Respectable Rags Working-Class Poverty A PDF

Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:51–81
DOI 10.1007/s10761-010-0133-7
Respectable Rags: Working-Class Poverty

and the 1913–14 Southern Colorado Coal Strike
Sarah J. Chicone
Published online: 3 November 2010

# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
Abstract This article uses the events of the 1913–14 Southern Colorado Coal strike
and the cooperative work of the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project to
explore emergent historical narratives of working-class poverty and the role they
play in shaping contemporary ideologies and public policy. It uses clothing as an
entrée into discussions of the deserving and undeserving poor, and asks how
competing groups used dress in the context of the 1913–14 southern Colorado coal
strike to fashion subjects in particular ways. In so doing, it demonstrates the
ineffectiveness of either-or dichotomies of deserving and undeserving that still
influence current public policy.
Keywords Poverty . Working-class poor . Ludlow Massacre . Clothing
Introduction
In February 2000 the satirical newspaper, The Onion, ran a story with the following
headline, “As You Can See From My Name-Brand Clothing, I Am Not Poor.” It
capitalized on the idea that if people are “really” poor than one should be able to see
their poverty simply by looking at them. The author, fictitious Taco Bell employee,
Manny Lucas, is poor, in fact, Lucas is poor in spite of his “name-brand” clothing,
and the reader is led to conclude that his “name-brand” clothing is actually
contributing to his poverty. So, not only is Lucas poor, more importantly, he is an
undeserving poor.
The undeserving poor are considered unworthy and are believed to have reached
their present circumstances out of deliberate manipulation, neglect, or idleness.
Poverty in this case is a result of a personal failing. The deserving, on the other hand,
are the segment of the poor who are lucky enough to be deemed worthy of assistance
S. J. Chicone (*)
Museum Studies, Johns Hopkins University, 1717 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Suite 104,
Washington, DC 20036, USA
e-mail: schicon1@jhu.edu
52 Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:51–81
by those in a position to administer relief, for example, those whose poverty is a

temporary condition or a result of circumstances well beyond their control.
The existence of the working poor, like Manny Lucas, complicates the
contemporary dichotomy between deserving and undeserving. Popular belief holds
that the undeserving poor are idle and lazy, and that they would rather receive
government handouts than work. If someone is poor despite working a full time job,
than we look for another way to make him or her undeserving. Lucas, in this case, is
made undeserving through irresponsible spending. In fact, Lucas (2000) uses this
mainstream ideology to help construct a non-poor identity. He explains:
See these Karl Kani jeans? Eighty-eight dollars. Would I spend that kind of
money on a pair of jeans if I were poor? Of course not … If my total weekly
take-home pay were only $175, why in the world would I spend practically
that much on a Nautica sweater and pair of Timberlands? That would mean I’d
have spent 40 h slinging Chalupas just for that one shopping trip to the mall.
That’d just be plain stupid. So, obviously, I must be rolling in dough. And I
am. You can tell by my special non-poor-people clothing.
The reader judges Lucas on two levels—first for using name brand clothing to
mask his poverty to the casual observer, and second for wasting his money in doing
so. The reader is not outraged by Lucas’s $175 in weekly take home pay, but by the
fact that he spends it on clothing he cannot afford.
All well and good but what do Lucas and his expensive Timberlands have to do
with the 1913–14 southern Colorado Coal strike, and still yet, what do they have to
do with archaeology? The article’s successful satire preys upon specific ideas about
the poor, the same themes mobilized by competing interest groups in 1913–14 on the
coalfields of Southern Colorado. Lucas’s story is not anachronistic but a modern
manifestation of nearly a century of middle class views about the very public
appearance of poverty and its relationship to materiality. As Barbara Voss (2008,
p. 418) suggests in her recent work on ethnogenesis in Spanish-colonial San
Francisco, dress is a “dangerous yet alluring medium of social mobility.”
By rethinking the way we approach poverty archaeologically we can contribute to
a larger contemporary discourse. Dean Saitta (2007, p. 2) maintains that,
“archaeological work is neither philosophically innocent nor socially inconsequen-
tial. It has impacts upon and implications for the present and must respond to a
growing number of external constituencies. The question is not whether archeology
is political, but how it is so” (emphasis in original). Archaeologists need to view
poverty as a category of analysis and in so doing consider the impact this work has
on today’s working poor.
This paper uses the events of the 1913–14 Southern Colorado Coal strike and the
cooperative work of the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project (CCWAP; a
collaborative effort between faculty and students from Binghamton University, Fort
Lewis College, and the University of Denver). It explores emergent historical
narratives of working-class poverty and the role they play in shaping contemporary
ideologies and public policy. It asks how competing groups used clothing as a visible
way to distinguish the deserving and undeserving poor, and in so doing,
demonstrates the ineffectiveness of either-or dichotomies that still influence current
public policy.
Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:51–81 53
Poverty as Process: Rethinking our Approach
Before we approach poverty analytically, there needs to be some general agreement

