Coal mining in Colorado

[4] The United Mine Workers (UMW) were defeated in large part because of the activities of a company spy in a strike in the southern field in 1903-04.

The strike was inconclusive, but prompted a 10 percent wage increase for ten thousand Colorado miners.

The union's real target in Colorado was the larger southern field located south of Pueblo toward Trinidad.

[5] Neutralized by the dispatch of federal troops after ten days of skirmishes provoked by the massacre, the UMW essentially suspended most activities in Colorado for more than a decade.

In 1927 Colorado coal miners again laid down their tools, this time under the banner of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

Colorado Fuel and Iron, a major conglomerate of steel mills in Pueblo and coal mines around the region, opposed the strike.

In announcing this policy, President Roche avoided recognizing the radical IWW, which had successfully shut down 113 of the state's 125 coal mines.