are one of the groups that have received attention in the existing literature (Kraut 1994, 2004; Orsi 1985; Ragucci 1981). Likewise, historians of health care have looked mainly at the attitude of health reformers toward immigrants, both as a single class and as individual groups (e.g., Irish, Italians, Russians, Jews). Some commonalities can be drawn without generalizing too greatly across the vast spectrum of immigrant experience. Of the immigrant groups present at Ludlow, the greatest amount of health research has been conducted with regard to Italian immigrants and their descendants. In her study of a multigenerational community of Italian immigrants and their descendants, Antoinette Ragucci (1981:225–226) discovered a range of attitudes toward health care. Among the older Italian immigrants, Ragucci noted a variety of factors believed to cause disease, including “disease-bearing winds and currents,” contamination, “genetic or hereditary disposition,” and human or supernatural intervention. In addition, Ragucci found that as late as the 1960s a number of home remedies were in use in the Italian community. She documented such herbal remedies as mallow and lemon juice for head and chest colds; chamomile tea for a variety of complaints; compresses of vinegar, rubbing alcohol, or potato for headaches; onion poultices for colds; and mustard greens and dandelions as a “blood tonic” in the spring (Ragucci 1981:238–239). In his studies of immigrant health, Alan Kraut (1994:114–115, 2004:6) noted a general mistrust of physicians among southern Italian immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century because in Italy physicians were employed by the resented northern-controlled central government. Jonathan Wagner (1991) noted a similar avoidance of physicians among German immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century, although he attributed the action more to a strong tendency toward self-sufficiency. In the United States, Robert Orsi found that Italian immigrants preferred the services of an Italian doctor, both because of the common language and because U.S. doctors were seen as too abrupt (cited in Kraut 2004:6). Hispanics in the southern Colorado mining camps also had traditions of medical care different from those within the prevailing U.S. medical establish-

276

“Thou Shalt Not Dose Thyself”

ment. In most records from the early twentieth century, Hispanics in southern Colorado were labeled “Mexicans,” although very few actually came from Mexico. Most Hispanics in southern Colorado were local to the area, from either southern Colorado or northern New Mexico. In some cases, the coal mining companies had actually taken over Hispanic pueblos, insisting that the land was unused and unclaimed (Deutsch 1989:89–90). Traditional health care among Hispanics in the area involved the use of curanderos (healers) and parteras (midwives). According to Sarah Deutsch (1989:47) and Irene Blea (1991), after the arrival of Anglo-Americans in the Southwest, many Hispanics still often preferred traditional healers far into the twentieth century. Without analyzing different success rates in treating patients, curanderos and parteras were known people from the community who spoke Spanish. Deutsch (1989:47) and Blea (1991:129–130) have argued that Hispanics saw Anglo doctors as impersonal, abrupt, unfriendly, noncommunicative, and too expensive. Outside the coal mining camps, Anglo doctors charged cash fees that were prohibitively high, while traditional healers relied on the patient or patient’s family to pay what they could afford, often in goods or services. One common comment in studies of immigrant and Hispanic health is the close tie between health care and religion, a tie not found in the dominant Anglo medical profession (Blea 1991:135; Kraut 1994:113, 2004:6). Conclusion

For a variety of reasons, working-class miners and their families in southern Colorado did not always follow the health proscriptions of the U.S. upperand middle-class medical establishment. The number of illnesses and injuries CF&I’s medical staff treated indicates that coal miners and their families did not wholly reject the dominant medical ethos but rather they used it when they saw it as effective. Alongside the methods supported by medical science, other concepts of health care persisted, as indeed they persist to this day.3 While health reformers worked to eradicate diseases such as typhoid, tuberculosis, malaria, and smallpox, they also aimed to change the habits of the working class to make them “better citizens” as well as to improve their health. Coal miners and their families at Ludlow and Berwind did not necessarily comply with plans to “improve” their lives. Major strikes in 1903–1904, 1913–1914, and 1927 stemmed from the inherent tensions between the company and the workers. Health advice and programs presented by the company were part of these tensions, not separate from them. By evading company control wherever possible, the coal miners and their families were taking part in creating their own working-class culture.

277

Claire H. Horn

Notes 1. In consultation with native Italian speakers, I have interpreted this text as “The Archducal Pharmacy of G. Prodam Fiume.” While “Fiume” translates to “river” in Italian, it seems unlikely to native speakers that there would be a pharmacy of a river. What seemed more likely is that either “G. Prodam” or “G. Prodam Fiume” is the name of the proprietor. The city of Rijeka on the present-day border of Italy and Croatia was historically known as “Fiume” when it was in Italian (or, earlier, Venetian) hands. Thus, it is possible that the medicine bottle could be from the Archducal Pharmacy of G. Prodam (proprietor) in the city of Fiume. 2. Tent pads without cellars were typically identified on the basis of shallow ditches in a square or rectangular outline. These shallow ditches have been interpreted as either drip lines from rain running off the tents or areas that were dug out to pile soil into low berms to insulate the bases of the tents. 3. Modern versions of the early–twentieth-century proprietary medicines include calorie blockers (to help lose weight without eating less or exercising more), magnets to relieve pain and heal a number of ailments, and plant-based products such as “wild yam cream” to provide relief from PMS (Barrett 1997).

Works Cited Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) Publications C&P Camp and Plant Magazine, vols. 1–3, 1901–1903. Colorado Fuel and Iron Archives, Bessemer Historical Society, Pueblo, CO. HR Hospital Report of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. 1899, 1901, 1902. IB Industrial Bulletin, vols. 1–12. Colorado Fuel and Iron Archives, Bessemer Historical Society, Pueblo, Colorado. RMD Report of the Medical Department. 1903–1909 and 1916–1929. Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. RMSD Report of the Medical and Sociological Department. 1910–1915. Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. RSD Report of the Sociological Department. 1903–1908. Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. SSB Sanitary and Sociological Bulletin, vols. 2–12. 1904–1915. Colorado Historical Society, Denver, Colorado.

Secondary Sources Asher, Robert 1987 The Limits of Big Business Paternalism: Relief for Injured Workers in the Years before Workmen’s Compensation. In Dying for Work: Workers’ Safety and Health in Twentieth-Century America, ed. David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, 19–33. Indiana University Press, Indianapolis. Barrett, Stephen. 1996 http://quackwatch.org/. Accessed August 2005.

278

“Thou Shalt Not Dose Thyself” Baugher-Perlin, Sherene 1982 Analyzing Glass Bottles for Chronology, Function, and Trade Networks. In Archaeology of Urban America: The Search for Pattern and Process, ed. Roy S. Dickens Jr., 259–290. Academic Press, New York. Bell, Edward 1987 A Preliminary Report on Health, Hygiene and Sanitation of the Boott Mills Boarding Houses .€.€. In Interdisciplinary Investigations of the Boott Mills, Lowell, Massachusetts, vol. 1: Life at the Boarding Houses, ed. Mary Beaudry and Stephen Mrozowski, 57–68. Cultural Resources Management Study 18. Division of Cultural Resources, North Atlantic Regional Office, National Park Service, Boston, MA. Beshoar, Barron B. 1957 Out of the Depths: The Story of John R. Lawson, a Labor Leader. Golden Bell, Denver. Blea, Irene I. 1991 Bessemer: A Sociological Perspective of the Chicano Barrio. AMS, New York. Blocker, Jack S. 2006 Kaleidoscope in Motion: Drinking in the US, 1400–2000. In Alcohol: A Social and Cultural History, ed. Mack P. Holt, 225–240. Berg, New York. Bonasera, Michael, and Leslie Raymer 2001 Good for What Ails You: Medicinal Use at Five Points. Historical Archaeology 35(3):49–64. Byington, Margaret 1974 Homestead: The Households of Mill Town. University Center for International [1910] Studies, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA. Cabak, Melanie, Mark D. Groover, and Scott J. Wagers 1995 Health Care and the Wayman AME Church. Historical Archaeology 29(2):55– 76. Carr, John Foster 1911 Guide to the United States for the Immigrant Italian. Published under the auspices of the Connecticut Daughters of the American Revolution. Doubleday, Page, Garden City, NY. Cassedy, James H. 1991 Medicine in America: A Short History. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. Clyne, Rick J. 1999 Coal People: Life in Southern Colorado’s Company Towns, 1890–1930. Colorado Historical Society, Denver. Cohen, Lizabeth A. 1982 Embellishing a Life of Labor: An Interpretation of the Material Culture of American Working-Class Homes, 1885–1915. In Material Culture Studies in America, ed. Thomas J. Schlereth, 289–305. American Association for State and Local History, Nashville, TN.

279

Claire H. Horn

Davis, Michael M., Jr. 1971 Publication No. 125: Patterson Smith Reprint Series in Criminology, Law Enforcement, [1921] and Social Problems. Americanization Studies: The Acculturation of Immigrant Groups into American Society, vol. 5: Immigrant Health and the Community. ReÂ�pubÂ� lished under the editorship of William S. Bernard from the 1921 edition. Patterson Smith, Montclair, NJ. Derickson, Alan 1998 Black Lung: Anatomy of a Public Health Disaster. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY. Deutsch, Sarah 1989 No Separate Refuge: Culture, Class and Gender on an Anglo-Hispanic Frontier in the American Southwest, 1880–1940. Oxford University Press, New York. Doyle, Ed 1912 Nationalities Employed in Mines of Colorado during the Year 1912, and Per Centage. Doyle Papers, Denver Public Library, Denver. Draper, Elaine 2003 The Company Doctor: Risk, Responsibility, and Corporate Professionalism. Russell Sage Foundation, New York. Duffy, John 1997 Social Impact of Disease in the Late 19th Century. In Sickness and Health in America: Readings in the History of Medicine and Public Health, ed. Judith Walzer Leavitt and Ronald L. Numbers, 418–425. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison. Duke, Emma 1915 Infant Mortality: Results of a Field Study in Johnstown, Pa., Based on Births in One Calendar Year. U.S. Department of Labor, Children’s Bureau, Infant Mortality Series 3. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. Engs, Ruth Clifford 2001 Clean Living Movements: American Cycles of Health Reform. Praeger, Westport, CT. Estes, J. Worth 1988 The Pharmacology of Nineteenth-Century Patent Medicines. Pharmacy in History 30(1):3–18. Fike, Richard E. 1987 The Bottle Book: A Comprehensive Guide to Historic, Embossed Medicine Bottles. Peregrine Smith Books, Salt Lake City. Fishback, Price V. 1992 Soft Coal, Hard Choices: The Economic Welfare of Bituminous Coal Miners, 1890– 1930. Oxford University Press, New York. Fitts, Robert K. 1999 The Archaeology of Middle-Class Domesticity and Gentility in Victorian Brooklyn. Historical Archaeology 33(1):39–62.

280

“Thou Shalt Not Dose Thyself” 2002

Becoming American: The Archaeology of an Italian Immigrant. Historical Archaeology 36(3):1–17.

Franzen, John G. 1995 Comfort for Man or Beast: Alcohol and Medicine Use in Northern Michigan Logging Camps, ca. 1880–1940. Wisconsin Archaeologist 76(3–4):294–337. Goldstein, Ivo é Queen’s University Press, 1999 Croatia: A History. Translated by Nikolina Jovanovic. McGill, Montreal. Gradwohl, David M., and Nancy M. Osborn 1984 Exploring Buried Buxton: Archaeology of an Abandoned Iowa Coal Mining Town with a Large Black Population. Iowa State University Press, Ames. Hanson, Charles E., Jr. 1990 Perry Davis’ Vegetable Pain Killer. Museum of the Fur Trade Quarterly 26(2):7– 11. Hardesty, Donald L. 1994 Class, Gender Strategies, and Material Culture in the Mining West. In Those of Little Note: Gender, Race, and Class in Historical Archaeology, ed. Elizabeth M. Scott, 129–145. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Hautaniemi, Susan 1994 Race, Health and Gender at the W.E.B. DuBois Boyhood Homesite. Bulletin, Massachusetts Archaeological Society 55(1):1–7. Herskovitz, Robert M. 1978 Ft. Bowie Material Culture. Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona 31. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Hill, Sarah H. 1982 An Examination of Manufacture-Deposition Lag for Glass Bottles from Late Historic Sites. In Archaeology of Urban America: The Search for Pattern and Process, ed. Roy S. Dickens Jr., 291–328. Academic Press, New York. Howson, J. 1992 The Archaeology of 19th-Century Health and Hygiene at the Sullivan Street Site in New York City. Northeast Historical Archaeology 21:137–160. Hoy, Suellen 1995 Chasing Dirt: The American Pursuit of Cleanliness. New York: Oxford University Press. Kaufman, Martin 1981 “Step Right Up, Ladies and Gentlemen . . .”: Patent Medicines in 19th-Century America. American History Illustrated 16(5):38–45. Kittredge, Mabel Hyde 1911 Housekeeping Notes: How to Furnish and Keep House in a Tenement Flat, a Series of Lessons Prepared for Use in the Association of Practical Housekeeping Centers of New York. Whitcomb & Barrows, Boston.

281

Claire H. Horn

Kraut, Alan M. 1994 Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and the “Immigrant Menace.” Basic Books, New York. 2004 Foreign Bodies: The Perennial Negotiation over Health and Culture in a Nation of Immigrants. Journal of American Ethnic History 23(2):3–22. Larkin, Karin, Mark Walker, Michael Jacobson, and Anna Gray 2005 Archaeological Investigations at the Ludlow Massacre Site (5LA1829) and Berwind CF&I Coal Camp (5LA2175), Las Animas County, Colorado, Final Synthetic Report. Unpublished report, University of Denver, Denver. Larsen, Eric L. 1994 A Boardinghouse Madonna—Beyond the Aesthetics of a Portrait Created through Medicine Bottles. Historical Archaeology 28(4):68–79. Leavitt, Judith Walzer, and Ronald L. Numbers 1997 Sickness and Health: An Overview. In Sickness and Health in America: Readings in the History of Medicine and Public Health, ed. Judith Walzer Leavitt and Ronald L. Numbers, 3–10. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison. Levitt, Alexandra M., D. Peter Drotman, and Stephen Ostroff 2007 Control of Infectious Diseases: A Twentieth-Century Public Health Achievement. In Silent Victories: The History and Practice of Public Health in TwentiethCentury America, ed. John W. Ward and Christian Warren, 3–17. Oxford University Press, New York. Long, Priscilla 1991 Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America’s Bloody Coal Industry. Paragon House, New York. Mandell, Nikki 2002 The Corporation as Family: The Gendering of Corporate Welfare, 1890–1930. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill. Maniery, Mary L. 2002 Health, Sanitation, and Diet in a Twentieth-Century Dam Construction Camp: A View from Butt Valley, California. Historical Archaeology 36(3):69–84. McGovern, George S., and Leonard F. Guttridge 1972 The Great Coalfield War. Houghton Mifflin, Boston. Mullins, Paul R. 1999 “A Bold and Gorgeous Front”: The Contradictions of African American and Consumer Culture. In Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism, ed. Mark P. Leone and Parker B. Potter Jr., 169–194. Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York. O’Neal, Mary Thomas 1971 Those Damn Foreigners. Minerva, Hollywood, CA. Orsi, Robert Anthony 1985 The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880–1950. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.

282

“Thou Shalt Not Dose Thyself” Ragucci, Antoinette T. 1981 Italian Americans. In Ethnicity and Medical Care, ed. Alan Harwood, 211–263. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Rogge, A. E., D. Lorne Mewatters, Melissa Keane, and Richard Emanuel 1995 Raising Arizona’s Dams: Daily Life, Danger and Discrimination in the Dam Construction Camps of Central Arizona, 1890s–1940s. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Rosner, David, and Gerald Markowitz 1997 The Early Movement for Occupational Safety and Health, 1900–1917. In Sickness and Health in America: Readings in the History of Medicine and Public Health, ed. Judith Walzer Leavitt and Ronald L. Numbers, 467–481. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison. Saitta, Dean 2007 The Archaeology of Collective Action. University Press of Florida, Miami. Sellers, Christopher 2007 A Prejudice Which May Cloud the Mentality: The Making of Objectivity in Early Twentieth-Century Occupational Health. In Silent Victories: The History and Practice of Public Health in Twentieth-Century America, ed. John W. Ward and Christian Warren, 230–250. Oxford University Press, New York. Spencer-Wood, Suzanne 1994 Diversity and Nineteenth-Century Domestic Reform: Relationships among Classes and Ethnic Groups. In Those of Little Note: Gender, Race, and Class in Historical Archaeology, ed. Elizabeth M. Scott, 175–208. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. 1996 Feminist Historical Archaeology and the Transformation of American Culture by Domestic Reform Movements, 1840–1925. In Historical Archaeology and the Study of American Culture, ed. Lu Ann De Cunzo and Bernard L. Herman, 397–437. Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, distributed by University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Tomes, Nancy 1998 The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Toulouse, Julian Harrison 1971 Bottle Makers and Their Marks. T. Nelson, New York. United Mine Workers Journal 1916 Denver Public Library, Denver. 1917 Denver Public Library, Denver. 1918 Denver Public Library, Denver. Wagner, Jonathan F. 1991 In Pursuit of Gesundheit: Changing Health Practices among North Dakota’s German-Russians, 1890–1930. North Dakota History 58(3):2–15.

283

Claire H. Horn

Weed, Frank J. 2005 The Sociological Department at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1901 to 1907: Scientific Paternalism and Industrial Control. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 41(3):269–284. West, George P. 1915 United States Commission on Industrial Relations: Report on the Colorado Strike. Washington, DC. John Lawson Papers, Denver Public Library, Denver. Whiteside, Henry O. 1997 Menace in the West: Colorado and the American Experience with Drugs, 1873–1963. Colorado Historical Society, Denver. Whorton, James C. 1993 The Phenolphthalein Follies: Purgation and the Pleasure Principle in the Early Twentieth Century. Pharmacy in History 35(1):3–23. Wilson, Bill, and Betty Wilson 1971 19th Century Medicine in Glass. 19th Century Hobby, Amador City, CA. Wilson, Rex 1981 Bottles on the Western Frontier. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Wolff, David A. 2003 Industrializing the Rockies: Growth, Competition, and Turmoil in the Coalfields of Colorado and Wyoming, 1868–1914. University Press of Colorado, Boulder. Wood, Margaret C. 2002a “Fighting for Our Homes”: An Archaeology of Women’s Domestic Labor and Social Change in a Working-Class, Coal Mining Community, 1900–1930. PhD dissertation, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. 2002b Women’s Work and Class Conflict in a Working-Class Coal-Mining Community. In The Dynamics of Power, ed. Maria O’Donovan, 66–87. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Occasional Paper 30. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale. Yamin, Rebecca 2001 From Tanning to Tea: The Evolution of a Neighborhood. Historical Archaeology 35(3):1–15. YMCA 1915

284

Report upon the Possible Service by the Young Men’s Christian Association in the Mining Communities of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, Based upon a Survey by Dr. Peter Roberts of the Industrial Department, International Committee. By W. S. Hopkins and John A. Goodell. Rockefeller Family Collection, Record Group RG2, Business Interests Series, Box 18, Folder 156, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, NY.

Summer Moore

9

Working Parents and the Material Culture of Victorianism Children’s Toys at the Ludlow Tent Colony

The Children of Ludlow The “mass exodus” of striking families from the coal camps in the rain and snow on September 17, 1914, struck an emotional chord among those who saw it (Long 1989:272). In her historical account of the 1913–1914 strike, Priscilla Long quotes remarks Mary “Mother” Jones made to the strikers several days later: “â•›‘There was a lot of poor wretches on that wagon,’ Jones said of one family, ‘their life earnings were piled on that wagon. .€.€. [A] child of about ten years old, and the mother—she had a babe in her arms and did not have clothing enough to shelter them from the cold’â•›” (Long 1989:272–273). Of men, women, and children, the largest demographic group of strikers in southern Colorado in 1914 was children, who outnumbered men and women by a count of 9,316 (45%) to 7,201 (35%) and 3,991 (20%), respectively (Rudden 1998:116). Many coal mining families during this period included more than a few children. One oral history informant recalled this fact about coal mining families: “The family of 5 was a small family. I’ve heard of families of 12 and 15 children” (Margolis 1983:1). It could be argued that one of the most moving aspects of the Ludlow story is the fact that it revolves around families. The characters in this tale are not simply single male miners, whom we can envision as somewhat socially detached

285

S u mm e r M o o r e

9.1. Members of striking miner’s family in front of a tent at the Ludlow Tent Colony, 1913 or 1914. Courtesy, Denver Public Library, DPL x-60461, Denver, CO.

(see Baxter 2002); their wives and children were directly involved in the events at Ludlow and also played active roles. Children were a very visible and active part of the Ludlow Tent Colony during the strike, and numerous historical photographs show them playing, posing, and simply passing the time. Several family portraits, for example, show children posing with adults in front of colony tents (Figures 9.1 and 9.2). Adults are pictured promenading at the tent colony with two small children, one of whom is being wheeled in a baby carriage (Figure

286

Working Parents and the Material Culture of Victorianism

9.2. Group of strike participants, including three women, five younger children, and two infants, 1913 or 1914. Courtesy, Denver Public Library, z-217, Denver, CO.

9.3). At least two photographs show both boys and girls participating in activities at the colony that are labeled in captions as “demonstrations,” featuring snow towers, an effigy, and U.S. flags (Figure 9.4). Children demonstrated outside the boundaries of the tent colony as well. Along with several demonstrations by women, a “Boys’ March” was organized in support of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and the strike.

287

9.3. A man and two small children play at the Ludlow Tent Colony, 1913 or 1914. Courtesy, Denver Public Library, DPL x-60463, Denver, CO.

9.4. Three boys stand in front of an effigy and snow tower during a demonstration at the Ludlow Tent Colony, 1914. Courtesy, Denver Public Library, DPL x-60344, Denver, CO.

S u mm e r M o o r e

9.5. Boys march down a street in Trinidad, Colorado, 1913 or 1914. Courtesy, Denver Public Library, DPL x-60492, Denver, CO.

Contemporary photographs depict a line of boys on one of Trinidad’s main streets holding well-lettered signs with slogans such as “We Represent the CF&I Prosperity Slaves” (Figure 9.5). Children were also numbered among those killed during the events that occurred on April 20, 1914. One twelve-year-old boy was shot in the head during the firefight, and ten children suffocated in the cellar known as the “Death Pit.” It was, in fact, the deaths of women and children at Ludlow that incited so much public outrage regarding the Ludlow Massacre and the Colorado Coalfield War (Wood 2002:218). As much as it is attested to in the literature surrounding the story of the massacre, the presence of children in the tent colony is also reflected in the artifacts excavated from the Ludlow site in the form of toys, leather shoes, and the remains of nursing bottles and other child-care equipment. This chapter examines a specific subset of the archaeological collection excavated from Ludlow—children’s toys—with the aim of placing these items within the larger context of working-class immigrants trying to make a place for themselves in earlyâ•fiÂ�twentieth-Â�century American society. In this argument, Victorian-style toys constitute visible symbols of success and social mobility.

290

Working Parents and the Material Culture of Victorianism

Children’s Artifacts Children’s objects are among the most personal and poignant artifacts uncovered so far by archaeological excavations at the Ludlow Tent Colony. These personal possessions, among them toys and children’s shoes, speak eloquently to the violence that occurred here, as they were hurriedly abandoned during the event that came to be called the Ludlow Massacre. Although children’s objects can be very evocative, historical archaeological research conducted specifically on children is rare. The presence of children may be mentioned in analyses of archaeological sites (e.g., Cantwell and Wall 2001), but children’s lives and objects have only recently begun to be analyzed thoroughly (e.g., Wilkie 2000; Yamin 2002). The presence of a relatively large number of these objects in the Ludlow archaeological collections gives us an important opportunity to better understand the types of information they can yield. Children’s artifacts are typically personal items that can provide two significant categories of data. First, they can tell us what children’s lives were like in the past—what they wore, what they played with, and how they were cared for. A second and perhaps even more important type of information children’s artifacts can yield concerns the strategies parents used in raising and socializing their children. Play, of course, is practice for life in the social world of adults. As a result, the toys parents give a child to shape this process may represent an intentional effort to shape the child’s development as an emerging adult, although any number of additional factors may also be involved in a parent’s choice to favor one type of toy over another. Toys were first manufactured for and marketed to children on a large scale in the mid–nineteenth century (Cantwell and Wall 2001:207). This development brought about what was essentially a revolution in terms of the number of objects produced that can be directly associated with the lives of pre-adults. In contrast, it is often impossible to identify children’s objects in prehistoric archaeology. Whereas prehistoric archaeologists must sometimes rely heavily on children’s burials and other direct physical evidence to establish the presence of children (Moore 1997 and Scott; Sofaer Derevenski 2000), archaeologists who study historical sites often have a more dependable supply of objects with which to work. By studying the remains of these objects at archaeological sites, we can move toward an understanding of what it was like to be a child in the past, at least on a material level. Because they are so strongly linked with childhood in the minds of many adults, toys are not only one of the most affecting types of objects associated with children; they also reveal something about the values and behavior parents may want to transmit to their children. Toys give children introductory lessons in many cultural subjects, ranging from the types of decorative colors and patterns considered fashionable and “in good taste,” which might be represented

291

S u mm e r M o o r e

by a doll’s garments, to the kinds of activities thought suitable for each gender. Certainly, individual children may have acted independently to trade for or produce their own toys (Wilkie 2000:102), but it seems clear that toys found within the boundaries of the household must have at least met with parental approval. Relatively expensive manufactured toys, in addition, were almost undoubtedly purchased by parents or at least given to children with their parents’ consent. The particular way the excavated contents of the Ludlow Tent Colony site were originally deposited provides an unusually clear look into the domestic material life of an early–twentieth-century coal mining family. As dense collections of historical artifacts are typically only found in privies and wells, archaeologists most often focus on objects that have been broken and then thrown away or simply thrown away, sometimes over long periods of time. In this case, however, a large proportion of the artifacts were likely deposited in the tent cellars in a single depositional event, when the wood floors of the burning tents gave way and the contents of entire households came to rest within them. These pieces, rather than representing a family’s unwanted items, actually represent the household objects families were using at the time the fire occurred. These were, moreover, items family members valued highly enough to haul by wagon from the coal camps at the beginning of the strike. So although, as Laurie Wilkie (2000:102) has stated, in most cases “it is the act of discard, loss and destruction of child-specific artefacts that we are most likely to encounter,” at Ludlow we are looking at something different. We have the opportunity not so much to identify the artifacts to which individual children have taken exception and then discarded, as Wilkie does in her study of the Freeman family (2000:106), but rather to focus on the sorts of children’s objects parents brought or allowed into their households. This study focuses on a particular tent cellar within the Ludlow Tent Colony referred to as Feature 73, thought to represent the most complete contents of a single household. This cellar contained a wide variety of domestic items, such as tableware, food storage vessels, decorative objects, and appliances. This cellar also contained a relatively high number of artifacts that can be associated with children. It appears likely that at least one adult and several small children occupied this tent. The child-related objects include a nursing bottle and a number of jars of Horlick’s malted milk, used in the early twentieth century as both an infant formula and a dietary supplement for adults. A small metal spoon of the size that might be used to feed a baby or toddler was found as well. In addition to these infant-care–related artifacts, there were a number of items that could be associated with older children. A leather oxford shoe in the style popular with small boys during this period was found, as were several ceramic toys that would likely be associated with girls’ play. The head of a bisque porcelain doll was located, in addition to a single piece from a miniature table setting.