regarding its meaning. Traditionally, Western frameworks have defined poverty in
terms of its measurements, whether absolute or relative (Iceland 2003, p. 5). This
quantification objectifies the social relationships involved in poverty’s production.
According to anthropologist Maia Green (2006, p. 1124), “the quantification of
poverty permits the homogenization of poverty across time and space.” While they,
both absolute and relative approaches, rely on quantification, the differences
between them inform on historic conversations of deserving and undeserving and
the locus of blame and responsibility, the same themes that permeate Lucas’s article.
Public policy makers use absolute measures to establish economically quantifi-
able tools, like the poverty line, these assume a constant threshold of basic needs.
Implicit in this description is the idea that these measures are based on a reality that
exists outside of cultural constructions, a measurement of economically defined
materiality directly translating into a definition of poverty. Hidden within the
strictures of economic quantification, however, this definition misses the cultural
influence of poverty’s production, particularly given that the establishment of
quantifiable thresholds is itself a social and for that matter historical process. Gordon
Fisher (1997b, p. 2) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services insists
that
the drawing of the poverty line [is] a social process—not merely a technical
economic exercise. The outcome of this social process can be strongly affected
by conscious or unconscious assumptions that are made about poverty and the
poor; in particular, the strong stigma that many Americans attach to poor
people can become a much more important consideration in this social process
than the second decimal digit of a particular equivalence scale.
It is worth noting that there was no official definition of poverty in the United
States until the 1960s (Katz and Stern 2001, p. 4). Poverty thresholds developed in
1963 by Mollie Orshansky of the Social Security Administration (SSA) provided the
foundation for the government’s official poverty line drawn for the first time in 1969
(Fisher 1997a). Discrete poverty indicators were necessary for President Lyndon B.
Johnson’s war on poverty. In order to declare war, poverty as a category needed clear
definitions and relative victory conditions. Success in the war on poverty was
measurable by how many people public policy efforts raised above the predefined
line.
Relative measures, unlike absolute ones, rely on the comparative disadvantage of
the poor in relation to other members in a particular community. One is poor as far as
someone else is not as disadvantaged. Relative measures are not based on discrete
quantitative measurements like absolute definitions, but instead are based on a
measurement of comparative disadvantage. It is true, as Iceland (2003, p. 23)
suggests, that as the “standards of living change so do people’s perceptions of
poverty.” To put it in simpler terms, the experience of poverty in the United States
today manifests itself differently from the experience of poverty in 1913–14.
However, relative measures run the risk of trivializing the material consequences of
poverty’s production. Within a relative context the lower class are poor when
compared to the working class, who are poor when compared to the middle class,
who are poor when compared to the upper middle class, who are poor when
compared to the rich. Further, relative measures limit cross-cultural comparisons of
poverty because they can mask the material and social consequences experienced by
marginalized groups. For example, those classified as poor in the United States
would not be considered so when compared to the poor of sub-Saharan Africa. This
runs the risk of trivializing the poverty experienced by marginalized people in
economically advantaged countries.
What results from comparisons between both absolute and relative measurements
is poverty’s virtual ambiguity: “does poverty refer to subsistence standard: amount
of money required to survive, or economic marginalization: deprivation relative to
social norms and standards?” (Iceland 2003, p. 36). As such, neither approach
adequately addresses the question, what is poverty? Both approaches define poverty
by the measurement of its materiality whether absolute or relative. Moreover, both
approaches conceptualize poverty as a thing, discrete and quantifiable. Their
shortcomings demand a more comprehensive method of analysis. Poverty is not a
“thing,” and therefore we should not treat it as a discrete and quantifiable category.
In fact, poverty does not exist as a fixed reality distinguishable from the multiple
social relations involved in its production. As Green (2006, pp. 1109, 1124), further
suggests, “anthropological perspectives on poverty prioritize poverty not as an
absolute measurable condition but as a qualitative social relation… not a ‘thing’ to
be attacked, but the outcome of specific social relations that require investigation and
transformation.” Poverty is a process. By framing it in terms of process, we
emphasize according to Rescher (2002) “modes of change rather than fixed
stabilities.” Further, as process, poverty is a series of dialectically related influences,
actions, and outcomes, defined by the changing relationship between associated
ideologies and materiality. Poverty is not limited to a theoretical project nor is it
defined by a specific materiality, but instead is socially, economically, and
historically contingent.
Centering this general discussion of poverty in historical archaeology led me to
characterize its applications in one of two ways—I refer to these approaches as
object-centered and representational. Because archaeologists primarily deal with
materiality, its dialectical relationship with ideologies is crucial.
Socioeconomic Indicators and an Object-Centered Approach
Mainstream ideologies have definite ideas about what “poor” people should and
should not have, and what they should and should not be doing with the limited
resources at their disposal. However, to reduce poverty to the quantification of its
physical manifestations (a pile of objects) neglects its social and political
implications as a project of difference.
When “socioeconomic status” first appeared in the archaeological literature in the
early 1970s, archaeologists based it on the “assumption that social status and
economic status are somehow equivalent” (Cook et al. 1996, p. 51). In keeping with
the processual archaeology of the 1980s, historical archaeologists looked for a way
to quantify the alleged relationship. What resulted was a series of studies linking
social status with archaeologically defined economic indicators. Archaeologists set

out to calculate socioeconomic status by relying on traditionally economic
definitions of poverty to quantify its materiality.
This was followed by the popularity of consumer choice models that focused
primarily on socioeconomic status indicators, or index artifacts. In other words, if
you uncovered artifact A at a particular site it was indicative of social status A and
so on. This focus on specific artifacts neglected the relational aspects of social
positioning. We do not best understand poverty in absolute terms, as a predefined
rung on a discrete ladder of social or economic hierarchy (for a similar discussion of
class see Wurst 2006, p. 191). Investigations into socioeconomic status, however,
have attempted to make these connections. They discuss status in terms of the
increasing and decreasing quality and quantity of goods, with a direct correlation to
structural social stratification.
An object-centered approach, with its express relationship between the relative
quantity and quality of goods as embodied in an economic scaling of historic
artifacts and its eventual expansion within consumer choice models, is reductionist.
It is based on structural attributes of class that serve as indications of hierarchical
social status. This is in part due to its reliance on measurement-based definitions. A
big pile of expensive goods or “status wares” translates into increased social status or
stratification and a small pile designates the opposite, lower social status. However, a
large pile of objects versus a small pile of objects does not directly translate into
differential social status. Less is not equivalent to poverty, and more is not always
indicative of wealth.
Representational: An Ideological Approach to Poverty
A representational approach reconciles many of the inadequacies raised by the

