In Killing for Coal, Professor Andrews offers a bold and original perspective on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre in southern Colorado, the deadliest strike in American history. Striking members of the United Mine Workers of America fought with guards working for the Rockefeller family and a state militia beholden to Colorado’s industrial barons. When the clash was over, 19 men, women, and children of the miners’ families lay dead. The striking mine workers had killed at least 30 men and destroyed six mines and two company towns. In an analysis of the incident that goes well beyond traditional labor history, Professor Andrews makes a powerful case for rethinking the relationships that unite and divide workers, consumers, capitalists, and the natural world in an economy dependent on fossil fuels. Taking the organic world as his starting point, Professor Andrews elucidates the causes and consequences of the violence that erupted in coal shipping strikes over the course of nearly half a century. Killing for Coal reveals a complex world shaped by forces of land, labor, industrialization, and workers’ resistance. (See related story on page 29)
