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Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West | 
 enlarge | Author: Scott Martelle
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
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Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 496775
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 280
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.3 x 0.8
ISBN: 081354419X
Dewey Decimal Number: 973
EAN: 9780813544199
ASIN: 081354419X
Publication Date: September 30, 2008
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Product Description
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 U.S. Army. Overall at least seventy-five men, women, and children were killed in seven months, likely the nation's deadliest labor struggle.
In Blood Passion, journalist Scott Martelle explores this little-noted tale of political corruption and repression and immigrants' struggles against dominant social codes of race, ethnicity, and class. More than a simple labor dispute, the events surrounding Ludlow embraced some of the most volatile social movements of the early twentieth century, pitting labor activists, socialists, and anarchists against the era's powerful business class, including John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and helped give rise to the modern twins of corporate public relations and political 'spin.' But at its heart, Blood Passion is the dramatic story of small lives merging into a movement for change and of the human struggle for freedom and dignity.
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| Customer Reviews:
Excellent August 1, 2008
Excellent book on the Ludlow Massacre. Well researched and written. History buffs will really enjoy this one.
Many Losers, Few Winners October 5, 2007
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
There is a lot of empty space in Southern Colorado. This book masterfully fills in some of this space with beliefs, blood, ghosts, and little known Western history. A fine read, and thoughtfully written with insights and even handedness.
Objective and Insightful September 27, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
A wonderful walk through the events and people involved in Colorado coal mining in the early 20th century. A refreshing perspective that looks at the culmination of actions and personalities.
Personally, another piece was clarified in my ancestral puzzle. My grandmother was born in the Berwind mine camp and with my immigrant Croatian greatgrandparents, resided in the Ludlow area during the books timeframe.
A look into labor relations in the western mining towns. September 15, 2007
11 out of 25 found this review helpful
There is a lot to like about BLOOD PASSION: THE LUDLOW MASSACRE AND CLASS WARFARE IN THE AMERICAN WEST by Scott Martelle. Here you will find an intricate description of life in a "company" town. It's hard to imagine today, how less than a century ago, company towns were commonplace. These were towns founded around a single business entity, in this case, coal mining, whereby the company that owned the coal mines, in essence owned the town and its' inhabitants.
We study a society where it was a firing offense for an employee to purchase from anywhere other than a company owned store, where prices were set by the employer. They lived in company owned housing, in this case, tents. Their entire existence depended almost entirely on the provisions made by their employer. It's not a far stretch to say, these people existed largely as indentured servants.
Martelle gives an unbiased narrative of the events that spawned the Ludlow Massacre. There is plenty of blame to go around for the massacre that occurred in 1914, and Martelle spreads that blame rather evenly between the striking workers, the strikebreakers, the owners and the National Guardsmen that became embroiled in the southern Colorado mining labor problems.
Perhaps there will always remain a slight wedge between employers and employees, but hopefully never again the deep chasm that existed in the early industrialization of America.
The book is a very interesting read, though at times a bit dry and slow. Martelle is not the most colorful or flamboyant of writers, but does convey his message and story with a succinct style readers will appreciate. The book will appeal to varying audiences, from those studying labor problems in America to the study of the western states. You'll find a graphic description of life a century ago in an existence hardly imaginable today.
Strikers vs. owners = no winners August 27, 2007
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
I knew nothing about the southern Colorado coal strikes and the Ludlow Massacre when I started Scott Martelle's new book, Blood Passion. By the time I finished it -- just two days after starting it -- I understood not only how, but why, the violent strike ended the way it did.
Martelle's prose style is dense with facts, yet elegant and easy. The writing is beautifully done, and the story itself is so compelling that it's easy to understand why he became preoccupied with it.
Each decision along the way, by owners and strikers, deepens the chasm between the two, until at last the line is not drawn but engraved in the sand and there can be no winners.
Whatever your interest in the book -- through the lens of labor history, or western studies, or the social strata of the times -- you will find much here that will resonate for a long time. Martelle, who weathered the nasty Detroit newspaper strike in the mid-90s and did not cross picket lines, gives neither strikers nor owners a bye in this book. (Full disclosure: I, too, weathered that strike by honoring the picket lines.)
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