failures of an object-centered approach. It moves socioeconomic status indicators
beyond the forced equation of artifacts with economic status by addressing the
ideological construction of poverty. Within this approach, archaeologists compare
artifacts against popular representations of poverty. While this is certainly a step in
the right direction, it falls short in its application. Middle-class imaginations of the
slum and ghetto are misconstrued as realities embodied in a world created in part by
popular myth. Instead of looking into why certain assumptions were made about
particular people and investigating the impact of these popular characterizations, this
approach begins with the ideologies as already constructed. From established
characterizations, it explores how specific conditions either fit or did not fit within the
dominant middle-class ideology. Instead of questioning middle-class constructions,
these investigations set out to prove poverty existed, just not in my neighborhood.
Take for example the work done at New York’s notorious Five Points (Yamin
1998, 2000, 2001a). This has advanced the archaeological analysis of poverty
beyond an object-centered approach as previously described. The archaeologically
uncovered “reality” of poverty speaks directly to the socioeconomic and ideological
processes that contributed to the cultural construction of the slum (Yamin 2000b,
p. 7). The project set out to reconcile the “disparity between the artifacts that were
recovered and the constructed reputation of the neighborhood” (Yamin 2000,
p. 421). However, by upholding the middle-class ideological construction of the

neighborhood as real and framing poverty as a thing, the authors stop short of
reconciling the working-class experiences that developed out of the materiality of
their poverty.
What emerges from Five Points is a picture of a resilient working class who,
while they lived in what has historically been considered one of the worst slums in
the history of the United States, really did not have it all that bad. After all, they
possessed the “accouterments of respectability” (Yamin 2000, p. 502). Sure, they
were “poor,” but according to the middle-class ideology of what constituted poverty
they were not supposed to have all this stuff. By highlighting their “agency” and
resistance to the middle-class construction of poverty (an ideology the authors
misconstrue as the object of poverty), the authors obstruct the very materiality of the
inhabitants’ working-class poverty.
In this context, archaeologists view poverty not as process but as a definable
“thing” based on a reality implicit in the imagined “slum.” This reality exists apart
from the relations that constructed it. Consequently, historical archaeologists who
study urban poverty have neglected its genuine effects on the working poor. Yamin
and her colleagues recognize the project of the imagined slum as outlined by Alan
Mayne (1993, p. 129), its evolution into a “universalizing concept” that “condensed
complex spatial forms and social conditions into readily comprehensible images of
deprivation and social pathology.” But their contention that if the word “slum only
referred to the physical conditions of poor urban neighborhoods, Five Points would
certainly qualify” (Yamin 2000, p. 505) suggests that there is an implicit reality in
the descriptive project that falls outside of the social relations of the neighborhood.
The fact remains that despite constructed labels, poverty distinctly shaped the
conditions experienced by people in these areas.
Alan Mayne and Tim Murray’s (2001) edited volume The Archaeology of Urban
Landscape: Explorations in Slumland sets out, in their words, to question the
“totalizing notion of the slum.” As defined by the authors, slums are “constructions
of the imagination: a stereotype that was fashioned in the early nineteenth century by
bourgeois entertainers and social reformers, and that obscured and distorted the
varied spatial forms and social conditions to which it was applied” (Mayne and
Murray 2001, p. 1). But, by dismissing the stereotype of the slum wholesale and
focusing on an “alternative narrative” (Yamin 2001b, p. 154) and the “respectable
side of life in a working-class, immigrant neighborhood” (Yamin 2001b, p. 167) the
authors in Murray and Mayne’s volume trade one middle-class project for another,
emphasizing instead working-class inclinations to conform to middle-class notions
of respectability. If the project of the imagined slum is problematic, then so too is the
suggestion by Yamin (2001b, p. 166) that working-class women achieved
respectability through active participation in consumer culture.
The following examples (Karskens 2001; Mayne and Murray 2001) challenge the
standardization of a slum identity. I agree that within each of the specific cases, the
authors reject the totalizing notion of the slum, but the slum as so defined still
comprises their yardstick. They misconstrue the slum as a constructed reality of
poverty out there for comparison. Similarly, by dismissing the slum myth, the
authors have lost sight of the material consequences of poverty that characterized
working-class dependence, and have inadvertently dismissed the social effect of the
imagined slum on contemporary populations. Poverty is not reducible to a single

