Guarding Capital: Soldier Strikebreakers on the Long Road to the Ludlow Massacre
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W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 2004 Guarding capital: Soldier strikebreakers on the long road to the Ludlow massacre Anthony Roland DeStefanis College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation DeStefanis, Anthony Roland, "Guarding capital: Soldier strikebreakers on the long road to the Ludlow massacre" (2004). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539623451. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-d7pf-f181 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. GUARDING CAPITAL: Soldier Strikebreakers on the Long Road to the Ludlow Massacre A Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History The College of William and Mary in Virginia In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Anthony Roland DeStefanis 2004 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. APPROVAL SHEET This dissertation is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Anthony Roland DeStefanis Approved by the Committee, October 2004 Cindy Hahamovitch, Chair r Judith Ewell Scott R. Nelson David Montgdmeiy Yale University, (Emeritus ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgements v Abstract vii Introduction 2 Chapter I. The Ludlow Massacre 33 Chapter II. An Empire Within: The Southern Colorado Coalfield, 1872-1913 53 Going West 60 Workers of the World Migrate! 70 Union Anyway 75 Huerfano 80 (Social) Engineering Better Workers 83 A Stunted State 97 The 1903-04 Strike 101 The Operators as the State 104 Chapter III. Workers and Capital Organize 126 Organizing Against the Empire 130 Capital Organizes 153 Baldwin-Felts at the Operators’ Service 164 Road Trip 179 Forcing the Issue 181 Following the Money 189 Chapter IV. Creating a Killer: 204 Race, Gender, Class, and the Colorado National Guard Chapter V. “In the Islands, We Done Exactly the Same Thing”: The Spanish- 244 American-Filipino War, Strike Duty, and the Colorado National Guard The Philippines and Cuba 246 The 1903-04 Strikes Redux 249 Manhood, the Spanish-American-Filipino War, and the Court of Inquiry 252 iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Chapter VI. The Road to Ludlow 280 Conclusion 332 Bibliography 343 Vita 358 iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have received more help than can be adequately acknowledged here. Cindy Hahamovitch advised this dissertation after suggesting the topic when I wandered into her office wondering what to write about. Her support of this project never flagged, and although I sometimes fought her suggestions, I now realize that I was truly fortunate to have her think about this project with me. Cindy’s comments on every chapter were always incisive and her advice was always sound. She also knew how to organize my chapters far better than I did. Cindy has been incredibly patient, and along the way, she taught me a great deal about teaching and about how the academy works—and doesn’t work. Her commitment to the living wage campaign for campus workers at William and Mary demonstrated how to be both a serious scholar and an advocate for social and economic justice. Above all, Cindy is an ideal model for how to be a scholar and teacher. My second reader, Leisa Meyer, was enthusiastic about this project from the start. Her attention to the subtleties of language and her advice to pay close attention to the history of the National Guards made this a better dissertation. Leisa’s generosity—with her time and her cigarettes—and ability to explain the struggles of ordinary people in the past, and graduate students in the present, have made it a pleasure to work with her. My other readers also provided fresh insights for analyzing my research. Scott Nelson offered new ways to think about the mine operators’ strategy for strikebreaking, and Judy Ewell pointed out sources of racial and ethnic tension in Colorado that I neglected. Thanks to David Montgomery for reading and commenting on this dissertation. I deeply appreciate his willingness to stick with this project, and his comments and encouragement will undoubtedly help me as I revise the manuscript. Researching this dissertation took me to archives and libraries all over the country. The Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University provided a generous grant that allowed me to make an extended research trip to Colorado. The College of William and Mary also provided financial support for the research I conducted in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. I was fortunate to find knowledgeable and amiable archivists in all these far-flung places. At the Denver Public Library, Lisa Backman and Brian Kenny expertly guided me through the library’s Western History Collection. At the Colorado State Archives, Erin McDanal, Jason Chipman, and George Orlowski worked hard to find various National Guard sources. Erin McDanal also asked the state archivist to reduce the archive’s $1.50 per page photocopying charge when she realized that my bill was going to bankrupt me! David Hays at the Norlin Library of the University of Colorado, Boulder was a font of information on Colorado mining history, and he was generous with his time and knowledge of the library’s collection. Tom Rosenbaum at the Rockefeller Archive v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Center in Sleepy Hollow, New York put in overtime helping me track down elusive sources. Many thanks to John Lawrence and the interlibrary loan staff at William and Mary and Susan Connell Derryberry in the interlibrary loan department at Stetson University for granting my every request. In Williamsburg, I was lucky to have a group of fellow travelers who were serious historians, good cooks, and great friends. For creating a community of rigorous intellectual inquiry, and for being ever-willing to escape from it, thanks to: Tim Barnard, John Coombs, Rob Galgano, Brian Geiger, Wendy Gonaver, Kelly Gray, Amy Howard, Phil Levy, Jennifer Luff, Paul Moyer, Jennifer Petrafesa-McLaughlin, Rob Nelson, Andy Schocket, James Spady, and Ericka Thoms. I wrote this dissertation in DeLand, Florida, where I found a wonderful group of friends among the alligators, lizards, tornadoes, and hurricanes. Thanks to Maria Alvarez, Mario Aldana, Cathy Burke, Paul Jerome Croce, Harold Dansberger, Mark Long, Eric Perramond, Hari Pulapaka, Dom Rodi, Jan Rodi, and Nancy Vosburg for their friendship and encouragement. Tim, Wendy, Kelly, James, Maria, Paul, and Mark also read and provided valuable comments on portions of this dissertation. My sister, Susan, and her husband, Cliff, offered much-needed encouragement, and my niece and nephew, Amanda and Bryan, provided hours of holiday amusement that helped me temporarily escape from the Colorado National Guard. Thanks as well to Harry and Leanore Mieras for their support and interest in what I was doing. Emily Mieras has been with me through every phase of this project. She was always willing to discuss strikebreaking, the state, and the nature of ethnic and racial conflict, and her own considerable knowledge of the Progressive Era United States helped me clarify the ideas and arguments in this dissertation. Emily took valuable time away from her own manuscript and teaching to read these chapters multiple times. Her reading sometimes led to complex diagrams that showed me what my argument really was, and she generated countless comments and suggestions for making this a better dissertation. Emily, however, has done much, much more to make my life better. Her love, support, wisdom, patience, grace, and willingness to be my companion in all things make everything else possible. My parents, Anthony and Angela DeStefanis, along with my maternal grandmother, Velia Tranghese, and my uncle, Felix Tranghese, encouraged me to think critically about the past and the world around me. To their great credit, my parents always let me follow my own path, and while they never tired of asking when this dissertation would be done, I still could not have completed it without them. For their love and unending support, I dedicate this dissertation to them. vi Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the cultural politics of military strikebreaking. By focusing on the contest between striking southern and eastern European and Mexican immigrant coal miners and their employers during the 1913-14 coal strike in southern Colorado, the dissertation demonstrates how the intersection of politics with issues of race, class, gender, and ethnicity shaped the miners’ rebellion and the state and corporate responses to it. The Colorado National Guard was an integral part of how the state and capital reacted to the strike, and makes an ideal focus for this