292

Working Parents and the Material Culture of Victorianism

Ceramic toys such as this porcelain doll and miniature tea set, as one means of teaching girls proper ways to behave in society, were popular Victorian-era toys. Although such toys were originally marketed to the middle class, the archaeological evidence at Ludlow and other early–twentieth-century sites indicates that by that time period, objects such as these were owned and used by working-class families. Victorian Values, Immigrant Lives: Victorianism as a Social Model

Although the site being studied was created in the early twentieth century, the material culture found there is part of a material tradition that began almost a century earlier, with the advent of Victorianism. During the twentieth century and earlier (Fitts 2001), members of the American working classes began to appropriate Victorian household symbolism for their own purposes. In this way, Victorianism, which originated as a nineteenth-century British cultural phenomenon, was quickly appropriated as an American middle-class status marker. Queen Victoria’s reign in Britain lasted from 1837 to 1901, a period known as the Victorian era. This period of time in British history is associated with a particular set of cultural ideas and values thought to have developed out of the rapidly changing social climate of the nineteenth century. As the United States was still very much under the sphere of Britain’s influence, these values were communicated across the Atlantic (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 1990, 1992). The origins of American Victorianism were British American and Protestant and rooted in the recently born urban bourgeoisie (Fitts 1999, 2000; Howe 1976:9); as such, in America these ideas soon became associated with the trappings of middle-class status and privilege. American Victorianism, in fact, was a mainstream social model that possessed a certain amount of cultural hegemony in the United States during the nineteenth century (Howe 1976:6). Perhaps in response to feelings of uncertainty in a world of rapid societal change and industrialization, the Victorians placed increased importance on ideals such as balance, order, and temperance. According to Daniel Howe: Victorian values, like Victorian culture as a whole, represented a combination of premodern modes of thought (patriarchalism, English common law) with attitudes specifically linked to the modernization process. .€.€. Victorian ideals associated with modernization taught people to work hard, to postpone gratification, to repress themselves sexually, to “improve” themselves, to be sober, conscientious, even compulsive. (Howe 1976: 17)

As “the great age of prescriptive writing of all kinds” (Howe 1976:23), the Victorian era was marked by what seems to have been a profound urge to dis-

293

S u mm e r M o o r e

seminate these values throughout the social scale. By educating the “unwashed masses” in Victorian ideals of self-control and modesty, many intellectuals seemed to believe members of the working class who adhered to these values could obtain some sort of “genteel” status (Fitts 2001; Howe 1976:12). This Victorian concern with sharing “proper” values and “improving” oneself and one’s family can clearly be seen in the home. As the number of families relying on farming to make a living steadily declined during the nineteenth century, it became more common for fathers to work in offices or factories. They were therefore separated from their families during the day (Rubinstein 2000:129). As women were often the only adults present in the house on a daily basis, they became charged with the tasks of managing domestic affairs and raising the children (Rubinstein 2000:130). Mothers, then, were considered responsible for transmitting important cultural values in Victorian society. Middle-class mothers in particular were accountable for “teaching their children the class-specific values of gentility and ‘Christian morality’â•›” (Fitts 1999:39). From this general assignment of responsibility to mothers for their children’s proper upbringing developed what scholars call the “cult of domesticity” (Fitts 2001), in which the home was thought of as a sanctuary, “an orderly and secure place where children were indoctrinated with the proper values before being sent forth to make their way in a rapidly changing world” (Howe 1976:25). Women were thus expected to create a nurturing home environment in which children could learn important lessons about how to behave in adult Victorian society (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 1990, 1992). Based on the increasing separation of the work environment from the home during this period, the children of relatively affluent families were released from pressure to contribute to the family economy and instead were encouraged to spend their time experiencing childhood, a time of learning and leisure (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 1990, 1992). The cult of domesticity had a well-defined meaning in material terms as well. Simply teaching children correct middle-class values and behavior was not enough in the world of Victorian America; the possession and display of symbolically appropriate material items were also necessary. Stuart Blumin has asserted that through consumption, families tried “to shape the domestic environment in ways that signified social respectability and that facilitated the acquisition of habits of personal deportment that could set a family apart from both the rough world of mechanics and the artificial world of fashion” (1989:188). Although overt and excessive consumption by middle-class women in the pre-1900 era was negatively associated with social aspirations (Blumin 1989:186)—modesty being one important Victorian value—the heads of households were still expected to outfit their homes in a manner that demonstrated an acceptable level of economic comfort and communicated the proper messages regarding social values (Fitts 1999, 2001).

294

Working Parents and the Material Culture of Victorianism

The middle-class Victorian home was filled with objects considered to symbolize a particular set of values and ideals. Tableware, for example, was an important means of communicating social messages, as children were given special individual dishes to emphasize the notion that each diner would be served individually from the kitchen (Fitts 1999:49). Family-style meals, in which diners are served from a communal dish placed on the table, contradicted the Victorian focus on the individual. White tablewares were considered to symbolize “modesty” (Fitts 1999:58), and covered dishes were thought to help distance the genteel diner from direct contact with food (Fitts 1999:54). Matched sets of tableware also transmitted messages about a family’s financial ability to obtain a large quantity of dishes at once. As members of the working class seldom had the time, money, or desire to dine in a manner that met the stringent etiquette standards laid out by the middle class, “proper” table manners were thought to set the Victorian middle class apart (Fitts 1999:49). Another aspect of Victorian middle-class material life that separated aspiring members of this group from other members of society was the parlor. The Victorian parlor, an extensively decorated room set apart for entertaining guests, was an important feature of domestic display (Mullins 2004). A proper parlor, according to Fitts (2002:6–7), would have contained a number of prominent and characteristic items, such as a mantel and clock, porcelain figurines, potted plants, lamps, mirrors, a sofa, and a piano. Potted plants and other “natural” symbols, such as floral motifs on figurines and other objects, were associated with Christian religious principles; therefore, the presence of these items could be considered symbolic of a woman’s attempts to maintain a religious environment in the home (Fitts 1999:47, Spencer-Wood 1996:419). The presence of Gothic design motifs, whether architectural or integrated into household objects, was also considered a way to bring “church” into the home (Fitts 1999:47). In this way, Victorian women mixed a variety of symbols to make a culturally appropriate statement about their families’ place within society as a whole. Pianos, as symbols of education and erudition; clocks, symbolic of time keeping and an alignment with the industrial present and future (Leone, Potter, and Shackel 1987); natural imagery, symbolic of religious principles; and other decorative objects, which collectively symbolize an ability to consume, all worked together to create a complex declaration about Victorian family identity. The significance of the Victorian parlor is demonstrated by the attempts of modernist reformers to encourage members of the working class to create parlors: “Reformers applauded all attempts by workers to create parlors in their homes. They viewed such spaces as evidence of civilization, self-respect, and assumption of middle-class standards. A home with a parlor was more likely, they felt, to instill the middle-class image of the family as an emotional, sentimental unit” (Cohen 1982:300).

295

S u mm e r M o o r e

Although the reformers’ attempts were sometimes successful, Fitts (2002:7; see also Mullins 2004) has reported that working-class and immigrant versions of middle-class parlors were often very different from the originals. They were frequently opulent to the point of appearing gaudy and in addition were sometimes converted to sleeping quarters at night. I wish to draw a parallel here between the material culture adults used to decorate their households and that which they gave to their children for play. Not only did children’s material culture in the Victorian era visually resemble decorative objects in the home—for example, we can compare porcelain dolls with the popular mantelpiece Parian figurines molded from the same material—but it was also meant to transmit a set of corresponding messages. We have established that, for Victorians, domestic artifacts had important meanings beyond their value as purely aesthetic objects, and Victorian toys, it seems, were no different. These toys can be viewed as part of the material reality of the cult of domesticity, intended to mold children into adults fully capable of exhibiting “proper” behavior according to their particular class and gender. One of the first uses of fashion dolls was as mannequins for tailors in fashion centers, such as France, to display the latest fashions to the elite in other regions (von Boehn 1972). As such, dolls have long had a prescriptive function in transmitting ideas about the kinds of clothing their owners should aspire to wear. By the time of the Victorian era, fashion dolls were part of a constellation of children’s toys intended to convey messages about how children should appear and behave. Girls, for instance, were given toys such as porcelain dolls and ceramic tea sets that “required quiet, careful handling and often encouraged solitary play indoors,” while toys intended for boys, such as marbles and sleds, encouraged more active and communal play (Calvert 1992:112). These attempts at gendered socialization fell very much within the confines of Victorian ideas about proper behavior for girls and boys and, of course, for women and men. Another common theme recognizable in the toys of Victorian girls is that they gave little girls abundant opportunities for training in how to manage a household, in the reproduction of the cult of domesticity under whose conditions they were likely raised. Dolls such as Victorian child dolls, which “[w]ith their round faces, rosy cheeks, oversized eyes, and long curls” represented “the epitome of the Victorian ideal of the beautiful, unspoiled, innocent child” (Calvert 1992:118), allowed children to practice nurturing a child of their own. It is easy to assume, although contemporary accounts show that some little boys also owned and played with dolls (Calvert 1992:116), that Victorian parents would have given these toys to girls to teach them how to become mothers. According to Max von Boehn, a toy historian writing in the 1920s,

296

Working Parents and the Material Culture of Victorianism The more highly, then, did the professional pedagogues estimate the educational value of the toy doll, which not only provides a welcome soil for the thriving and blossoming of the child’s imagination, but is also regarded as a concentration of all the functions making for serious thought and act. .€.€. Unquestionably the development of the maternal instinct in the little girl is deeply influenced by the interest she takes in her doll. George Sand and Victor Hugo provide us with examples—indeed, Konrad Lange goes so far as to assert that “Women who have not played much with dolls in their childhood are distinguished in their maturity by low taste in matters of art and especially by lacking of feeling.” (von Boehn 1972:173–174)

Knowing how highly the Victorians valued mothers, as the individuals who transmitted their own social values to the next generation, it seems clear that they would not have wanted girls to ascend to this station without practicing first. Parents provided girls with another opportunity to practice for their eventual roles as female heads of households in the form of miniature ceramic tea sets and table settings. Victorian parents frequently gave these types of toys to their children, particularly their daughters, to help them to learn to negotiate the complex terrain of Victorian middle-class table manners (Fitts 1999:50; PraetÂ�zelÂ� lis and Praetzellis 1990, 1992). From cisterns at the suburban middle-class Atlantic Terminal site, which date to the 1860s, Fitts has described an assemblage of toys that includes miniature table settings for dollhouses and toy tea sets. These dish sets even included serving dish covers, allowing these children’s dolls to practice “segmented genteel dining” (Fitts 1999:54). Beyond Victorianism: Social and Material Change in the Twentieth Century

Regarding Ludlow, the importance of the Victorian era lies not with its peak during the nineteenth century but rather with its eventual collapse as a middle-class social model. By the end of the nineteenth century, the rapid pace of societal change had led to a new style of living, and an opposing reaction to the somewhat stifled nature of Victorian behavior and material culture began to occur. Perhaps because of its very nature as a response to the order and balance of Victorianism, this new lifestyle is more difficult to group into a singular cultural system than is the Victorian era. The characteristics of the new “modern” lifestyle and aesthetic were complex and at times contradictory. It is clear, however, that a substantial break with Victorian cultural and material values occurred around the turn of the twentieth century. The sweeping changes within the art world in the first years of the twentieth century, for example, provide a visual example of this phenomenon,

297

S u mm e r M o o r e

as the abstract images of Picasso and other “modern” artists replaced the more orderly, reality-based works that came before. Acceptable modes of behavior began to change as well. Whereas nineteenth-century women indulged themselves socially with morning visits and tea parties, by the 1920s America was experiencing the “flapper” trend, a movement that completely redefined what constituted acceptable behavior for young women. Although most aspects of Victorian culture had fallen out of favor by the early twentieth century, middle-class reformers retained a desire, which may have emerged out of the self-assurance of Victorianism, to share their values with disadvantaged members of the working class. As science and scientific knowledge became more prestigious during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, domestic reformers created a quasi-scientific discipline out of housework: the new field of “domestic science.” Domestic science as a homecare trend encompassed several separate trends within itself, among them the uplift of women through the professionalization of housework (Spencer-Wood 1994:178) and the Americanization of immigrant housekeeping practices, but one of its main focuses was explicitly sanitary living. As such, germ theory and other turn-of-the-twentieth-century scientific innovations made clutter-free houses a necessity for social respectability (Cohen 1982). Although, as Lizabeth Cohen (1982) has observed, it would have been a surprise to colonial farmers, the late–nineteenth-century Colonial Revival movement provided a suitable setting for this new emphasis on simplistic and uncluttered home furnishings. As industrialization reached a peak around the turn of the twentieth century, Americans began to sentimentalize their colonial past— the manufactured and industrial nature of Victorian material culture, such as its molded porcelain figurines, seems to have been increasingly seen as stale and even passé. Antique or reproduction handmade furniture in the Colonial style became increasingly popular, and the homemade handiwork of the Arts and Crafts movement began to eclipse machine-made decorations (Cohen 1982:294– 295). The aesthetic of the Colonial Revival style emphasized simplicity, and the elaborate ornamentation of the Victorian parlor, with its accompanying multitude of decorated objects, was emphatically no longer in fashion. According to Cohen, domestic and social reformers encouraged members of the working class to outfit their homes according to these new trends, basing their appeals on the importance of sanitary living: Though social reform efforts in this period were broad in scope, a surprising range of reformers made use of the new styles as they sought to transform people’s home environments in order to promote social improvement and cultural homogeneity. Often behind their pleas for cleaner, simpler, more sanitary homes for working people lay a desire to encourage more middle class environments. (Cohen 1982:295)

298

Working Parents and the Material Culture of Victorianism

However, members of the working class, who were often immigrants, did not always adhere to such advice. They held on to their plush furniture, drapes, and gilt picture frames, Cohen says, against the suggestions of reformers. These opulent objects were visual representations of the reasons they had come to the United States in the first place (Cohen 1982:304). The toys possessed by children of the elite in the early twentieth century were different from those purchased and played with in the nineteenth century. The turn-of-the-twentieth-century shift in the stylistic qualities of manufactured goods, which made Victorian household items seem dated and obsolete, also occurred within the realm of the material culture of children. Not only did the aesthetic qualities of these objects change, but the lessons they were intended to impart became subtly different as well, in tune with the societal change occurring at the same time. As Karin Calvert has written, “[A] few types of children’s artifacts flourish for a time and then disappear, to be replaced by a new and quite different constellation of goods considered necessary to properly bring up a baby” (1992:5). One of these periods of transition clearly occurred at the end of the Victorian era. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, new types of toys began to emerge, particularly dolls, which may reflect changing attitudes about the meaning of childhood. New, softer toys were produced, instilled with personalities with which a child could identify. Dolls began to be constructed from less breakable materials, a trend that may have allowed girls to play more boisterously. The mass production of porcelain dolls, which began in 1845, made these dolls much more accessible to poorer children. Constance King has claimed that after 1845 these types of dolls would have been “within the price range of practically every child” (1979:110). Shortly thereafter, in 1850, German toy makers introduced the “limbed baby doll” to the British, establishing a new trend in children’s toys toward somewhat naturalistic designs (von Boehn 1972:156). From that time forward, the porcelain doll makers began to move toward a more childlike form for their dolls, which became known as bebés (King 1979:126). These bebés, it seems, were a transitional design, as by the early twentieth century the new “character dolls,” with more realistic faces and assigned names and characteristics, were in high demand. From about 1900 to 1910, apparently, toy manufacturers and consumers developed an interest in more naturalistic dolls that more closely represented actual human faces (King 1979:139). This development drew criticism, as some observers felt the idealized porcelain faces of the Victorian-era dolls were more aesthetically pleasing, but the movement for naturalism seems to have eventually won out. Although materials besides porcelain were used for toy figures before the turn of the twentieth century, it was after the beginning of that century that the popularity of the other materials exploded. “Unbreakable” dolls, for instance—

299

S u mm e r M o o r e

made of such materials as metal, rubber, celluloid, and wood—in addition to the “Can’t Break ’Em” composition dolls of Solomon Hoffman, emerged around the turn of the twentieth century. These more durable dolls, it seems, may indicate that more active types of play were becoming acceptable for girls, as the liveliness of their activities was no longer constrained by the brittleness and breakability of porcelain dolls. Soft toys also became popular during this period. Although they were manufactured before the turn of the twentieth century, these types of toys became more popular afterward. The introduction of the teddy bear in 1903 propelled soft toys to new heights of popularity and visibility (King 1979:147). It is challenging to attempt a convincing explanation of the meaning these new developments in toy production may have had within the context of early– twentieth-century society. The innovations in the designs and materials used in turn-of-the-twentieth-century toy production indicate that children were increasingly recognized as a consumer group, or at least as targets for marketing campaigns. Ruth Rubinstein has stated that parents in the emerging late– Â�nineteenth-century middle classes used consumption to mark their rising status. Dressing children as expensively as adults was seen as a sign of both love and success (Rubinstein 2000:131). This innovation may also reflect the changing aesthetic tastes during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The rejection of the industrially produced appearance of certain household objects of the Victorian era in favor of the handmade appearance of Colonial Revival furniture and Arts and Crafts–period handmade quilts and other items also appears to have occurred within the realm of children’s toys. Molded, impersonal Victorian porcelain dolls, then, were replaced by dolls with naturalistic features and character associations, thereby reducing the industrial feel of their production. While these objects were industrially produced, this type of production was no longer associated with innovation and privilege and therefore seen as an advantage; rather, toy makers attempted to disguise that appearance by emphasizing the dolls’ human aspects. In addition, porcelain as a toy material was superseded by materials such as felt and plush that did not necessarily appear mass-produced. Educational toys also became more important, as childhood was increasingly seen as an extended period of preparatory learning. Rubinstein has written that toy manufacturers in the 1920s marketed toys to adults based on the fact that particular toys could help a child learn (Rubinstein 2000:180). Children’s Material Culture at Ludlow It appears that by the early twentieth century the toys of the Victorians were moving out of the collection of symbolically appropriate middle-class material culture, as had the knickknacks and elaborately ornamented material culture of

300

Working Parents and the Material Culture of Victorianism

Victorian adults. Members of the middle classes, who had moved on to cuddly teddy bears, character dolls, and educational toys, no longer considered these types of objects fashionable. Their meaning for members of the working class, however, was quite different. I contend that when early–twentieth-century adults procured Victorian-style toys for their children, those purchases bore a meaning similar to that of their purchases of “adult” objects. These toys symbolized early–twentieth-century working-class notions of “success,” as well as a hope for social mobility for their children. Fitts (2002:5) has observed that one of the first things immigrant families who came to the United States did was buy new suits of clothes. This activity symbolized the family’s new identity as “Americans” (Fitts 2002:5). The assumption of new forms of material culture, therefore, was seen as a symbolic affirmation of a new status. People immigrated to the United States, after all, for what they considered a “better life.” As Josephine Bazanelle, who immigrated to the United States and lived in the coal camps of southeastern Colorado, stated, “I didn’t know what I was coming to anyway but I was prepared I think for the hard life anyway. Over there [Tyrol] you don’t get nothing fancy” (Bazanelle 1978:18). It is to this end that Lizabeth Cohen claims twentieth-century working-class immigrants adopted the material culture of the Victorian era. To the immigrant working class, these visibly opulent, manufactured forms, in her analysis, represented “success” and the “American dream” in a more tangible form than did the restrained, artificially rustic designs of the Colonial Revival aesthetic. These immigrants often came from rural areas; likewise, the middle-class nostalgia for preindustrial life likely held little meaning for them. Therefore, they increasingly came to rely on Victorian-like forms of material culture to make statements about their new perceived prosperity. Cohen states that these choices were widespread among the immigrant working class: While working-class people at the time may not have viewed their choices in reified terms, their set of preferences seems not arbitrary but a recurrent, symbolic pattern; not a simple emulation of middle-class Victorian standards with a time lag due to delayed prosperity, but rather a creative compromise forged in making a transition between two very different social and economic worlds. This working-class ethos of material values, inspired by rural values and reinforced within the urban neighborhood, departed in almost every way from aesthetics favored by the middle class and promoted by the domestic reformers. Ironically, while middle-class people viewed the appearance of working-class homes as unsanitary, tasteless, and un-American, workers in fact felt that their new material world represented acculturation to American urban ways. Through the purchase of mass-produced objects, they struggled to come to terms with their industrial society. . . .

301

S u mm e r M o o r e

At the turn of the [twentieth] century, the homes of both the middle class and the working class reflected the transitions in their respective social experience. On the one hand, middle-class people rejected Victorian decor for a simpler, more “American” aesthetic, which they tried to impose on workers. On the other hand, the working class found in the ornate Victorian furnishing style an appropriate transition to industrial life. (Cohen 1982:304)

The cheapness of manufactured goods produced after the Industrial Revolution gave workers the ability to clothe themselves and decorate their houses in ways that resembled those of the middle class (Blumin 1989:140). With the exception of one blue glass marble, the toys found within the tent cellar feature at Ludlow are ceramic toys that strongly resemble the toys with which a middle-class child would have played in the Victorian era. These toys include a porcelain doll with a relatively childlike face (Figure 9.6), fragments of miniature plates, and other fragments of a ceramic tea service or table setting (Figure 9.7). These toys are the only ones that survived; we cannot know if the children had other soft toys that decayed or burned prior to excavation of the site. However, we can draw some conclusions from the toys that did endure. The only portion of the doll that has survived and is recognizable is her head, which is broken into two fragments. The remainder of her body was probably constructed from kid leather or cloth and was either burned during the destruction of the tent colony or has since decomposed. As a childlike doll rather than an adult doll, this example represents the kind of doll first made popular during the late nineteenth century. She has an appealing babyish face, but her facial features are less naturalistic or personalized than those of the character dolls toy makers developed during the early twentieth century. Her almost featureless appearance can be described as cold and impersonal or, alternatively, as representing the purity and innocence the Victorians tended to associate with childhood. She would have given a coal miner’s daughter, if a female child in fact owned her, the opportunity to practice designing outfits, as well as dressing and caring for a child of her own. The clothes she came with would have suggested styles of dress to which her owner could aspire, and, although her owner may not have chosen to, her fragility would have encouraged her owner to play with the doll quietly and inside the home, behavior adults considered most appropriate for privileged Victorian girls. The ceramic table setting would have taught its owner a similar set of lessons. The preserved portion of the set is a complete butter dish approximately two inches long. This dish would have constituted part of a complete set of a miniature table setting that, if it were complete or nearly complete, would have allowed its owner to practice setting a “proper” table and then dining with appropriate table manners. It also likely encouraged indoor play. Whether the owners of toys such as these followed this implicit directive is less assured.

302

Working Parents and the Material Culture of Victorianism

9.6. Doll’s head recovered at the Ludlow Tent Colony from Feature 73, a burned tent cellar. PhoÂ�tograph by Summer Moore.

Karin Calvert offers the case of Eliza Ridgely, who lived in Baltimore during the height of the Victorian period, as an example of one child who did not use her porcelain toys as they were intended. Although Eliza and her friends saw each other’s porcelain and wax doll collections, Eliza reported in her diary that her serious, active play was conducted with paper dolls and costumes (Calvert 1992:113). It seems that at Ludlow, this might have been the case as well. The image of the daughters of coal miners playing docilely inside while their brothers indulged in games of marbles and rolling hoops outside seems incongruous and leads me to suspect that the real value of these ceramic toys lay more in their possession than in their use. We can never know, of course, what the intentions behind excavated ceramic toys actually were, but it seems that their purpose may have been symbolic more than anything else. Based on archaeological evidence, it appears that

303

S u mm e r M o o r e

9.7. Ceramic toy dishes recovered during excavations at the Ludlow Tent Colony and the nearby Berwind coal camp. Photograph by Summer Moore.

working-class parents often bought Victorian-style toys for their children. Of three known archaeological sites with an early–twentieth-century workingclass component, all three have remarkably similar ceramic toy assemblages. An archaeological excavation conducted on the property of Lucretia Perryman—an African American midwife who lived in the early–twentieth-century Deep South (Wilkie 2002)—as well as excavations conducted within a working-class Irish neighborhood in Paterson, New Jersey (Yamin 2002), and those at the Ludlow site, all yielded ceramic toys of comparable types. The Perryman site, which was occupied in the 1920s, held a porcelain doll that likely resembles the doll found at Ludlow, as well as portions of a toy tea set (Wilkie 2002:108). The Paterson site held several tea sets and small porcelain dolls known as “frozen charlottes,” which were also present in the Perryman well. These dolls were not present in the latest feature at Paterson, which has terminus post quem (TPQ) dates of 1903 and 1906, but they were located in a feature with 1894 and 1903 TPQ dates (Yamin 2002:117).

304

Working Parents and the Material Culture of Victorianism

The similarity of these types of toys to the toys found in the tent cellar at Ludlow, it seems, indicates that early–twentieth-century working-class children all across the country may have played with a relatively uniform set of toys. The fact that the parents bought these types of “Victorian” toys for their children or, at the very least, accepted their presence in the household demonstrates that this set of toys may have served as material symbols of success for working-class parents in the way Cohen describes. Conclusion: Practical Choices

According to Rebecca Yamin (2002), a need exists for additional research into patterns of working-class play and the material culture associated with it. Middleclass positions with regard to play and children’s toys have been well covered, she says, but more work needs to be done to gain a fuller understanding of the lives of working-class children (Yamin 2002:114). Studies of the material culture of children are an important aspect of research into the lives of members of the working class because by studying the ways parents wish to raise their children, we learn more about the values and aspirations of adults as well. Yamin (2002:124) claims that “while middle-class parents self-consciously constructed play to produce desired gender specific behaviors and class attitudes in their children, working-class parents also influenced their children’s development” by facilitating types of play that reinforced acceptable gender roles and other types of behavior. As such, it seems that the design of play and the purchase of particular toys are well implicated in parents’ dealings with contemporary normative ideologies. In other words, the degree to which parents make use of “mainstream” middle-class children’s material culture must tell us something about their relationship to the values and cultural contexts out of which that culture arose. Although members of the working class and immigrants tended to be fairly conservative in their child-rearing techniques, as noted by Calvert (1992), they did incorporate changes as well. These changes often followed those experienced by middle-class parents some years before. Calvert mentions a series of photographs taken in the early twentieth century that “show tenements in New York City furnished with white metal cribs and wooden high chairs, objects only introduced into middle-class homes within the previous sixty years” (1992:14). This integration by working-class parents, who in this period were often recent immigrants, into middle-class material culture should be viewed neither as a passive acceptance of dominant “American” ideologies nor as a wholesale renunciation of the values of the societies into which they were born. Assimilation, it has been established, is a very complex process that should be viewed as “neither complete nor inevitable” (Fitts 2002:2). The use of the

305

S u mm e r M o o r e

material culture of a dominant group should not necessarily be seen as a passive acceptance of dominant ideologies; instead, in the case of working-class parents choosing toys for their children that resemble those of the middle class, it should be viewed as an active choice. This choice was a decision by individuals to teach their children how to get along in their new society. Howe (1976:11) suggests, in fact, that many people actively acquired aspects of Victorianism to better integrate themselves into American life. Countless immigrants came to the United States with hopes for greater financial success for themselves and their children. Many wished to proclaim their new success as well as embrace their new American identities using the symbolism of purchasing new material items in the “American” style. The parents of the children whose toys have been uncovered at Ludlow may have wished to announce their own success in a similar way, by purchasing fine toys for their children. The toys, which they purchased following the tradition of toys of the Victorian era, may not have represented the latest fashions in children’s objects. However, since members of the working class showed a particular affinity for Victorian home decorations long after members of the middle class spurned them (Cohen 1982), it seems that a similar affinity may have existed for Victorian-style children’s toys. To working-class parents, these items may have represented the material culture of a privileged childhood, the type of childhood they came to the United States to be able to provide for their children. Even if, as I suspect, the daughters of coal miners did not use these toys in everyday play, there is still important meaning in their possession alone. These objects were treasured highly enough, after all, to be brought from the children’s homes in the coal camps to the Ludlow Tent Colony in wagons. Victorian-style toys in the hands of coal miners’ children, therefore, must have played a complex set of roles, with at least two identifiable main effects. First, these toys were a visible symbol of success. They were a tangible method for parents to reap the rewards of coming to the United States and enduring long hours of hard work in the coalmines of southeastern Colorado. Buying nice toys and clothing for children, after all, is an especially potent symbol of financial success. Second, these particular types of toys provided learning tools for the children that would help them negotiate their new material environment in the United States. These toys, more than the more modern naturalistic babies and lovable soft toys, could teach children important social lessons about proper appearance, behavior, and etiquette that would have given them an increased chance of being able to master the slippery slope of social mobility. The material culture of Victorianism, at least to working-class parents in the early twentieth century, was an important symbolic declaration and an example of how the parents at Ludlow, as well as Lucretia Perryman’s family and parents in Paterson, New Jersey, appear to have actively worked to better their children’s situation.

306

Working Parents and the Material Culture of Victorianism

Works Cited Baxter, R. Scott 2002 Industrial and Domestic Landscapes of a California Oil Field. Historical Archaeology 36(3):18–27. Bazanelle, Josephine 1978 Oral History Interview, 08238:1. Western History Collection, University of Colorado, Boulder. Blumin, Stuart M. 1989 The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760– 1900. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Calvert, Karin 1992 Children in the House. Northeastern University Press, Boston. Cantwell, Anne-Marie, and Diana DiZerega Wall 2001 Unearthing Gotham: The Archaeology of New York City. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Cohen, Lizabeth A. 1982 Embellishing a Life of Labor: An Interpretation of the Material Culture of American Working-Class Homes, 1885–1915. In Material Culture Studies in America, ed. Thomas J. Schlereth, 752–775. American Association for State and Local History, Nashville, TN. Fitts, Robert K. 1999 The Archaeology of Middle-Class Domesticity and Gentility in Victorian Brooklyn. Historical Archaeology 33:39–62. 2000 The Five Points Reformed, 1865–1900. In Tales of the Five Points: Working-Class Life in Nineteenth-Century New York, vol. 1: A Narrative History and Archaeology, ed. Rebecca Yamin, 67–89. John Milner Associates, Philadelphia. 2001 The Rhetoric of Reform: The Five Points Missions and the Cult of Domesticity. Historical Archaeology 35(3):115–132. 2002 Becoming American: The Archaeology of an Italian Immigrant. Historical Archaeology 36:1–17. Howe, Daniel W. 1976 Victorian Culture in America. In Victorian America, ed. Daniel W. Howe, 3–28. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. King, Constance 1979 Antique Toys and Dolls. Studio Vista, London. Leone, Mark P., Parker B. Potter, and Paul A. Shackel 1987 Toward a Critical Archaeology. Current Anthropology 28(3):283–302. Long, Patricia 1989 Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America’s Bloody Coal Industry. Paragon House, New York.

