From Signing In To Dominate The World

Chapter 526 Ward Group (2)

After learning that the Miners Federation was about to organize a strike, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Ore Company naturally tried every means to obstruct it.

First, they rushed to recruit a large number of new immigrants from other countries to serve as miners, in order to make the miners have problems with language communication, thereby weakening the miners’ organization.

Second, more armed guards were hired to prepare for a possible strike.

The Federation of Miners subsequently submitted seven requests to the Colorado Fuel and Iron Ore Company to improve the conditions of the miners, but they were flatly rejected.

In September of the same year, the Miners Federation formally organized a strike by the miners of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Ore Company.

In response, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Ore Company immediately expelled all miners who participated in the strike and expelled them from the dormitory area.

In response to this, the Miners Federation had long been prepared. They leased a large area of ​​land in the Ludlow area near the mine and set up many tents to accommodate the expelled miners and their families.

Therefore, “History” magazine described the conflict as the “Colorado Coal Field War” and the “Ludlow Massacre.”

Facing the resistance of the miners, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Ore Company, controlled by the Ward Group, did not choose to discuss, but continued its strong style, and even intensified it!

They hired the then infamous “Baldwin-Fields Detective Agency” to deal with the miners.

This detective office is not as law-abiding as today’s office. At the time, it had the nickname of “strike remover”, and in essence it was a mercenary company that specialized in armed suppression of strikers by wealthy enterprises.

In order to achieve the goal of rapid suppression, these mercenaries were so frantic that they dispatched an armored vehicle modified from a large trailer, and placed a heavy machine on the armored vehicle!

When the night fell, the mercenaries drove armored vehicles and randomly fired at the Ludlow tent area where the striking miners were gathered.

Therefore, the miners in the Ludlow tent called this armored vehicle “a special god of death.”

In addition, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Ore Company even hired a group of snipers to kill the miners in the tent area.

In the face of the threat, the miners and their families in the Ludlow tent area fought back, and at the same time dug many holes-sleeping in the holes every day to avoid the flying bullets.

Looking at these historical facts, Chen Liang couldn’t help but resounding the scene of the war during liberation in his mind.

But these miners are all civilians.

As the conflict intensified, Colorado finally stepped in.

The governor at the time ordered: The National Guard of the state should be dispatched to quell the conflict.

But who knows, the commander of the Colorado National Guard at the time was completely on the side of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Ore Company, and he actually jointly suppressed the strikers.

Soon after the National Guard joined, a man’s body was found on a railroad track near Forbes, Colorado. The National Guard commander quickly wiped out a residential area of ​​the striking miner on the grounds that the striker miner killed the man. For the flat ground.

After a half-year crackdown, as the finances had no money to maintain the large-scale operations of the National Guard, most of the National Guard was withdrawn from the strike area, but the private guards of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Ore Company were allowed to put on the National Guard’s guards. The uniform continued to “maintain order.”

So after most of the National Guard withdrew, the private guards of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Ore Company became even more unscrupulous.

In April of the second year after the strike broke out, three private guards from the Colorado Fuel and Iron Ore Company broke into the Ludlow tent area and framed that “strike miners detained a man and demanded that he be released immediately.”

Subsequently, the company’s private security guards set up a seizure position on the hill next to the Ludlow tent area. And rushed to the tent area. In addition, a large number of private guards took an offensive posture about 800 meters from the Ludlow tent area.

The miners in the tent area believed that “the company is going to kill him”, so they grabbed their weapons and rushed to the nearby hill, trying to eliminate the mountain’s machine to grab the position, and the two sides began to fight.

In this conflict, the miners in the Ludlow tent area were able to resist for a while at first, but in the afternoon that day, the situation changed; the company added hundreds of private guards to join the battle, and the private guards possessed a machine to grab such a situation. With heavy firepower, the resistance of the miners gradually weakened.

By twilight, the miners who had almost run out of ammunition were in desperation. What worries them is that there are still a large number of family members of the miners-unarmed women and children in the tent area.

Fortunately, there was a railway line not far from the Ludlow tent area, and a freight train happened to pass through the area at that time. The conscientious train driver saw the mining company guards attack the miners and stopped the car. Most of the miners in the Ludlow tent area climbed onto the train with their families, and then the train started and fled the battlefield.

However, not everyone escaped this catastrophe. The company’s private guards finally broke into the Ludlow tent area, and then began to search for the remaining miners. At 7 o’clock that evening, private guards began to set the entire tent area on fire. Two women and 11 children were suffocated to death or burned alive as a result of the fire. Three other strike leaders in the tent area were arrested.

It is believed that they were subsequently executed by a lieutenant of the National Guard. In the end, the bodies of the three of them were abandoned by a section of railway. The private guard threatened that “no one is allowed to collect the bodies, so that the passing train passengers will see the fate of these people”.

According to statistics after the incident, a total of 19 strikers and their families were killed in the disaster that day.

The tragedy in the Ludlow tent area ignited the anger of the Miners Federation and Colorado miners. The Federation of Miners began to issue weapons and ammunition directly to the striking miners, which led to Colorado’s subsequent guerrilla warfare.

Approximately 1,000 striking miners launched attacks on the mines, killing or expelling private guards from the mines. The mining companies immediately organized counterattacks and mobilized a large number of private forces to fight the strike and mine work.

The situation is completely out of control.

In the end, this struggle between the working people and the capital bureaucracy even caught the attention of the President, who personally ordered federal troops to station in Colorado and disarmed the strikers and private forces of mining companies.

The Miners Federation also gradually dried up due to the gradual exhaustion of operating funds, and soon announced that it would suspend the organization of strikes in Colorado.

According to statistics after the incident, a total of about 200 people were killed in the strike conflict, but the blood sacrifices were also rewarded.

The strike prompted the Ward family to rethink their company’s management policies, and subsequently improved the treatment of miners to a certain extent. From brutal and violent oppression, they embarked on a more “peaceful” path of development.