We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 January 2017
John D. Rockefeller, Jr.’s reactions to the Colorado Coal Wars resulted in the creation of the Employee Representation Plan, better known as the Rockefeller Plan. While labor historians identify the Rockefeller Plan as a dynamic shift in labor-management relations, this article focuses on the lesser studied portion of Rockefeller's reconstruction plan, his program of soft reform and its effect on the construction of masculinity in the industrial West. For Junior, restructuring the work environment and the relationship between management and labor left reconstruction incomplete, and thus vulnerable to future crises. Beginning in 1914, Rockefeller provided support for local and national social organizations to work throughout southern Colorado in order to impart middle-class values to his workers. He believed that reconstructing their social and cultural values—from language to sexual behavior—would remove any socialist influences, and create a better workforce. By applying this type of pressure, Junior helped create an environment that supported local anti-vice movements, and validated a growing belief that law enforcement and legislation could be used to curb vice. Following the deadly strike, Rockefeller's attempts to transform his public image and industrial workers not only have implications for labor history, but also social and gender histories, in particular the construction of masculinity in the American West.
As I understand you are a member of the Baptist Church. So am I. But I think you must be a very inconsistent one. You teach Sunday school in New York and let the devil run your business in Colorado. You and your managers are totally responsible for all the bloodshed that occurred in Colorado. If you had lived up to the law there would have been no strike in Colorado. It is human nature to suffer rather than resent and men do not go on strikes for the fun of it.1
1 Ogden to Rockefeller, Jr., July 8, 1914, folder 21, box 21, series BI, RG2, Rockefeller Family Papers, Rockefeller Archives Center (hereafter RAC).
2 House Resolution 387, enacted Feb. 2, 1914.
3 “Report of the Military Commission,” May 2, 1914, Final Report of the Commission on Industrial Relations (Chicago: Barnard and Miller Publishing, 1915), 7311–12Google Scholar.
4 Martelle, Scott, Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 146–58Google Scholar.
5 John D. Rockefeller Jr to William Mackenzie Lyon King, Apr. 20, 1914, John D. Rockefeller Jr. Papers (hereafter JDR2), box 68, RAC; correspondence between Junior and King, Apr. 20, 1914–Mar. 15, 1915, JDR2, RAC; United Mine Workers Journal, 29 (May 16, 1918), 6; Darrell Munsell, F., From Redstone to Ludlow: John Cleveland Osgood's Struggle against the United Mine Workers of America (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2009), 45–62 Google Scholar.
6 Andrews, Thomas G., Killing for Coal: America's Deadliest Labor War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Gitelman, Howard M., Legacy of the Ludlow Massacre: A Chapter in American Industrial Relations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Long, Priscilla, Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America's Bloody Coal Industry (New York: Paragon House Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Martelle, Blood Passion; McGovern, George S. and Guttridge, Leonard F., The Great Coalfield War (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1972)Google Scholar.
7 Montgomery, David, The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Rees, Jonathan H., Representation and Rebellion: The Rockefeller Plan at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1914–1942 (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2010)Google Scholar.
8 Tone, Andrea, The Business of Benevolence: Industrial Paternalism in Progressive America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Mandell, Nikki, The Corporation as Family: The Gendering of Corporate Welfare, 1890–1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Faue, Elizabeth V., Community of Suffering and Struggle: Women, Men and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis, 1915–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991)Google Scholar.
9 Historians of foreign relations attribute the term “soft power” to Joseph S. Nye of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He develops this concept in two books, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990)Google Scholar; and Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004)Google Scholar. Adam Roberts and Timothy Garton Ash's edited collection Civil Resistance & Power Politics: The Experience of Non-Violent Action from Gandhi to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009)Google Scholar develops the concept of ‘soft power’ outside of official state action, specifically in the context of global civil rights movements of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
10 Todd Laugen, R., The Gospel of Progressivism: Moral Reform and Labor in Colorado, 1900–1930 (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2010), 145–53Google Scholar.
11 Canaday, Margot, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Holloway, Pippa, Sexuality, Politics, and Social Control in Virginia, 1920–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006)Google Scholar.