307

S u mm e r M o o r e

Margolis, Eric 1983 “Toil and Rage in a New Land.” Part 1 of the series The Life of the Western Coal Miner. Produced by Eric Margolis and Randall C. Vik. Institute of Behavioral Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder. Moore, Jenny, and Eleanor Scott (editors) 1997 Invisible People and Processes: Writing Gender and Childhood into European Archaeology. Leicester University Press, London. Mullins, Paul R. 2004 Consuming Aspirations: Bric-a-Brac and the Politics of Victorian Materialism in West Oakland. In Putting the “There” There: Historical Archaeologies of West Oakland, ed. Mary Praetzellis and Adrian Praetzellis, 85–116. Anthropological Studies Center, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA. Prepared for the California Department of Transportation. Praetzellis, Mary, and Adrian Praetzellis 1990 “For a Good Boy”: Victorians on Sacramento’s J Street. Anthropological Studies Center, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA. Prepared for the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency and McCuen Properties/Library Plaza Group. 1992 Faces and Facades: Victorian Ideology in Early Sacramento. In The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology: Essays in Honor of James Deetz, ed. Anne Elizabeth Yentsch and Mary C. Beaudry, 75–99. CRC, Boca Raton, FL. Rubinstein, Ruth P. 2000 Society’s Child: Identity, Clothing, and Style. Westview, Boulder. Rudden, Mary E. 1998 Female Class Consciousness in the Ludlow Tent Colony. MA thesis, University of Denver, Denver. Sofaer Derevenski, Joanna (editor) 2000 Children and Material Culture. Routledge, London. Spencer-Wood, Suzanne M. 1994 Diversity and Nineteenth-Century Domestic Reform: Relationships among Classes and Ethnic Groups. In Those of Little Note: Gender, Race, and Class in Historical Archaeology, ed. Elizabeth M. Scott, 175–208. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. 1996 Feminist Historical Archaeology and the Transformation of American Culture by Domestic Reform Movements, 1840–1925. In Historical Archaeology and the Study of American Culture, ed. Lu Ann De Cunzo and Bernard L. Hermann, 397–437. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville. von Boehn, Max 1972 Dolls. Dover, New York. [1929]

308

Working Parents and the Material Culture of Victorianism Wilkie, Laurie 2000 Not Merely Child’s Play: Creating a Historical Archaeology of Children and Childhood. In Children and Material Culture, ed. Joanna Sofaer Derevenski, 100–113. Routledge, New York. 2002 The Archaeology of Mothering: An African-American Midwife’s Tale. Routledge, New York. Wood, Margaret 2002 “Fighting for Our Homes”: An Archaeology of Women’s Domestic Labor and Social Change in a Working-Class, Coal Mining Community, 1900–1930. PhD dissertation, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. Yamin, Rebecca 2002 Children’s Strikes, Parents’ Rights: Paterson and Five Points. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 6:113–126.

309

Mark Wa lker

10

Archaeology and Workers’ Memory

The Ludlow Project is an explicitly political project, an attempt to fuse scholarly labor with working-class interests (Ludlow Collective 2001:95). The goal of working with union members and organized labor, an audience outside the traditional realm of archaeology, confronts us with a history little studied by archaeologists and little taught within general historical education. The Ludlow Massacre, like many historical episodes, is a silenced history, written out to the margins of national history. The Ludlow Massacre helped change the lives of working-class people throughout the United States, so its absence in official history, and the absence of events like it, is in some sense astonishing, though unsurprising. Although for most of us on the project it was a “silenced history,” for union members and communities in southern Colorado it is anything but silent. The United Mine Workers of America bought the site after the massacre, erected a monument there, and commemorates the massacre annually. Ludlow is a memory that is mobilized on behalf of striking workers throughout the United States, but it is especially powerful in southern Colorado. Before we began our work at Ludlow, the project principals were questioned by district officials about their political beliefs (Walker 2003) and were challenged at union

311

Mark Walker

local meetings over the project (Duke and Saitta 1998). After the archaeological work began, we were invited to speak at union halls, and a spur-of-the-moment exhibit we put together to show at the 1999 commemoration has been used by Pueblo steelworkers and as part of a United Auto Workers organizing effort in Tennessee. The United Mine Workers Journal published updates on our work to keep union members informed. The monument was recently vandalized, but within a remarkably short period enough money had been contributed for a full restoration (Green 2004; McGuire 2004). Although organized labor is our primary focus, interest in our work has extended beyond this audience, at least in the Colorado area. In short, we find ourselves crossing from one setting where Ludlow is unknown to another in which the history is anything but silent—noisy, contested, and jealously guarded. We knew we would be confronted with a strong historical memory that has an importance that extends beyond academic concerns, so from the very beginning the politics of the project lay in acknowledging archaeology not just as history or science but as memory (Ludlow Collective 2001:96). This chapter addresses this aspect of the project, attempting to define memory and why it is important and highlighting some of the issues archaeologists face when working in “sites of memory” (Nora 1989). Defining Memory

Memory has become a topic of much recent scholarly interest, but it is still a difficult, indeed a slippery, concept. Memory is a complex integration of diverse forms of understanding, a diffuse concept that resists simple categorization. It is a substantial topic of discussion within neurobiology, psychology, literary criticism, and art, as well as in more historically oriented disciplines such as history, anthropology, and archaeology. Discussions of memory can thus range from descriptions of neurochemical processes to abstract discussions of national or even supranational character. In spite of its vagueness, it is nonetheless an important concept, conveying popular understandings of the past. Memory and history (in the sense of the historical disciplines, which include archaeology) are often opposed in the literature, yet they bleed into each other and interact in such ways that boundaries are not easily drawn. Attempts to draw out oppositions between memory and history often seem to circle back on each other as shifting senses of each meaning are used. For example, for some authors the private world of memory is marked off against the public world of officially sanctioned history (Hamilton 1994; Popular Memory Group 1982), while for others or even for the same authors the collective public world of memory is set against the ivory tower of academia (Connerton 1989; Halbwachs 1950; Hamilton 1994; Thelen 1990; Trouillot 1995).

312

Archaeology and Workers’ Memory

As noted, distinctions between the practices of memory and history are not easily drawn. Natalie Davis and Randolph Starn (1989:2) have noted that many discussions of memory and history mirror the opposition between nature and culture, with the natural and organic flow of memory opposed to the calculated accounts of historians. Pierre Nora (1989) has particularly emphasized the distinction between organic “real” memory and the “archival” nature of history and public memory of today. Some, such as Davis and Starn, argue that as both are heavily constructed narrative forms, the main differences between memory and history are institutionally regulated ones. Others argue that there is a profound difference, that academics compose historical narratives in fundamentally different ways than do individuals and society (Hamilton 1994:12). But few would argue that the boundaries they draw between history and memory are hard and fast. Professionals discover within their discipline practices and assumptions that are indistinguishable from the functioning of memory (Davis and Starn 1989; Hamilton 1994; Nora 1989; Thelen 1990). However, the practices of academic history do vary significantly from those of memory. History is reproduced through the production of formal written texts. It is largely an individual enterprise conducted within an institutional setting. The authority to produce narratives is well-defined, and the formal authenticity of the narratives is bound up in truth claims and argumentation over the evidence. A position within the academy generally translates to expertise and authority outside the academy. Memory, on the other hand, is transmitted through far more culturally diffuse forms that tend to be socially and materially rooted. These forms are often informal—family conversations, photo albums, and oral tradition—but they can be institutionally regulated through means such as mass media, museums, and official celebrations and commemorations. Another important distinction is that while history thrives on alterity, memory essentially denies it. The events and actions we study cannot be too close to us as historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists. The idea of historical distance or otherness as a means to objectivity and neutrality is deeply embedded in our practice. Objects of study must be disconnected from us for us to maintain a disinterested pose and simply to make those objects worthy of study. Memory, on the other hand, seeks sameness in the past. An identity rooted in the past must be the same through time. Benedict Anderson highlights this point in his vision of the nation as a “sociological organism moving calendrically through homogeneous, empty time” (1983:226). Most studies of the mythic time of memory deal with nationalism (BirnÂ� beck and Pollock 1996; Friedman 1992; Kohl 1998; Kohl and Fawcett 1995). Archaeological studies have noted the “primordialization” of social relations, elites, and polities through the anachronistic use of material culture (Van Dyke and Alcock 2003). It is in nationalism that the annihilation of time reaches its

313

Mark Walker

most extreme form. The impoverished experiential basis of national memory entails anachronism: the erasing of history between a founding event or group and the nation in the present. National identity is an identity that exists outside experience, a memory without content. In contrast, while working-class and local memories emphasize the continuity between past and present, they lack the vicarious participation of national memory. One never hears, for example, how “we fought at Ludlow.” The identity between present-day working-class people and those at Ludlow is rooted in concrete experience rather than ideological formulations. As academics working at Ludlow we find ourselves in an unfamiliar terrain. In some ways the practices of archaeology as a historical discipline made for an uneasy mesh with the preexisting memory of Ludlow, but in other ways they may be a powerful contribution. Archaeologists break the link between past and present. They are a profane intrusion into sacred time. In most people’s minds, nothing says a past is dead and gone like an archaeologist’s interest in it. Maintaining the link between past and present and remembering that the past still labors in the present are important aspects of working outside the academy (Green 2000). Archaeologists working in public outreach and interpretation realize the importance of this linkage, but sometimes this seems to involve little more than anachronistic titles, such as inserting “the First” before the name of a modern political entity. Ours is an audience that shares common experience with the inhabitants of Ludlow, not necessarily as miners but as organized labor. They know what it is like to work in an industrial setting, and they know what it means to go on strike. They do not endure the violence the earlier workers had to when they struck, but strikes are rarely settled by violence. At its most basic, a strike is a war fought over one’s family’s stomachs. The main weapons are not guns or clubs but household budgets. Regardless of spectacular actions and violence, the hard labor of a strike falls on the women (Long 1985; Wood 2002). The outcome of the 1913–1914 strike lies in the cans, bottles, and food remains from Ludlow. These are the residues of desperate decisions. This is an experience that rings as true today in Pueblo, Colorado, as it did at Ludlow. Bearing this in mind, it is worth considering that academic approaches to gender and diet may resonate in our public outreach more than we realize. Memory and history are both ways of understanding the past, of re-Â�creating it in the present through narratives. Memory is an understanding that is structured in part by the “real” past and by the academic practices devoted to the study of the past. But it is also formed by entire realms of experience that exist outside the purview of any single academic discipline. In short, memory is here seen as consisting of two interrelated moments: (1) the production of narratives about the past, and (2) the functioning of these narratives to create identity.

314

Archaeology and Workers’ Memory

Narrative, Power, and Identity The production of narratives is irreducibly part of the production of history, to the extent that historical events and the narratives of those events constitute the same term—“history” (Ricoeur 1981:298; Trouillot 1995:2). In discussing the narrative nature of history production, Paul Ricoeur defines three mimetic moments: the pre-understandings we bring to historical events and actions, even to the extent of abstracting an event as a discrete object of study, to the emplotting of these events within a narrative (Ricoeur 1981), and finally the actual act of reading and the understanding the reader brings to the narrative (Moore 1990:103–106; Ricoeur 1984). The creation of narratives entails selection, ordering, and interpretation of events. Those events not relevant to the narrative plot are discarded or marginalized, becoming silences in history. Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1995:26) traces the introduction of silences in the production of history at four moments: the creation of historical sources, the creation of archives, the creation of narratives, and the making of retrospective historical significance. An important aspect of memory is that narratives about the past are used to create identity (Kane 2000:315). “Personal narrative simultaneously is born out of experience and gives shape to experience. In this sense, narrative and self are inseparable. We come to know ourselves as we use narratives to apprehend experience and navigate relationships with others” (Ochs and Capps 1996:20– 21). Identities are not sets of categories within which people find themselves but instead are relational in the most basic sense. Identities are one’s relationships with others through the establishment of a common set of interests. These common interests are realized and formulated through memory, which provides common experiences, understandings of those experiences, and guides for action. As part of identity, memory is multiscalar. As the relations of identity shift in scale—for example, from identity as a member of a rural town to a member of a nation-state—so too does memory shift. In local and small-scale settings, the bonds of identity may actually be forged in the memory of shared experience; but as the circle of identity grows geographically to take in more and more anonymous others, the memories that provide these bonds are pushed further back in time, invoking distant origins and heritage and becoming rooted less in shared experience and more in imagination. Memory at these larger scales becomes more institutionalized and regulated, reproduced through officially sanctioned methods and media. An identity requires the privileging of certain narratives and the silencing of others. As a community’s construction of its identity shifts, so do its narrative memories, and vice versa. In this process there is obviously the exercise of power through the construction of authorized narratives and also the construction of

315

Mark Walker

authority to narrate (Ochs and Capps 1996; Vansina 1985). At larger scales, such as the creation of national identities, the role of power becomes more extreme. At a very basic level this is because there are many more memories competing for a role in an identity largely devoid of concrete experience. The danger for a national memory is not so much that one memory will supplant another but rather that it will add to it (Young 1989:92). The simplistic contours of national memory cannot tolerate ambiguity and mixed messages. Discussing the scale of the identity does not refer to the scale of the institutions that reproduce it. National memory, for example, is largely reproduced at local scales by local elites. John Bodnar has observed that leaders of local commemorative ceremonies tend to be socially and financially prominent, with an interest in social unity and the continuity of existing institutions (1992:13). Memory is not, however, the outcome of the untrammeled exercise of power. The claims of historical memory rely on claims to authenticity. To have authority, they must be perceived as true. Because of this, national and large-scale identities cannot simply be created out of nothing but rather are assembled from preexisting local and regional identities (e.g., Sinopoli 2003). Certain local identities and memories are “departicularized” (Alonso 1988), removed from their local context and privileged above others as representing the experience and primordial character of the nation, becoming the inert cultural “stuff ” of national tradition. Ana Maria Alonso (1994:396–397), in her study of national memory in Mexico, draws attention to the fact that nationalist representations tend to draw on low-status subjects, such as campesinos in Mexico and peasants in nineteenth-century Europe. In the United States the figure of the cowboy serves the same role; a wage worker, who often did not even own his own horse, became a signifier of American national character (Lopez 1977; McGuire and Reckner 1998; Papanikolas 1995; Slotkin 1992). What was historically specific and local becomes stripped of its context and is held up as representing the nation. The Dialectic of Memory There is thus a dialectic between local and national memories. National memory is created out of romanticized and commodified local memories, but this process creates dissension and conflict as local agents see their memories transformed or marginalized (Foster 1991). In turn, national ideology reconfigures local memories and identities, both through the agency of nationalistic local elites (Bodnar 1992) and because national memories then provide a material framework within which local memories are experienced and constructed. The drive toward engaging with local histories or histories outside the academy was initially conceived as an attempt to step outside hegemonic and

316

Archaeology and Workers’ Memory

class-based understandings to recover histories outside the dominant versions, particularly in relation to working-class histories (Bommes and Wright 1982; Green 2000; Hamilton 1994; Popular Memory Group 1982; Samuel 1981). Many early efforts worked with an initial assumption of dichotomized sets of histories: official/vernacular, dominant/submerged, hegemonic/counterhegemonic. It soon became evident that these dichotomies, while useful in highlighting the role of power in the construction of histories and indeed necessary as a heuristic device for discussion, must be seen as relational, as a dialectical unity. There is no “space” outside hegemony where alternative visions flourish in complete opposition to dominant notions (Martin 1993:440). Counterhegemonic memories should instead be seen as subversions or reinterpretations of hegemonic memories (Kane 1997), just as hegemonic memories draw on local, and possibly once subversive, memories. The designation of what is hegemonic and counterhegemonic, dominant and subversive, is dependent on context and scale. Memories that at an international scale are anti-colonial and a vital part of national liberation struggles may at another scale be the outcome of the hegemony of local elites. We can never arrive at a place without power. The nesting of histories within histories is something we encounter at Ludlow. As a significant event in labor history, Ludlow is a silence in national history. Labor history, with its engine of class struggle, contradicts consensus history in a fundamental way. Where national history seeks one identity, the history of labor highlights the existence of multiple identities in conflict within the nation. At a more regional level, where the memory of labor struggles may still exist—as a result of either experience or commemoration by local labor groups—these histories are presented as isolated “black spots,” aberrations that were soon rectified. At the regional level, one gets the sense of continual competing histories much more than when contemplating the placid, although occasionally ruffled, waters of national history. Colorado is part of the western United States, a region whose history has been extensively drawn upon to create an American national identity. The West is a prime example of the dialectic between national and regional memories. While the history of this region provided the raw material for the Mythic West of nationalist history, the local understanding of its own history is now structured almost entirely by dominant conceptions. The Mythic West of sturdy pioneers, hard-living cowboys, and, of course, Indians was a product of the class tensions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and would not exist if not for the fact that the working classes and immigration were very much in the minds of the Mythic West’s patrician eastern boosters—men such as Theodore Roosevelt, Frederick Jackson Turner, Frederic Remington, and Owen Wister, whose novel The Virginian defined the modern cowboy Western.

317

Mark Walker

The last quarter of the nineteenth century saw a concentration of wealth and capital that was unthinkable in the earlier days of the republic. This period also saw a massive wave of immigration from Asia, England, Ireland, and Southern and Eastern Europe. Most of these immigrants, especially those from agricultural backgrounds, were funneled into low-paid unskilled jobs. So prevalent in the historical West, these immigrants make one appearance in The Virginian (Papanikolas 1995): “There go some more I-talians.” “They’re Chinese,” said Trampas. “That’s so,” acknowledged the Virginian with a laugh. .€.€. “Without cheap foreigners they couldn’t afford all this hyeh new gradin.” (Wister 1929:149)

The working class was no longer “American” but immigrant. Class was becoming racialized. The Mythic West was not an escape to a simpler place and time, as might be supposed, but instead provided a model for understanding and dealing with class tensions in the coastal metropoles. With its simple dichotomies, the West provided a framework for comprehending the changing nature of American capitalism and its consequent tensions and justifications for the appropriate actions; cowboys and Indians, civilization and savagery, Americans and foreigners, and a rich terrain of last stands circled wagons and threatened homesteads and harsh justice. The West was where Victorian white Americans could strip away the accretions of urban living and rediscover their Anglo-Saxon core. Wister himself noted that survival in the “clean cattle country requires spirit of adventure, courage, and self-sufficiency; you will not find many Poles or Huns or Russian Jews in that district; but the Anglo-Saxon is still forever homesick for [the] out-of-doors” (quoted in Stevens 2002:14). Because Wister was able to ignore the social relations that created the cowboy—the wage work, the debt peonage, and even the fact that cowboys rarely owned their own horses—he was able to create the isolated free-roaming individual who has become such an integral part of dominant conceptions of American identity. The absence of class in this history is not an oversight in the national reconfiguration of Western history but is part of that reconfiguration’s reason to exist. Because of its declining industrial base, the Mythic West is important in southern Colorado as a way of boosting the local economy through heritage tourism. The Santa Fe Trail passes through this area; its history is replete with cowboys, pioneers, Indian attacks, and figures such as Kit Carson, Dick Wootten, Black Jack Ketchum, and Bat Masterson. These historical icons provide a link to both national histories and a mythology that, through Hollywood, has a truly global appeal. The histories of coal mining, company towns, and labor struggles pale in comparison (McGuire and Reckner 1998; Papanikolas 1995:73–90).

318

Archaeology and Workers’ Memory

The mine workers were very much aware of the weight of national memory and the need to commemorate Ludlow in the face of organized silence. One writer to the United Mine Workers Journal noted that there are histories that receive commemoration and those that do not: An artificial civilization may at times play upon public feeling to such an extent that men who have fought against and killed their fellow men in wars and have assisted in great destruction are heroes, but such unnatural adulation has no lasting property. .€.€. How different are the memories of those who gave up their lives as sacrifices on the industrial fields of the world’s work! No martial music roused their passion and stimulated their bloodlust. No laced and buttoned uniforms pandered to an unnatural spirit. They dressed in the common everyday livery of their craft. They lived and died in a hand to hand struggle with poverty, and no monuments of carved stone mark the first place that they found that rest and peace that Christ himself promised to all who followed him. (Ramsey 1915:7)

Ensuring that Ludlow was not forgotten was an immediate concern of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) (Figure 10.1). By the 1915 anniversary of Ludlow, calls for a memorial were a prominent theme in letters to the United Mine Workers Journal. At this scale we see organized labor confronting a national memory that denied its existence. But memory is relational. When we shift perspectives and consider memory within the union, we see the same dialectic between national and local memory, the play of power, the tension of remembering and forgetting. Because of its political explosiveness Ludlow was a valued memory in the years immediately after 1914. The monument was debated and approved by the UMWA president and International Executive at the 1916 annual convention. Union locals throughout the United States raised funds through subscription. Vandalism to the monument led to the installation of an iron fence in 1919 and the approval of funds for a caretaker by the International Executive (UMWJ 1919a; Zimmerman, O’Leary, and Dalrymple 1919). The memory of Ludlow was felt to be the memory of the entire union, as represented in the International Executive, not just that of the Colorado miners. In the years after the massacre this was not a minor point. Southern Colorado miners felt abandoned by the UMWA International after the 1914 strike. The strike failed not because of a lack of will on their part but because it had practically bankrupted the union. The cutting off of strike support by the union meant absolute ruin for many southern Colorado mining families. Resentment toward the union in southern Colorado was strong enough that two of the UMWA organizers who had led the strike, John Lawson and Ed Doyle, broke with the UMWA to try to form another union, the Independent Union of Coal Miners of America, in Pueblo in March 1918 (Harlin 1918). The documentary record of this union seems to exist primarily in the

319

Mark Walker

10.1. Calls for commemoration of Ludlow began within two months of the massacre (cover, United Mine Workers Journal, June 18, 1914). Used by permission of the United Mine Workers of America.

thunderous declamations against it in the United Mine Workers Journal, articles with headings such as “Ingratitude Like a Serpent’s Tooth!” (UMWJ 1918) and “Secession Raises Its Ugly Head in Colorado: John R. Lawson and E. L. Doyle, Arch Ingrates, Lead Dual Organization” (Harlin 1918). Although the existence of the dual union was brief, the UMWA International saw it as a real threat, espe-

320

Archaeology and Workers’ Memory

cially given Lawson’s and Doyle’s popularity among the miners. The appearance of the dual union was probably symptomatic of wider dissatisfaction with the UMWA International during this period because of its ruthless efforts to centralize control by undermining the regional organizations: the districts (Dubofsky and Van Tine 1986). The International had earlier removed Lawson and Doyle from the leadership of District 15 by placing the district into receivership (White, Hayes, and Green 1917). UMWA editorials and circulars initially cast the conflict in terms of secession by the Colorado miners as a whole and attempted to rally national support behind the UMWA leadership by emphasizing the financial sacrifices the union had made in the struggle. Later missives spoke directly to the Colorado miners, reminding them that the Ludlow martyrs had died for the right to join the UMWA specifically. The unveiling of the Ludlow Monument in May 1918 occurred in the midst of this controversy and gave the International Board an opportunity to strengthen its claim to the memory of Ludlow and the loyalty of the Colorado miners. Explicit reference to the topic of dual unionism seems to have been absent from the unveiling, although the fact that the Ludlow victims died over the right to join the UMWA was highlighted. However, two months later Colorado miners were reminded in an article in the Journal that stated the UMWA’s relationship to Ludlow in no uncertain terms and framed the threat of dual unionism explicitly as a failure of memory on the part of the miners of Colorado: My advice to the miners of Colorado—all factions—is to remember the great financial sacrifices made by the miners of America a few years ago in their behalf for freedom and justice; remember those men and women that laid down their lives in that great struggle and the little children burned by the same power that still holds some of them in bondage; remember that the present officers in Colorado are the true representatives of District 15 and remember, last but not least, that there is only one coal miner’s union in this country, the United Mine Workers of America. (Robb 1918:23)

The 1919 memorial service made a direct appeal to local miners to avoid dual unions (UMWJ 1919b), although by this time the threat was probably from the Industrial Workers of the World (the IWW or “Wobblies”) rather than the Independent Coal Miners. The last major strike led by the IWW took place in Colorado in 1927 and ultimately led to the unionization of Rocky Mountain Fuel by the UMWA, in part because the UMWA presented itself as a more conservative alternative to the IWW. During the 1927 strike the IWW also made use of the memory of Ludlow by holding a mass meeting at the monument, a move calculated to enrage the UMWA, which actually advised the National Guard on how to disrupt the meeting (Whiteside 1990:129).