variable; instead, its production is located in part with the social relations that
constitute it, relations that were built on, among other things, an imagined slum.
Grace Karskens (2001, p. 77) suggests, “large proportions of the assemblages”
from the Rocks Slum in Sydney, Australia, have “to do with respectability, self-
improvement and control and so on, we can see the strands of more traditional
pastimes also survived” (emphasis added). She goes on to define these pastimes as
drinking and gambling, so what then makes these more traditional? Karskens seems
to base this statement on a middle-class construction of a homogenized slum, a
construction the author has purported to dismiss. From her statement, we can see the
impact historical characterizations of the working poor have on contemporary
analysis. Beyond this, Karsken’s suggestion also raises the question of respectability.
In whose terms is the author basing her assumptions? Mayne and Murray’s (2001)
work on “Little Lon” in Melbourne, Australia, is similar to the critique of the slum
myth launched by Karskens, they submit that “Little Lon” “was poor and crowded,
but it was not a homogenous place of outcasts” (Mayne and Murray 2001, p. 102).
I suggest that historical archaeologists must rethink their approach to poverty as a
project with diverse ideologies and imaginations based on the materiality of the poor
together with other invested groups. If we consider the construction of the “slum” as
a consequence of class relations, we should ask how this category came about, and
more importantly how did it affect materiality and result in action?
Archaeology must move beyond a direct comparison of material culture against
historically established ideologies and beyond the demonstration of socioeconomic
indicators based on a structural view of class. Archaeological sources inform on
material conditions. By its nature, archaeology looks at the materiality of the poor,
both physical objects and the relationships between them (Edwards and Hart 2004,
p. 3), but beyond confirming its attributes, which is not a remarkable undertaking; it
connects it to associated ideologies. Archaeological inquiry must make room for
diverse interests without dehumanizing the poor or denying their existence. Instead
of comparing materiality against itself as in an object-centered approach or against a
dominant ideology of poverty as in a representational approach, we should seek to
account for the influence of materiality on ideology and ideology on materiality.
Archaeologically recovered artifacts are not simply characteristic of poverty. I do not
suggest we use archaeology to “discover” the working poor nor simply to describe them.
Moreover, I do not suggest that just because certain people used a particular item, and
they were poor, then that item is characteristic of their poverty. Instead, the revealing
inquiry rests in the way competing interest groups used materiality together with
disparate ideological constructions of poverty in conflicting ways, all the while drawing
on some of the same recycled ideas and exhausted rhetoric we still see today.
In the case of the 1913–14 southern Colorado coalfield strike, reconfigured
relationships between labor and capital following the conflict altered popular
constructions of working-class poverty without effecting lasting change. I use
clothing as an example to illustrate the multiplicity of social relations and
relationships between ideologies and materiality in poverty’s production.
I have deliberately chosen to describe the assemblage defined in this case as
“clothing” and not for example “dress,” which is often the preferred taxonomy in
anthropological discourse. Roach-Higgins and Eicher (1995, p. 7) define “dress” as
“an assemblage of modifications of the body and/or supplements to the body.” This
is a particularly inclusive definition incorporating direct modifications to the
physical body beyond external supplements. External supplements are described as
garments, jewelry, and similar accessories. Bodily modifications include, but are not
limited, to such things as pierced ears, scented breath, and colored skin. The
category of dress defined in this manner is particularly general. It is difficult to
illustrate historically explicit body modifications within the confines of this project. I
use the category of “clothing” instead to maintain consistency throughout the
historical evidence used in my research; photographs, documents, oral histories and
archaeologically recovered artifacts.
According to Roach-Higgins and Eicher (1995), clothing, as opposed to dress, is
more frequently used to emphasize enclosures that cover the body (garments). This
by and large does not include body modifications. Artifact analysis emphasizes
enclosures and does not include such items as cold cream jars and perfume bottles,
which relate to the later category of body modification. It does, however, include
such supplements as jewelry, similar accessories, and sewing implements. I have
included items that also speak to issues of clothing practices for the community,
because I see them as fundamentally linked to the materiality of working-class
poverty, as are buttons and shoes.
Respectable Rags: Poverty in the Coalfields
In September 1913, plagued by poor working conditions, substandard pay, and

excessive company control, miners all across southern Colorado answered the
United Mine Workers’ (UMW) call to strike. Families streamed down from the
canyons with the little they owned. By the end of the month over 80% of the work
force had walked out (McGovern and Guttridge 1996, p. 108; McGuire and Reckner
2002, p. 50). They endured the long cold winter displaced in one of the temporary
tent colonies provided by the union. In April 1914, the strike erupted in deadly
violence. Miners and their families residing in the largest tent colony at Ludlow
came under the attack of coal company employees and Baldwin-Felts Company
private detectives under the command of the Colorado National Guard. The tents
were riddled with bullets, and the entire encampment went up in flames. Once the
smoke had cleared, only the skeletons of the burned-out tents marked the scarred
landscape. Twenty-five people lay dead, including two women and 11 children who
were trapped beneath a smoldering tent (Saitta 2007, p. 45). The innocent lives lost
at Ludlow thrust the brutalities of labor conflict onto a national stage.
Archaeological investigations, by the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology
Project included fieldwork, at both the site of the former United Mine Workers
tent colony at Ludlow that contained over 100 tents, and housed nearly 1,200
strikers, their wives, and children (Long 1991, p. 274; McGuire and Reckner 2002,
p. 50); and the Colorado Fuel & Iron company (or CF&I) town of Berwind. The
unique depositional context of Ludlow provided access to artifacts beyond those
typically found in traditional archaeological contexts. The fire that destroyed the
colony forced miners and their families to abandon nearly all their worldly
possession to the encompassing blaze.
By analyzing artifacts recovered from pre- and post-strike occupational contexts