12 Mandell, Nikki, The Corporation as Family: The Gendering of Corporate Welfare, 1890–1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)Google Scholar; see also Davis, Clark, Company Men: White-Collar Life and Corporate Cultures in Los Angeles, 1892–1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 42, 214Google Scholar; on corporate welfare and welfare capitalism see Brandes, Stuart, American Welfare Capitalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976)Google Scholar; and Rees, Managing the Mills: Labor Policy in the American Steel Industry during the Nonunion Era (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003)Google Scholar.
13 Dorsey, Bruce, Reforming Men and Women: Gender in the Antebellum City (New York: Cornell University Press, 2002), 40–52 Google Scholar; Gorn, Elliot J., The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 123–26Google Scholar; Hall, Donald E., Muscular Christianity: Embodying the Victorian Age (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 34–45 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kimmel, Michael S. and Messner, Michael A., Men's Lives (Boston: Pearson Allyn and Bacon, 2007), 78–89 Google Scholar; Meanings of Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America, Carnes, Mark C. and Griffen, Clyde, eds. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Putney, Clifford, Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880–1920 (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Rotundo, E. Anthony, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 180–92Google Scholar. For recent works that address specifically the construction of masculinity in the American West, see Boag, Peter, Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011)Google Scholar; and Moore, Jacqueline M., Cow Boys and Cattle Men: Class and Masculinity on the Texas Frontier, 1865–1900, (New York: New York University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.
14 Jane R. Ballinger, “The Muckraker and the PR Man: Upton Sinclair, Ivy Lee, and Press Coverage of the Ludlow Massacre” (unpublished paper, 1994, in author's possession), 5–8; Hiebert, Ray Eldon, Courtier to the Crowd: The Story of Ivy Lee and the Development of Public Relations (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1966), 72–84 Google Scholar; Hallahan, Kirk, Ivy Lee and the Rockefellers’ Response to the 1913–14 Colorado Coat Strike (Ft. Collins: Colorado State University Press, 2002), 124–27Google Scholar; Charles David Warren, “‘The Art of Getting Believed In’: The Paradox of Ivy Lee's Publicity and Principles in His Information Campaign following the Ludlow Massacre,” (M.A. thesis, University of Northern Colorado, 1991), 42–44; Fosdick, Raymond B., John D. Rockefeller, Jr.: A Portrait, (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1953), 235 Google Scholar.
15 Hiebert, Courtier to the Crowd, 104.
16 Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor, 348–50, 355; Rees, Representation and Rebellion, 29–52; Crocker, Ruth Hutchison, Social Work and Social Order: The Settlement Movement in Two Industrial Cities, 1889–1930 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 95–110 Google Scholar; Scamehorn, H. Fee, Mill & Mine: The CF&I in the Twentieth Century (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 120–40Google Scholar; Nelson, Daniel, “The Company Union Movement: 1900–1937: A Reexamination,” Business History Review 56:3 (Autumn 1982): 340–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Andrews, Killing for Coal, 123–39; Cohen, Lizabeth, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 10–15 Google Scholar.
17 June 4, 1915, “Rockefeller Visits the Mines,” Pueblo Chieftain, Western History Collection, Denver Public Library.
18 Fosdick, Rockefeller, Jr., 34–36.
19 Fosdick, Rockefeller, Jr., 83.
20 Curtis, Susan, A Consuming Faith: The Social Gospel and Modern American Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 13–20 Google Scholar; Fosdick, Rockefeller Jr., 23–30; Putney, Muscular Christianity, 111–18; Schenkel, Albert F., Rich Man and the Kingdom: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and the Protestant Establishment, (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995), 116 Google Scholar.
21 King to Rockefeller, Jr., Nov. 20, 1917, folder 127, box 15, series BI, RG2, Rockefeller Family Papers, RAC.
22 Winter, Making Men, Making Class, 25–27; Fosdick, Rockefeller, Jr, 344.
23 Wiebe, Robert H., The Search for Order, 1871–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), 23 Google Scholar.
24 Letter from James G. Cannon, Alfred E. Marling, and Frederick B. Schenck to Rockefeller, Jr., Dec. 21, 1906, RF, III2R, Welfare Interests-Youth, box 24, folder 241, 1, RAC.
