Blood Passion Los Angeles Times

Blood Passion

Los Angeles Times journalist Scott Martelle's book, Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West, is a book about labor history, unfair condition, and class prejudices. While working on a picket line during the 1995 Detroit newspaper strike, Martelle became very interested in this topic. In his book, Martelle wrote, "A few years back I was reading a now-forgotten American history book and stumbled across a footnote reference to 100 men, women and children killed in a months-long war between striking coal miners and the Colorado National Guard. My first thought: Why didn't I know about that? I knew about the April 1914 Ludlow Massacre, when two mothers and eleven children died after marauding Guardsmen torched a striker's tent colony. But the broader war came as a revelation."

Martelle's book is about the events surrounding the Ludlow massacre, which is considered the bloodiest event in the 1914 Colorado Coal Strike. The massacre refers to the violent deaths of women, children, miners, and union officials during an attack by the Colorado National Guard. These deaths occurred after an argument between union strikers and the Guard.

In response, the miners armed themselves and attacked dozens of mines. According to Martelle, striking miners were fighting for more than their rights. They were "fighting for their lives and livelihoods in a tableau established by mine operators, and against an overwhelming system of corporate feudalism in which the U.S. Constitution was trumped by greed and prejudice."

Martelle's story was written primarily from the point-of-view of a journalist, rather than a historian. He took this approach because he believed that the history books left out a lot of important facts. He began his search for information by checking Colorado's death records, which revealed that 75 people had been killed -- a number that did not match historical records.

Martelle's main goal in writing this story appears to be to expose the horrific conditions in which coal miners were forced to work. Through pictures and real-life stories, he paints a picture of how miners and their families lived in dangerous, poor environments. Many mining communities, including the Colorado Fuel and Iron community, were forced to live in company housing tents. If they needed to shop, go to church, or even grab a beer, their only choices were to go to company-owned facilities.

Martelle described how the mine operators were in control of everything that went on in their workers' lives. On a whim, they could increase rent and food prices, and deflate wages so that the miners were stuck working in the mines. While this method was effective in keeping the miners working and preventing them from leaving, it created an atmosphere of anger and resentment.

Martelle's journalistic point-of-view prevents him from making assumptions or inserting personal opinions into the story. Rather, he states the facts and allows the reader to form his or her own opinions. He describes clearly the unfair treatment received by the Colorado coal miners, which included poverty, poor living and working conditions, and lack of freedom. These are the major themes of the book.

The company-operated communities, which were owned by Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, a holding of the Rockefeller family, are clearly described by Martelle, in an effort to show just how cruelly these workers were treated. According to Martelle, the majority of these workers were immigrants who were lured to the coal mines with promises of good jobs and affordable housing.

The Rockefeller family, along with other mining companies, followed very few safety regulations and paid workers very small wages for the work they did. Miners did not receive any of the bonuses they do today, including down-time work, such as clearing cave-ins, or given fair weighs.

The coal mine managers, local law enforcement, and the Colorado National Guard were all called upon to maintain peace during the coal miner strikes, which were organized by the union in an effort to improve the lives of the miners. However, these enforcers primarily sided with the coal companies. Martelle wrote that the events surrounding the Ludlow Massacre were less about 'the romantic notion of the resilience of the union men and women in the face of oppression,' and more about class distinctions, as the coal company managers and law enforcers were all white and upper middle class.

This book helps history students understand that the rights that Americans take for granted today, like labor laws, did not always exist. People like the coal miners in Blood Passion had to fight for them. Instead of an 8-hour work day with weekends off, these workers endured 16-hour days and were lucky to have one day a week to rest. The mine shafts were not held to safety law standards, so workers worked in environments that included carcinogenic and flammable coal dust and methane gas that could suffocate workers or explode at any time.