Column by George Sibley
Labor hisory – August 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
THE CALLING UP of the National Guard this year, to support the war in Iraq, reminded me that 2003 is the centennial of another occasion in which the Guard was called up in Colorado: in the summer of 1903 Colorado’s troops were summoned for a war — against other Coloradans.
The occasion was a labor strike in the mining districts of Colorado, pitting emerging industrial organizations like the Western Federation of Miners and the United Mine Workers against the established power of industrial giants like the Rockefellers and Gug gen heims.