Liberalism: Power, Economic Crisis, Reform, War 71tents, and then they brought out an armored car with a machine gun on it—
they called it “The Death Special”—and began shooting at the miners,
women, and children in the colony. The miners had dug holes in the ground
in the tents so they and their families could dodge the bullets, but some were
hit and the gunfire, as it hit the tents doused in kerosene, started a huge fire.
The exact number killed, some by gunfire, others burned to death in the fox-
holes in the tents, was never established, but it seems clear that at least two
dozen people, including perhaps 10 or more small children, died that day in
Ludlow. In the immediate aftermath, a “coal war” broke out in Colorado as
miners and state and private security forces began shooting at each other, with
several dozen more killed. Ultimately, the “war” faded as the forces of author-
ity—militias, police, and private agents—crushed the miners’ resistance.
Afterwards, no one from the Baldwin Felts Agency was punished for the
massacre and ten National Guardsmen were court martialed and found not
guilty, but many of the union leaders were arrested and “black-balled,” or kept
out of, the coal industry—they could never work again in the mines. As for
Rockefeller, he supported the company. At the beginning of the strike, in
FIGuRE 2-5 Slain Miner at Ludlow Massacre