of Berwind, and the Ludlow encampment, we can begin to see the dialectical
relationship between the ideology of working class poverty and its materiality. The
strike resulted in a reconfigured relationship between management and labor
embodied in John D. Rockefeller’s (majority shareholder of CF&I) Industrial
Representation Plan, and the removal of particular expressions of poverty’s
materiality. The cosmetic improvements following the strike, and the choreographed
photographs of shiny happy miners and their families went a long way in appeasing
wide-spread outrage for the innocent lives lost in the conflict, but it did little to alter
the production of poverty and the lives of southern Colorado coal miners. Instead,
they continued to negotiate their poverty in many of the same ways after the strike,
as they did before they left their homes and walked down the canyon from Berwind
to the temporary tent colony at Ludlow.
Blue Collar and the Miners’ Uniform
Blue-collar is an adjective derived from the physical description of working-class

dress, used to represent a particular class of laborers, a group othered not only
socially but also visibly by their clothing. According to the anthropologist Karen
Hansen (2004, p. 369), clothing has a dual quality, “because it both touches the body
and faces outward towards others.” A diversity of constituencies mobilized clothing
in a variety of ways, before, during, and after the strike, with the internal production
of working-class identity, and union solidarity, and the outward expression of
worthiness, and the physical manifestation of poverty’s materiality. How the poor
project themselves visually and how different groups, including the poor themselves,
interpret and reinterpret this, contributes to differing ideological constructions of
poverty. Malcolm Barnard (1996, p. 101) suggests, “Fashion and clothing… are
ways in which class positions are constituted, signaled and reproduced.”
Taken a step further, Bernard (1996, p. 106) claims that particular clothing or
uniforms “are not to be understood as reflections, or epiphenomenon, of already
existing class relations but as the ways in which those class relations are
constituted.” This is applicable to the rise of cotton work clothes. Throughout the
1890s, cotton work clothes began to replace the familiar wool trousers of the
nineteenth century (Psota 2002, p. 112). This clothing was cheaper and more
durable. Workers could purchase the ready-made clothing from mail order catalogs
and company stores. Sunshine Psota (2002, pp. 112–113) suggests that the “rise of
this new working-clothing phenomenon created a solidarity among working men.”
They now had their own distinct, more utilitarian “uniform,” variations of which
were worn by both native born and immigrant workers, visibly uniting work crews.
A common dress, visible to the larger public, helped foster a sense of class solidarity.
This was particularly salient given that both the company and various unions
exploited the ethnic diversity in the coalfields.
The unique environmental conditions associated with coal mining worked well
with the “new” working-class dress. Miners wore “work-clothes,” characterized by
overalls, miner’s helmets, and heavy boots or shoes. The miners in Fig. 1 (ca. 1900–
10) are posing in typical clothing. This clothing was available to southern Colorado
Fig. 1 Coal miners in typical

miners’ uniform, boots, jackets,
and hats with miner's lights.
The photograph taken near
Trinidad, Colorado (ca. 1900–
1910) is part of the Aultman
collection (Copyright, Colorado
Historical Society, (Aultman
Collection, Scan # 20010672))
coal miners at least as early as 1902, as suggested by advertisements in CF&I’s

weekly employee periodical Camp and Plant (1901–04) (Fig. 2.) Miners could
purchase Underhill brand clothing at “all the Stores of the Colorado Supply Co.”
(Camp and Plant, April 26, 1902: back cover, May 31, 1902: back cover).
John D. Rockefeller, majority shareholder of CF&I, visited the embattled region
in 1915 in a wide-scale public relations campaign following the brutality of the
strike. During his visit he purchased work clothes from the company store for $2,
equivalent to what the company charged per room, per month, for the standard
home. Rockefeller also toured the mines and posed for some well-choreographed
photographs with his employees. In Fig. 3, Rockefeller stands next to McKenzie
King (future president of Canada and craftsman of Rockefeller’s Industrial
Representation plan); both men wore typical miners’ work clothes. By donning the
appropriate apparel, Rockefeller attempted to marshal working-class clothing to the
company’s benefit. In an act of discernible solidarity with his workers, Rockefeller
assumed their socially designated clothing. He attempted to represent himself as one
Fig. 2 Underhill Brand

clothing advertised in the
Colorado Fuel and Iron
Company employee periodical
Camp and Plant (left: Camp
and Plant 4/26/1902:back
cover; right: Camp and Plant 5/
31/1902, back cover)
Fig. 3 John D. Rockefeller