321

Mark Walker

Although Ludlow remains an important memory for the union, responsibility for the monument’s upkeep and its annual commemoration eventually fell to the district and local levels, where the memory of Ludlow is most intense. The bounds of identity seem most strongly limned by tragic violence. Such episodes provide martyrs and common threats. The Ludlow Massacre became a key element in the identity of working-class people nationally but especially in southern Colorado, where the events are bound up with kinship and local experience. Maintaining memory, especially on a large scale, entails work and resources. Labor cannot match the resources brought to bear on memory by government institutions and corporations. As previously noted, the physical presence of dominant memory on the landscape can be overwhelming. Nevertheless, the United States is dotted with small local memorials to countless struggles, efforts by unions to also write their own history on the landscape (AFL-CIO 1999; Green 1995; Labor Heritage Foundation n.d.). But without work, memories can be forgotten or become meaningless. A monument can soon drift into “invisibility” through habitual viewing (Hallam and Hockey 2001:8). The annual ceremonies at Ludlow keep the meaning of the monument alive. Pierre Nora has observed that “without commemorative vigilance history would soon sweep them away. We buttress our identities on such bastions, but if what they defended were not threatened, there would be no need to build them” (1989:12). These ceremonies, held nearly every year since Ludlow and apparently fairly similar in content and structure through the years, create a direct link to Ludlow and the mining families of 1914, providing continuity and also celebrating that continuity (Connerton 1989:48). Materiality and Memory

Power over the physical environment can translate into power over memory. Existing outside the institutions that formally produce texts, the transmission of memory has a strong material and lived component (Connerton 1989; Halbwachs 1950). Memory transmits identity verbally and nonverbally through rituals of commemoration and by writing it into the landscape and the practices of everyday life. The mental spaces of the group refer back to and receive support from the physical spaces that group occupies (Connerton 1989; Halbwachs 1950; Meskell 2003; Pauketat and Alt 2003; Van Dyke 2003). Obviously, memory is the communication of narratives not only across space but also through time. Unchanging material objects provide an illusion of stability and continuity as well as prompts or stimuli for memory. National memory is reproduced through a very material and pervasive mapping of the past through the educational system and the media but also through monuments, museums, public ceremonies, and even objects such as highway markers (Burnham 1995; Foote 1997; Loewen

322

Archaeology and Workers’ Memory

1999). The loosely connected set of institutions through which national memory is communicated to the public can be termed a Historical Public Sphere. Archaeology, by virtue of its institutional settings, funding sources, and the class backgrounds of archaeologists, participates in this public sphere (McGuire 1992; Patterson 1995, 1999; Trigger 1984). Historical archaeology itself is firmly rooted in creating a heritage that defines a national identity (Schuyler 1976; Shackel 2000). The National Park Service draft American Labor History Theme Study (Arnesen et al. 1997) attempts to redress some of the underrepresentation of workers in the public landscape of American memory. But as one of the historians involved with this project noted, finding sites important in labor history that satisfy the National Park Service criteria is far from easy (Green 2000:122, 143, 151–154), not only because of biases within the preservation movement but also because of biases within preservation itself. Workers’ lives usually leave a less substantial material trace than do the lives of industrialists: A survey of potential labor history landmarks for the National Park Service included few extant sites that could signify the lives of these forgotten men and women who toiled in the fields and the factories, the mines and mills that produced the region’s wealth. Few of these structures survived and even fewer were preserved for their national significance or architectural value. Workers passed through the coal and textile towns, the turpentine and timber camps, the dockyard and railyard districts leaving few material traces of their lives. .€.€. It is easier to find places where they died and were buried than places where they lived, worked, and associated. (Green 2000:151)

An archaeologist cannot fail to be struck by this statement and to see the potential of historical archaeology to contribute to the history and commemoration of labor. In recent years, a number of archaeologists have begun to engage with questions of labor history and to actually realize this potential, looking at the company towns and temporary camps (Van Bueren 2002) and also reconsidering industrial sites as places of work and struggle (Cassell 2005; Shackel 1996, 2004). The public sphere is a hegemonic construct, an arena not just for the presentation of an authoritative national past but also for maintaining that past’s authority. There must be an element of consent on the part of the governed for the government to be legitimate (Gramsci 1971). The legitimacy of the past is secured through some measure of debate and negotiation between different interests, but that debate is unequal and limited. The outcomes fall within certain limits, presenting a primordial unity and deemphasizing social and political contradictions in the present. The resulting narratives are nationalistic and patri-

323

Mark Walker

otic, emphasizing citizen duties over citizen rights. They emphasize social unity and the continuity of the social order, and gloss over periods of transformation and rupture (Bodnar 1992:13–19). Histories that through broader social and political changes have become unavoidable but are nonetheless unassimilable are marginalized as the histories of special interest groups separate from the central history of the nation. Memory is not solely the product of an officially structured public sphere. The past is remembered through many means—photo albums, family conversations, and local commemorations of histories that have been excluded from or marginalized within official history (Rosenzweig and Thelen 1998). The archetypal “memory object” of the late–nineteenth- and twentieth-century West is probably the photograph. Our material worlds are filled with small objects that serve no function other than memory—“memento,” “souvenir” (literally, “to remember”). In recent years “scrapbook” has become a verb and is an activity supported by a multimillion-dollar “memory industry.” Memory is reproduced through landscapes and monumental architecture but also through the smallest objects. We must consider these objects, which reproduce memory in everyday life (Hallam and Hockey 2001). In his discussion of refugees, David Parkin noted, “Refugees carry not only items for subsistence and exchange, but also those of sentimental value which both inscribe and are inscribed by their own memories of self and personhood. While art, artefacts, and ritual objects are conventionally located in predictable contexts of use, items taken under pressure and in crisis set up contexts less of use and more of selective remembering, forgetting, and envisioning” (1999:304). These small personal objects may actually substitute for interpersonal relations and can be used to reestablish socio-cultural identity when circumstances permit (Parkin 1999:314, 317). We can look on many of the artifacts from Ludlow and the coal camps in much the same way. The historical records speak of the ethnic diversity of strike camps in terms that speak to archaeologists of ongoing cultural traditions. Many of the artifacts we recovered speak to us in almost exaggerated ways of ethnicity and emergent nationality—buttons inscribed with Habsburg eagles and “Societa Alpinisti Tyrolesi,” bottles from Milan and the Adriatic city of Zara (which was AustroHungarian in 1914, Italian in 1915, Yugoslavian in 1947, and is now Croatian), and religious medallions. Like the refugees discussed by Parkin, the identities of the families in the coal camps and at Ludlow were being reconfigured in dramatic ways. Many of these objects can be seen as mnemonics intended to enable a continuity of identity, even through the uprooting of their migration and the unfamiliar life of the Colorado coal industry. Their identities often shifted from being rooted in local and regional networks to the national identities archaeologists and others traditionally equate with ethnicity, identities often forged in

324

Archaeology and Workers’ Memory

industrial America. Common experiences of life in coal camps such as Berwind forged new memories and solidarities, ones rooted in class. The Ludlow site and monument commemorate the identity forged in the 1913–1914 strike and in subsequent strikes. They are part of a continuum of memory objects, from the small objects brought from other places to the monument and the accretions of recent memory around it. An archaeological metaphor seems redundant but nonetheless apt. This chapter emphasizes some of the differences in the memory of Ludlow at different scales, from the silences of national memory to the raucousness of internal union politics. But many other conflicting memories proliferate around the events of 1914 and after, and we encountered them in the course of our work—from claims that the National Guard killed hundreds of miners and buried them in the hills to claims that the strikers massacred a trainload of Mexican workers being brought in as scab labor. We encountered complaints that we were overemphasizing something that was better forgotten and that we were disturbing sacred ground. We encountered the children of strikers who lived in the colonies and the children of mine superintendents whose homes were dynamited during the ten days after the massacre. Regardless of the politics and backgrounds of these narratives, Ludlow still maintains a vital presence in local memory, produced and reproduced through multiple informal networks we can sometimes only guess at. The pervasiveness of this memory was summed up in a poem by a miner’s daughter, printed in a local newspaper: No one talked about Ludlow, hardly anyone went out there, that spot of abandoned, scorched earth, where a sculpture was placed in contrition, as beautiful as the Pieta—but in some way it made itself known, even to children, who learn most from whispers, who knew, all too soon, about Strikes. (Peck 1998:7)

Works Cited AFL-CIO 1999 A Collection of Workers’ Memorials. http://www.aflcio.org/safety/wmd_ mem.htm. Accessed July 12, 2006. Alonso, Ana Maria 1988 The Effects of Truth: Re-Presentations of the Past and the Imagining of Community. Journal of Historical Sociology 1(1):33–57. 1994 The Politics of Space, Time, and Substance: State Formation, Nationalism, and Ethnicity. Annual Review of Anthropology 23:379–405. Anderson, Benedict 1983 Imagined Communities. Verso, London.

325

Mark Walker

Arnesen, Eric, Alan Derickson, James Green, Walter Licht, Marjorie Murphy, and Susan Cianci Salvatore 1997 Labor History Theme Study. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Denver Service Center, Denver. Birnbeck, Reinhard, and Susan Pollock 1996 Ayodhya, Archaeology, and Identity. Current Anthropology 37:S138–S142. Bodnar, John 1992 Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Bommes, Michael, and Patrick Wright 1982 “Charms of Residence”: The Public and the Past. In Making Histories: Studies in History Writing and Politics, ed. Richard Johnson, Gregor McLennan, Bill Schwarz, and David Sutton, 253–302. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Burnham, Philip 1995 How the Other Half Lived: A People’s Guide to American Historic Sites. Faber and Faber, Boston. Cassell, Mark S. (editor) 2005 Landscapes of Industrial Labor. Society for Historical Archaeology, California, PA. Connerton, Paul 1989 How Societies Remember. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Davis, Natalie Zemon, and Randolph Starn 1989 Introduction. Representations 26:1–6. Dubofsky, Melvyn, and Warren Van Tine 1986 John L. Lewis: A Biography. University of Illinois Press, Urbana. Duke, Philip, and Dean J. Saitta 1998 An Emancipatory Archaeology for the Working Class. Assemblage 4, http:// www.shef.ac.uk./assem/4/4duk_sai.html. Accessed November 21, 2007. Foote, Kenneth E. 1997 Shadowed Ground: America’s Landscape of Violence and Tragedy. University of Texas Press, Austin. Foster, Robert J. 1991 Making National Cultures in the Global Ecumene. Annual Review of Anthropology 20:235–260. Friedman, Jonathan 1992 The Past in the Future: History and the Politics of Identity. American Anthropologist 94(4):837–859. Gramsci, Antonio 1971 Selections from the Prison Notebooks. International Publishers, New York.

326

Archaeology and Workers’ Memory Green, Archie 1995 Labor Landmarks: Past and Present. Labor’s Heritage 6(4):26–53. Green, James R. 2000 Taking History to Heart: The Power of the Past in Building Social Movements. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst. 2004 Crime against Memory at Ludlow. Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 1(1):9–16. Halbwachs, Maurice 1950 On Collective Memory. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Hallam, Elizabeth, and Jenny Hockey 2001 Death, Memory, and Material Culture. Berg, Oxford. Hamilton, Paula 1994 The Knife Edge: Debates about Memory and History. In Memory and History in Twentieth-Century Australia, ed. Kate Darrian-Smith and Paula Hamilton, 9–32. Oxford University Press, Melbourne. Harlin, Robert H. 1918 Secession Raises Its Ugly Head in Colorado: John R. Lawson and E. L. Doyle, Arch Ingrates, Lead Dual Organization. United Mine Workers Journal, March 14, 6. Kane, Ann E. 1997 Theorizing Meaning Construction in Social Movements: Symbolic Structures and Interpretation during the Irish Land War, 1879–1882. Sociological Theory 15(3):249–276. 2000 Reconstructing Culture in Historical Explanation: Narrative as Cultural Structure and Practice. History and Theory 39(3):311–330. Kohl, Philip L. 1998 Nationalism and Archaeology: On the Constructions of Nations and the Reconstructions of the Remote Past. Annual Reviews in Anthropology 27:223–246. Kohl, Philip, and Clare Fawcett (editors) 1995 Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archaeology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Labor Heritage Foundation n.d. Inventory of American Labor Landmarks. Labor Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC. Loewen, James W. 1999 Lies across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong. New Press, New York. Long, Priscilla 1985 The Women of the C.F.I. Strike, 1913–1914. In Women, Work, and Protest: A Century of U.S. Women’s Labor History, ed. Ruth Milkman, 62–85. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. Lopez, David 1977 Cowboy Strikes and Unions. Labor History 18:325–340.

327

Mark Walker

Ludlow Collective 2001 Archaeology of the Colorado Coal Field War, 1913–1914. In Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past, ed. Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas, 94–107. Routledge, London. Martin, JoAnn 1993 Contesting Authenticity: Battles over the Representation of History in Morelos, Mexico. Ethnohistory 40(3):438–465. McGuire, Randall H. 1992 A Marxist Archaeology. Academic Press, New York. 2004 Colorado Coalfield Massacre. Archaeology 57(6) (November–December):62–70. McGuire, Randall H., and Paul E. Reckner 1998 The Unromantic West: Labor, Capital and Struggle. Historical Archaeology 36(3):44–58. Meskell, Lynn 2003 Memory’s Materiality: Ancestral Presence, Commemorative Practice, and DisÂ� junctive Locales. In Archaeologies of Memory, ed. Ruth Van Dyke and Leslie Alcock, 34–55. Blackwell, Oxford. Moore, Henrietta 1990 Paul Ricoeur: Action, Meaning and Text. In Reading Material Culture: Structuralism, Hermeneutics and Post-Structuralism, ed. Christopher Tilley, 85–120. Blackwell, Oxford. Nora, Pierre 1989 Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire. Representations (26):7– 25. Ochs, Elinor, and Lisa Capps 1996 Narrating the Self. Annual Review of Anthropology 25:19–43. Papanikolas, Zeese 1995 Trickster in the Land of Dreams. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Parkin, David 1999 Mementoes as Transitional Objects in Human Displacement. Journal of Material Culture 4(3):303–320. Patterson, Thomas C. 1995 Toward a Social History of Archaeology in the United States. Harcourt Brace College Publishers, Philadelphia. 1999 The Political Economy of Archaeology in the United States. Annual Reviews in Anthropology 28:155–174. Pauketat, Timothy R., and Susan Alt 2003 Mounds, Memory, and Contested Mississippian History. In Archaeologies of Memory, ed. Ruth Van Dyke and Leslie Alcock, 151–179. Blackwell, Oxford. Peck, Margery H. 1998 Untitled poem in Letters to the Editor. Huerfano World, Walsenburg, CO, 7.

328

Archaeology and Workers’ Memory Popular Memory Group 1982 Popular Memory: Theory, Politics, Method. In Making Histories: Studies in History Writing and Politics, ed. Richard Johnson, Gregor McLennan, Bill Schwarz, and David Sutton, 205–252. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Ramsey, John D. 1915 Our Dead. United Mine Workers Journal, April 15, 7. Ricoeur, Paul 1981 Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 1984 Time and Narrative, vol. 1. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Robb, David 1918 To the Colorado Miners. United Mine Workers Journal, July 11, 23. Rosenzweig, Roy, and David Thelen 1998 The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life. Columbia University Press, New York. Samuel, Raphael (editor) 1981 People’s History and Socialist Theory. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. Schuyler, Robert 1976 Images of America: The Contribution of Historical Archaeology to National Identity. Southwestern Lore 42(4):27–39. Shackel, Paul A. 1996 Culture Change and the New Technology: An Archaeology of the Early Industrial Era. Plenum, New York. 2000 Archaeology and Created Memory: Public History in a National Park. Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York. 2004 Labor’s Heritage: Remembering the American Industrial Landscape. Historical Archaeology 38(4):44–58. Sinopoli, Carla M. 2003 Echoes of Empire: Vijayanagara and Historical Memory, Vijayanagara as Historical Memory. In Archaeologies of Memory, ed. Ruth Van Dyke and Leslie Alcock, 17–33. Blackwell, Oxford. Slotkin, Richard 1992 Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. Atheneum, New York. Stevens, J. David 2002 The Word Rides Again: Rereading the Frontier in American Fiction. Ohio University Press/Swallow, Athens. Thelen, David 1990 Introduction: Memory and American History. In Memory and American History, ed. David Thelen, vii–xix. Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Trigger, Bruce 1984 Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, and Imperialist. Man 19: 355–370.

329

Mark Walker

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph 1995 Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Beacon, Boston. UMWJ 1918 Ingratitude Like a Serpent’s Tooth! United Mine Workers Journal, March 21, 4–6. 1919a New Iron Fence Erected around the Miners’ Monument at Ludlow. United Mine Workers Journal, August 15, 8. 1919b Tribute Is Paid to the Memory of Ludlow Martyrs. United Mine Workers Journal, May 15, 7. Van Bueren, Thad M. (editor) 2002 Communities Defined by Work: Life in Western Work Camps. Society for Historical Archaeology, California, PA. Van Dyke, Ruth 2003 Memory and the Construction of Chacoan Society. In Archaeologies of Memory, ed. Ruth Van Dyke and Leslie Alcock, 180–200. Blackwell, Oxford. Van Dyke, Ruth, and Leslie Alcock (editors) 2003 Archaeologies of Memory. Blackwell, Oxford. Vansina, Jan 1985 Oral Tradition as History. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison. Walker, Mark 2003 The Ludlow Massacre: Class, Warfare, and Historical Memory in Southern Colorado. Historical Archaeology 37(3):66–80. White, President John P., Vice President Frank J. Hayes, and Secretary-Treasurer William Green 1917 Letter to the Officers and Members of All Local Unions, District 15, United Mine Workers of America. UMWA Archives, District 15 Correspondence, D15 1917, Pennsylvania State University, State College. Whiteside, James 1990 Regulating Danger: The Struggle for Mine Safety in the Rocky Mountain Coal Industry. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Wister, Owen 1929 The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains. Macmillan, New York. Wood, Margaret 2002 “Fighting for Our Homes”: An Archaeology of Women’s Domestic Labor and Social Change in a Working Class, Coal Mining Community, 1900–1930. PhD dissertation, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. Young, James E. 1989 The Biography of a Memorial Icon: Nathan Rapoport’s Warsaw Ghetto Monument. Representations 26:69–106. Zimmerman, John, John O’Leary, and William Dalyrymple 1919 Letter to Wm. Green, Secretary Treas. UMWA, Recommending Leo Brytto as Caretaker of Ludlow Monument. UMWA Archives, Executive Data, Folder 15, Pennsylvania State University, State College.

330

Bonnie J. Clark and Eleanor Conlin Casella

11

Teaching Class Conflict

A Trans-Atlantic Comparison Using the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project in Undergraduate Curricula

Like many good collaborations, this chapter began in a pub. When the 2005 Society for Historical Archaeology meetings were held in York, England, the two of us took the opportunity to get in a good visit. As newly minted faculty teaching historical archaeology, we spent much of our time talking about teaching, discussing students, and comparing notes about pedagogy as viewed from different sides of the Atlantic. During one of these meandering conversations, our discussion turned to the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project. In the field, only one of us (Clark) had intersected with this research, once at the inception of the project and again in 2001, serving as field director. But both of us had found that the research at the Ludlow Tent Colony and associated sites such as the company town of Berwind served as a very effective case study for teaching historical archaeology. Some of the ways in which it worked were similar, but others were very different. Historical archaeology is often concerned with the way global phenomena such as colonization and industrialization play out in a local setting. This focus has led to a greater internationalization of practice, both in terms of where practitioners are located and where they research. As such, there is growing interest in comparative views of international practice (Gilchrist 2005; Tarlow and

331

Bonnie J. Clark and Eleanor Conlin Casella

West 1999). Within this context, our conversations took on import beyond mere junior faculty shoptalk. How our students engaged with this project revealed both the ramifications of different disciplinary placement and potentials for public practice at an international scale. As such, we believe our experience teaching with Ludlow can be used to identify some trans-Atlantic directions for a truly global historical archaeology and to highlight the underlying strategic value of such research within the modern university environment. Pedagogical Issues in Historical Archaeology

We were a pair of practitioners musing over curry and chips, but our conversations were not unlike those going on across the globe. There is a growing interest in the practice of teaching and learning archaeology within the tertiary educational sector. Before turning to our experiences teaching with Ludlow, we consider current pedagogical theories of knowledge construction and how these social models have emerged to critique the increasingly corporatized world of higher education. Teaching and Learning as a Social Process

If a central aim of higher education is to transform “the way we conceptualise the world around us” (Ramsden 1992:40), then “learning” must be understood as a perpetually changing relationship between a person and a phenomenon. To say a student “understands an idea” means that he or she relates to that concept or phenomenon the way a subject expert would. As the student builds proficiency through the steady accretion and networking of expertise, the student’s worldview gradually undergoes a fundamental transformation. However, the cultivation of such relationships never occurs within a social, political, or economic vacuum. Increasingly, scholars who explore archaeological pedagogy have begun to adopt the concept of “situated cognition” (Perry 2004:240) to examine the multifaceted nature of learning. In this approach, the acquisition and distribution of knowledge become a social process, embedded within broader dynamics of gender, class, ethnicity, age, and language (Nieto 1999). These social factors are understood to strongly influence how, what, and even when individuals learn. By focusing on the broader social context surrounding the learning process, this alternative pedagogy draws heavily upon “standpoint theory,” a feminist epistemology that similarly emphasizes the situated nature of knowledge construction (Hartsock 1987; Longino 1990; Wylie 1997). But if we acknowledge that experiences of social identity shape what students grasp of our discipline, can we (as instructors) use archaeology itself to critique those same patterns of social inequality? How would this highly theo-

332

Teaching Class Conflict

retical model of situated cognition operate within the rigorous structures of the modern university? Are students encouraged to engage with the construction of archaeological knowledge based on their own diverse personal experiences and backgrounds? Critical Intelligence and the Corporatization of the Anglo-American University

Unfortunately, rather than providing supportive and tolerant environments for the public creation of knowledge, universities are instead rapidly evolving into privatized institutions shaped by the neo-liberal principles of Western capitalist society. This transformation has been neither accidental nor inevitable. Over the last quarter century, drastic reductions in public funding have resulted in the stark commodification of knowledge as a research “product,” the privatization of university services (including, e.g., student accommodations, conference spaces, catering facilities, photocopying services, research laboratories), and the intensification of research links to private corporate sponsors. Identified as the “corporatization” of the university (Castree and Sparke 2000; Press and Washburn 2000), this transformation has profoundly affected both the priorities and ownership of research within these formerly public institutions. Within the field of archaeology, international corporations offering major sponsorship of fieldwork projects have included Shell, British Airways, Visa, and GlaxoSmithKline (Hamilakis 2001:5), with instances emerging of direct interference with the interpretation and presentation of research results (Hodder 1999). Some scholars argue that this neo-liberal agenda has equally infused teaching and learning programs in contemporary Anglo-American universities (Barnett 1994; Pluciennik 2001). In stark contrast with pedagogical models of situated cognition, an instrumentalist model of knowledge has come to dominate, where “everything taught and experienced within the university should lead to a concrete outcome, an investment which should yield significant return (in most cases in the literal financial sense) in the future” (Hamilakis 2001:6). For the students/customers trained to join the postindustrial workforce, the success of this neo-liberal educational program is measured in a neutral audit language of “benchmarks,” “performance indicators,” and “generic skill” registers. Portrayed as an apolitical and objective assessment of educational “values,” this neo-liberal discourse works to obscure the underlying agendas and interests served by this specific pedagogical philosophy. As Henry Giroux has observed in his critique of American higher education, “[A]sked to define themselves either through the language of the marketplace or through a discourse of liberal objectivity and neutrality that abstracts the political from the realm of the cultural

333

Bonnie J. Clark and Eleanor Conlin Casella

and social, educators are increasingly being pressured to become either servants of corporate power or disengaged specialists wedded to the imperatives of a resurgent and debasing academic professionalism” (2000:343). But the underlying crisis is not merely one of educational quality, standards, or values. Control over the creation and distribution of knowledge has profound implications for the foundations of society itself. Recognizing what is actually at stake, a number of scholars now champion the idea of “critical intelligence” as an alternative pedagogy (Giroux 2000; hooks 1994; Pluciennik 2001). Termed an “emancipatory pedagogy” by some archaeologists (Hamilakas 2004), this approach explicitly links the process of learning to that of social change. By attempting to relate both the content and practice of teaching to our own lives and those of our students, this alternative pedagogy encourages a critical reexamination of the stereotypes, ideas, and common-sense truths that structure society. By helping students perceive their own active role in the creation of knowledge, this approach to higher education ultimately strives to nurture the intellectual skills required for reshaping wider society. Academic freedom is therefore understood as a necessary precondition for the creation of a more pluralistic social order: “The real criterion of a dynamic society is whether new, noninstrumental knowledge is genuinely valued not only as art, but as the basis for social decisions. Where critical intelligence is shunted to the margins, even in democratic societies, the social formation is destined for decline” (Aronowitz 1990:34). Archaeology can obviously be taught in a manner that ultimately legitimates and extends the interests of the modern corporate university. But to adopt an approach to higher education as a multifaceted, situated, critical, and lifeÂ�transforming experience rather than a simple acquisition of narrowly defined specialist abilities, the crucial elements of our teaching must focus on social values rather than merely instrumentalist knowledge or quantifiable resources. We can, in other words, teach the discipline of archaeology to cultivate broader skills in critical thinking, cooperation, teamwork, and tolerance. Through our analysis and interpretations of the past, we can help foster an appreciation of personal and social responsibilities, of social solidarity and compassion. Student Attitudes

As a field concerned with the recent past, historical archaeology is uniquely located to critique the way we conceptualize the world around us. Because of its particularly close temporal and emotive links to the present, our subdiscipline illuminates the historically contingent nature of our current social order. It can be used to expose how existing power asymmetries have recent origins—how they have become objectified and naturalized through specific material inscrip-

334

Teaching Class Conflict

tions. Historical archaeology thus offers the opportunity to demonstrate the mechanics of our social order, thereby opening the possibility of radical social change. But does our field achieve this worthy “emancipatory” potential? When we compared student attitudes to historical archaeology, as well as its position within the teaching curricula of our respective regions, some intriguing patterns of marginality emerged. Historical Archaeology in the United States

The majority of Americans polled by Gallup in 1994 thought schools needed to place more emphasis on U.S. history. High school students disagree, however, consistently ranking history and social studies as their least favorite subjects (Loewen 1995). This ambivalence carries over as students begin tertiary education. A longitudinal poll of incoming freshmen (Dey, Astin, and Korn 1991) indicated a significant downward trend in those intending to major in history or political science throughout the mid- to late twentieth century, dropping from a high of 6.8 percent in 1966 and bottoming out at 2.4 percent in 1983. The numbers rallied slightly in the late 1980s, to 4 percent, but by the early 1990s had dropped again, to 3.2 percent (Astin, Korn, and Riggs 1993). In the United States, most historical archaeologists teaching today do so under the auspices of an anthropology or sociology department rather than a history department. Although practitioners often complain of our marginal location within anthropology and archaeology as a whole (see Wilkie 2005 for a recent example), when it comes to appealing to students we are perhaps fortunate for our disciplinary placement. Although the social sciences also dropped in popularity during the 1980s, from a high of 8.9 percent of freshmen choosing a major in 1970 to a low point in 1982 of 3.9 percent (Dey, Astin, and Korn 1991), they rebounded to 6.9 percent by the mid-1990s (Astin, Korn, and Riggs 1993). Conversations with students suggest that while they choose archaeology courses of their own free will, they take history classes to fulfill requirements. Most students who enroll in archaeology courses with a focus in historical archaeology suggest they do so because of their interest in the archaeology end of the enterprise. A combination of general enthusiasm for the practice but general ignorance of the process actually serves us well. When it comes to engaging our students once we have tricked them into taking our courses, the history component of our work often does become a problem. There is much hue and cry about what U.S. high school graduates do or do not know about their own history. For example, in a survey taken in the 1980s, only one-third of American seventeen-year-olds could place the Civil War in the right half-century (Ravitch and Finn 1987). Given the enormous repercussions of that conflict on issues ranging from race relations to industrialization,

335

Bonnie J. Clark and Eleanor Conlin Casella

such ignorance of basic chronology is startling. Courses in historical archaeology in the States require a decisive element of remedial history. This is particularly true when it comes to the crux of the story of Ludlow: the relationship between classes in the United States. In the 1990s, Professor James W. Loewen set out to understand more about the background of his incoming college freshmen. To do so, he spent a year examining the twelve leading history textbooks used in secondary schools in the United States. The resulting book, Lies My Teacher Told Me, became a best seller. One of his most startling conclusions is that despite its enormous impact on their lives, students in the States “know little about how the American class structure works .€.€. and nothing at all about how it has changed over time” (Loewen 1995:201). For example, not a single one of the textbooks he examined used the term “working class.” Another key to what happened at Ludlow lies in the history of immigration to the United States. Here the textbooks fare better, yet the history they present is a confirmation of the country as a land of opportunity, some actually employing the phrase “rags to riches” (Loewen 1995:209). By focusing on exceptional cases of immigrant success and completely bypassing any discussion of social class, the textbooks leave students completely in the dark about the workers who made the successes of men like Andrew Carnegie possible. It is not just the content of secondary history that has come under fire; it is also the methods. Few textbooks present primary sources or outline areas where historians disagree (Loewen 1995). Rather, they present a string of details in a singular narrative voice, providing what one history teacher calls “something alarmingly like an official story” (Kornfeld 1992:28). The concept that history is a process, not a product, comes across only in the rare secondary history classroom. Certainly, some teachers buck the national trends, encouraging students to engage with primary sources or gather oral histories, but they are in the minority. Their efforts are also undermined by state and national standards and tests that drive much of the curriculum. Particularly germane to this chapter are the findings by Denis Shemilt at Leeds University that high school–age students in Britain are more fully exposed to history as a form of knowledge and to the skills of analyzing evidence, causation, and narrative logic than are their counterparts in the United States (cited in Fink 2001). By highlighting methods such as the use of multiple lines of evidence and multiscalar analysis, we in fact can use historical archaeology to teach history the way many historians would like to see it taught. Ambivalence and the Archaeology of Britain’s Recent Past

Within Great Britain, historical archaeology has emerged over the last decade as a marginal subfield because of its own ambiguous position within the academy. To study the recent past, students typically choose a degree in history,

336

Teaching Class Conflict

a well-established discipline taught at most British universities. Archaeology degrees, in contrast, are typically chosen because of an underlying passion for the exotic. Thus, popular subjects tend to explore either distant time periods (from the Paleolithic through Early Medieval periods) or far-flung global regions (typically Africa, the Mediterranean, Central Asia, or the ancient Near East). In a sense, the recent past is simply too seemingly familiar to properly constitute “archaeology” (see Tarlow 1999). Further exacerbating this perception, a basic crisis of identity plagues British historical archaeology. Are we part of the archaeology of the European colonial diaspora and indigenous response (e.g., Deetz 1977) or the archaeology of capitalism (e.g., Johnson 1996)? Others argue for the archaeology of literate societies (e.g., Moreland 2001), a position that immediately inflames debates regarding our relationship with the long-existing fields of Classical and Near Eastern archaeology. An increasing number of scholars have argued for a temporal definition (Casella 2005; Clark 1999; Tarlow and West 1999), noting that an archaeology of the modern era (e.g., Orser 1996) could devote itself to understanding the rapid, global, and unprecedented absorption of all human societies into capitalist economic systems—an exceptional (and, many would argue, definitive) characteristic of the recent past. What of the well-established British subfield of industrial archaeology? While an emerging literature has begun to engage with critical social theory (Barker and Cranstone 2004; Casella and Symonds 2005; Gwyn and Palmer 2005), the discipline has traditionally emphasized technological and mechanical aspects of industrial sites over social ones. Perhaps this specific focus represents a broader ambivalence over the recent past. When examined from a purely technological perspective, Britain’s industrial past is a glorious era: steam engines, canals, bridges, factories, urban town planning, sanitation systems, steel, and textiles—the workshop of the nineteenth-century world. But when acknowledged as a recently past era, Britain’s industrial heritage acquires a more nostalgic patina. Particularly for the de-industrialized north of England, the towns and worksites now deemed “heritage places” primarily operated through the 1960s as thriving local communities and skilled industries. An archaeology of the recent past is frequently associated, in other words, with a melancholic narrative of dislocations, closures, and loss. A general lack of student engagement with historical archaeology may therefore reflect a wider sense of ambivalence over the very recent past—an era popularly associated with growing economic uncertainty, rising unemployment, urban decay, and racial tensions (Figure 11.1). When one can ponder the mysterious megaliths of the British Neolithic or celebrate the monumental fortifications and villas of the Romano-British frontier, why study decaying places inextricably linked with the stark transformations of Britain’s postindustrial decades?

