The Children of Ludlow: Their Struggle is Our Struggle

The Ludlow Massacre galvanized the US labor movement. Once properly unified, trade unions became strong enough to leverage significant economic concessions from the Captains of Industry. Those economic concessions proved sufficient to buoy the aspirations of America’s middle class throughout much of the 20th century. More than a century after the Ludlow Massacre, post-industrialist fat cats continue their relentless efforts to undermine the working class. If America’s middle class is going to survive this never ending onslaught, then hard-pressed 21st century workers will need to rekindle the spirit of the Ludlow strikers whose sacrifices gave working stiffs a shot at the American Dream.

The Children of Ludlow: Their Struggle is Our Struggle

Ever since that dark day, April 20, 1914, what has since been known as the Ludlow Massacre galvanized the US labor movement. Once properly unified, trade unions became strong enough to leverage significant economic concessions from the Captains of Industry. Those economic concessions proved sufficient to buoy the aspirations of America’s middle class throughout much of the 20th century. More than a century after the Ludlow Massacre, post-industrialist fat cats continue their relentless efforts to undermine the working class. If America’s middle class is going to survive this never ending onslaught, then hard-pressed 21st century workers will need to rekindle the spirit of the Ludlow strikers whose sacrifices gave working stiffs a shot at the American Dream.

Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This biography explains first how Josephine Roche moved from a small town on the Great Plains, where she was born in 1886, to the nation's capital, where she joined Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration in 1934. Especially significant in explaining her achievements were her education at Vassar, mentoring by a progressive reform community in Denver, and the meaning she made of the momentous coal strike in Colorado that culminated in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914. This biography also explains why, having achieved renown in the 1930s, Roche largely disappeared from history and memory, a disappearing act made all the more mysterious by her stunning post-New Deal resume.

Marking Labor History on the National Landscape: The Restored Ludlow Memorial and its Significance

In 1915 officers of the United Mine Workers of America purchased forty acres of land north of the Ludlow, Colorado train depot on land where a tent colony had sheltered coal miners and their families during the 1913–1914 southern Colorado coal strike. Three years later, the union dedicated a memorial of Vermont granite on the site in memory of those who died there April 20, 1914, in the Ludlow Massacre.