25 Cannon to Rockefeller, Jr., 3, RAC; Winter, Making Men, Making Class, 43–47.
26 Corwin, R. W., “Advances in Medical Department Services,” Colorado Fuel and Iron Company Industrial Bulletin 4 (Jan. 15, 1919): 7 Google Scholar; Montgomery, Fall of the House of Labor, 237; Rees, Representation and Rebellion, 74–76; Tolman, Social Engineering, 55; Scamehorn, Mine & Mill, 85–88; Weed, Frank J., “The Sociological Department at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1901–1907: Scientific Paternalism and Industrial Control,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 41 (Summer 2005): 274–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 Weed, “The Sociological Department,” 274–78.
28 Rockefeller, Jr. to Foster, Mar. 1, 1925, folder 148, box 17, series BI, RG2, Rockefeller Family Papers, RAC.
29 Rockefeller, Jr. to Foster, Mar. 1, 1925, folder 148, box 17, series BI, RG2, Rockefeller Family Papers, RAC.
30 “Churches Active in Mining Towns,” Industrial Bulletin, Apr. 30, 1919, folder 147A, box 17, series BI, RG2, Rockefeller Family Papers, RAC.
31 Mandell, The Corporation as Family, 145.
32 Rockefeller, Jr. to Welborn, Mar. 24–Apr. 14, folder 171, box 16, RG2, Rockefeller Family Papers, RAC.
33 Rockefeller, Jr. to Welborn, Mar. 24–Apr. 14, folder 171, box 16, RG2, Rockefeller Family Papers, RAC.
34 Rockefeller, John D., “Opportunity in America,” Cosmopolitan 43 (1907), 369 Google Scholar.
35 Rockefeller, Jr. to Welborn, Mar. 25, 1915, folder 170, box 16, series BI, RG2, Rockefeller Family Papers, RAC.
36 Rockefeller, Jr. “Memo Regarding CF&I Bandstands,” folder 149, box 17, series BI, RG2, Rockefeller Family Papers, RAC.
37 Rockefeller, Jr. “Memo Regarding CF&I Bandstands,” folder 149, box 17, series BI, RG2, Rockefeller Family Papers, RAC.
38 Memo to Merrial C. Settle from Rockefeller, Jr., Apr. 19, 1922, 2–3, RAC; Putney, Muscular Christianity, 55.
39 Montgomery, Fall of the House of Labor, 237; Winter, Making Men, Making Class, 102–10.
40 Letter from W. S. Richardson to Starr J. Murphy, Mar. 30, 1914, Rockefeller Family, III2R, Welfare Interests-Youth, box 24, folder 246, 6, RAC.
41 Letter from W. S. Richardson to Starr J. Murphy, Apr. 3, 1917, RAC.
42 Letter from W. S. Richardson to Starr J. Murphy, Mar. 30, 1914, Rockefeller Family, III2R, Welfare Interests-Youth, box 24, folder 246, 5, RAC.
43 Winter, Making Men, Making Class, 17.
44 Railroad Men and Industrial Magazine and Association Magazine, Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University Library, University of Minnesota Twin Cities and the YMCA of the USA. [hereafter cited as KFA].
45 Report of C. C. Michener, Secretary, Industrial Department, 1916, KFA.
46 Letter from W. S. Richardson to Starr J. Murphy, RAC.
47 Letter from W. S. Richardson to Starr J. Murphy, RAC.
48 Letter from C. J. Hicks to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Dec. 20, 1916, RAC.
49 C. J. Hicks, “The Relation of the Young Men's Christian Association to Industrial Democracy,” 3–5, folder 156, box 18, series BI, RG2, Rockefeller Family Papers, RAC.
50 Hicks, Relation of the YMCA,” 12, folder 156, box 18, series BI, RG2, Rockefeller Family Papers, RAC.
51 Hicks, “Relation of the YMCA,” 15, RAC.
52 Albert W. Stone, “Since the Days of Ludlow,” Association Men, Feb. 4, 1924, 246, folder 117, box 14, series BI, RG2, Rockefeller Family Papers, RAC.
53 “Social Betterment in the Rocky Mountains,” Camp and Plant, vol. 1, Saturday, Mar. 1, 1902, number 12, Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (hereafter CF&I), Bessemer Historical Society. (hereafter cited as BHS).
