Description
Use this book to answer the following discussions: Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. NY: Harper-Collins, 2003. Plagarism free and number each discussion.
Discussion 1
How did the end of the Civil War affect the rise of workers' unions? Consider how the war influenced views about race, ethnicity, and gender.
Discussion 2
How did immigration patterns change in the late nineteenth-century, and how did that affect the relationship between the working classes?
Discussion 3
What was the Ludlow Massacre and what did it suggest about the success of the Progressive Era?
Respond to this in own opinion (Paige)
The Ludlow Massacre of April 1914 was a response to the Colorado coal strike in September 1913 (354). Thousands of mainly foreign-born miners went on strike against low pay, dangerous conditions, and feudal domination, after the murder of one of their fellow workers. The strikers were evicted from their shacks and so they sent up tent colonies nearby in the hills. The miners resisted and refused to give in, so the National Guard was called by the Rockefellers to end the strikes (355). At first, the Guard was welcomed by cheers until the miners quickly realized they were there to destroy the strike. Miners still were not giving in and it "became clear that extraordinary measures would be needed to break the strike" (355). On the morning of April 20th, a machine gun attack began on the tents. The miner's leader Lou Tikas was "lured up into the hills to discuss a truce, then shot to death by a company of National Guardsmen. The women and children dug pits beneath tents to escape the gunfire. At dusk, the Guard moved down from the hills with torches, set fire to the tents, and the families fled into the hills; thirteen people were killed by gunfire" (355). The following day the bodies of eleven children and two women were found charred in a pit under one of the tents and the Massacre received its name(355). Zinn argues the progressive reforms succeeded to an extent in doing what they intended-stabilizing the capitalist system by repairing its worst defects, blunt the edge of the socialist movement, restoring some measure of class peace in a time of increasingly bitter clashes between capital and labor (354)- but the Ludlow massacre was one of the most violent struggles between workers and capitalists in the history of the United States, and was a major setback for progress.