337

Bonnie J. Clark and Eleanor Conlin Casella

11.1. Former textile industry workshop, West Yorkshire, March 2006. Photograph by Eleanor Casella.

Why Ludlow Works

Given both the attitudes of our students and our disciplinary positioning, the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project could, in fact, be a problematic case study. On both sides of the Atlantic, the recent class conflict is a relatively unwelcome topic for a course in archaeology. Although not all students embrace what the project has to teach them, they certainly are engaged. In this section we explain what those reactions have been and explore some reasons why Ludlow works. Within the United States

Unlike most postsecondary educators, graduate teaching assistants at the University of California schools are unionized. In the fall of 2002, just as courses started, the support staff at the Berkeley campus went on strike. One of the most powerful tools of collective labor organizations is solidarity; if one union strikes, the others should honor it. That term, Clark was both an active union member and the head teaching assistant for a class of 200 students. The situ-

338

Teaching Class Conflict

ation presented a dilemma for the entire teaching staff: they wanted to honor the strike but knew that if the first classes were not held, many students would leave for good. The education in the stewardship and conservation of sites and artifacts students receive in introductory archaeology classes is critical for protection of the archaeological record (Bender and Smith 2000). Which was the greater public good, a commitment to the field or a commitment to worker rights? After consultation, the teaching staff decided to use its bully pulpit. So rather than a traditional first day of class, that fall, Introduction to Archaeology started with a teach-in about Ludlow. As indicated previously, very few American students come into a postsecondary setting with any background knowledge about class relations, in particular the history of collective struggle and unions. Although there are more children of working-class parents at a public school like Berkeley, this was likely the first time many of these students had experienced picketing workers (Figure 11.2). The primary goal of the teach-in was to provide background on the history of workers’ struggles in the United States. Clark wanted the students to appreciate that a strike is one of the last refuges of the worker. Through the remainder of the term, in discussions, written assignments, and course evaluations, it was clear that students got it. Our intervention in “critical intelligence” was successful. Students were able to make the link between their lives and the recent past, conceptualizing history as something struggled over in the present. One of the key overlaps between the strike that was going on around these students and the strikers at Ludlow was the struggle over health care. These workers, past and present, wanted access to decent health care for themselves and their families. The link between work and family life is something most nineteen-year-olds have not really thought about. Ludlow makes that link explicit. Although working men struck, everyone’s lives were affected. This point is brought forcefully home by the nature of the site. For example, Feature 73, one of the tent cellars, contains a wealth of items there because the tent housed children, including a baby bottle, diaper pins, children’s clothing, and fragmented toys. From this same feature excavators also recovered a jacketed bullet, by its nature intended not to intimidate but to kill. The tangibility of the evidence creates empathy in the students. Made somehow more real because its history is not a mere recitation of “facts,” archaeology grants a visceral understanding of workers’ collective struggle. Suddenly the written documentation of the reasons behind the strike, such as higher pay or safer working conditions, is brought immediately to what was really at stake—survival, of both workers and their families. The credibility of those who teach historical archaeology rests on the fact that our discipline can make a contribution to the study of the relatively recent past. Although it is widely believed that industrial processes and the labor struggles

339

11.2. Striking University of California worker, Berkeley, September 2002. Photograph by Bonnie Clark.

Teaching Class Conflict

that go with them are a phenomenon of the Eastern seaboard (Igler 2000), the American West of cowboys and wide-open spaces was a wageworker’s frontier that often flared with industrial violence (Schwantes 1987). Students in the States typically express shock that they have heard so little about the Colorado Coalfield War, a critical historical event that took place less than 100 years ago. This is particularly true of the many Colorado natives who attend classes at the institution where Clark teaches, the University of Denver. The invisibility of the strike and the massacre shakes their belief in the superiority of written history. This shakedown continues as students engage with the results from the project. It is almost an old saw by now that entire classes of people are left out of or slandered by written history. Ludlow is an ideal case study for the explanatory power of historical archaeology, as the strikers there represented many members of that laundry list: children, women, immigrants, people of color, the illiterate, the working class. These often textually muted actors are unmistakably evidenced by item after item recovered from the site. For example, images of a cellar filled with melted canning jars attest to the importance of women’s labor at a time of economic vulnerability and juxtapose these mundane artifacts with the drama of struggle (Figure 11.3). One really need not lecture on the importance of historical archaeology when the objects themselves speak so powerfully of the promise of the discipline. A final way Ludlow “works” for students in the United States is that it convincingly places historical archaeology in the center of what they conceive of as archaeology. Certainly, this is aided by the Pompeii effect present at much of the site. Features that represent a snapshot in time are encountered as important data sources in a way surface scatters are not. In addition, researchers applied a full range of discovery techniques at the site, including surface survey to locate artifact concentrations, the identification of ground disturbance through vegetation changes, and the location of cellars using a proton magnetometer. The value of both low- and high-technology field techniques appeals to students drawn to the scientific side of archaeological practice. Within Britain

Within the British educational context, the Ludlow case study offers a powerful reinvigoration of labor history. Unlike their American counterparts, most English students have developed a passing awareness of the Industrial era, particularly if they have completed history as one of their “A”-level topics for university entrance. However, this exposure can too frequently be limited to the dry political history of nineteenth-century Parliamentary reforms, the fetishized minutiae of industrial technology, or the overtly polemical narratives of Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, and the mid-century Chartists. The

341

11.3. Melted canning jars amid other domestic items in tent cellar at Ludlow (Feature 73), August 2001. Photograph by Bonnie Clark.

Teaching Class Conflict

11.4. Diorama, Barnsley main seam. An offering to the York Minster from the coal miners of Yorkshire, modeled by George Hector, 1959. York Minster Cathedral, January 2005. Photograph by Bonnie Clark and Eleanor Casella.

Ludlow Project provides an evocative teaching example because it intentionally shifts attention to the everyday lives of the working communities themselves. From the mid–eighteenth century through the 1980s, coal mining constituted the economic backbone of South Wales, Yorkshire, and England’s northeastern counties (Figure 11.4). Thus, for many Welsh and northern students, a study of class conflict within an American coal mining community directly parallels their own local towns and family stories. The Ludlow Project demonstrates how archaeology could provide an alternative (and more compelling) perspective on their own recent past. An additional factor adds complexity to the pedagogical value of the Ludlow Project. The general topic of “coal mine strikes” retains a special poignancy within Britain’s very recent past. At the height of its power in the 1970s, the British trade union movement began suffering a rapid decline during the first years of Margaret Thatcher’s government as Tory economic policies destabilized Britain’s manufacturing industries. By 1984, emboldened by the success of her military campaign in the Falklands, Thatcher turned to a new internal combatant—the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and its leader, Arthur

343

Bonnie J. Clark and Eleanor Conlin Casella

Scargill. Following her appointment of a confrontational American-trained mine manager, Ian MacGregor, as chair of the National Coal Board, a nationwide coal strike began in March 1984. With a policy of forceful policing that provoked violent clashes along picket lines, the nation became transfixed by nightly television reports of the “Coal War.” Battles spread rapidly across Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Kent, Scotland, and South Wales. During its peak in June 1984, approximately 94,000 British coal miners had stopped work. Lasting twelve brutal months, the miners’ strike became one of the longest and most damaging industrial disputes in British history. As the crisis stagnated, pit villages and mining families across the country grew dependent on voluntary soup kitchens and food parcel donations. While government coal stockpiles ensured the political support of industry and middle-class Britons, mining communities across the country struggled to survive. By September 1984, with a steadily growing number of strikers abandoning picket lines, violent confrontations turned inward, and strike solidarity began to crumble. When the NUM voted to call off the strike in March 1985, the slow demise of Britain’s coal industry was assured. Approximately 180,000 miners were employed at 170 pits before 1984. Two decades later, the remaining 9 pits employed only 6,000 workers (BBC 2004a). Nonetheless, through the Coal War, Thatcher achieved a far greater legacy than the destruction of a single extractive industry. Her victory rendered British trade unions impotent for the subsequent generation (BBC 2004b). Today, the Coal War is commemorated annually in staged reenactments of infamous armed battles between police and strikers. The conflict has served as a backdrop for such recent British films as Brassed-Off and Billy Elliot. It has entered the national consciousness as the most significant postwar transformation of Britain’s socio-political and economic landscape. Thus, when thematically linked to the epic confrontations between ThatÂ�chÂ� er’s government and the British labor movement, the Ludlow Project can contribute to the creation of an emancipatory pedagogy. Rather than conveying the traditional neo-liberal narrative of inevitable industrial obsolescence and melancholic socioeconomic decay, the Ludlow Project encourages students to consider the phenomenon of labor relations as a historically contingent process—one in which the workers themselves played an active (rather than responsive) role and one that retained the possibility of alternative outcomes. By encouraging students to draw upon their own experiences of Britain’s recent Coal War and consequent industrial upheavals, Ludlow opens the possibility of a more situated cognition. It supports the creation of knowledge through empathy and critical intelligence rather than the simple acquisition of expertise. In other words, students’ personal, family, and regional histories can provide the cognitive framework for learning specialist archaeological skills of stratigraphic analysis, artifact identification, statistical manipulation, and site interpretation. Further, by

344

Teaching Class Conflict

adding a fresh perspective, one materially generated by the workers themselves, Ludlow encourages students to question forms of knowledge generated solely from written sources. It highlights the value of archaeology as a tool for hearing those who did not create their own written accounts. It helps them consider how different those stories might have been. Lessons from Ludlow

A main goal of the suite of scholars who designed the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project was to build a praxis of archaeology that “entails knowing the world, critiquing the world and changing the world” (Ludlow Collective 2001:95). Our experience teaching about Ludlow suggests that they were successful. From a pedagogical perspective, the Ludlow Project highlights the emancipatory promise of historical archaeology. By demonstrating how an early–twentieth-century mine strike could be approached from various vantage points—that of the management and owners, that of the strikers, that of the mining families, that of the law enforcement troops—the Ludlow Project encourages the creation of a more situated and democratic knowledge about the recent past. It examines the conflicted social life of an archaeological site rather than retreating to the familiar technological or melancholic aspects. In other words, by unpacking the multivocality of this project, students can observe how representations of the past are in themselves profoundly political acts. By fostering the development of such “critical intelligence,” our teaching can in turn encourage students to question their deeper relationships with the commonsense truths that structure wider society. It is clear that on both sides of the Atlantic, students engaged with the archaeology of Ludlow forge an empathetic tie to the workers who lived and died there. Pedagogy that encourages empathy has been promoted by a number of camps, in particular feminist and postcolonial scholars (Kornfeld 1992). Empathy, which calls up emotion through an appreciation of the situation in which others find themselves, is an effective way to hold people’s “otherness” at bay and to allow for a more nuanced understanding of the context of people’s actions. Lynne Henderson, an advocate for empathy in the courtroom, has written, “Properly understood, empathy is not a ‘weird’ or ‘mystical’ phenomenon, nor is it ‘intuition.’ Rather it is a way of knowing that can explode received knowledge” (1987:1577). Applying empathy to the teaching of history, Eve Kornfeld (1992) has similarly argued that a heightened empathy with historical figures enriches students’ own sense of agency and choice. Rather than viewing them as pieces in the great machine of linear history, archaeology allows the residents of the Ludlow Tent Colony to come alive as people whose lives could have been different.

345

Bonnie J. Clark and Eleanor Conlin Casella

Finally, as a result of its basic subject matter, Ludlow draws students into a broader critique of the corporate capitalism that so strongly influences their educational experience. It offers a detailed archaeology of workers’ collective responses to industrial action, in terms of both the physical landscape of the strike camp and the strategic distribution of resources within those vulnerable households. With themes of cooperation, teamwork, solidarity, and compassion woven throughout its interpretive framework, Ludlow helps shift the pedagogical emphasis from the individual to the community—and thereby reverses a trend intrinsic to the rise of instrumentalism in higher education. As a pedagogical resource, the Ludlow Project helps foster the broader social values essential to the formation of a more pluralistic social order. By exposing the importance of engaging with (not merely passively “learning”) archaeological theory, Ludlow links our archaeological teaching to the cultivation of a deeper philosophical awareness of politics, economics, society, education, and, ultimately, human ethics. Our students have learned a good deal from the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project. We believe historical archaeologists themselves also have something to learn. Although the internationalization of our discipline is critical to the creation of a world historical archaeology, there is little likelihood that the myriad practitioners will come to a consensus about how we should go about our work or even what it is that we all do (Gilchrist 2005). Yet public engagement with our practice is a concern we all share. This chapter began with a candid conversation about pedagogies that work and research with which students actually engage, but it could just as easily have centered on which Industrial-era sites should be preserved and interpreted for the larger public. The success of Ludlow suggests that we should be seeking to research, preserve, interpret, and teach with sites that are suited to the multivocal strengths of our discipline, that can be used to present the past through empathy, and that remind us that we are each a part of a community. Because those communities range in scale from a household to a global economic network, our conversations and collaborations should be equally multiscalar if historical archaeologists are to truly benefit from the expanding scope of our discipline. Works Cited Aronowitz, S. 1990 On Intellectuals. In Intellectuals: Aesthetics, Politics, Academics, ed. Bruce Robbins, 3–56. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Astin, Alexander W., William S. Korn, and Ellyne R. Riggs 1993 The American Freshman: National Norms for Fall 1993. Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA, Los Angeles.

346

Teaching Class Conflict Barker, David, and David Cranstone (editors) 2004 The Archaeology of Industrialization. Maney, Leeds. Barnett, Ronald 1994 The Limits of Competence: Knowledge, Higher Education and Society. Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press, Buckingham, UK. BBC 2004a “Can the UK Coal Industry Survive?” http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/ hi/business/3534519.stm. Accessed November 18, 2005. 2004b “Enemies Within: Thatcher and the Unions.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/ fr/-/1/hi/uk_politics/3067563.stm. Accessed November 18, 2005. Bender, Susan J., and George S. Smith (editors) 2000 Teaching Archaeology in the Twenty-First Century. Society for American Archaeology, Washington, DC. Casella, Eleanor 2005 Social Workers: New Directions in Industrial Archaeology. In Industrial Archaeology: Future Directions, ed. Eleanor Casella and James Symonds, 3–31. Springer, New York. Casella, Eleanor, and James Symonds (editors) 2005 Industrial Archaeology: Future Directions. Springer, New York. Castree, Noel, and Matthew Sparke 2000 Professional Geography and the Corporatization of the University: Experiences, Evaluations and Engagements. Antipode 32(3):222–229. Clark, Kate 1999 The Workshop of the World: The Industrial Revolution. In The Archaeology of Britain, ed. John Hunter and Ian Ralston, 280–296. London, Routledge. Deetz, James 1977 In Small Things Forgotten. New York, Anchor. Dey, Eric L., Alexander W. Astin, and William S. Korn 1991 The American Freshman: Twenty-Five Year Trends, 1966–1990. Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA, Los Angeles. Fink, Leon 2001 New Tidings for History Education, or Lessons We Should Have Learned by Now. The History Teacher 34(2):235–242. Gilchrist, Roberta 2005 Introduction: Scales and Voices in World Historical Archaeology. World Archaeology 37(3):329–336. Giroux, Henry 2000 Public Pedagogy as Cultural Politics: Stuart Hall and the “Crisis of Culture.” Cultural Studies 14(2):341–360.

347

Bonnie J. Clark and Eleanor Conlin Casella

Gwyn, David, and Marilyn Palmer (editors) 2005 Understanding the Workplace: A Research Framework for Industrial Archaeology in Britain. Industrial Archaeology Review (special issue) 27(1). Hamilakis, Yannis 2001 Interrogating Archaeological Pedagogies. In Interrogating Pedagogies: Archaeology in Higher Education, ed. Paul Rainbird and Yannis Hamilakis, 5–12. British Archaeological Reports S948. Archaeopress, Oxford. 2004 Archaeology and the Politics of Pedagogy. World Archaeology 36(2):287–309. Hartsock, Nancy 1987 The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism. In Feminism and Methodology, ed. Sandra Harding, 157– 180. Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Henderson, Lynne 1987 Legality and Empathy. Michigan Law Review 85(6):1575–1579. Hodder, Ian 1999 The Archaeological Process. Blackwell, Oxford. hooks, bell 1994 Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Routledge, New York. Igler, David 2000 The Industrial Far West: Region and Nation in the Late Nineteenth Century. Pacific Historical Review 69(2):159–192. Johnson, Matthew 1996 An Archaeology of Capitalism. Blackwell, Oxford. Kornfeld, Eve 1992 The Power of Empathy: A Feminist, Multicultural Approach to Historical Pedagogy. The History Teacher 26(1):23–31. Loewen, James W. 1995 Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. Touchstone, New York. Longino, Helen 1990 Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Science. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Ludlow Collective 2001 Archaeology of the Colorado Coal Field War 1913–1914. In Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past, ed. Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas, 94–107. Routledge, London. Moreland, John 2001 Archaeology and Text. Gerald Duckworth, London. Nieto, Sonia 1999 The Light in Their Eyes: Creating Multicultural Learning Communities. Teachers College Press, New York.

348

Teaching Class Conflict Orser, Charles E., Jr. 1996 A Historical Archaeology of the Modern World. Plenum, New York. Perry, Jennifer E. 2004 Authentic Learning in Field Schools: Preparing Future Members of the Archaeological Community. World Archaeology 36(2):236–260. Pluciennik, Mark 2001 Theory as Praxis. In Interrogating Pedagogies: Archaeology in Higher Education, ed. Paul Rainbird and Yannis Hamilakis, 21–28. British Archaeological Reports S948. Archaeopress, Oxford. Press, Eyal, and Jennifer Washburn 2000 The Kept University. Atlantic Monthly 285(3):39–54. Ramsden, Paul 1992 Learning to Teach in Higher Education. Routledge, London. Ravitch, Diane, and Chester E. Finn Jr. 1987 What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know? Harper and Row, New York. Schwantes, Carlos A. 1987 The Concept of the Wageworker’s Frontier: A Framework for Future ReÂ� search. Western Historical Quarterly 18(1):39–55. Tarlow, Sarah 1999 Strangely Familiar. In The Familiar Past: Archaeologies of Later Historical Britain, ed. Sarah Tarlow and Susie West, 263–272. Routledge, London. Tarlow, Sarah, and Susie West (editors) 1999 The Familiar Past: Archaeologies of Later Historical Britain. Routledge, London. Wilkie, Laurie A. 2005 Inessential Archaeologies: Problems of Exclusion in Americanist Archaeological Thought. World Archaeology 37(3):337–351. Wylie, Alison 1997 Good Science, Bad Science or Science as Usual? Feminist Critiques of Science. In Women in Human Evolution, ed. Lori Hager, 29–55. Routledge, New York.

349

Philip Duke and Dean Saitta

12

Why We Dig

Archaeology, Ludlow, and the Public

From its inception, the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project was committed to developing a serious and focused public outreach component. We hoped we could go beyond the public lecture and other traditional forms of information sharing—important though these outlets are—to involving the public actively in our work and to a continuing conversation about its relevance to local and wider communities. We were fortunate to have archaeology as a medium to engage the public in a dialogue about Ludlow, labor wars, and class struggle. Archaeology is popular at many levels of society, as evidenced by the number of local amateur archaeological societies throughout the country and the frequency of archaeological programs on such television channels as the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, and others. In this chapter we first present the major messages we tried to convey to the public. Second, we examine the philosophies that underpinned our attempts to use the project as a means of public consciousness raising about the Colorado Coalfield War and the nature of archaeological knowledge production.

351

Philip Duke and Dean Saitta

Messages of the Coalfield War The previous chapters have fully explicated the specifics of these messages, in particular Chapter 1 by McGuire and Larkin. In this section we explain why we felt these messages were so important in our public outreach. The main messages include: • The importance of the Colorado Coalfield Strike and War in American history. As we note later in this chapter, we were confronted early on with an unfamiliarity among the public with the events of the war. Many visitors to Ludlow assumed it was the site of an Indian massacre rather than an episode in the history of American labor wars. We felt Ludlow could be used as a medium for educating schoolchildren and citizens about the role of industrialization and immigrant labor in the making of the American West. • The role of women in the camps and their importance to the conduct of the strike. The work by Margaret Wood (2002) and others helped project members realize that women played a fundamentally important role in initiating and sustaining the strike. Given the traditional emphasis on male activities in analyses of working-class culture, this emphasis allowed a dialogue on an oft-neglected aspect of the strike and encouraged comparison with the status of women in contemporary American society. • The complications of ethnicity. Crosscutting class membership is ethnicity, and in 1913–1914 this led to complicated and at times oppositional social relations among miners. The coal companies often exploited ethnic variation as a way to impede collective action by miners. Yet the miners proved fairly successful in overcoming ethnic divisions that could undermine class solidarity, as evidenced by the strike’s long duration. The Colorado Coalfield War thus allows insight into the variety of identities that work together to shape human experience and complicate collective action, as well as how those identities can work together to achieve a common good. • The importance of historical memory to the local descendant community. Several chapters in the volume, including this one (see later discussion), identify different communities for which Ludlow is a seminal event worth remembering. Ludlow is a living memorial to which working-class people return every summer to remember the events of 1914 and the people who died on what for many is sacred ground. We hoped that highlighting this commemorative tradition would resonate with the wider public and perhaps allow them to see why, for southern Colorado coal miners and many others in the labor movement, the past is still very much present. • The contributions of organized labor to winning workers’ rights. The labor movement in the United States continues to be maligned and misunderstood. The project gave us an opportunity to use archaeology as a means of

352

Why We Dig initiating a dialogue with the public on the labor movement’s successes as a positive force in achieving the kind of workplace safety and dignity many of us take for granted today. • The relevance of coalfield history to contemporary American culture and society. We were very concerned that the public not perceive Ludlow as something that happened in the bad old days. We used coalfield events as a means of reminding our audiences that for many citizens the struggle for workplace safety and dignity is a continuing one.

Disciplinary Issues

Archaeology has increasingly accepted its commitment to communicate its findings to the public, although many archaeologists still seem uncomfortable with the notion of drawing in the public as equal partners in the construction of the past, lest they lose control (cf. Russell 2006:25). The commitment to what might be termed “public archaeology” is predicated on the assumption that archaeologists serve as stewards of the archaeological record and that a disciplinary goal should be to preserve elements of that record for the public good. It has further been assumed that serving the public (cf. McManamon 1991 on the nuances of who exactly constitutes the public) could be accomplished without reference to any explicit ideological or political agenda. Subsequent federal and state legislation has been directed to protect what has commonly been called the “national heritage.” It is not our intention to critique this movement, ostensibly laudable though it may be. We point out, however, that any form of commitment to public archaeology is not, in our opinion, politically or culturally value-free. The concept that archaeologists serve as stewards of the archaeological record is naive to say the least and politically dangerous at worst (Hamilakis 1999, 2003). Our choice of what is important, that is, what is worth saving, is determined by archaeologists operating within a contemporary political and cultural climate. The record is as much cultural production in the present as in the past. Unfortunately, the emergence of cultural resource management as both a direct product of public archaeology’s commitment to the preservation of heritage and the largest single employer of archaeologists today has created a climate in which archaeologists play the roles of professionals who are paid to get projects through the legal hurdles of archaeological preservation, in much the same way an architect is paid to put up a building. This tends to remove archaeologists’ power to intercede in the construction of the past in an ethical way that extends behind the rote code of ethics professional organizations such as the RPA (Register of Professional Archaeologists) have adopted in the past few years (cf. Cumberpatch and Blinkhorn 2001; Kintz 2001). An important first commitment of the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project, then, was to acknowl-

353

Philip Duke and Dean Saitta

edge the explicit political ideologies each of us has as citizens and the ways these ideologies were manifested in our work at Ludlow. A second commitment was to engage the public in the political nature of all archaeological study. In this endeavor, we are supported by parallel trends in history and archaeology that overtly recognize that statements about the past are potentially political statements about the present. For instance, the emergence of New Western history (Limerick 1991) and emerging trends in historical archaeology, with its emphasis on the nexus between local events and the wider structures of global capitalism, provide a sympathetic context for our work at Ludlow (Saitta 2005). The issue of the nexus between archaeology and politics crystallized in the emergence in the 1980s of the so-called postprocessual school of archaeological theory. Three broad constituencies have been served—in theory if not always in practice—by postprocessualism’s advocacy of greater political awareness in how the past was created and its impact on the present: women, indigenous communities, and working people. Of course, all three groups are interrelated; studies by David Kojan and Dante Angelo (2005) in Bolivia, Nick Shepherd (2003) in South Africa, and Margaret Wood (2002, this volume) at the Berwind site are but three examples of this interconnectedness. However, although early authors such as Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley (1987) made explicit their commitment to a working-class voice in the brave new world of archaeology they advocated, one could soon discern that class was losing the potency of the other two issues, a point we made in an Assemblage article (Duke and Saitta 1998). The near, if not total, absence of class as an analytical focus in the work of many leading archaeological theoreticians (e.g., Conker 2005; Hodder 1991) reinforces the conviction that class, at least within Anglo-American archaeology, is not that important (but see numerous papers in Hamilakis and Duke 2007 for counterexamples of this trend). A tension exists, again at the disciplinary level, in terms of who owns the past and who has the right to create it. The concern exists over how the past is best communicated to the public and to what extent the public is encouraged or discouraged from becoming active participants in the creation of a particular past. The debate has played out in archaeology in the arenas of gender and indigenous archaeologies in particular, but we are encouraged by parallel trends in history toward recognition of the often profound differences between official and vernacular history, to use John Bodnar’s (1992) phrase. An official history of Ludlow is national, progressive, and triumphal. It sees the coalfield wars as the product of a less enlightened past, an “angry splotch” (Zinn 1970:100) that is fading rapidly as America moves ever upward toward fuller equality for its citizens. In contrast, vernacular history is local and personal, recited around the dinner table by community members. It gives a different spin to past events, a different context, a darker, more insidious, and more contemporary resonance.

