I went to a Wyoming Historical meeting last night. The speaker told about her research and her book on Hartville, Wyoming. Hartville is 6 miles north of Guernsey and was a mining town in days gone by. It is still a town but hanging on by a thread. There were several other towns also in this area in days of yore - I knew about Sunrise, I didn't know about Fairbank(s). I didn't know what they mined either. It was interesting actually.
Hartville was not a company town but Sunrise was. There were many different mining endeavors - copper and iron were two of them. Copper petered out pretty quickly but iron was mined until 1980 when all mining was closed. For anyone who lives in Wyoming you know the towns are small, few and far between. Public transport is almost non-existent. The biggest hurdle for the mines was getting their product out of the mine, through a canyon, across the North Platte River into Cheyenne where the rail head was. It is a wonder anybody thought they could make money, but the towns grew. Hartville once had a population of 800, Sunrise had 1500. Hartville had the gamblers, the saloon keepers and the girls. The citizens of Hartville clamored for legimate businesses but even when the businesses did come in, they ran another business behind the store - the men frequented these businesses; their wives and families did not.
Sunrise is no more - even the buildings have been razed. Someone bought the town for $750 not long ago. I think it changed hands again but is privately owned, Hartville is gasping but still hanging on and I understand they have a wonderful steak house that is visited by people from as far away as Casper and Cheyenne - pricey though and you have to be 21 in order to eat in their establishment.
During all this information, a mine in Colorado was brought into the conversation. The Ludlow down in Southern Colorado was owned by the Rockefellers as were many of the mines in Sunrise/Hartville. Unions called for a strike in Colorado and the miners did. From there the speaker's information got a little fuzzy but suffice it to say that tragedy struck and 2 women and 10 children were suffocated in trenches dug by the miners to protect their family in case gunfire took place. The trenches were dug inside tents that the miners and families lived in while they were on strike. There was gunfire - but the gunfire set the tents on fire and some of the women and children suffocated when the burning tents fell across the trenches they were hiding in.
I haven't delved into the facts of this matter or who was actually at fault. Of course, Rockefeller was the obvious target of blame. It seems the tragedy stuck with him for a long time. To improve his image maybe or to be fair to workers, who knows what actually motivated him, he did improve his town in Sunrise. The workers homes were better built, he provided a YMCA for the town, a school, a church, a clinic for the workers and finally hired a doctor to come in for the community.
When I heard all of that I remembered our early days in Wright, Wyoming. Originally, Wright was a company town owned by ARCO coal. The company laid out the streets, built a beautiful recreational center, built a mall that housed the town management offices, a library, a bowling alley, a grocery, the post office, a hardware store, the drugstore, the dentist, the doctor, the hair salon, a bank, a restaurant, the ambulance service, a laundromat, then a newspaper office, a preschool, an auditorium which eventually became a restaurant and bar. We had to rent our homes from the company (mobile homes at that time) or we could build but only with the pre-approved builders. We were given a down payment to encourage us to buy a home in this company town. We were given free insurance - we paid no premiums, co-pays, or out-of-pocket expenses - we did have to pay for our birth control and eyeglasses and eye exams. We had free dental care, too. Anyone who worked at ARCO Coal mine was given one of the best wages in the regions and the benefits were eye-popping to Tom and myself. Tom had NO Benefits when he worked in the woods as a logger. Every now and then we were even given free clothes with the ARCO logo on the jackets/t-shirts/polo shirts etc. Now and then union organizers would attempt to organize the miners but were generally rebuffed.
I should mention we had new schools also - not built by the company but mineral royalties certainly contributed to fine buildings. ARCO didn't build our churches but set aside lots that were church specific. In many ways, this was big business at it's best. Producing a product needed by our nation, careful with the resources and putting the land they disturbed back when the coal was extracted. They took care of their workers and their families. While the mall was provided by the company, the businesses within the mall were private enterprises and yes, the prices were steeper than they were in Gillette, but they were provided. I think that is an important point. As I said, in Wyoming towns are small, few and far between. To have a company willing to provide the most basic essentials is big business at its best.
I hear folks clamoring for companies to do the same today. Quit looking out for the CEO's, quit looking out for the bottom line, take care of the folks that make the bottom line possible.
That is why, as I searching for more about Sunrise, Hartville and Ludlow, I came across some of what happened in Ludlow.
Rockefeller was called before a Congressional committee. The correspondence between Rockefeller and his management was available. The federal mediator made this statement in October 1913 almost 100 years ago. "Theoretically, perhaps, the case of having nothing to do in this world but work, ought to have made these men of many tongues, as happy and contented as the managers claim … To have a house assigned you to live in … to have a store furnished you by your employer where you are to buy of him such foodstuffs as he has, at a price he fixes … to have churches, schools … and public halls free for you to use for any purpose except to discuss politics, religion, trade-unionism or industrial conditions; in other words, to have everything handed down to you from the top; to be … prohibited from having any thought, voice or care in anything in life but work, and to be assisted in this by gunmen whose function it was, principally, to see that you did not talk labor conditions with another man who might accidentally know your language — this was the contented, happy, prosperous condition out of which this strike grew … That men have rebelled grows out of the fact that they are men."
I had to read this statement a number of times. It surprised me. The capitalists were being called on the carpet for providing the basics. In Sunrise's case the workers did not have to shop at company stores because Hartville was down the road but you might bump into the more unsavory types. It was stated that often the miners would come home with little after payday because they stopped off in Hartville first and spent their paychecks on booze, women and gambled the rest. In a company town some of that was more controlled. In a company town you didn't have to find transportation to a bigger town to buy your food and clothing - you didn't have choice that is true and I'm sure men being men (and I mean that in the inclusive sense) will always abuse every situation eventually. I am sure there were abuses in Ludlow - no town is perfect. Even Wright, that seemed so perfect, was not. While we weren't in essence "owned" by the company sometimes we felt "owned". Eventually Wright incorporated and the citizens had to grow up and govern themselves. In some areas that was painful.
I think what I have learned with my brush with history is that while times change - men do not. Power and money get to make the rules. It doesn't matter if it's big business power and money, big government power and money, union power and money - those in power will generally look out for their best interest. I find hope in the Federal mediator's last sentence. "That men have rebelled grows out of the fact that they are men." If there is too much that becomes wrong in our society, eventually men will rebel and the pendulum of time will swing the other direction. In the meantime, let's not shush the freedom of speech which was one fault of the Ludlow Massacre. Freedom of speech makes us think...I was taught thinking was a good thing.
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