(right) and McKenzie King
(middle) wear traditional miners’
clothing during their 1915 visit
to southern Colorado. Miner
Archie Dennison stands on the
far left, projecting a much
different image than the two
businessmen, whose crisp new
miners’ clothes still had creases
visible in the pant legs (Courtesy
of the Rockefeller Archive
Center)
of them, exploiting the visage of their shared appearance to emphasize CF&I’s new
relationship with labor; they were all in it together, partners in industry. While
Rockefeller used clothing to signal a message of commonality, clothing was more
often mobilized as a way to signal otherness. What people did and did not wear
featured heavily in discussions of the deserving and undeserving poor.
Labor Conflict and Working-Class Dress: The Red Bandana
The working class in the context of the 1913–14 southern Colorado coal miners’
strike also used clothing to create and publicly maintain class solidarity. Striking
miners and other union sympathizers wore red bandanas around their necks to signal
allegiance to the union and the “cause.” Figure 4 shows four different union
sympathizers wearing red in support of the 1913–14 strike.
The practice of wearing red around the neck in support of the strike and the union
contributed to the etymology of the term “redneck.” According to Patrick Huber
(2006, pp. 196–197) “the best explanation of redneck to mean ‘union man’ is that
the word refers to the red handkerchiefs that striking union coal miners in both
southern West Virginia and southern Colorado often wore around their necks or arms
as a part of their informal uniform.” William Snyder, a coal miner and resident of the
Ludlow tent colony, lost his son Frank during the massacre when a militia bullet tore
through his family’s tent and struck his son in the head, shattering his skull and
killing him. Snyder’s testimony to the Commission on Industrial Relations following
the strike highlights the militia’s use of red neck as a class slur during the conflict.
Snyder claimed that National Guardsmen threatened him as he left his tent with the
lifeless body of his 11-year-old boy: “You red-neck son of a bitch; I have a notion to
Fig. 4 Photographs of striking miners and union sympathizers wearing red bandanas in support of the
1913–14 UMW southern Colorado coal miners’ strike. (Denver Public Library, Western History
Collection, from left to right, DPL X-60367; DPL X-60403; DPL X-60406)
kill you right now” (Commission on Industrial Relations 1916, p. 7372). He testified
further that Linderfelt, then acting commander of the militia, accosted him “What
God- damn red-neck have we got now… It is a damn pity that all of you damned
red-neck bitches were not killed” (Commission on Industrial Relations 1916, p. 7372).
Huber also suggests “that redneck, as a term of contempt for organized coal miners…
derided both their union membership and their poor whiteness….Thus, in the mouths
of coal operators, the epithet could have been doubly expressive of contempt” (Huber
2006, p. 197). The company saw the donning of red bandanas as an offensive symbol
of poverty while the striking miners saw it as a laudatory symbol of strength and class
solidarity, what was visible to others held varied meanings and signaled complex
negotiations of social relations and class identity.
Photographs: Visual Representations of Working-Class Clothing
Photographs of miners and their clothing provide information about both the
ideologies and materiality of working-class poverty. I analyzed them for content and
production. I looked at what was represented in each image, and in what context it
was produced and curated. Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart (2004, p. 2) suggest
that, “it is not merely the image qua image that is the site of meaning, but that its
material and presentational forms and the uses to which they are put are central to
the function of a photograph as a socially salient object.”
My use of historic photographs draws heavily on Eric Margolis’s (1984, 1985,
1988, 1994, 1998, 1999a, 1999b) broad analysis of southern Colorado coal mining
images Margolis has analyzed more than 10,000 photographs from personal
scrapbooks, public archives, small town libraries and museums, and private and
corporate collections (Margolis 1994, p. 6). His work primarily focuses on a few
influential collections including, the Mitchell Collection, the Aultman Collection,
photographs commissioned and produced by CF&I, and those related to the strike
shot by Lewis R. Dold. I consider a few representative samples from these varied
contexts.
According to Margolis (1994, p. 9), the pioneer rancher Arthur Roy Mitchell
collected and preserved several hundred prints. Mitchell’s collection, when taken as
a whole, emphasizes the miners’ otherness. Images of miners and their families
positioned in front of vernacular/folk housing dominate the assembly. These images
of “large working class populations contradicted the dominant ideology of the
frontier” (Margolis 1994, p. 11), an ideology posited and reinforced by Frederick
Turner’s frontier thesis (Turner 1920). Turner’s frontier was dominated by Anglo-
cowboys, farmers, and ranchers all embodying American individualism. The
intention of Mitchell in assembling his collection was not to effect reform but to
highlight, according to Margolis (1994, p. 11), “the foreign element on the frontier,”
to show miners “in their true light—ignorant immigrants standing in front of shacks
and hovels” (Margolis 1988, p. 7).
Captions scrawled onto the back of photographs or scribbled into negatives
provide still yet another layer of meaning. Margolis (1988, p. 10) writes, “captions…
simultaneously force meanings on the picture that are neither explicitly nor
implicitly part of the image. The words overdetermine and legislate meaning.” Take
for example the caption that accompanied Fig. 5 from the Mitchell Collection, “The
flower of Trinidad’s white trash.” The caption explicitly categorizes, stigmatizes, and
devalues the woman in the image as poor white trash, a foreign and polluting
element to a glorified frontier.
The same analysis can extend to a comparison of miners’ children. The children
in Fig. 6 are visibly dirty. The girl on the far right is not wearing shoes, and the
young girl in the middle of the back row has holes in both knees of her stockings.
The image, from the Mitchell collection, shows clothing tattered and heavily worn.
The intent of image’s curation was not to illicit sympathies for a deserving poor, but
instead to emphasize their otherness and unworthiness. This type of project was in
contrast to the social photography of reformers like Jocob Riis (1849–1914) and
Lewis Hine (1874–1940), who used the power of photography to promote social
change. The clothing in the Mitchell image stands in contrast to other images curated
and produced by miners and the union. The girl in Fig. 7 looks distinctly different
Fig. 5 Photograph from the

A.R. Mitchell Collection. The
caption on the back reads “The
flower of Trinidad’s white
trash” (Copyright, Colorado
Historical Society, (Trinidad
Collection, Scan # F-35,924))
Fig. 6 Photograph of coal camp

children from the Mitchell
collection ca. 1890–1910
(Copyright, Colorado Historical
Society, Mining-Miners-
Families, Scan # 20004869)
with not only clean light-colored clothing but also a beaded necklace and bows in
her hair. This figure was a UMW photograph and fits within their campaign to
present strikers and their families as deserving poor. The original of Fig. 8, archived
at the Denver Public Library Western History and Genealogy Collection, had a
postcard stamp on the back. Miners purchased images like these, and presumably
were how the miners wanted to see themselves. The girl’s dress is neatly pressed and
she sits posed with a doll in front of a window with lace curtains, upon closer
inspection, however, the viewer can see that her stockings and shoes are heavily
worn.
Fig. 7 Union photograph of a

