By early April 1914, Colorado Governor Elias Ammons thought the violence in his state’s strike-bound southern coal district had eased enough that he could begin withdrawing the Colorado National Guard, deployed six months earlier as military occupiers. But Ammons misread the signals, and on April 20, 1914, a full-scale battle erupted between the remaining militiamen and armed strikers living in a tent colony at the small railroad town of Ludlow. Eight men were killed in the fighting, which culminated in the burning of the colony. The next day, the bodies of two women and eleven children were found suffocated in a below-ground shelter. The “Ludlow Massacre,” as it quickly became known, launched a national call-to-arms for union supporters to join a ten-day guerrilla war along more than two hundred miles of the eastern Rockies. The convulsion of arson and violence killed more than thirty people and didn’t end until President Woodrow Wilson sent in the
Trade Review
"Blood Passion is the definitive account of a major landmark in the American struggle for social justice. And the way Scott Martelle tells the story is splendid proof that history can both be written as vividly as a novel and also be documented with scrupulous care." -- Adam Hochschild * author of Bury the Chains and King Leopold's Ghost *
"We must welcome this carefully-researched study of one of the most dramatic, violent, and important episodes in the history of labor struggles in this country." -- Howard Zinn * author of A Power Governments Cannot Suppress *
"Martelle's excellent book captures [the Ludlow Massacre] with a journalist's flair for narrative and a historian's penchant for making the necessary inferences where they belong: on the page for all to see." * San Francisco Chronicle *
"...a lively journalistic account" -- Caleb Crain * The New Yorker *
"Some of the bloodiest events in the U.S. labor movement took place in the 1890s and beyond in Western mines, as labor, management, government, and political philosophies clashed. Martelle...brings the era alive in his 'blend of journalism and historic inquiry' focusing on the conflict in the Ludlow, Colo., mines in 1914, which left 75 dead. Engrossing." * Orange Coast *
"Scott Martelle's account of the 1914 Ludlow Mssacre and the surrounding events is perhaps the most gripping and readable account of these times." * Western Legal History *
"Blood Passion is a fine contribution to the history and spatiality of conflict in the mining industry."
* Industrial Archaeology *
"Blood Passion is the definitive account of a major landmark in the American struggle for social justice. And the way Scott Martelle tells the story is splendid proof that history can both be written as vividly as a novel and also be documented with scrupulous care." -- Adam Hochschild * author of Bury the Chains and King Leopold's Ghost *
"We must welcome this carefully-researched study of one of the most dramatic, violent, and important episodes in the history of labor struggles in this country." -- Howard Zinn * author of A Power Governments Cannot Suppress *
"Martelle's excellent book captures [the Ludlow Massacre] with a journalist's flair for narrative and a historian's penchant for making the necessary inferences where they belong: on the page for all to see." * San Francisco Chronicle *
"...a lively journalistic account" -- Caleb Crain * The New Yorker *
"Some of the bloodiest events in the U.S. labor movement took place in the 1890s and beyond in Western mines, as labor, management, government, and political philosophies clashed. Martelle...brings the era alive in his 'blend of journalism and historic inquiry' focusing on the conflict in the Ludlow, Colo., mines in 1914, which left 75 dead. Engrossing." * Orange Coast *
"Scott Martelle's account of the 1914 Ludlow Mssacre and the surrounding events is perhaps the most gripping and readable account of these times." * Western Legal History *
"Blood Passion is a fine contribution to the history and spatiality of conflict in the mining industry."
* Industrial Archaeology *
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Prologue
1 Money in the Ground
2 Company Men and Union Leaders
3 Trouble in the Fields
4 The Strike Begins
5 Hardened Lines
6 Deadly Encounters
7 Enter the Militia
8 The Battle at Ludlow
9 Insurrection
10 Final Engagements
11 Epilogue
Appendices
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
