Labor fairness battle did not come without blood

One hundred years ago thousands of children worked in jobs alongside adults. Even in coal mines.

Mary Harris “Mother” Jones fought to unionize adult miners. If the miners could earn enough money for their families, their children could go to school and not have to “slave in the caves,” as she put it.

Jones was no ordinary union organizer. A widow whose husband and four children had died of yellow fever, Jones had a national reputation as a fiery speaker. She not only encouraged workers to strike for fair wages and decent working conditions, but got their families to rally behind the cause.

	“Strike! Mother Jones & The Colorado Coal Field War” by Lois Ruby Filter Press, $15.95 cloth, $8.95 paper, 224 pp.

Lois Ruby’s new book for middle readers and older focuses on Jones’ union-organizing efforts, especially those in southeastern Colorado and the events that led to what was called the Ludlow Massacre of April 20, 1914. At the time, Ludlow was a mining community about 12 miles north of Trinidad, Colo.

“Ludlow wasn’t the biggest mine, but it attracted the most attention from mine owners and operators. In a sense Mother Jones stirred up the miners so much. Though she said she didn’t believe in violence, she kept things heated up that it was on the brink of violence,” said Ruby, an Albuquerque resident.

Ludlow’s miners and their families were living in tents because mine owners, principally John D. Rockefeller, had kicked them out of the company-owned housing when they had gone on strike in September 1913.

The author said it is difficult to determine which side fired the first shot that triggered the massacre, but when fighting broke out miners’ wives and children hid in dugouts underneath their tent homes to avoid being shot.

“The tents were set on fire by the Colorado Guard. There was no way for them to get out. Tents were burning. One mother escaped,” Ruby said.

Eleven children and two women suffocated to death in the dugout. The massacre refers to their deaths, though several miners were also shot and killed.

The coal field wars in southern Colorado had initially erupted 10 years before the infamous massacre, Ruby said, though Mother Jones was not involved in that earlier confrontation.

Curiously, Ruby said, Jones opposed the women’s suffrage movement; she felt women should focus on labor issues.