striking miner’s daughter during
the 1913–14 southern
Colorado coal strike (Denver
Public Library, Western
History Collection,
DPLX-60387)
Fig. 8 The daughter of a

striking UMW miner (ca.1913–
14) photographed in the town of
Ludlow, Colorado (Denver
Public Library, Western History
Collection, DPL X-60384)
The three images taken collectively demonstrate diverse ideologies of working-

class poverty while simultaneously illustrating its materiality. According to Edwards
and Hart (2004, p. 15), framing the photograph as material object “allows one to
look at and use images as socially salient objects, as active and reciprocal rather than
simply implications of authority, control and passive consumption on the one hand,
or of aesthetic discourse and the supremacy of individual vision on the other.”
Bourgeois western pioneers like Mitchell, sought to emphasize the miners’ otherness
and focused on images that conformed to popular imaginings of America’s poor,
undeserving, dirty, unkempt. The UMW on the other hand was intent on illustrating
the callousness of southern Colorado’s coal companies. Also embedded within this
agenda was their push to garner national support for the struggling miners by
appealing to middle class sensibilities. The miners were framed in this context as
poor, but deserving, neat, orderly and tidy. Margaret Wood (2002, p. 234) suggests
“The tension between these… types of images shows how the union was treading a
fine line between emphasizing victimization and emphasizing the fact that these
were modern American workers who were deserving of an American standard of
living.” The reality of working-class poverty was complicated and the variety of its
representations calls attention to this fact.
During the thick of the conflict, January 21, 1914, a group of women (strikers and
their supporters) marched in Trinidad, Colorado to protest the imprisonment of
Mother Jones, a prominent champion of the working class. The demonstration
conjured up images of the suffrage movement (Fig. 9); the women marched side-by-
side in an orderly line and dressed in their Sunday best (Wood 2002, pp. 249–250).
They projected an image of a deserving working class that the middle class could
Fig. 9 Women protesting

the imprisonment of union
activist Mother Jones and in
support of the southern
Colorado coal strike. Marching
in Trinidad, Colorado dressed in
their Sunday best, carrying
signs, and wearing sashes they
evoke images of the suffragist
movement (Denver Public
Library, Western History
Collection, DPL-X-60486)
feel comfortable supporting. The National Guard later charged the protestors on
horseback. The union was able to use images as postcards (Fig. 10). They offered
convincing depictions of deserving victims, featuring not only defenseless, but
respectable looking, defenseless women chased by men on horseback with sabers
drawn. By referencing an exchange of Trinidad’s more ‘respectable’ women
following the strike and captured by Max Eastman in the Masses (1914) Margaret
Wood (2002, p. 253) suggests that despite the union’s efforts, local Colorado women
were not convinced by this display of worthiness “that’s it’ said Mrs. Rose. ‘They’re
nothing but cattle, and the only way is to kill them off.”
Clothing Berwind: CF&I and the Working Poor
Photographs suggest that miners and their families “looked” a certain way, asking
how and why they did so begins to explore the relationships between ideology and
materiality. Well before the 1913–14 strike, CF&I suggested that new clothing was a
“luxury,” stating that it was “far better to wear a shabby coat or faded gown than to
be hampered or handicapped by the expense of a new one, which cannot be readily
Fig. 10 Members of the

Colorado National Guard on
horse back with sabers drawn
disperse unarmed women
demonstrators in Trinidad,
Colorado (Denver Public
Library, Western History
Collection, DPL X-60516)
paid for” (Camp and Plant, July 12, 1902, p. 57). By framing new clothing as a
“luxury” and exploiting the notion of a deserving and undeserving poor the company
was strategically positioning itself not only in the minds of its employees but also in
the minds of the broader public. If you wore a new coat or gown either you were not
poor because you could afford it or, if you were poor, it was your own fault because
you bought something you could not afford. This inexorably linked the ideologies of
working-class poverty developing at that time from middle-class convictions
regarding what people should or should not spend their money on to the national
discourse on the deserving and undeserving poor, consider the previous discussion
of Manny Lucas. Not only this, clothing could quickly and visibly distinguish one’s
social position to an outside observer, including publicly displaying one’s poverty. It
had the potential to reveal to others whether the working class was spending their
money “appropriately.”
The working poor of southern Colorado did not have much. In the period leading up
to the strike, Angeline Savoy-Tonso (a miner’s wife) recalled, “The dress that we had on,
you know, we had to wash it and wear it, wash it and wear it, wash it and wear it, you
know. We didn’t have no closet for the clothes then” (quoted in Margolis 1994, p. 52).
Miners and their families passed clothing down between family members, heavily
worn and frequently repaired. The preservation of existing clothing was the priority.
Residents of Berwind were able to purchase their clothing from a variety of
sources including but not limited to the Colorado Supply Company, the CF&I
sponsored company store. These opportunities were consistent both before and after
the strike. Other options included mail order catalogs and two additional camp
stores, Toller’s store (1904–11/12), and Aeillo’s store.
While male miners may have had more need to purchase ready-made work
clothes, their wives and daughters almost exclusively wore home-manufactured
clothing. Home economics classes at the local schools taught young girls the skills
needed to make their own clothes. The display featured in Fig. 11, most likely from
the Sopris School in the CF&I camp of Sopris, Colorado ca.1915, demonstrates the
kinds of clothing young girls would have learned how to make in class.
Sewing clothes often saved families money over the purchase of ready made
clothing, but this is not to say that the home manufacture of clothing was free, it still
cost families precious resources. In a 1998 interview with Margaret Wood (2002,
p. 131), Josephine Banzanelle recalled the tension that she created in her family, not
when she purchased ready-made clothes, but when she bought sewing supplies.
We used to go to town sometimes and naturally I have two girls so I like to
sew, and I had to sew. I would need bias tape, rick-rack, buttons, and all kind
of stuff to sew. When we would go to town he would start from downtown and
nag, nag, nag, nag all the way up Bear Canyon, how much money I spend.
With few opportunities in the coal camps for extra income, the sewing and repair of
clothing offered women an opportunity to contribute to the family economy. As a
cottage industry, sewing would have included the stitching of entire garments as well as
the repair of both purchased and homemade clothing (Beaudry 2006). As Josephine
Bazanelle described the post-strike period (Wood 2002:131): “Now-a-days women
don’t know how to patch. When clothes are full of holes they just throw it away and
buy some more. But that time you got to patch and patch some more. Even the
Fig. 11 View of home