54 “How the CF&I Company Aids in Beautifying Homes,” Industrial Bulletin, vol. 1, no. 6, 7, CF&I papers, BHS.
55 Camp and Plant, vol. 1, no. 8, 6, CF&I papers, BHS.
56 “Expert Aid for CF&I Clubs,” Industrial Bulletin, vol. 2, no.4, 10, CF&I papers, BHS.
57 “YMCA at Minnequa Steel Works,” Industrial Bulletin, vol. 2, no. 4, 4, CF&I papers, BHS.
58 “YMCA at Minnequa Steel Works.”
59 Solomon, Harry C., Syphilis for the Innocent: A Study of the Social Effects of Syphilis on the Family and the Community (Washington, D.C.: United States Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board, 1922), 199–201 Google Scholar; S. P. Thrasher, “Organized Righteousness vs. Organized Viciousness,” Superintendent of the Committee of Fifteen, Chicago, IL, May 1915, series BSH, RG 3.2, box 9, fld 198, RAC; “An Act Making appropriations for the support of the Army for the fiscal year ending June thirtieth, nineteen hundred and nineteen: Chapter 15,” United States Statutes at Large 40, I: 886–88; Illinois State Statutes, 1915; State of New York, no 762, Int. 731, In Assembly, Feb. 20, 1914, “An Act to Amend the Public Health Law, in Relation to the suppression of certain nuisances,” BSH, RG 3.2, box 9, fld 197, RAC; “Social Hygiene,” from Social Hygiene Study Results, November 1931, 2 series BSH, RG 3.2, box 9, fld 197, RAC; “Vice Conditions Visited by Dr. H. B. Woolston,” June 1917, BSH, RG 3.2, box 9, 194, RAC. “The ‘White Slave’ Report,” Women's Journal, July 23, 1910, 118–19; “New York White Slave Bill,” Vigilance 23 (August 1910).
60 “Vice Conditions Visited by Dr. H. B. Woolston” June 1917, BSH, RG 3.2, box 9, fld 194, RAC.
61 Murphy to R. W. Corwin, July 20, 1915, box, 14, series BI, RG2, RFP, RAC.
62 Corwin to Rockefeller, Dec. 5, 1918, box 14, series BI, RG2, RFP, RAC.
63 “The End of the Saloon at CF&I Properties,” Industrial Bulletin, vol.1, no.2, Dec. 22, 1915, 9, CF&I papers, BHS.
64 “The YMCA in CF&I Camps,” Industrial Bulletin, vol.1, no.5, 8, CF&I papers, BHS.
65 Stone, “Since the Days of Ludlow,” 283, RAC.
66 Roberts, 2–4, RAC.
67 Roberts, 5, RAC.
68 Arrest record for Darby and McCourt, Pueblo Police Dockets, 1915–1920, 1920–1925, Colorado State Archives.
69 The Pueblo Chieftain, Jan. 10, 1922, Western History and Rare Manuscripts Department, DPL.
70 Andrews, Killing for Coal, 62–87.
71 “Church Archives in Mining Towns,” Industrial Bulletin, Apr. 30, 1919, folder 147A, box 17, series BI, RG2, Rockefeller Family Papers, RAC; Rockefeller, Jr., “Memo Regarding CF&I Bandstands,” folder 149, box 17, series BI, RG2, Rockefeller Family Papers, RAC; C.J. Hicks, “The Relation of the Young Men's Christian Association to Industrial Democracy,” 4–7, folder 156, box 18, series BI, RG2, Rockefeller Family Papers, RAC; Dubofsky, We Shall Be All, 132–34; Andrews, Killing for Coal, 286–87.
72 Letter from Rockefeller, Jr. to Welborn, July 13, 1923, folder 127, box 15, series BI, RG2, Rockefeller Family Papers, RAC.
73 Rees, Representation and Rebellion, 3.
74 Rodgers, Daniel, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 290, 420, 460Google Scholar.
75 Donovan, Brian, White Slave Crusade, (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 112–24Google Scholar.
76 Montgomery, Fall of the House of Labor, 3.
