High-grade And Fissures: A Working-class History Of The Cripple Creek, Colorado, Gold Mining District, 1890-1905. (volumes I And Ii).

Abstract

The Cripple Creek, Colorado, gold-mining district was a stronghold of the radical Western Federation of Miners (WFM) for a ten-year period between two miners' strikes in 1894 and 1903-04. The 1894 strike established the eight-hour day, three-dollar minimum daily wage, and the right to union membership for the District's miners, and by 1902 a majority of all workers in all trades were organized. Unions were central social, political, and economic institutions in the area, and they established a powerful working-class culture and class analysis. However, that community and analysis were strained by internal working-class divisions of race, ethnicity, and sex, and by cross-class social and political alliances. Labor and political leaders belonged to common lodges and fraternal organizations and frequented the same saloons and social events. That sense of cross-class community did not survive the test of industrial strife, however. During the Cripple Creek strike of 1903-04, class proved to be the primary determinant of people's allegiances. Labor largely transcended divisions of race and sex, as union survival and working-class unity became paramount considerations. Members of the same lodges and political parties were on opposite sides of the strike, which culminated with the triumph of anti-union mine owners over more moderate employers, the deportation of union leaders by the National Guard, and the end of organized labor in the District. Quantitative analysis of the union, political, and lodge leadership revealed that all were among the most stable residents of the area, more likely to be married and to own homes than most district residents. This stability, however, did not necessarily support conservative politics. Socialists and strike leaders were both more likely than all adults to be married and to own homes. This study thus qualifies previous assumptions that family responsibility and property ownership undermined working-class radicalism, and suggests rather that the opposition of the state and of employers to radical dissent were primary factors.