354

Why We Dig

A further concern that stimulated our approach to public involvement in the project was the relationship between the academy and the public. First, the academy is not—and never has been—an institution committed solely to the creation of objective knowledge. Since their origin in the Medieval period, universities have been willing and active promoters of the status quo (Austin 2001). Universities gain their funding, both public and private, by carefully parsing their supposed commitment to greater social, economic, and political equality. Second, the academy does not reward scholars for producing publicly accessible material at the same level as it rewards the production of material intended solely for the consumption of other members of the academy. The academic hierarchy leads to elite universities, many privately funded, where scholarship is privileged and where the use of the classroom—indeed, the use of knowledge itself—to reach out to constituencies that have been overlooked is of secondary importance. Articles in K. Anne Pyburn and Nick Shepard (2005) indicate opportunities for such outreach, but the fact that Pyburn and Shepherd’s volume, a special edition of Archaeologies (the journal of the World Archaeological Congress), needed to be devoted to this problem is indicative of the challenges still to be overcome. Our “problem,” therefore, is that we, the participants in the project, are of the academy yet strive to escape at least some of its constraints. This was particularly manifest in the ways we communicated with the public about the project. It was not simply a matter of minimizing academic-speak so vocabulary became less jargon, a decision that itself is not politically value-free (Duke and Saitta 1998; Watkins 2006). Rather, we sought innovative ways in which we could engage with the public. Some of these were successful, others less so—the topic of the next section. Local Issues and Strategies

Within this overall context we were faced with specific issues, peculiar to the project although not necessarily unique. We needed to recognize that Ludlow was significant to a number of different constituencies. First, most obviously, was the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), the institution that owns the land and for whom the site is sacred. In an early meeting with UMWA officials, that very word was used to describe how the union felt about the site. It was made very clear that we had to proceed carefully and sensitively if we were to gain the union’s respect. Second, two distinct communities claim ties to the Ludlow ground. The descendants of the Ludlow Colony who visit the memorial each year are mainly middle-class Anglos. Few of them are miners or even members of the working class. Their parents or they themselves took part in the processes of social mobility that marked the 1950s and 1960s, with the result that many of them

355

Philip Duke and Dean Saitta

now hold “professional” employment. They do not form a community; rather, their connection to the Colorado Coalfield War is personal and familial. We have helped these descendants by locating graves so they can raise markers to family members who died in the massacre and by correcting errors in documentation or labels on photographs in historical archives. The descendant community is not in the main related by family ties to the strikers, although some do have this connection. This community instead comprises the unionized working people of southern Colorado. The majority of this community is composed of Chicanos, with a small minority of ethnic whites (Italians or Eastern Europeans). This descendant community has an active stake in Ludlow and the events of the coalfield wars. They maintain the monument, organize the annual Ludlow commemoration, and make the events of the Colorado Coalfield War part of their broader struggle for dignity and human rights. We join them each year at the commemoration and share with them the results of our findings and our knowledge of how labor’s rights were won—literally—with blood. We discovered very early that our proposed activities might be greeted with suspicion (Duke and Saitta 1998). As one rank-and-filer bluntly stated at a 1997 union hall meeting where we were seeking permission to excavate at coalfield sites: “I can tell you everything you need to know about Ludlow in three words— they got fucked.” This was a wakeup call about how the academy in general and archaeology in particular are held in suspicion by many members of our society. However, we also discovered as the project continued that members of the descendant community were profoundly grateful to us for initiating the project and wanting to involve them in it as much as possible. After viewing excavated artifacts, Yolanda Romero, president of UMWA Local 9856 Women’s Auxiliary, commented, “Until now, we’ve only known what we’ve seen in photographs. But to see a real thing, an item that a person actually handled, really brings those people and that time to life. .€.€. [W]orkers today are still fighting for some of the same protections the Ludlow miners wanted. People should know how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go” (cited in UMWJ 1999:13). As a result of these and other epiphanies, union leaders now routinely announce that because of our efforts to publicize the story of Ludlow, we are now seen as “brothers and sisters” in the struggle for workplace justice (Butero 2005). Third, beyond the immediate communities of southern Colorado, we identified that the citizens of Colorado are also stakeholders in Ludlow and the events of nearly a hundred years ago. However, the Colorado Coalfield War and even Ludlow are not especially well-known among Colorado residents. In two popular Colorado history books pulled at random from the shelves of the Durango Public Library, Ludlow is described in one page of text with an accompanying photograph in one of the books (Ubbelohde, Benson, and Smith 2001); it is not even mentioned in the other (Ubbelohde, Benson, and Smith 1982). By

356

Why We Dig

way of comparison, Ludlow rates three pages in the left-leaning People’s History of the United States (Zinn 2003). Anecdotally, Duke has found in informal surveys of freshman students at his college, most of whom graduated from Colorado high schools, that very few have heard of Ludlow. This is not entirely unexpected because Colorado history is not a state-mandated social science course in Colorado. If it is taught, it is only as an elective, so teachers are allowed to choose whichever texts they wish and to concentrate on whatever events interest them (Shane Voss, personal comm., 2007). Voss, a high school teacher in Durango, teaches about Ludlow as part of the wider issue of union-company conflict in late–nineteenth-century Colorado and uses Ubbelohde and colleagues (2001) as his text. We suspect, however, that this emphasis is not widespread. We have made two substantive and, by all indications, successful efforts to bring knowledge of the Colorado Coalfield War into both schools and the public consciousness. In collaboration with the Colorado Endowment for the Humanities (CEH), we developed two Summer Teacher Institutes dedicated to imagining ways Colorado’s rich labor history could be incorporated into the public schools’ American history curriculum. Given the differences between official and vernacular accounts of the past, the main challenge was to negotiate and explore synergies between these accounts. While this curriculum building is a work in progress, for participating teachers the institutes raised archaeology’s stock as a respectable and socially relevant complement to traditional history. We have also published an article about the project (Duke et al. 2005) in a reader on public history in the American West that, although intended for college audiences, could also serve as an accompanying text for the kind of high school curriculum imagined by CEH Summer Teacher Institute participants. A traveling exhibit and history trunk containing historical photographs and excavated artifacts have been widely used not only in Colorado schools and cultural institutions but also at educational sites around the country. The potential for using the Colorado Coalfield War as a means of educating undergraduates about such issues as class and conflict management is explored by Clark and Casella in Chapter 11 of this volume. The second effort to disseminate knowledge is through onsite public interpretation. A survey of visitors to the Ludlow site conducted by Mark Walker in 1998 revealed that nearly 60 percent thought the sign “Ludlow Massacre Memorial” promised a memorial to American Indian wars, not to industrial labor wars (an interesting insight into American culture in its own right). Comments in the memorial’s visitors’ book are mostly sympathetic, although the occasional right-wing diatribe (e.g., “they should have been sent to Russia”; “thank goodness trade unions are on the decline”) sullies the overall tone of respect conveyed in the majority of comments. In response to this need, one of our first contributions was to build an interpretive kiosk for the site that described the history,

357

Philip Duke and Dean Saitta

archaeology, and legacy of the events that transpired there (Manajek 1999). The UMWA Local Women’s Auxiliary had heavy input into the kiosk’s design and urged a stronger connection between the Ludlow Massacre and contemporary labor struggles in the area. In so doing, the group ensured that Ludlow was not consigned to a dead past, something archaeological research can often inadvertently suggest (Walker 2003:75). We followed this up with a smaller historical marker for the Berwind coal camp modeled on the Corazon de Trinidad (Heart of Trinidad) markers that celebrate Santa Fe Trail history in downtown Trinidad. The Berwind marker emphasizes the role Colorado’s immigrants played in the making of the industrial West. We have recently completed and installed an interpretive trail for the Ludlow Massacre site to supplement the original kiosk, a twelve-panel installation that timelines the history, updates the story told by archaeology, and locates the Ludlow drama within a wider landscape. These interpretive materials do useful work in offering counter-classic narratives to balance the triumphal, mythic narratives that have long informed Western public history. Conclusion The Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project is one working people can relate to both intellectually and emotionally. It is one of the few archaeological projects in the United States that speaks to the struggles of working-class people, past and present. It does so in a format and language to which citizens can relate. Through site interpretation, teacher education, and other outreach work, we have engaged an audience that has never heard of the Ludlow Massacre and that has missed (or misunderstood) the history of U.S. labor conflict and its powerful legacy. In so doing, our work has shown how archaeology can contribute to a better understanding of the American experience. Whether this wider audience will be convinced of Ludlow’s significance in the human struggle for workplace freedom and dignity remains to be seen (see Matthews 2005 and Wood 2002 for critiques of the Ludlow Project’s strategies of student and citizen engagement). For the moment, we content ourselves with the knowledge that we are politically engaged—that we are “in the game,” to quote Hall (2004)—and with the belief that our activities are cultivating new audiences for archaeological work while simultaneously justifying archaeology’s existence as an enterprise that serves the wider public good. Yet we must conclude with the recognition that much work still needs to be done. Archaeology still needs to prove its relevance to constituencies other than its traditional middle-class constituency. Archaeology can tell a compelling story about the past, but in so doing it can help direct the public to see the present differently. Other pasts can provide other futures. This has been the primary—

358

Why We Dig

the one truly transcendent—goal of the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project. If archaeology’s goal is merely to tell a story about the past, then it does indeed deserve Grahame Clark’s condemnation as merely “an intellectual game for the meritocracy” (1967:472). The past deserves more than that, and so does the present. Works Cited Austin, David 2001 Archaeology, Funding and the Responsibilities of the University. In The Responsibilities of Archaeologists: Archaeology and Ethics, ed. M. Pluciennik, 31–37. BAR International Series 981. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Bodnar, John 1992 Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century. Princeton University Press, Princeton. NJ. Butero, Bob 2005 Remarks at the Ludlow Memorial Service, Ludlow, CO, June 5. Clark, Grahame 1967 Review of Stewart Piggotti’s “Ancient Europe.” Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 33:472–473. Conkey, Margaret 2005 Dwelling at the Margins, Action at the Intersection? Feminist and Indigenous Archaeologies. Archaeologies 1(1):9–59. Cumberpatch, Christopher, and Paul Blinkhorn 2001 Clients, Contractors, Curators and Archaeology: Who Owns the Past? In The Responsibilities of Archaeologists: Archaeology and Ethics, ed. M. Pluciennik, 39– 45. BAR International Series 981. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Duke, Philip, Randall H. McGuire, Dean J. Saitta, Paul E. Reckner, and Mark Walker 2005 The Colorado Coalfield War Archaeological Project: Archaeology Serving Labor. In Preserving Western History, ed. Andrew Gulliford, 32–43. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Duke, Philip, and Dean J. Saitta 1998 An Emancipatory Archaeology for the Working Class. Assemblage 4. www.sh ef.ac.uk/assem/4. Hall, Martin 2004 Keynote Address. Contemporary and Historical Archaeology Theory Conference, Leicester, UK. Hamilakis, Yannis 1999 La Trahison des Archéologues? Archaeological Practice as Intellectual Activity in Post-Modernity. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 12(1):60–79. 2003 Iraq, Stewardship, and the “Record”: An Ethical Crisis for Archaeology. Public Archaeology 3(2):117–124.

359

Philip Duke and Dean Saitta

Hamilakis, Yannis, and Philip Duke (editors) 2007 Archaeology and Capitalism: From Ethics to Politics. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, CA. Hodder, Ian 1991 Interpretive Archaeology and Its Role. American Antiquity 56(1):7–18. Kintz, Theresa 2001 Archaeologists as Intellectuals: Agents of the Empire or Defenders of Dissent? In The Responsibilities of Archaeologists: Archaeology and Ethics, ed. M. Pluciennik, 47–55. BAR International Series 981. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Kojan, David, and Dante Angelo 2005 Dominant Narratives, Social Violence and the Practice of Bolivian Archaeology. Journal of Social Archaeology 5(3):383–408. Limerick, Patricia 1991 What on Earth Is the New Western History? In Trails: Toward a New Western History, ed. P. Limerick, C. Milner, and C. Rankin, 81–88. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence. Manajek, Kim 1999 Ludlow Massacre Interpretive Kiosk. MS thesis, University of Denver, Denver. Matthews, Christopher 2005 Public Dialectics: Marxist Reflection in Archaeology. Historical Archaeology 39: 26–44. McManamon, Francis P. 1991 The Many Publics of Archaeology. American Antiquity 56(1):121–130. Pyburn, K. Anne, and Nick Shepard (editors) 2005 Archaeologies 1(2). Russell, Ian 2006 Images of the Past: Archaeologies, Modernities, Crises, and Poetics. In Images, Representations, and Heritage, ed. Ian Russell, 1–38. Springer, New York. Saitta, Dean J. 2005 Labor and Class in the American West. In North American Archaeology, ed. S. Loren and T. Pauketat, 359–385. Blackwell, London. Shanks, Michael, and Christopher Tilley 1987 Reconstructing Archaeology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Shepherd, Nick 2003 “When the Hand That Holds the Trowel Is Black”: Disciplinary Practices of Self-Representation and the Issue of “Native” Labour in Archaeology. Journal of Social Archaeology 3(2):334–352. Ubbelohde, Carl, Maxine Benson, and Duane Smith 1982 A Colorado Reader. Pruett, Boulder. 2001 A Colorado History, 8th ed. Pruett, Boulder.

360

Why We Dig UMWJ 1999

Lest We Forget: Ludlow Project Puts Massacre in Spotlight. United Mine Workers Journal (March–April):12–13.

Walker, Mark 2003 The Ludlow Massacre: Class, Warfare, and Historical Memory in Southern Colorado. Historical Archaeology 37:66–80. Watkins, Joe E. 2006 Communicating Archaeology: Words to the Wise. Journal of Social Archaeology 6(1):100–118. Wood, Margaret 2002 Moving toward Transformative Democratic Action through Archaeology. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 6:187–198. Zinn, Howard 1970 The Politics of History. Beacon, New York. 2003 A People’s History of the United States. HarperCollins, New York.

361

Index

Page numbers in bold face indicate illustrations

Academy, the: audience for this book, 4; history and, 313–14, 316–17; public and, 255; working class and, 311, 314, 354, 356 Africa, 130, 337, 354 African Americans: in Berwind, 114, 115, 152, 229–31, 231; discrimination against, 44, 226–28; foodways, 152, 245; at Ludlow tent colony, 286; midwife, 304; in southern Colorado, 219, 275; as strike breakers, 36, 230; in UMWA, 34 Aiello, John, 42, 268, 269 Alcohol: at Berwind, 14, 112, 113–14, 117, 150, 270; bottles, 112, 113–14, 116, 150, 264–65, 268; in Ludlow tent colony, 14, 117, 239, 264–65, 271; patent medicine, 112, 113–14, 252, 269–71, 274 Allen mine, 61 American Federation of Labor, 34 America First Society, 146–47 American Indians, 18, 226, 228, 317, 318, 352, 357 Americanization: ceramics and, 15; identity and, 22, 146–55, 219; as ideology, 223–29,

231; Progressives and, 221–25, 226; sanitation and, 298; schools and, 222; Sociological Department and, 224–25, 229; UMWA and, 148–49, 225 Ammons, Elias (Governor of Colorado), 7, 46, 51, 52, 56 Anarchists, 34 Andreatta, August, 276 Andrews, Thomas, 10 Angelo, Dante, 354 Anglos, 16, 44, 229, 230, 355 Archaeologies, 355 Archaeological excavations: archival research and, 74–76, 114, 116, 188, 208, 267–68, 339; artifacts recovered by, 106–110, 264; choice of sites to excavate, 76–79; field seasons, 75; findings, 115–17, 352–353; mapping of households, 71–72; mapping of neighborhoods, 72; mapping of sites, 79–87; oral history and, 114–15, 251, 261; photographic overlay technique, 87–92, 94–95, 194–96; privies, 14, 17, 70, 72, 73, 262, 265–67, 292; provenience control, 81–82; remote sens-

363

Index

ing, 92–94, 116, 265; research design, 70–75; to reveal lived experience, 13–14; sampling in, 5; testing of sites, 87–96, 194–96. See also Archaeology; Berwind archaeological site; Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project; Ludlow archaeological site Archaeology: class and, 19–20, 258; Classical, 337; Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project as challenge to, 253–55; craft of, 5, 13–14, 21; CRM, 353–54; documents and, 13, 74–76, 114, 116, 188, 208, 267–68, 339; emancipatory, 4, 80–81, 333–34, 345, 357–58; field school, 19–20; findings about Colorado Coalfield War, 14–16, 115–17, 352–53; gender, 76, 354; of health, 251, 252, 262, 263, 264–68; Heritage Public Sphere, 323; historical (See Historical archaeology); Indigenous, 354; landscape, 22, 76, 189–93; media and, 5, 18; memory and, 312, 313, 314; Near Eastern, 337; Neolithic, 337; perfect site, 11, 210, 349; photographic overlay, 87–92, 94, 95, 97, 193–96; photographs used to reconstruct tents and cellars, 208, 209, 212–13; as political action, 5, 20–22, 344–45, 353–54, 357–58; post-processual, 354; public, 253–54; Roman, 337; students and, 335; study of impacts of Rockefeller plan, 149– 55; to study the Colorado Coalfield War, 11–14. See also Archaeological excavations; Berwind archaeological site; Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project, Ludlow archaeological site Archives. See Colorado Coalfield Strike: archives Arts and Crafts Movement, 254, 298, 300 Arms and ammunition, 15, 73, 46, 339. See also Machine guns Assemblage, 354 Attfield, Judy, 155 Aultman, Oliver, 9, 88 Aultman, Otis, 41 Austro-Hungarian Empire, 275, 324 AutoCAD, 77, 79, 90 Baldwin Felts Detective Agency: agents kill Gerald Lippiatt, 46; battles with strikers, 49, 50, 179; hired by companies, 7, 45; in Ludlow Massacre, 53–54; recruited into National Guard, 52; testimony, 52, 202. See also Death Special; Machine guns

364

Barrett, James, 226, 227–28, 230 Bartolotti, John, 55 Baseball, 49, 52, 146, 147, 198, 198–99 Basso, Keith, 189–90 Battle of the Viaduct, Chicago, 33 Bavaria, Germany, 235, 242 Bayes’ ranch, 54, 88 Bazanelle, Josephine, 301 Beaudry, Mary, 140 Berwind, Colorado: acquired by CF&I, 163; African Americans in, 114, 115, 152, 229–31; alcohol consumption, 14, 112, 113–114, 117, 150, 270; baseball team, 146, 147; boarders in, 134–35, 138, 141–42, 176–78; canning in, 151–52, 154; census, 115, 134, 219–20, 229–31, 232; chapters on, 21–22; Chicanos in, 112, 115, 230–31; closed, 61, 111; clubhouse, 138, 144–47; Corwin School, 146; Eastern Europeans in, 129–31; founding of, 41–42; Frijole Hill, 112, 115; housing, 113, 133, 136–47, 155–56, 163–78, 180, 261; impact of Rockefeller plan on, 59, 111, 125, 136–47, 149–55; interpretive marker, 358; Italians, 42, 114–15, 229–231, 268–69; landscape, 114–15, 125, 136, 144, 147; life in, 325; map, 137; oral history of, 114–15, 251, 261; proprietary medicine use, 113–14, 267–268, 268; Rockefeller visits, 123, 126; sanitation in, 262; women in, 15, 21; YMCA in, 59–60, 114, 138, 144–45. See also Berwind archaeological site; Company towns Berwind archaeological site: Area B (Frijole Hill), 111, 112, 115, 116, 169–70, 171, 267– 268, 268; Area K, 111, 112, 116, 169–70, 171, 267–268, 268; ceramics, 150, 152; excavations in, 13–14, 111–13, 140–41, 149–52, 166, 169–70, 331; findings, 115–17; mapping, 81; maps of, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86; privies, 79, 81, 111, 112–13, 116, 169–70, 262–63, 268; provenience control, 81, 86; sampling of, 5, 17, 70, 78–79, 110–11 Berwind Canyon: census of, 229–30, 232; company towns in, 41, 50, 77, 262, 361; National Guard in, 205, 207 Beshoar, Barron, 10 Beshoar, Benjamin, M.D., 10, 264 Bessemer Museum, Pueblo: CF&I archives, 8, 20; photos from, 142, 145, 166, 169, 175, 177, 259, 260 Billy Eliot, 344

Index Binghamton University, 4, 9 Black Hills, Colorado, 55, 88, 90, 91, 92 Blatnick-Barros, Carol, 17 Blea, Irene, 277 Blumin, Stuart, 294 Boarders: batching, 42, 134, 138, 141, 164, 176; burned in war, 57; decline in, 131, 141; egalitarianism and, 140; opposition to, 134–135, 140, 148; Rockefeller visits, 59, 123; single men as, 42, 71, 164; sleep in kitchen, 140; women’s income from, 42, 138, 143–44, 148, 176–78, 180 Boarding houses: company, 42, 71, 132; private, 132–133, 138; photograph, 177; single men in, 42, 71, 164, 176 Bodnar, John, 316, 354 Bolivia, 354 Bolshevism, 148 Boswell, Helen V., 223 Bottles: alcohol, 112, 113–114, 116, 150, 264–65, 268; archaeological value of, 13, 314; baby, 71, 254, 290, 292, 339; caps, 100; in cellars, 106, 108, 112; Coke, 150; condiment, 117; diet indicators, 74; ethnicity and, 71, 132, 324; glass shards of, 203, 264; malted milk jar, 292; medicine, 72, 113, 252, 265–71, 274, 278(n1); used by Mother Jones to fend off rats, 51 Boulder, Colorado, 34 Bourgeoisie: ethnic, petty, 42, 45, 132, 268, 269; family, 130; professionals in mines, 37, 44–45; rural, 9, 44–45; urban, 293. See also Class; Middle Class Bowers, Lamont: chair CF&I board of directors, 35, 257; on Mother Jones, 50; papers, 9; requires employees to shop at company store, 40; xenophobia against immigrants, 44–45, 49, 133–134, 170, 255 Brass checks, 38 Brassed Off, 344 British Airways, 333 Broockmann, Daniel, 79, 88 Burke, Heather, 189 Butte, Montana, 34 California, 63, 140, 228, 252 Calvert, Karin, 299, 303, 305 Camp and Plant: described, 35, 224; health issues discussed in, 255, 256, 272, 272; housing discussed in, 139, 165, 166, 167, 168,

172; photos from, 115, 133, 134, 139, 166; suspended, 35 Canning, home: African Americans and, 152; cooperative activity, 154–55; economic activity, 21, 151–52; patriotic activity, 125, 152–54. See also Canning jars Canning jars: African Americans and, 152; as evidence of domestic activity, 74, 102, 108–9, 110, 151–52, 265; lids for, 151, 153; meaning (symbolism) and, 125, 154, 156; melted in cellars, 13, 107, 266, 341, 342 Capitalism: capitalists, 35, 127; class relations, 44 (See also Class); class war, 34, 214 (See also Class war); consumer, 135; corporate and education, 346; critiques of, 34, 188; early twentieth century, 30–34; family and, 130; Fordism, 135; global, 337, 354; immigrants and, 30, 33, 201; labor and, 5, 30, 126, 162, 181; Laissez-faire, 30, 272; Neo-liberal, 333–34, 344, 346; reform of, 31–32, 34, 300 (See also Progressive Movement); values, 200, 201, 202; West and, 318, 354 Capitalists. See Capitalism: capitalists Carnegie, Andrew, 127, 336 Carson, Kit, 318 Casella, Eleanor Colin, 22, 343, 357 CCWAP. See Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project Cellars. See Tents: cellars Ceramic backstamps: Alfred Meakin, 135–36, 237; Buffalo Pottery, 237; Charles Meakin, 235, 238; D.E. McNicol & Smith, 237; East Liverpool Potteries, 237; East Palestinian Pottery Company, 237, 241; Harker Pottery Co., 237; Homer Laughlin, 236, 238, 239, 242; J&G Meakin, 235, 236, 237; Mellor, Taylor & Co., 238, Ohio China Co., 238; Potter’s Co-Operative Co., 258; Sevres China Co., 258; Taylor, Smith & Taylor, 258 Ceramics: archaeological study of, 14, 22, 74, 220, 231–34, 244; Berwind, 150, 152; bottles, 239, 264, 265, 268; English, 235, 237, 238, 239; as evidence of diet, 74; as evidence of domestic occupation, 203; as evidence of women, 71; German, 235, 238, 242; Harper’s Ferry, 137; ironstone, 234, 235, 237, 241, 242; Japanese, 235, 238, 242, 243, 245; Ludlow tent colony, 13–14, 99, 112, 150, 234–46, 240, 292; manufactures, 235–

365

Index

39, 237, 238 (See also Ceramic backstamps); Middle class, 233–34, 240, 244, 245; porcelain, 13–14, 63, 203, 233–34, 239, 241–42, 243; stoneware, 151, 234, 239, 264, 265, 268; tableware, 14–15, 231, 232, 235–45, 240, 292, 295; teaware, 14–15, 235, 237, 239, 241– 45, 246; toys, 292–93, 296, 297, 302–4, 303, 304; transfer printed, 234, 241; Tuscany, 240–41; United States, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239; whiteware 234, 241, 242 CF&I. See Colorado Fuel and Iron Company Charles, Mona, 93, 94 Chase, John: attacks women’s march, 51; Cripple Creek strike, 34, 36, 50; Commander of Colorado National Guard, 50, 205; declares martial law, 51; Mother Jones and, 51; view of Ludlow tent colony, 201, 213 Chicago, Illinois, 31, 33, 166, 199 Chicago Tribune, The, 18 Chicanos: in Berwind, 112, 115, 230–31; as conquered people, 228, 277; in descendent community, 17, 356; discrimination against, 44, 131–32; early twentieth-century immigration, 32, 220–21, 228–29; as in-between people, 219, 230; foodways, 245; health, 276–77; pay, 38; percentage of, 36, 229–31; rural, 44; as strikebreakers, 36, 229, 325; Whiteness and, 228; women, 229 Chickens, 14 Chicone, Sarah, 21 Children: as active agents, 5, 12; Americanization of, 222, 224–25; Berkeley strike and, 339; care of, 42; census of, 285; child labor, 130–31; cleanliness and, 258, 161–62; companionate (nuclear) family and, 127–28, 130, 135; denigrated, 130–32, 170, 201; descendents, 40, 325; early twentieth-Â�century ideals of, 299–300; economic contribution to family, 13, 18; education of, 45, 130–31, 256, 352; everyday life of, 69, 71; experience of class war, 56, 57; experience of Ludlow Massacre, 1, 3, 4, 29, 54–55, 203, 290; Feature 73 and, 232, 292, 305–06, 339; in Ludlow tent colony, 18, 208, 285–93; monument, 1, 62; outrage over deaths of, 7, 30, 56, 59, 258, 290, 321; photographs of, 43, 53, 132, 194, 260, 286, 287, 289, 290; proprietary medicine for, 271; Rockefeller tour and, 126; tableware and, 295; in UMWA

366

demonstrations, 51, 51, 287, 290, 290; Victorian ideals of, 296–97; workers treated as, 127, 259–60 Chinese, 10, 32, 318 Churches. See Religion Civil War, 227, 335 Clark, Bonnie J., 22, 331, 338, 339, 341, 357; photos by, 340, 342, 343 Clark, Grahame, 361 Class: Americanization and, 22, 226, 228, 254–55, 298–99; archaeology students and, 19–20, archaeological studies, 19–20, 323; child raising, 290, 293–94, 300–6; in Colorado coalfields, 44–45; conflict (See Class war); descendents, 15–16, 355–56; emulation, 74, 233–34, 244, 301; ethnicity and, 11–12, 21–22, 197, 352; family and, 130–32, 149; gender and, 11–12, 21–22; Greenwich Village, 232, 242; health and, 22, 251–55, 271–74, 277; history, 311, 316–17; home, 11–12, 233, 253–54, 295, 298–99, 301–2, 306; ideology of, 18; landscape and, 192, 213–14; memory and, 314, 316–17, 322, 325, 352; Mythic West, 317–318; poverty and, 21, 161–63, 165, 170–73, 175–76, 180– 83; propietery medicine use, 271, 275, 277; racialized, 228, 318; in workplace, 11–12. See also Bourgeoisie; Coal miners; Middle Class; Working Class Class consciousness: community of, 188, 214; gender, 11–12; in home, 11–12, 21; as lived experience, 4–5, 11–14, 16, 214; Ludlow monument and, 18; poverty and, 21. See also Solidarity Class war: as bad memory, 18; Colorado Coalfield War as an example of, 3, 5, 24, 29–30, 55–57, 343; denied by official history, 17–18, 22, 317, 341, 319; educating about, 357; Progressives and, 34; specter of, 34, 52. See also Colorado Coalfield War Clyne, Rick J., 224 Coal, 30, 33, 34–35, 60–61 Coal camps. See Company towns Coal miners: accidents, 31, 37, 38–39, 258; check weighman, 38, 46, 47, 59; dead work, 30–31, 38, 47; deaths of, 31, 37, 38–39, 272; ethnicity (See Ethnicity); granite, 1, 2, 3, 23, 23; as independent contractors, 12, 38; living conditions, 7, 37, 39–42; methods, 30, 37–38; memory of Ludlow Massacre, 319–

Index 22; pay, 30, 38, 263; testimony on massacre, 8. See also Coal mines in Colorado Coal mines in Colorado: bituminous, 5, 34; blacksmiths, 38, 263; class in, 37–38, 44–45; company guards (See Company guards); company men, 29, 37–38, 57, 58; deaths in, 31, 38–39, 272; decline of, 60–61; electric engines, 30, 38; ethnic basis of work crews, 11–12, 38; explosions, 31, 37, 258; laws governing, 37, 39, 46, 47, 113; last mines, 20, 60–61; mechanics, 38; 1919 strike, 60; 1903 strike, 36, 45; 1921 strike, 60; 1927 IWW strike, 60; northern field, 34, 36, 45, 61; southern field, 5, 6, 34–35, 36, 45, 61; safety, 7; shift pit boss, 37–38, 39; shot firers, 37; superintendents, 37, 39, 56, 138, 143, 146, 262, 325; tipple, 1, 38, 39, 57; unsafe, 38–39; weigh boss, 38; working conditions, 7, 37–38. See also Coal miners; Company Towns; specific mines by name Coffee, 15, 63, 74, 104, 105, 242 Cohen, Lizabeth, 199, 298–99, 301–2, 305 Coke, 1, 30, 35, 38, 42, 46, 61, 131 Collective bargaining. See Worker’s rights Collier, George, 272 Colonial Revival style, 254, 298, 300, 301 Colorado Agricultural College Cooperative Extension Service, 153, 154 Colorado Coalfield Strike: archives, 8–11; Baldwin Felts Detectives (See Baldwin Felts Detective Agency); boys’ march, 287, 290, 290; casualties, 49–50, 52; descendent community (See Descendent community); descendents of (See Descendents); focuses attention on miners’ living conditions, 167; historiography, 10–11; limits to written sources, 5, 11–13, 69; map, 48; martial law, 50; National Guard intervenes, 50; oral history, 10–11; solidarity during, 45–47; summary of, 5–7, 45–52; UMWA cancels, 7, 58; union demands, 38, 46–47, 251, 339; violence, 46, 49–52; women’s march, 51, 51. See also Colorado Coalfield War; Colorado National Guard; Forbes tent colony; Ludlow tent colony; United Mine Workers of America Colorado Coalfield War: archaeological study of, 11–16; attacks on company towns, 3, 29, 56–57, 202; casualties, 3, 54–55, 56–57, 58, 193, 321, 356; federal troops and, 3, 7, 29,

