Colorado Labor Wars
The Colorado Labor Wars were a series of labor strikes in 1903 and 1904 in the U.S. state of Colorado, by gold and silver miners and mill workers represented by the Western Federation of Miners. Opposing the WFM were associations of mine owners and businessmen at each location, supported by the Colorado state government. The strikes were notable and controversial for the accompanying violence, and the imposition of martial law by the Colorado National Guard in order to put down the strikes.
A nearly simultaneous strike in Colorado's northern and southern coal fields was also met with a military response by the Colorado National Guard.
Colorado's most significant battles between labor and capital occurred between miners and mine operators. In these battles the state government, with one exception, sided with the mine operators. Additional participants have included the National Guard, often informally called the militia; private contractors such as the Pinkertons, Baldwin–Felts, and Thiel detective agencies; and various labor entities, Mine Owners' Associations, and vigilante groups and business-dominated groups such as the Citizens' Alliance.
The WFM strikes considered part of the Colorado labor wars include:
- Colorado City, March to April 1903, and July 1903 to June 1904
- Cripple Creek mining district, March to April 1903, and August 1903 to June 1904
- Idaho Springs, May to September 1903
- Telluride, September to December 1903
- Denver, July to November 1903
- Durango, August to September 1903
Western Federation of Miners
In late 1902, the Western Federation of Miners boasted seventeen thousand members in one hundred locals.p. 58p. 15Early victory in Cripple Creek
In January 1894, mine owners tried to lengthen the workday for Cripple Creek miners from eight to ten hours without raising pay. This action provoked a strike by the miners. In response, mine owners brought in strike breakers. The miners intimidated the strike breakers, so the mine owners raised a private army of an estimated 1,200 armed men. The gunmen were deputized by El Paso County Sheriff F. M. Bowers.p. 19 The miners were also armed, and were prepared for a confrontation.Colorado Governor Davis Waite convinced the mine owners to go back to the shorter workday in what was called the "Waite agreement."p. 19 Governor Waite also called out the state militia to disarm the 1,200 gunmen who were no longer taking orders from the sheriff. The Waite agreement on miners' hours and wages subsequently went into effect, and lasted nearly a decade.p. 19-20
WFM builds power
Downtown Cripple Creek was destroyed by fires in 1896. Carpenters and other construction workers rushed to the area to rebuild the city, and unions arose to organize them. The carpenter's union and other unions owed their leverage to the Western Federation of Miners.p. 62 The strike victory in 1894 enabled the WFM to build labor organizations at the district, state, and regional levels.Mining companies acted on a concern about miners stealing high grade ore by hiring Pinkerton guards. In one case three hundred miners walked out to protest the policy, the company negotiated, and the Pinkerton guards were replaced by guards nominated by the union. The new agreement stipulated that miners suspected of theft would be searched by a fellow miner in the presence of a watchman. To ensure a cooperative work force, mine managers and superintendents found it useful to urge all miners to join the union.p. 71-74
El Paso County included both heavily working class Cripple Creek and more conservative Colorado Springs, home to many of the mine owners. Backed by the pro-union Victor and Cripple Creek Daily Press, the unions elected union members to public office, and split the mining district from El Paso County, by creating Teller County.p. 69 Teller County was a union county where the eight-hour workday was enforced, and workers were paid union scale. Unions used social pressure, boycotts, and strikes to ensure that union goals were enforced. The unions were powerful enough to simply announce wages and hours, and any businesses that failed to comply were boycotted. Non-union products were eliminated from saloons and grocery stores.p. 70
WFM turns to socialism
Outside the Cripple Creek District, however, things were not going well for the WFM. The union had lost a strike in Leadville in 1896, and in 1899 there was another confrontation at Coeur d'Alene, Idaho which ended with hundreds of union miners locked up by the militia in temporary prisons. WFM Secretary-Treasurer Bill Haywood concluded that the companies and their supporters in government were conducting class warfare against the working class.p. 55At their 1901 convention the WFM delegates proclaimed that a "complete revolution of social and economic conditions" was "the only salvation of the working classes."p. 179 WFM leaders openly called for the abolition of the wage system. By the spring of 1903 the WFM was the most militant labor organization in the country.p. 15 This was a considerable change from the WFM's founding Preamble, which envisioned a future of arbitration and conciliation with employers, and an eventual end to the need for strikes.p. 23
Craft versus industrial unionism
, the WFM's powerful secretary treasurer and second in command, had adopted the industrial unionism philosophy of his mentor, former WFM leader Ed Boyce. Boyce disagreed with Samuel Gompers, head of the AFL, over union organization.p. 23 Haywood thought that unions should cover whole industries, and that the WFM should extend to workers at ore processing mills as well, and that all workers in an industrial union should stand up for the rights of other workers. Haywood believed he had the necessary weapon to force the mill owners to negotiate: the solidarity of the workers in the mines that fed the mills.p. 60,79Under the leadership of Ed Boyce, Cripple Creek unions also helped to organize, and provided leadership for the Western Labor Union, a federation formed in response to the American Federation of Labor which had federated the craft unions in the east. In 1899, the WFM wrote industrial unionism, its response to the AFL's craft philosophy, into its charter.p. 63,68
Anti-union forces in Colorado
Colorado's employers observed the WFM's socialist pronouncements with trepidation, because the union's goal was now the elimination of private ownership of the mines.p. 28Republican James Peabody ran a campaign for governor of Colorado pledging to restore a conservative government which would be responsive to business and industry. He nonetheless expressed warm sentiments toward unionism while campaigning in the Cripple Creek District. Labor organizations were not persuaded and opposed his candidacy, but the Republicans gained control of the state governmentp. 39-41 when the Democrats and Populists split the progressive ticket.p. 201
Peabody saw the Western Federation of Miners as a threat to his own class interests, to private property, to democratic institutions, and to the nation itself. He promised in his inaugural address to make Colorado safe for investments, if necessary using all the power of the state to accomplish his aims.p. 45
National employers' movement
A national employers' movement aimed directly at the power of unions was gaining strength. In his 1972 book Colorado's War On Militant Unionism, George Suggs, Jr. reported that antiunion employers' organizations in Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, and Wisconsin had effectively stopped the growth of unions through open shop campaigns.p. 65-66In 1903, David M. Parry delivered a speech at the annual convention of the National Association of Manufacturers that was a diatribe against organized labor. He argued that unions' goals would result in "despotism, tyranny, and slavery." Parry advocated the establishment of a great national anti-union federation under the control of the NAM, and the NAM responded by initiating such an effort.