From Redstone to Ludlow

From Redstone to Ludlow PDF Author: F. Darrell Munsell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
This book covers events from 1892, when John Cleveland Osgood and his associates organised the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, to 1917, when Osgood signed a contract with the United Mine Workers of America, marking the end of his long history of battling the union. Called the Fuel King of the West, Osgood was the leading coal baron in the western mountain region and the most prominent spokesperson for the coal industry for over three decades. During this time, his anti-union policies made him the UMWA's most formidable foe in its effort to organise the Colorado coal fields. The book depicts the bipolarity of his approach to the threat of unionism. The "Redstone experiment," a model industrial village designed to improve the lives of workers through social programs, showed Osgood's efforts to attain his anti-union goals through compassion. Conversely, the Ludlow tent colony and the events that transpired there, marked by armed gunmen and machine guns paid for by Osgood, illustrate his willingness to resort to violence and intimidation for the same purpose. A leading participant in the transformation of the West, Osgood helped to shape the character of the Gilded Age.

From Redstone to Ludlow

From Redstone to Ludlow PDF Author: F. Darrell Munsell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Get Book

Book Description
This book covers events from 1892, when John Cleveland Osgood and his associates organised the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, to 1917, when Osgood signed a contract with the United Mine Workers of America, marking the end of his long history of battling the union. Called the Fuel King of the West, Osgood was the leading coal baron in the western mountain region and the most prominent spokesperson for the coal industry for over three decades. During this time, his anti-union policies made him the UMWA's most formidable foe in its effort to organise the Colorado coal fields. The book depicts the bipolarity of his approach to the threat of unionism. The "Redstone experiment," a model industrial village designed to improve the lives of workers through social programs, showed Osgood's efforts to attain his anti-union goals through compassion. Conversely, the Ludlow tent colony and the events that transpired there, marked by armed gunmen and machine guns paid for by Osgood, illustrate his willingness to resort to violence and intimidation for the same purpose. A leading participant in the transformation of the West, Osgood helped to shape the character of the Gilded Age.

Remembering Ludlow but Forgetting the Columbine

Remembering Ludlow but Forgetting the Columbine PDF Author: Leigh Campbell-Hale
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 164642302X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Mining the American West Remembering Ludlow but Forgetting the Columbine examines the causes, context, and legacies of the 1927 Columbine Massacre in relation to the history of labor organizing and coal mining in both Colorado and the United States. While historians have written prolifically about the 1914 Ludlow Massacre, there has been a lack of attention to the violent event remembered now as the Columbine Massacre in which police shot and killed six striking coal miners and wounded sixty more protestors during the 1927–1928 Colorado Coal Strike, even though its aftermath exerted far more influence upon subsequent national labor policies. This volume is a comparative biography of three key participants before, during, and after the strike: A. S. Embree, the IWW strike leader; Josephine Roche, the owner of the coal mine property where the Columbine Massacre took place; and Powers Hapgood, who came to work for Roche four months after she signed the 1928 United Mine Worker’s contract. The author demonstrates the significance of this event to national debates about labor during the period, as well as changes and continuities in labor history starting in the progressive era and continuing with 1930s New Deal labor policies and through the 1980s. This examination of the 1927–1928 Colorado Coal Strike reorients understandings of labor history from the 1920s through the 1960s and the construction of public memory—and forgetting—surrounding those events. Remembering Ludlow but Forgetting the Columbine appeals to academic and general readers interested in Colorado history, labor history, mining history, gender studies, memory, and historiography.

Representation and Rebellion

Representation and Rebellion PDF Author: Jonathan H. Rees
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1457109840
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
In response to the tragedy of the Ludlow Massacre, John D. Rockefeller Jr. introduced one of the nation's first employee representation plans (ERPs) to the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company in 1915. With the advice of William Mackenzie King, who would go on to become prime minister of Canada, the plan - which came to be known as the Rockefeller Plan - was in use until 1942 and became the model for ERPs all over the world. In Representation and Rebellion Jonathan Rees uses a variety of primary sources - including records recently discovered at the company's former headquarters in Pueblo, Colorado - to tell the story of the Rockefeller Plan and those who lived under it, as well as to detail its various successes and failures. Taken as a whole, the history of the Rockefeller Plan is not the story of ceaseless oppression and stifled militancy that its critics might imagine, but it is also not the story of the creation of a paternalist panacea for labor unrest that Rockefeller hoped it would be. Addressing key issues of how this early twentieth-century experiment fared from 1915 to 1942, Rees argues that the Rockefeller Plan was a limited but temporarily effective alternative to independent unionism in the wake of the Ludlow Massacre. The book will appeal to business and labor historians, political scientists, and sociologists, as well as those studying labor and industrial relations.

Energy in American History

Energy in American History PDF Author: Jeffrey B. Webb
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440872155
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 1015

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Book Description
Contextualizes and analyzes the key energy transitions in U.S. history and the central importance of energy production and consumption on the American environment and in American culture and politics. Focusing on the major energy transitions in U.S. history, from the pre-industrial era to the present day, this two-volume encyclopedia captures the major advancements, events, technologies, and people synonymous with the production and consumption of energy in the United States. Expert contributors show how, for example, the introduction of electricity and petroleum into ordinary American life facilitated periods of rapid social and political change, as well as profound and ongoing impacts on the environment. These developments have in many ways defined and accelerated the pace of modern life and led to vast improvements in living conditions for millions of people, just as they have also brought new fears of resource exhaustion and fossil-fuel induced climate change. Today, as America begins to move beyond the use of fossil fuels toward a greater reliance on renewables, including wind and solar energy, there is a pressing need to understand energy in America's past in order to better understand its energy future.