56–57; as hidden history, 18, 22, 311, 341, 356–57; map, 48; photographs of, 46, 57, 58, 63; sparked by death pit, 42; summary of, 7, 29, 55–57; trials, 59. See also Class war; Colorado Coalfield Strike; Colorado National Guard; Forbes, Colorado (company town); Ludlow tent colony; Tent colonies; United Mine Workers of America Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project (CCWAP): archival research, 74–6, 114, 116, 188, 208, 267–68, 339; audiences, 4, 17, 18, 21–22, 182, 311–12, 314, 353, 357–58; challenge to discipline of archaeology, 253–55; collaboration with UMWA, 17, 20–22, 355– 56; collaboration with United Steelworkers of America, 20; critiques of, 358; description of 4–5, 69, 358–59; excavations, 96–106, 110–14, 149, 203, 210, 262, 267–68; exhibits, 19, 312, 356, 357; field school, 19–20; findings, 14–16, 115–17, 352–53; goals, 21; ideology of, 353–54; media and, 5, 18; at memorial service, 3–4, 18–19, 312, 356; as memory, 4, 17–21, 311–12; oral history, 70, 71, 75, 114–15, 251, 261, 285; as pedagogical tool, 331, 338–346; as political action, 5, 20– 22, 344–45, 353–54, 357–58; public program, 18–19, 75, 312, 346, 351–53, 356, 357–58 (See also Education); products, 17; relationship with unions, 4–5, 16–17, 355–56; research design, 70–75; and students, 19–20, 338, 245–46, 356–57; working class and, 4, 358. See also Archaeology; Archaeological excavation; Berwind archaological site; Ludlow archaeological site; Ludlow Collective Colorado Endowment for the Humanities, 19, 357 Colorado Federation of Labor, 55 Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I): acquires Berwind, 163; archives, 8, 20; bought by Oregon Steel, 20; Camp and Plant (See Camp and Plant); clean company towns, 136; closes mines in southern Colorado, 20, 61; Colorado Supply Company, 40, 42, 272; corporate history, 10, 35–36; fires miners for union sympathies, 7; foreign-born work force, 7, 36, 131, 149; home canning and, 152–53; Industrial Bulletin, 126, 129, 152, 172, 255, 258, 259; housing, (See Housing); Industrial Representation Plan (See Rockefeller Plan); largest company in

367

Index

Colorado, 7; medical department, 262, 263– 64, 271–74, 273, 277; Minnequa Hospital, 257, 263, 264, 273; name changed to Rocky Mountain Steel, 20; patriotism and, 125, 129–30, 152–53; photographers, 9; political corruption and, 37, 39; prejudice against immigrants, 44–45, 131–34, 138, 149, 153, 164–66, 170, 178; Rockefeller Plan (See Rockefeller Plan); Sanitary and Sociological Bulletin, 173, 255, 256, 257; sanitation and health policies (See Health and sanitation); Sociological Department (See Sociological Department, CF&I); steel mill, 20, 34, 35, 40, 44, 45, 61, 170, 224; steelworkers’ strike, 20; testimony on massacre, 8. See also Berwind, Colorado; Company towns; Rockefeller, John Jr. Colorado Historical Society: archives, 8, 90, 115, 173, 179; Aultman collection, 41, 115; State Historical Fund, 77; Trinidad collection, 37, 43, 132, 133; Welborn collection, 134 Colorado National Guard: attacks women’s march, 51; class makeup, 44–45; in class war, 56–57; Company B, 52, 54, 55, 205, 206, 213; Company K, 50; court martial, 8, 59; at Cripple Creek, 34, 77; day after massacre, 29; death pit and, 55, 57, 212; harassment of tent colonies, 179, 188, 192, 213, 214, 245; intervenes in strike, 50; IWW strike, 321; at Ludlow tent colony, 72–73, 201–5, 207, 208; at massacre, 1–3, 7, 52–55; myth about, 325; photographs, 9, 42–43, 53, 54, 55, 57, 200; presence reduced in strike zone, 52; testimony on massacre, 8, 15–16; Troop A, 52 Colorado Public Schools, 19 Colorado School of Mines, 92 Comaroff, Jean, 130 Comaroff, John, 130 Commission on Industrial Relations. See U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations Committee on Public Information, 148 Company guards: assault union organizers, 39– 40, 46; attack and kill strikers, 7, 49–50, 179, 204, 206; attacked and killed by strikers, 49, 50, 57; class position of, 45; kill strikers at Columbine, 60; Linderfelt as, 50, 205; in Ludlow Massacre, 53–55, 188, 203; miners’ aversions to, 40, 47, 179, 206; miners’ wives

368

and, 40, 47, 49; never tried, 59; photographs of, 42, 53; as private police force, 7, 37, 45, 115; recruited into National Guard, 50, 52, 205, 213 Company men. See Men: company Company store, 7, 37, 39, 40, 74, 115, 187, 263, 268. See also Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I); Colorado Supply Company Company towns: abandonment of, 3, 29, 61; archaeological study of, 11, 14, 69, 70–75, 116, 244–45, 323; attacks on, 3, 29, 56–57, 202; borders in, 135, 176–78, 177; CF&I, 35, 36, 37, 132, 134, 166, 224, 232; children in, 292, 306; class in, 44–45; cross burning in, 33; ethnicity in, 44–45, 230–31, 269, 275–77, 324–25; exodus from, 49, 285; fenced, 39– 40, 46; gardens, 143, 153, 174, 255; gender in, 42; health and sanitation in, 37, 39, 173, 260–263, 264, 271, 275–77; historiography of, 8, 318; housing (See Housing); as landscapes, 125, 187–90, 196–97, 200, 207, 214; living conditions in, 7, 11, 37, 39–42, 76, 117; men in, 42, 135, 153–54; miners’ mobility between, 124; model, 35; photographs, 9, 37, 134; population of, 36, 230–231; Rockefeller plan and, 59–60, 123–25, 135, 176–77; Rockefeller tour of, 59, 124, 125–26; stores (See Company store); violence in, 131–132; women in, 42, 153–154. See also Berwind; Company store; Forbes; Hastings; Morley; Primero; Rugby; Rouse; Sequndo; Sopris; Starkville; Tabasco; Tollerburg Congress of Industrial Organizations, 45 Conyers, Larry, 92, 93 Coroner’s juries, 39 Costa, Charles, 54, 320 Costa, Fedelina, 55, 208, 320 Corwin, Warren, 224, 258–59, 264 Cripple Creek Strike, 34, 36, 50 Croatia, 265, 278(n1), 324 Cult of Domesticity, 294, 296 Cultural capital, 130, 148 Dead thug, 9 Death pit: bodies in, 29, 42; construction of, 211–13, 212; location, 91, 95, 194; photos of, 55, 57, 209; survivors, 55, 58, 93; women and children in, 57, 193, 290 Death Special, 45, 49, 50, 208

Index Delagua arroyo, 105, 267 Delagua canyon, 116, 207 Delagua mine, 57, 258 Denver, Colorado, 44, 47, 51, 52, 56, 127; coalfields north of, 34; ophthalmologist John Chase in, 34, 50; public schools, 19 Denver Public Library Western History Department, 8, 90, 115 Denver Times, The, 9, 44 Denver University, 4, 19, 76, 92, 341 Derbyshire, England, 344 Descendent Communities, 16–17, 352, 355–56 Descendents, 16–17, 40, 325, 355–56 Deutsch, Sara, 155, 277 Dickens, Chalres, 341 Diet, 72, 73–75, 117, 222, 314 Discovery Channel, 351 Dishes. See Ceramics Doctors: Chicanos and, 277; company, 37, 163– 64, 255–56, 261, 262, 272; fees for, 38, 263; freedom to choose, 47, 251; homes, 143; in Ludlow tent colony, 10, 117, 196, 197, 207, 264; proprietary medicine and, 252, 275, 277. See also Health and sanitation Dold, Lewis, photographer: Colorado National Guard, 50; Death pit, 209; Forbes tent colony, 52, 53, 63; Ludlow tent colony, 52–53, 55, 56, 88, 89, 194, 199–200, 209; Mother Jones, 45; miners, 46; postcards, 9, 42, 44, 49, 200 Dolls: bebés, 299; clothes, 291–92; in Feature 14, 63, 73, 292, 302, 303, 304; history of, 296–303; Paterson, N.J., 304; to socialize girls, 293, 296–97 Dominiske, Margaret, 198, 201, 208 Dotson, Irene, 52, 53, 63 Doyle, Edward, 8, 9, 174–175, 178, 319–321 Driscoll, Stephen, 192 Duke, Phillip, 22, 354, 357 Durango, Colorado, 357 Durango Public Library, 356 Eastern Europeans: in Berwind, 230–231; in descendent community, 17, 356; foodways, 245; immigration of, 220, 227; strikebreakers, 36, 229; Whiteness and, 227–28, 229 East Liverpool, Ohio, 235, 236, 237, 238 East Palestine, Ohio, 241 Education today: college, 352; corporatized, 332–33, 334; critical intelligence, 334, 339,

344, 345; curriculum, 19, 357; empathy in, 339, 344, 345, 346; K–12, 19, 352, 357; Ludlow Massacre as pedagogical tool, 22, 331, 338–346; national memory in, 322; pedagogy, 332–34; teachers’ institutes, 19, 352. See also Archaeology: field school; Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project: field school, public program Eight-hour day. See Workers’ rights Emancipatory archaeology. See Archaeology: emancipatory Empire mine, 56–57 Engineering and Mining Journal, The, 35 England, 235, 237, 238, 239, 318, 337, 343. See also Great Britian English language, 36, 132, 146, 222–25, 229 Ethnicity: Americanization and, 148–49, 225, 229–31; in Berwind, 71–75, 114–15, 314, 356; in CF&I, 7, 36, 131, 149; class and, 11–12, 21, 352; in Colorado Coalfields, 36, 42, 44–45, 229–231, 275; in company towns, 44–45, 71–75, 114–15, 230–31, 269, 275–77, 324–25; health and, 254, 275–76; in home, 11–12, 71; identifying archaeologically, 71, 72, 74; lived experience of, 5, 11–14; nationality and, 324–25; neighborhoods, 15, 72–74, 111, 113–15; oral history of, 114–15; race and, 42, 49; recreation and, 197–99; solidarity and, 11–12, 21, 22, 49, 197, 201, 352; tenements, 135; in UMWA, 34, 36, 44; in workplace, 11–12, 38. See also Immigrants; Race; specific ethnic groups by name Ethnic Whites, 17 Excavations. See Archaeological excavations Falkland Islands, 343 Families: African American, 114, 152, 292, 304, 306; alienation from company towns, 189–90; American ideal of, 125–36, 155–56; American identity and, 149–55, 222, 230, 231; American standard of living, 148–49, 163; archaeological study of, 13–14, 101–3, 106–7, 140–41, 150–51, 210–11, 292–93; boarders and, 42, 133–35, 140, 176, 180; British, 344; Chicano, 229; companionate, 127–28, 144; corporate, 123, 125–27, 128, 129, 144, 146; cost of living, 38; descendents and, 15–16, 40, 325, 356; as deserving poor, 178, 180–81, 182; dining, 233–34, 240, 242, 244, 245; European, 130; health and

369

Index

sanitation, 271–72, 275, 277, 339; harassment of, 201, 204–05, 206, 213–14; hard life of, 12, 37–38, 42, 69, 170, 174, 187–88; heritage, 16, 313, 343, 344; household and, 71–72; housing, 113, 136–47, 155–56, 163– 67, 172, 180; in The Jungle, 32; key group in strike, 314, 339; lived experience of, 4–5, 11–17, 21, 42, 150, 188, 219; in Ludlow tent colony, 193, 196–201, 204, 207, 213, 285–86; massacre of, 52–56; memory and, 313, 322, 324–25, 343, 344, 345; Middle class ideals of, 130, 135, 149; modern and Ludlow, 18; nuclear, 125, 130–31, 133–36, 138, 141–44, 148–49, 155–56; Peete, 232–34; Perryman, 306; photographs of, 43, 53, 132, 194, 286, 287, 288; possessions of single family, 22, 101–3, 105, 106–7, 109, 117, 232, 292–93; Rockefeller, 32, 58; sanitation and, 173, 261–62; send money to Europe, 44–45, 170, 220; Sociological Department focus on, 224, 256–58; after strike was lost, 58, 319; in tent colonies, 47–49, 117, 178, 232; transient, 168, 174; use in photographs, 167, 200; working, 1, 4, 5, 8, 11, 15, 16, 63, 130–35, 148–55, 161; work gangs and, 38; Victorian, 294–95 Farr, Jeff, 39, 45, 51 Faunal remains, 14, 74, 117, 203 Federation of Women’s Clubs, 223 Felts, Albert, 50, 52, 202–3 Field school. See Archaeology: field school; Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project: field school Fitts, Robert, 231, 232–33, 234, 244, 252, 296–97 Fiume, Italy, 265, 278(n1) Foner, Philip S., 227, 228 Forbes, Colorado (company town), 29, 57, 58 Forbes tent colony: attacks on, 7, 50, 52, 206; built by UMWA, 7; photograph, 53, 63; rifle pits, 202–204 Ford, Henry, 135 Fort Lewis College, 4 France, 296 Fraternal clubs, 13, 44, 99, 221 Frederick, Colorado, 263 Fyler, James, 29, 55 Gaddis, Eugene: head of Sociological Department, 168, 171, 174, 262, 264, 271; quoted, 261

370

Gallup, New Mexico, 272 Gallup poll, 335 Gaskell, Elizabeth, 341 GlaxoSmithKline, 333 Gender: academic approaches to, 314; alliances, 15; archaeology, 76, 354; census, 285; class and, 11–12, 21–22; in company towns, 42; family and, 18, 127–28, 144, 149; households and, 71; modern, 18, 156; in 1920s, 297–98; patriarchy and, 44, 127–28, 144, 156; toys and, 292–93, 296–97. See also Men; Women Germer, Adolph, 45 Gerstle, Gary, 220, 226 Giroux, Henry, 333–34 Gitelman, Howard, 10 Goats, 10 Gold, 34 Graves, 16, 356 Gray, Amie, 22 Great Britain, 30, 293–94, 299, 337, 341, 343–44, 343. See also England; Ireland; Wales Great Coalfield War, The, 10 Great Railroad Strike of 1877, 33 Greece, 32 Greeks, 36, 49, 202, 273 Green, Mia, 162, 172 Greenwich Village, New York, 232, 242 Guide to the United States for the Italian Immigrant, 254, 279 Guttridge, Leonard, 10 Habsburg, Eagle, 324 Hall, Martin, 358 Hall, Prescott, 226 Hamrock, Patrick, 53, 201, 213 Hanley, England, 235, 237 Harlem, New York, 233 Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, 137, 141, 252 Hastings, Colorado, 49, 53 Hausman Drug Co., 269 Health and sanitation: archaeology of, 251, 252, 262, 263, 264–68; in Berwind, 262; black lung, 274; Camp and Plant, 255, 256, 272; CF&I medical department, 262, 263–64; CF&I policies, 37, 39, 131–34, 138, 149, 153, 164–66, 271–74, 273, 277; CF&I sociological department and, 252, 255–58, 262; cholera, 254, 269, 270; coal dust and, 261–62; in company towns, 37, 39, 173, 260–263, 264,

Index 271, 275–7; constipation, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274–75; ethnicity and, 252, 254, 275–76; folk medicine, 276–77; germ theory of disease, 253–54, 269, 298; Italians and, 254, 275–76; in Ludlow tent colony, 267; malaria, 270, 277; Progressive reforms of, 252–55, 256; rheumatism, 272, 273, 274; Roosevelt Plan and, 113, 116, 258–61, 260; sanitary homes, 253–54, 255–58, 259, 298–99; strike as struggle over, 46–47, 251, 339; tuberculosis, 252, 253, 254, 269, 275, 277; typhoid, 39, 252, 262, 263, 272, 277. See also Bottles: medicine; Patent medicine; Patent medicine brands Henderson, Lynne, 345 Highlands, Michigan, 135 Hill, Howard, 221 Hispanics. See Chicanos Hispanos. See Chicanos Historical archaeology: craft of, 12–14; as critique of modern world, 4–5, 332, 334, 346; emancipatory promise of, 4, 80–81, 333–34, 345; global reach, 331–32, 354; in Great Britain, 336–37; industrial, 337, 338; multivocality, 345; as pedagogical tool, 22, 331, 338–396; scientific side, 341; in the United States, 335–36. See also Archaeology; Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project Historiography. See Colorado Coalfield Strike: historiography History. See Labor history; Memory History Channel, 351 Homestead strike, 33, 127 Horlick’s Malted Milk, 292 Horn, Claire, 22, 164 Housing: American Dream, 136; American standards for, 148; Camp and Plant, 165, 167, 168, 172; causes dysfunctional families, 132– 34; CF&I profits, 171–72; company, 40–41, 137–44, 166, 168–78; fencing, 130, 142–43, 144, 153, 178; four-room square, 125, 134, 138, 139–43, 144, 150, 155, 168; limitations of, 180; miner-built or vernacular, 40–41, 133–34, 136–39, 163–168; plans, 137, 139; photographs of, 9, 40, 133, 134, 140, 142, 166, 169, 173, 175; remains of, 149, 150, 164; Sociological Department and, 165. See also Boarders; Boarding houses; Tents Howe, Daniel, 293, 306 How the Other Half Lives, 31

Huebner, George G., 222, 225 Huerfano County, Colorado, 35, 39, 45, 49, 51 Hull, Ann, 6 Hungary, 32 Identity: American, 21–22, 125, 131, 136, 148–50, 153–55, 198, 316, 317–18; Americanization and, 220; British historical archaeology, crisis of, 337; class consciousness, 12, 22, 214; corporate, 146, 197; descendents, 16–17, 355–56; fences and, 143; immigrants and, 131, 165, 176, 219, 301, 324–25; memorialization and, 322–23, 325; narrative and, 315–16; national, 314– 18, 323, 353; race, 225–29; social, 332; socialization to, 22; theory of, 189–91; time and, 313; union, 197, 198–99, 200, 214; Victorian, 295; working class, 188, 322. See also Class; Ethnicity; Gender; Ideology; Race Ideology: American, 21, 172–173, 213, 319; Americanization as, 223–229, 231; in archaeology, 353–54; class as, 18; of child raising, 205–6; companionate family as, 128, 144, 155; corporate family as, 123, 125–27, 128; economic responsibility as, 172–173; health and medicine as, 22, 251–261, 274–275; industrial democracy as, 128–29, 144, 155; industrial partnership as, 30; landscape as, 189–192; materiality and, 178–81; memory and, 316–22; middle class as, 18; Mythic West, 317–318, 341, 358; national, 313, 316–18; nuclear family as, 130–31, 135–36; poverty as, 162–163, 172–173, 178, 180–183; Social Darwinism as, 30; theory of, 189–193; union, 196–97, 200–1, 206–7; versus experience, 314. See also Identity; Solidarity Immigrants: Americanization of, 148–55, 219, 221–25, 229, 231; archaeology of, 231–244; aspirations for children, 290, 305–306; census of, 229–231; CF&I recruit in Europe, 36; in coal mines, 7; early twentieth-century, 30, 219; education about, 336, 341, 352, 358; health and, 252, 255, 271, 275–77; housing in Company towns, 164–68, 170, 171, 172; Mythic West and, 318; patriotism and, 153–54, 125, 148; perceived as dangerous, 49, 131–132, 200, 201–202, 214, 245; Red Scare and, 148; as strikebreakers, 29, 33, 36; UMWA organizes, 34, 44; Victorian styles and, 290, 297–300, 301–302, 306; whiteness

371

Index

and, 219, 226–29; xenophobic reactions against, 30, 32–33, 44–45, 49, 131–134, 138, 170, 175, 255, 318. See also Chicanos; Eastern Europeans; Ethnicity; Greeks; Immigration; Italians Immigration, 30–34, 220–21, 225–27, 276, 317–18, 336. See also Immigrants Indiana Jones, 17 Industrial archaeology. See Historical archaeology: industrial Industrial democracy, 126, 128–29, 144, 149 Industrial Representation Plan (IRP). See Rockefeller Plan Iowa, 252 Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), 30, 34, 60, 149, 321 Ireland, 318. See also Great Britian Irish, 36, 44, 227, 229, 275, 276, 304 IRP. See Rockefeller Plan Italians: in Berwind, 42, 114–15, 229–231, 268– 69, 275; boarding house, 176; in descendent community, 17, 356; discrimination against, 44, 131–132; domestic violence among, 131; family, 132; foodways, 240–41, 245; health and, 254, 275–76; in Jamaica, New York, 232–34; largest immigrant group, 32, 275; native speaker, 278n1; shacks built by, 133, 167; strike breakers, 36. See also Southern Europeans Italy, 233, 240–41, 265, 275, 276, 278n1, 324 IWW. See Industrial Workers of the World Jacobson, Michael, 21–22, 76, 79, 114 Jamaica, New York, 233 Japanese, 29, 32, 36, 44, 57, 229, 275 Jaret, Charles, 225 Jars. See Bottles; Canning Jars Jensen, Joan, 155 Johnson County Cattle War, 10 Johnson, Marilynn, 10 Jolly, Pearl, 49, 54, 58, 204 Jones, Mary. See Mother Jones Jungle, The, 32, 58 Katz, Michael, 182–83 Kent, England, 344 Ketchum, Black Jack, 318 King Coal, 58 King, Constance, 299 King, Mackenzie, 59, 62

372

Klu Klux Klan, 33 Kojan, David, 354 Kornfield, Eve, 345 Kraut, Alan, 276 Labor Day, 18 Labor history: archaeology and, 323; importance of Ludlow in, 5, 7, 8, 17–18, 30, 319, 352; opposed to consensus history, 17–18, 22, 317, 319; National Park Service and, 323; teaching of, 5, 19, 69, 339, 341, 345, 347, 357, 359; works of, 10. See also Education Labor reform. See Workers’ rights Labor rights. See Workers’ rights Labor unions. See Unions Landscape: archaeology, 22, 76, 189–93; Berwind, 114–15, 125, 136, 144, 147; British, 344; CF&I controlled, 147; of coal mining, 39, 163, 196; defensive, 206–7; of fear, 200, 204–6; Harper’s Ferry, 141; house lots, 142; humanized, 199–200; memory and, 322–24, 358; modern, 149, 164, 183; oral history of, 114–15; postindustrial, 183; recreation and, 197, 198; solidarity and, 97–99, 214, 346; source of home remedies, 276; as stage, 187, 188; theory of, 189–93; use in photographic overlay, 87–91, 116; used to create optimism, 196–97, 214; vernacular house as control of, 165; of violence, 200–04, 213 Larese, Primo, 54 Larsen, Eric, 252 Las Animas County, Colorado, 6, 20, 34, 39, 60, 133, 264 Latinos. See Chicanos Latrines, 13, 14 Lawson, John: biography, 10; calls for class war, 56; founds Independent Union of Coal Miners, 319–321; papers, 8; testimony, 207; trial of, 59; union leader, 45, 197; vice-Â�president of Rocky Mountain Fuel Company, 60 Lead, 34 Leeds Univeristy, 336 Lewis, John L., 60, 148–49 Lies My Teacher Told Me, 336 Linderfelt, Karl: assaults strikers, 204, 205; as company guard, 50; executes Tikas, 55, 59; in National Guard, 50, 52, 53; on rifle pits, 203 Lindsey, Benjamin, 127–28 Lippiatt, Gerald, 46

Index Lithuanians, 32 Livoda, Michael, 44 Locals, union. See United Mine Workers of America: Local 1388, Local 1668, Local 9856; United Steel Workers of America: Local 2012, Local 3267 Loewen, James W., 336 Long, Pricilla, 10, 12, 261, 285 Lowell, Massachusetts, 140 Ludlow Collective, 4, 169, 183. See also Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project Ludlow Depot (Station), 29, 49, 53 Ludlow archaeological site: artifacts recovered, 106–110, 264; ceramics, 13, 14, 99, 112, 150, 234–46, 292; dog leash collections, 76–77, 78; excavations in, 13–14, 331; findings, 115–17; ground penetrating radar, 92–94, 116, 265; hand auger, 95–96; locating tents, 75, 79, 81, 87–96, 104, 196, 341; Locus 11, Feature 73, 101–110, 102, 117, 179–80, 203, 210, 232–45, 266, 292, 339; Locus 1, 90, 97– 98, 98, 180; Locus 13, 92, 93, 99, 100, 106, 107, 109, 267; Locus 12, Feature 74, 96, 101, 103–110, 117, 180, 203, 210–11, 211, 213, 266; magnetometer survey, 92–94; mapping, 79–81; maps of, 78, 80, 195; midden (Locus 7), 75, 77, 105, 109, 199, 239, 265, 267; mechanical stripping, 77; as perfect archaeological site, 11, 210, 341; photographic overlay, 87–92, 94–95, 194–96; privies, 70, 73, 74, 94, 96, 100–1, 101, 196, 265–66; provenience control, 81, 86; sampling of 5, 17, 70; tent cellars, 101–5, 102, 104, 107–9; tent pads, 17, 75, 97–99, 106, 109, 116, 267, 278; tent platforms, 70–71, 73, 77, 97, 99, 180, 196, 208, 265, 267. See also Ludlow tent colony Ludlow Massacre: casualties, 3, 29, 54–55, 193, 321, 356; consequences, 7–8; confused with Indian massacre, 18, 357; day after, 29; death of women and children, 54–55; death pit (See Death pit); description, 1, 7, 52–55; as hidden history, 18, 22, 311, 341, 356–57; importance of, 5, 7, 8, 17–18, 30, 161, 319, 352; investigations of, 8; lost belongings, 291; memorial service (See Ludlow memorial service); memory of, 4, 7–8, 22–24 (See also Ludlow memorial service; Ludlow monument); opposition to memory, 3–4, 18; poem, 325; point of interest sign, 18;

summary of, 1–2, 7, 52–55; as symbol to steelworkers, 20; tactics, 15; Water Tank Hill, 54, 205. See also Colorado Coalfield Strike; Colorado Coalfield War; Colorado National Guard Ludlow memorial service: archaeology students attend, 19–20; descendent community and, 17, 355–356; descendents and, 16, 355–56; exhibits at, 19, 312, 357–58; 1918 memorial service, 62, 321; 1919 memorial service, 321; 1999 memorial service, 19, 312, 362; Rockefeller at, 62; steelworkers at, 20, 62; 2000 memorial service, 44; 2005 memorial service, 24, 63; 2003 memorial service, 3–4; UMWA begins, 319, 320; union locals and, 322; after vandalism, 3–4, 23–24. See also Ludlow monument Ludlow monument: archaeological work near, 91–92, 93, 94, 95; description of, 1; erection of, 62, 311, 319, 321; identity and, 325; interpretative program at, 18–19, 357–58; IWW, 60, 321; as living memorial, 24, 322, 352, 358; oral history of, 251; photos of, 2, 3, 23; poem, 325; repair of, 23–24, 63; as sacred ground, 1, 8, 17, 20, 325, 352, 355; as shrine, 8, 18, 62; tourists at, 18; UMWA members sworn in at, 62; upkeep, 322; vandalism of, 3–4, 5, 62–63, 312, 319; visitor book, 357– 358. See also Ludlow memorial service Ludlow project. See Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project Ludlow tent colony: African Americans in, 286; alcohol consumption, 14, 117, 239, 264–265, 271; attacks on, 50; chapters on, 21–22; day after massacre, 29; defensive character, 206–7; deserving poor in, 178, 180–81; established, 49; fear in, 200, 204–6; humanized, 199–200; map of, 195; massacre at, 1, 7, 52–55; National Guard at, 50, 72–73, 201–5, 207, 208; optimism in, 196–97, 214; organization of, 193–96, 206–7; orientation, 196, 200; photographs, 55, 56, 57, 89, 179, 209; proprietary medicine use, 117, 264–67, 266, 271; recreation in, 197, 198; rifle pits, 15–16, 72–73, 202–04; sanitation in, 267; second camp, 9; solidarity in, 14, 97–99, 188, 190, 193, 197–99, 214, 346; tent cellars in, 207–13; violence and, 200–4, 213. See also Ludlow archaeological site; Ludlow massacre; Tents; Tent cellars; Tent colonies

