National Poetry Month Vintage Colorado Poetry Poems of Protest / Poems of the Week April 17, 2006

The labor dispute had gone on for months, and Colorado didn't see an end.  On April 20, 1914, Colorado state militia destroyed the Ludlow tent colony, refuge to striking coal miners and their families.  North of Trinidad on Interstate 25, the Ludlow Monument is a reminder of that day.

"The Women and Children of Ludlow," "Labor's Battle Hymn," and "Out, Damned Spot!" are reprinted from the Miner's Journal, which was published weekly in Denver by the Western Federation of Miners. The John D. Rockefeller family, of New York and Standard Oil, owned the coal mines.

The Women and Children of Ludlow by Frank J. Hayes (John D. Rockefeller, Jr., testifying before the congressional committee, investigating the Colorado strike, when asked if he approved of the use of machine-guns and paid gunmen to break the strike, even though scores of people were murdered, replied:  "My conscience acquits me.")               Your conscience acquits you---but how make reply               And speak now of justice, with eyes to the sky,               When there in the ashes their torn bodies lie---                           The women and children of Ludlow.               How look on their faces, their blood-matted hair,               Their charred, blackened bodies all swollen and bare,               And the babes on their bosoms thy fiends murdered there---                           The women and children of Ludlow.               Your conscience acquits you---but what of the dead!               O!  what of the murdered---they asked you for bread;               They begged you for freedom and you gave them lead---                          The women and children of Ludlow.               They sought but a chance for their husbands and sons,               A future more kindly for their little ones;               Your conscience acquits you---yet slaughtered with guns---                           The women and children of Ludlow.               Your conscience acquits you--go look where they died;               Go look where they perished, ay, pleaded and cried,               The mothers, the children, the babes crucified---                           The women and children of Ludlow.               And then tell the God you profess to adore;               O!  then tell the Master, your hands red with gore,               Your conscience acquits you---though slaughtered the poor---                            The women and children of Ludlow.                                             *******        "Out, Damned Spot!" by James Desmond (Manhattan, Nevada)                              Tell not me of a God on high                             Who watches o'er the sparrows' fall,                                                   Yet gave not heed to children's cry,                             Nor mothers' last despairing call.                       When hell-hounds of unholy greed,                             By Colorado clothed and fed,                       Dared in her name to do the deed                             That dyes her hist-ry bloody red.                      After machine-guns---then the fire---                             That hate might gorge on something new,                      Served to make the funeral-pyre                             A Rockefeller barbecue!                      Colorado, Colorado,                             If to yourself you be not true,                      Hug to your breast your shame and go,                             For civilization stinks of you!                                             *******             For the third poem "Labor's Battle Hymn," please click.