Making an American Workforce

The Ludlow Massacre climaxed the 1913–1914 southern Colorado coal strike, drawing national attention largely because two women and twelve children were among the dead. But others died throughout the strike and its violent aftermath. Nor was Ludlow uniquely violent among U.S. labor conflicts, even in claiming children. Nonetheless, most histories have focused on the massacre and on conditions in the mines and company towns before the strike. Making an American Workforce examines what came next. Published in conjunction with the 2014 strike centennial, eight essays probe the legacy of Ludlow at the Rockefeller-controlled Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) and John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s influence on welfare capitalism. Rockefeller’s industrial relations plan combined an employee representation plan (ERP, or company unions) with “sociological” programs intended to “Americanize” an ethnically diverse workforce through the YMCA, sports, and other community programs. Fawn-Amber Montoya’s introduction provides historical context; Sarah Deutsch’s useful historiographic review locates new Ludlow scholarship in contexts of twenty-first century class divides. Chapters explore how eugenics influenced Dr. Richard Corwin, who headed CF&I’s Medical and Sociological Departments from 1881–1928; the ethnic and class assumptions of Democratic governor Elias Ammons, who issued state bonds to send troops to the coalfields, assumptions he shared with the Denver elite who bought the bonds; the Rockefeller Plan in CF&I coal camps, steelworks, and Wyoming iron mines; the gender values embedded in CF&I welfare and leisure programs; and the comparative consequences of the ERP at CF&I’s Pueblo Steelworks and the British Empire Steel Corporation in Sydney, Nova Scotia. Maria E. Montoya’s conclusion locates Ludlow in wider contexts of American class violence and argues that the Rockefeller Plan was a precursor of New Deal labor reform.

Archaeology · Capitalism · Context (archaeology) · Democracy · Elite · Eugenics · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Workforce · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society