Gilded Mountain

Gilded Mountain PDF Author: Kate Manning
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982160942
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
In the early 1900s, Sylvie Pelletier leaves her family's Colorado mountain cabin to start work at a wealthy mine-owner's manor house and is fascinated by he luxury around her until she discovers the family's philosophy is at odds with the unfair labor practices that built their fortune.

America Goes Green [3 volumes]

America Goes Green [3 volumes] PDF Author: Kim Kennedy White
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1598846582
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 1358

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Book Description
This three-volume encyclopedia explores the evolution of green ideology and eco-friendly practices in contemporary American culture, ranging from the creation of regional and national guidelines for green living to the publication of an increasing number of environmental blogs written from the layperson's perspective. Evidence of humanity's detrimental impact on the environment is mounting. As Americans, we are confronted daily with news stories, blogs, and social media commentary about the necessity of practicing green behaviors to offset environmental damage. This essential reference is a fascinating review of the issues surrounding green living, including the impact of this lifestyle on Americans' time and money, the information needed to adhere to green principles in the 21st century, and case studies and examples of successful implementation. America Goes Green: An Encyclopedia of Eco-Friendly Culture in the United States examines this gripping topic through 3 volumes organized by A–Z entries across 11 themes; state-by-state essays grouped by region; and references including primary source documents, bibliography, glossary, and green resources. This timely encyclopedia explores the development of an eco-friendly culture in America, and entries present the debates, viewpoints, and challenges of green living.

Gambling on Ore

Gambling on Ore PDF Author: Kent Curtis
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607322358
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Gambling on Ore examines the development of the western mining industry from the tumultuous and violent Gold Rush to the elevation of large-scale copper mining in the early twentieth century, using Montana as representative of mining developments in the broader US mining west. Employing abundant new historical evidence in key primary and secondary sources, Curtis tells the story of the inescapable relationship of mining to nature in the modern world as the United States moved from a primarily agricultural society to a mining nation in the second half of the nineteenth century. In Montana, legal issues and politics—such as unexpected consequences of federal mining law and the electrification of the United States—further complicated the mining industry’s already complex relationship to geology, while government policy, legal frameworks, dominant understandings of nature, and the exigencies of profit and production drove the industry in momentous and surprising directions. Despite its many uncertainties, mining became an important part of American culture and daily life. Gambling on Ore unpacks the tangled relationships between mining and the natural world that gave material possibility to the age of electricity. Metal mining has had a profound influence on the human ecology and the social relationships of North America through the twentieth century and throughout the world after World War II. Understanding how we forged these relationships is central to understanding the environmental history of the United States after 1850.

Making a Modern U.S. West

Making a Modern U.S. West PDF Author: Sarah Deutsch
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496228618
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 653

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Book Description
Making a Modern U.S. West surveys the history of the U.S. West from 1898 to 1940, centering what is often relegated to the margins in histories of the region—the flows of people, capital, and ideas across borders.

Santa Rita del Cobre

Santa Rita del Cobre PDF Author: Christopher J. Huggard
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 160732153X
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 538

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Book Description
An account of the rise and fall of a mining town over two centuries, including photos: “An excellent story of the people and their community.” ―New Mexico Historical Review The Spanish, Mexicans, and Americans, successively, mined copper for more than two hundred years in Santa Rita, New Mexico. Starting in 1799 after an Apache man led the Spanish to the native copper deposits, miners at the site followed industry developments in the nineteenth century to create a network of underground mines. In the early twentieth century these works became part of the Chino Copper Company’s open-pit mining operations—operations that would overtake Santa Rita by 1970. In Santa Rita del Cobre, Christopher Huggard and Terrence Humble detail these developments with in-depth explanations of mining technology, and describe the effects on and consequences for the workers, the community, and the natural environment. Originally known as El Cobre, the mining-military camp of Santa Rita del Cobre ultimately became the company town of Santa Rita, which after World War II evolved into an independent community. From the town’s beginnings to its demise, its mixed-heritage inhabitants from Mexico and the United States cultivated rich family, educational, religious, social, and labor traditions. Extensive archival photographs, many taken by officials of the Kennecott Copper Corporation, accompany the text, providing an important visual and historical record of a town swallowed up by the industry that created it.

A History of Gold Dredging in Idaho

A History of Gold Dredging in Idaho PDF Author: Clark C. Spence
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 160732475X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
A History of Gold Dredging in Idaho tells the story of a revolution in placer mining—and its subsequent impact on the state of Idaho—from its inception in the early 1880s until its demise in the early 1960s. Idaho was the nation’s fourth-leading producer of dredged gold after 1910 and therefore provides an excellent lens through which to observe the practice and history of gold dredging. Author Clark Spence focuses on the two most important types of dredges in the state—the bucket-line dredge and the dragline dredge—and describes their financing, operation, problems, and effect on the state and environment. These dredges made it possible to work ground previously deemed untouchable because bedrock where gold collected could now be reached. But they were also highly destructive to the environment. As these huge machines floated along, they dumped debris that harmed the streams and destroyed wildlife habitat, eventually prompting state regulations and federal restoration of some of the state’s crippled waterways. Providing a record of Idaho’s dredging history for the first time, this book is a significant contribution to the knowledge and understanding of Western mining, its technology, and its overall development as a major industry of the twentieth century.