373

Index

Mace, Stuart, 9, 44, 50, 53, 54, 57, 58 MacGregor, Ian, 344 Machine guns: Baldwin Felts–owned, 45, 49, 50, 53; at Columbine, Colorado, 60; at Ludlow Massacre, 1, 29, 53, 54, 54, 63; Rocky Mountain Fuel Company–owned, 33, 57, 60; used during strike, 42, 45, 46, 208 Mandell, Nikki, 261 Maine, 261 Margolis, Eric, 9, 11, 41, 169 Martelle, Scott, 10 Marin, Alfred, 54 Maryland, 152 Masterson, Bat, 318 Maxwell mine, 61 McGovern, George, 10 McGuire, Randall, 5, 79, 88, 156, 189, 352; photos by, 2, 3, 23, 61 Medals, religious, 13 Medicine. See Health care Memory: archaeology and, 312, 313, 314; artifacts and, 63, 324–25, 356; bad, 18, 325; Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project, 4–5, 17–20, 311–12; defined, 312–14; descendent community and, 352; of descendents, 16, 40, 325; dialectic of, 316–17; family, 313, 322, 324–25, 343, 344, 345; history and, 312–13, 314–15, 316–18; identity and, 313, 315–316, 317; landscape and, 322–24, 358; materiality of, 322–25; national, 313, 316–18, 322–325, 353; necessity of celebrating, 322; photographs as, 324; as political action, 21, 22; post-industrial, 20; UMWA 7–8, 16–17, 23–24, 311–12, 319–22. See also Ideology; Ludlow Massacre: memory of; Ludlow memorial service; Ludlow monument Men: Americanization and, 222; alliances, 15; census, 285; class consciousness, 11–12; clubs, 13, 44, 99, 221; company, 29, 37–38, 44–45, 57, 58; in company towns, 42, 135, 153–54; forgotten, 323, 341; households and, 71; identify in archaeological record, 71–72; patriarchy and, 44, 127–28, 144, 256; sanitation and, 173, 259. See also Boarders; Coal miners Mexican Americans. See Chicanos Mexican-American War, 228 Mexican Revolution, 32, 220 México, 228–29, 277, 316

374

Micheli, Irene. See Dotson, Irene Michigan, 252 Middle class: archaeology students as, 19; British, 344; ceramics, 233–34, 240, 244, 245; consumption defines, 300; descendents as, 16–17, 355–56; in early twentiethÂ�century Colorado, 44–45; family, 130, 135, 149; Greenwich Village, 242; health and, 253, 277; home, 233, 254, 257, 298, 301–2; reformers, 167, 251, 254–55, 298; toys, 293, 295–97, 301, 302, 305–6; traditional audience for archaeology, 358; as universal class position, 18; values, 14–15, 22, 233–34; Victorian, 293–95; views on poverty, 167. See also Bourgeoisie; Class Midwest, 34, 36 Milan, Italy, 266, 268, 270, 324 Militia. See Colorado National Guard Mine guards. See Company gaurds Miners. See Coal miners Miner’s Fight for an American Standard of Living, The, 148 Mines, 12, 30, 31, 34, 60, 131, 229, 274, 323. See also Coal Mines in Colorado Minnequa Hospital. See Colorado Fuel and Iron Company: Minnequa Hospital Minnequa steel mill. See Colorado Fuel and Iron Company: steel mill Missouri, 34 Mitchell, Arthur, 9 Monopolies, 31 Monument. See Ludlow Monument Montana, 128, 180 Moore, Summer, 22 Morley, Colorado, 37, 263 Morzox, Joe, 39 Mother Jones, 7, 45, 46, 50–51, 63, 285 Moyers, Bill, 11 Mrozowski, Stephen, 140 Muckraking journalism, 31, 35 Mules, 29, 30, 31, 38, 39, 50, 57 Mullins, Paul, 152 Music, 10, 49, 52, 198, 319 Musical instruments, 13 Nails, 15, 73, 99, 106, 107, 110 Native-born Americans, 220, 221, 222, 226, 227, 230–32, 275 National Americanization Committee, 223 National Coal Board, 344

Index National Guard. See Colorado National Guard National Park Service, 323–324 National Union of Mineworkers, 343, 344 National Archives, Washington, D.C., 8 Native Americans. See American Indians New Deal, 7, 32, 34, 60 Newdick, Jane, 240 Newman, Almeron, 9 New Mexico, 34, 63, 155, 220, 224, 228–29, 277, 275 New York, 8, 9, 35, 235 New York City, 166, 232, 233, 242, 305 911, 156 Nones, H.S., 272 Nora, Pierre, 322 Northwestern University, 10 Nurses, 255, 260, 260–61, 264. See also Health care Ohio, 235 O’Neil, Mary. See Thomas, Mary Oral history: Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project use of, 70, 71, 75, 114–15, 251, 261; in classroom, 336; of families, 285; limits of, 11; memory and, 313; of home canning, 154; studies of, 10–11; volunteered, 5, 72 Oregon Steel, 20, 62 Orsi, Robert, 276 Osgood, John, 35–36, 165–66, 224, 255, 257, 258 “Out of the Depths—The Miners’ Story,” 11 Overland, Orm, 226 Ozark Mountains, Arkansas, 154 Papnikolas, Zeese, 10 Parkin, David, 324 Patent Medicine. See Alcohol; Proprietary medicine; Proprietary medicine brands Paterson, New Jersey, 304, 306 PBS (Public Broadcasting System), 11 Pedregon, Alcarita, 55 Peete, Michael, 233–34, 240, 244 Pennsylvania, 8–9, 31, 33, 36, 274 Pennsylvania State University, 8–9 People’s History of the United States, 357 Perryman, Lucretia, 304, 306 Petrucci, Mary: death pit, 55, 76, 208; life in camp, 201, 204; quoted, 29; survivors’ tour, 58; tent, 55, 91, 93, 95, 193–94, 211–12

Photography: archaeological use of to locate tents, 87–92, 94, 95, 97, 193–96; archaeological use to reconstruct tents and cellars, 208, 209, 212–13; of Colorado Coal Field Strike and War, 9, 16, 42, 290, 356; company publicity, 9, 126, 167; descendents’ interests in, 16, 356; as historical documents, 8, 11, 63, 188; memory and, 324, 356; Progressive Movement, 31, 305; snapshot, 9, 115, 286– 287; used in interpretive program, 357; used to support strike, 199–200; used to stereotype workers, 9, 131, 133. See also Aultman, Otis; Dold, Lewis; Doyle, Edward; Mace, Stuart; Newman, Almeron; specific subjects by name Picasso, Pablo, 298 Pieta, 325 Pinkerton agents, 33 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 33 Play, 22 Poland, 32 Postcards, 9, 42, 44, 49, 200 Poverty: archaeological study of, 162, 182–83; blame for, 161–63, 172–74, 181; class and, 21, 162; deserving and undeserving, 161, 175, 178, 180–81; housing and, 164–76; individual responsibility for, 172–73; working poor, 161–63, 165, 170–73, 175–76, 180–83 Praxis, 4–5, 21, 345 Price, Utah, 20 Primero, Colorado, 31, 258, 263, 272 Progressive Movement: Americanization and, 221–225, 226; class war and, 34; health care reform, 251, 252–55, 256; home reform, 131, 134–135; ideas used by coal companies, 35; Ludlow Massacre and, 7; New Deal and, 60; opposition to, 34, 35; personages, 7, 32; photography, 31, 305; summary of, 30, 31–32. See also Capitalism: reform; Mother Jones; Reed, John; Sinclair, Upton Prohibition, 113, 116 Providence, Rhode Island, 253 Provo, Utah, 11 Proprietary medicine: alcohol in, 112, 113–14, 252, 269–71, 274; archaeological study of, 252, 262, 263, 264–68; Berwind, 113–14, 267–68, 268; bitters, 265–66, 267, 268–69, 269–70; as cure for sobriety, 270; Ludlow tent colony, 117, 264–67, 266, 271; marketing, 274–75; narcotics in, 113, 252, 269, 271,

375

Index

274; types of, 269–70, 270; warnings against, 252, 275, 277. See also Health and sanitation; Proprietary medicine brands Proprietary medicine brands recovered: Aceite Mexicano, 265, 266, 266, 268, 268, 269, 270; Angleica Bitter Tonic, 265, 266, 266, 270; Davis Vegetable Pain Killer, 265, 266, 266, 269, 270, 273; Dr. Kilmer’s SwampRoot Cure, 268, 270, 271; Dr. S. Pitcher’s Castoria, 268, 270, 271; Dr. W.B. Caldwell’s Syrup Pepsin, 268, 270, 271; Farmacia Arciducale di G. Prodam Fiume, 265, 266, 266, 270, 278(n1); Fratelli Branca Bitters, 265, 266, 267, 268, 268, 270, 270; Hamlin’s Wizard Oil, 265, 266, 266, 268, 268, 269, 270, 273, 274; Hirsch’s Malt Whiskey for Medicinal Use, 268, 270, 270; Hood’s Sarsa Parilla, 268, 270, 270; Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, 268, 270, 271; Pierce’s Favorite Prescription, 268, 270, 271; Santal de Midy, 265, 266, 267, 270, 271; Slaon’s Liniment, 268, 268, 270 Public education. See Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project: public program; Education; Ludlow Monument Pueblo, Colorado: Bessemer Museum, 8; CF&I hospital in, 263–64; Independent Union of Coal Miners formed, 319; 1903 UMWA convention, 36; Steel mill, 20, 35, 40, 44, 45, 61; United Steelworkers of America, 20, 62, 312, 314 Pullman, George, 127 Pullman strike, 127 Pure Food and Drug Act, 1906, 31, 113, 271 Pyburn, K. Anne, 355 Race: American as, 220, 227; census, 230–31; divisions of, 11, 42; European national groups as, 33, 220, 226–28, 318; health and, 252, 253; in-between people, 219, 227, 230–32, 245; racism, 32, 44–45, 226–29, 318; relations, 335, 337; strikers transcend, 49; UMWA and, 34, 44; whiteness, 219, 226–29. See also African Americans; Chicanos; Chinese; Ethnicity; Japanese Ravenwood mine, 44 Red Cross, 55, 91, 101, 103, 104, 126, 146, 153 Red Scare, 148 Redstone, Colorado, 35, 272 Reed, John, 7

376

Religion: churches in camps, 39, 114, 138, 145, 256; miners, 44, 71, 221; Sociological Department and, 277 Relph, Edward, 188 Remington, Frederic, 317 Reserve army of the unemployed, 30, 33 Ridgely, Eliza, 303 Riis, Jacob, 31 Rijeka, Croatia, 265, 278(n1) Roberts, Cecil (President UMWA), 3, 5, 44 Rockefeller, Abby, 126 Rockefeller Archive Center, 9 Rockefeller, John D. Jr.: archives, 9; biography, 10; builds YMCA at Berwind, 144–45; buys CF&I, 7, 35, 257; Commission on Industrial Relations and, 58–59; establishes first corporate public relations office, 58; Eugene Debs on, 180–81; on housing, 167; letter from Bowers, 44–45, 49, 170; photographed with miners’ families, 124, 126; refuses to see Ludlow women, 58; remakes company towns, 147; sets up Rockefeller Plan, 59–60, 125–127, 129, 135, 142–43, 258; takes control of Standard Oil, 32; tour of coalfields, 59, 123, 124, 125–26, 167; visits first Ludlow memorial service, 62 Rockefeller, John D. Sr., 32, 129 Rockefeller Plan: 10, 30; archaeological study of, 149–55; company towns, and, 59–60, 123–25, 135, 176–77; corporate family and, 123, 125–27, 128; impact on Berwind, 111, 136–47; opposes boarding, 134–35; sanitation and, 113, 116, 258–61, 260; summary of, 59–60, 113–14, 125–29; union reaction to, 127, 180–81; YMCA and, 59–60, 114, 138, 144–45 Rock Springs, Wyoming, 10 Rocky Mountain Fuel Company, 33, 45, 57, 60, 321 Rocky Mountain Steel, 20 Roediger, David, 227–28, 230 Romero, Michael, 17 Romero, Yolanda, 17, 356 Roosevelt, Theodore, 317 Rouse, Colorado, 177, 272 Rubino, Franj, 54 Rubinstein, Ruth, 300 Rugby, Colorado, 134, 137 Russia, 32, 275, 276, 318, 357 Rutherford, Lynn, 240

Index Sablich, Mike, 149 Sage Foundation, 136 Saitta, Dean, 4, 22 Sanchez, George F., 223, 229 San Rafael Hospital. See Trinidad: San Rafael Hospital Sanitary and Sociological Bulletin, 173, 255, 256, 257 Sanitation. See Health and sanitation Santa Fe Trail, 318, 358 Sears and Roebuck Company, 234, 235, 236 Segundo, Colorado, 263 Scabs. See Strikebreakers Scamehorn, Lee, 10 Scargill, Arthur, 343–44 Scotland, 275, 344 Segundo, Colorado, 263 Shackel, Paul, 137 Shanks, Michael, 354 Shemilt, Denis, 336 Shepherd, Nick, 354, 355 Sheep, 14 Shell, 333 Sheridan, Claire, 227 Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 1890, 32, 35 Silver, 34 Sinclair, Upton, 7, 32, 36, 58 Skrifvars, Mary, 260 Sleepy Hollow, New York, 9 Social Darwinism, 30 Socialists, 34 Societa Aloinisti Tyrolesi, 324 Society for Historical Archaeology, 331 Sociological Department, CF&I: abolished, 35, 258, 260; Americanization and, 224–25, 229; founded, 35, 224, 262; health care and, 252, 255–58, 259, 262; housing and, 165; mission, 224; women and, 255 Solidarity: between Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project and unions, 4–5, 16–17, 20, 355–56; between unions, 338; in British “Coal War,” 344; in Colorado Coalfield Strike, 11, 45–47; ethnicity and, 201, 225, 245, 352; landscape and, 97–99, 214, 346; Ludlow Massacre as source of, 18–19; in Ludlow tent colony, 14, 97–99, 188, 190, 193, 197–99, 214, 346; memorial service and, 62; photographs and, 61, 200; social, 222, 334, 346; in tent colonies, 14, 205

Somerton, Colorado, 61 Sopris, Colorado, 41, 126, 132–135, 173, 173 Southern Europeans, 202, 220–21, 225, 227–31, 245, 318. See also Italians Snyder, Frank, 54–55 Space. See Landscape Spadefoot toads, 14 Spencer-Wood, Suzanne, 255 Standard Oil, 32, 35 Standpoint theory, 332 State College, Pennsylvania, 8 State militia. See Colorado National Guard Steel, 30, 61, 337 Stewart-Abernathy, Leslie, 154 Stoves, cast iron, 13 Strikebreakers: in Colorado Coalfield Strike, 47–49, 56, 205, 207; immigrants as, 29, 33, 36, 325 Strikers. See Coal miners Strikes: Berkeley, 338–339, 340; British, 343–44; early twentieth century, 33–34; late nineteenth century, 127; 1903 (Colorado), 36, 45; 1919 (Colorado), 60; 1921 (Colorado), 60; 1927 (IWW), 60; regulated, 30; violence in, 30, 33–34. See also Colorado Coalfield Strike; Cripple Creek Strike Surfer 8, 77, 80 Syracuse University, 4 Tabasco, Colorado: census, 230, 231; mine, 39, 42; town, 49, 50, 59, 60, 205, 263 Tabasco mine, 39 Tableware. See Ceramics: tableware Tea, 15, 242 Teachers: in company towns, 37; among descendents, 16; educating about labor history, 4, 19, 357, 358; of history, 336, 357; kindergarten, 224–25, 255–56, 260; in tent colonies, 197. See also Education Teaching trunk, 19, 357 Teaware. See Ceramics: teaware Ten Day War. See Colorado Coalfield War Tenements, 135, 252, 253, 254–55, 271, 275, 305 Tennessee, 312 Tent cellars: confused with rifle pits, 202–4; as defacto refuse, 13–14, 73–74, 279, 292, 302, 339, 266; excavation of, 17, 101, 102, 101–5, 116, 211, 266; locating, 75, 79, 81, 87, 90–94, 96, 104, 196, 341; reconstructed, 81; summary of, 208–13; during massacre, 54–55;

377

Index

uses of, 13–15, 47, 49, 72–73, 179–80, 206, 207, 232 Tent colonies: archaeology of, 13–14; attacks on, 50; baseball in, 49, 52, 198, 198–99; harassed by companies, 49; harassed by National Guard, 179, 188, 213, 214, 245; in Oregon, 20; IWW at Ludlow, 60; life in, 47–49; location map, 48; recreation, 49; set up by UMWA, 7, 47; White City, 49. See also Forbes tent colony; Ludlow tent colony Tents: archaeology as means to peer into, 13–14, 17; brought from West Virginia, 47, 178; burned remains, 14–15, 63, 266; cellars in (See Tent cellars); collapse under snow, 180; community, 47, 196, 197, 207; construction of, 47, 76, 97–99, 180, 278; description, 178–79; destroyed in massacre, 3, 54–55, 56, 57, 63, 179, 209; excavations of, 90, 97–99, 98, 106, 180; furnishings, 47, 56, 55, 63, 73, 193; Jolly, Pearl, 49; as households, 71, 73, 193, 292; living like dogs, 201; locating, 75, 79, 81, 87–96, 104, 194–96, 341; numbering, 193–94; organization of, 193–96, 206–7; pads, 17, 75, 97–99, 106, 109, 116, 267, 278; Petrucci, Mary, 55, 91, 93, 95, 193–94, 211–12; photographs of, 89, 181, 194, 197, 286, 287, 288; platforms, 70–71, 73, 77, 97, 99, 180, 196, 208, 265, 267; torn down at Forbes tent colony, 52, 53. See also Death pit; Housing Thatcher, Margaret, 343, 344 Thomas, Julian, 190 Thomas, Mary, 10, 49, 54, 58, 201, 242 Thugs. See Company guards Tikas, Louis: biography, 10, 11; death of, 29, 55, 59; leader of Ludlow Tent Colony, 7, 49; at Ludlow Massacre, 53, 54, 55 Tilley, Christopher, 190, 354 Tin cans, in tent cellars, 13 Tollerburg, Colorado: census of, 230, 231; description of, 77; maps of, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87 Tourists, 18, 19, 183 Toys: archaeology of, 103, 292; dishes, 242, 292–93, 297, 302–303, 304, 304; boys’, 296; dolls (See Dolls); early twentieth-century, 299–301; girls’, 292–93, 296–97, 299–300; from Ludlow tent colony, 22, 290–93, 300–3, 305–6; Victorian, 299–300, 305–6. See also Children

378

Treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo, 228 Trinidad, Colorado: Beshoar born, 10; businesses in, 269; coalfields, 5, 6, 39, 61, 263; Corazon de, 358; county seat, 34; demonstrations in, 45, 51, 51, 290, 290; mines close, 20, 60–61; photographers in, 9, 42, 88, 115; Rockefeller visits, 123; San Rafael Hospital, 20, 51, 60; during strike and war, 7, 46, 50, 52, 55, 56; UMWA locals, 4, 17, 20, 23, 60, 63; West Theater, 52. See also Colorado Historical Society: Trinidad collection Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, 315 Tuan, Yi-Fu, 190 Tuscany, Italy, 240, 241 Tyrol, Italy, 275, 301, 324 Ubbelohde, Carl, 357 UMWA. See United Mine Workers of America Unions: anti-union sentiment, 4, 357; archaeology students and, 19; breaking, 20; British, 343–344; company, 7, 60 (See also Rockefeller Plan); craft, 30, 33–34; descendent community, 16–17; early twentieth-century, 33–34; memorials, 322; reaction to Rockefeller Plan, 127, 180–81; revolutionary, 30, 33–34; steelworkers, 20. See also Industrial Workers of the World; United Mine Workers of America; United Steelworkers of America United Auto Workers, 312 United Mine Workers Journal. See United Mine Workers of America: United Mine Workers Journal United Mine Workers of America (UMWA): Americanization and, 148–149, 225; American Standard of living, 148–49; archives, 8–9; as descendent community, 16–17, 355–56; boys’ march, 287; calls strike, 7, 46–47; cancels strike, 7, 58; class war and, 55–57; collaboration with archaeologists, 17, 20–22, 355–56; craft union, 30; creates optimism in tent camps, 196–97; county workers, 20; District 15, 9, 38, 46, 171, 321; District 22, 4, 20; encourages recreation, 197–99; ethnicity and race in, 34, 36, 44, 229; formation, 34; hospital workers, 20; housing, 163, 168, 171, 174–75; IWW and, 30, 34, 60, 321; lays out camps for defense, 206–7; Lewis, John, 148–49; Local 1388, 178; Local 1668, 178; Local 9856, 4,

Index 17, 23, 60, 63, 356; memorial service (See Ludlow memorial service; Ludlow monument); memory of Ludlow Massacre and, 7–8, 16–17, 23–24, 311–12, 319–22; national executive committee, 3, 9, 17, 20, 24, 62, 319; 1903 Colorado strike, 36, 45; 1927 Colorado strike, 321; portrays strikers as deserving poor, 178, 180–81; on west slope of Colorado, 61–62, 61; opposes dual unions, 320–321; organizers, 9, 36, 44, 45, 46, 213, 319; organizes Ludlow as model community, 187–88, 192, 213–24; photographs taken, 9; tent colonies (See Tent colonies); testimony on massacre, 8; tour of Ludlow survivors, 58; unionizes Rocky Mountain Fuel Company, 33, 321; United Mine Workers Journal, 180, 275, 312, 319, 320, 321; unionizes southern Colorado, 60; WFM and, 36; women’s, 17, 356, 358. See also Dold, Lewis; Lawsen, John; Ludlow tent colony; Roberts, Cecil United Steelworkers of America, 20, 62, 312 Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, 4 University of Colorado, 4; Library Western History Collection, 11 University of Denver. See Denver University University of Manchester, 4 University of Utah, America West Center, 11 University of Wisconsin at Madison, 10 U.S. Bureau of Education, 223 U.S. Bureau of Naturalization, 223 U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations: formed, 34; investigates Ludlow Massacre, 8, 15, 40, 58–59; report used in archaeological analyses, 76, 95; testimony on housing conditions, 136, 165–166, 168, 171, 172, 174; testimony on health conditions, 262, 264; testimony by National Guard, 8, 15, 202 U.S. Congress, 34 U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Mines and Mining, 8, 52, 136 U.S. Senate, 129, 254 U.S. Supreme Court, 31 Utah, 38 Valdez, Patricia, 55 Van Cise, Phillip, 8, 50 Venice, Italy, 265 Victor-American Fuel Company, 35, 45, 49, 52, 165

Victorian: collapse of, 297–98; home decoration, 233, 253–54, 295, 298–99, 301–2, 306; identity, 22; Mythic West and, 318; period, 293–94; toys, 290, 293, 296–97, 299–301, 302–6; values, 22, 293–97 Virginia, 8–9 Virginian, The, 318 Visa, 333 Von Boehn, Max, 296–97 Voss, Shane, 357 Wagner Act of 1935, 60 Wagner, Jonathan, 276 Wales, 10, 343, 344 Walker, Mark, 22, 357 Walk Through the 20th Century, A, 11 Wall, Diana, 231, 242 Walsenburg, Colorado, 35, 39, 49, 50, 51, 56 Walsh, Francis Patrick, 34, 58–59, 174 Washington, D.C., 8, 56 Welborn, Jessie, 35, 40, 50, 144, 170, 257 Wales, 10, 343, 344 Welsh, 36, 44, 49, 229, 275, 343 West, the: industrial, 11, 35, 61, 341, 352, 358; mythic, 17, 317–318, 341, 358; New Western History, 354; photographs, 324; reader on 357; unions, 34 West Coast, 32 West Theater, Trinidad, 52 West Virginia, 45, 47, 137, 141, 252 Western Federation of Miners (WFM), 34, 36 Western History. See West, the WFM. See Western Federation of Miners Wheeler, Burton K., 128 Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life, 155 Wilkie, Laurie, 292 Wilson, Woodrow: actions as President, 34, 129, 148, 228; Colorado Coalfield War and, 3, 7, 40, 50, 58 Wobblies. See Industrial Workers of the World Wolff, David, 10 World Archaeological Congress, 354 Women: as active agents, 11–12; alliances among, 15, 154, 155; Americanization and, 222–23, 224–25, 298; archaeological identification of, 71–72, 105; care for boarders, 42, 138, 143–44, 148, 176–78, 180; census, 285; Chicanas, 229, 277; class conscious-

379

Index

ness of, 11–14; clubs, 222, 223, 225; coffee sharing, 15, 74, 242; companionate family and, 127–28, 144; in company towns, 42, 44, 71, 153–54, 352; confront strikebreakers, 47–49; death pit, 3, 4, 29, 55–56, 59, 62, 193, 208, 321; demeaned, 201, 204–5; domestic violence, 131; doing the hard work of the strike, 314, 352; economic contributions to family, 15, 42, 143–44, 176; experience of class war, 56, 57; experience of the massacres, 54–55, 203; forgotten, 323, 341, 354; health care and, 260–61; granite, 1, 2, 3, 23; as leaders in Ludlow tent colony, 49; Long study of, 10; march, 51, 51, 287; outrage at deaths of, 7, 18, 30, 290; patent medicine use by, 113, 270, 271, 274–75; photographs of, 43, 51, 53, 124, 132, 133, 142, 169, 175, 177, 181, 194, 260, 287; patriarchy and, 44, 127–28, 144, 156; Red Cross, 91, 123; reformers, 222, 223, 225, 254–55; Rockefeller meets miners’ wives, 59, 123, 124; sanitation and, 173, 255–59, 261–62; sexual exploitation of, 12, 40, 49, 204–205; stay at home, 130–31, 135; suffrage in Colorado, 46; tea service, 242, 298; in tent colonies, 47–49, 61, 71, 208; testimony, 58–59; tour of Ludlow survivors, 58; toys, 296–97; Victorian, 294, 295, 297, 298; women’s auxiliary of Local 9856, 17, 356, 358. See also Canning, home; Gender; Men; Teachers Women’s Bureau, 261 Wood, Margaret, 15, 21, 114, 261, 267–68, 352, 354 Workers’ rights: collective bargaining, 20, 33, 62, 129; contribution of organized labor to, 352–53; eight-hour day, 7, 20, 46, 62, 63; and Ludlow Massacre, 7; Rockefeller Plan, 10; steelworkers strike and, 20; won with blood, 3–5, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24, 62, 63, 321, 355 Working families. See Families: working Working class: absent from textbooks, 336; academy and, 311, 314, 354, 356;

380

Americanization and, 22, 226, 228, 254–55, 298–99; archaeology for, 21, 22, 80–81, 312–14, 323, 354, 357–58; archaeology students and, 19–20; boarders as, 35, 176–78; child raising, 290, 301, 304–306; in Colorado Coalfields, 44–45; Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project and, 4, 358; culture, 277; descendents, 16, 355; Greenwich Villlage, 232, 242; health care and, 22, 251–55, 271–74, 277; history, 311, 316–17; homes, 233, 253–54, 295, 298–99, 301–2, 306; ideologies of, 18; in early twentiethcentury Colorado, 44–45; landscape and, 192, 213–14; memory and, 314, 316–17, 322, 325, 352; mythic west and, 317–18; postÂ�industrial, 333; poverty, 161–63, 165, 170–73, 175–76, 180–83; proprietary medicine use, 271, 275, 277. See also Class; Coal Miners; Labor history World War I: Americanization and, 221, 227, 265; demand for coal, 60; Fiume, 265; home canning and, 152–53; patriotism during, 146, 148; post, 125, 156 World War II, 61 Wotten, Dick, 318 Wyoming, 62, 224 Yamin, Rebecca, 305 Yao, Peiling, 92 York, England, 331 Yorkshire, England, 338, 343, 343, 344 Young Men’s Christian Association: Americanization and, 224; Rockefeller plan and, 59–60, 114, 138, 144–45; survey of camp conditions, 262, 263, 269, 275; takes over work of Sociological department, 258 Young Women’s Christian Association, 222 Yugoslavia, 324 Zanetell, Emma, 41, 52 Zara, Croatia, 324 Ziesing, Grace, 140 Zorn, Eric, 18