economics class display
featuring homemade clothing,
dating from post-strike period
ca. 1915 (Copyright, Colorado
Historical Society, Aultman
Collection, Scan # 20010689)
stockings you mend, and mend, and mend. The pants, one patch on top of the other.”
In spite of the fact that both before and after the strike the company encouraged their
employees to repair versus purchase new clothing, CF&I made ready-made clothing
available at their stores. If the poor working class chose to spend their money on
“unnecessary clothing,” then the onus of their poverty came to rest back upon them. It
was a win-win situation for the company; not only could they make a profit off their
employees by selling ready-made clothing, but they then could relocate the
responsibility for the poverty in the coal camps back upon their workers, framing
them as undeserving.
The home manufacture and repair of clothing accompanied the home manufacture
and repair of shoes. Trinidad City and Las Animas County Directory listed Angello
Gallasso as a barber and shoemaker in 1915 (Trinidad City and Las Animas County
Directory 1915–16, pp. 243–244). The fact that the town could support an independent
shoemaker is characteristic of the need for serviceable shoes in this southern Colorado
community. It is likely that the majority of Gallasso’s business would have been shoe
repair, a particularly useful service in working-class communities.
The dependence on homemade clothing and its repair did not seem to change
much following the strike, despite a rise in the availability of ready-made clothes.
Regularly repaired and homemade clothing worked to visibly mark and at the same
time produce miners’ working-class poverty.
Artifact Analysis: Berwind Before and After the Strike
In addition to photographs and oral histories, archaeology provides clues about the
clothing of southern Colorado’s working poor. The Carolyn White (2004, p. 40)
suggests that the archaeological recovery of clothing and other material remains of
physical expression offers “information imbued in a person’s culturally constructed
appearance.” How others interpret, reinterpret and then mobilize that appearance is
significant when dealing with something as visible as clothing. The archaeological
analysis of clothing-related artifacts from Berwind focuses on two separate loci,
dated pre- and post-strike, locus K and B, respectively.
Locus K: Pre-strike Occupation
The clothing related artifacts from Berwind’s pre-strike (locus K) context provide
insight into the materiality of poverty experienced by southern Colorado’s working
poor. Excavation of the locus K midden (feature 1) over two field seasons resulted in
2204 individual clothing-related artifacts (see Chicone 2006). Shoe related artifacts
consisting of composite parts of whole shoes (see Chicone 2006, Appendix C,
pp. 322–333) accounted for 91% of the total artifact assemblage while buttons (made
of ferrous alloy, shell, glass, wood, bone, copper alloy, porcelain and rubber) made
up the second largest category at 4%. Analysis of the total number of shoe-related
artifacts (1,997 total) resulted in a minimum number of 153 records or, in other
words, a minimum number of 153 shoes. Because the majority of shoe parts were
leather, the decomposition of organic material resulted in more “pieces” of
individual shoes, inflating the shoe-related artifact count. While shoes made up
91% of the entire artifact assemblage they comprised only 60% of the records, with
each record having an average of 13 individual shoe-related artifacts, or separate
pieces of shoe. Similarly, analysis of the recovered buttons resulted in 57 records,
22% of the total number of records this compared with 4% of the total artifact count.
The excavation of the privy (feature 2) yielded artifact percentages similar to that
of the midden (feature 1). The largest total artifact assemblage was again shoe
related, comprising 84% of the total artifact count. This time however it made up
only 32% of the record numbers. Buttons had the second largest total artifact count
with 12% of the total assemblage. After analysis, however, buttons comprised a
larger percentage of the record numbers than shoes, 36% compared with shoes at
32% (see Chicone 2006).
Record numbers are useful in teasing out specific depositional episodes, and
better reflect these events than total artifact count. Take for example feature 2; with
shoes comprising 84% of the total artifact assemblage and buttons a mere 12%,
shoes appear disproportionately represented over buttons. Further analysis, however,
revealed that shoes made up only 32% of the records and buttons made up 36%.
Offering a much different picture of refuse disposal than what was available from a
simple artifact count. Even with this further analysis, however, there still seems to be
quite a few shoes making their way into the “trash.”
The intentional salvage of buttons becomes apparent when button count is
compared with record numbers for both assemblages (features 1 and 2). Each record
for feature 1 contained an average of 1.5 individual buttons, and each record for
feature 2 contained an average of 2.6 individual buttons. This pattern suggests that
the majority of buttons recovered from the midden and privy were isolated
occurrences, in other words they were unique individuals without a match. Miner’s
and their families likely salvaged matched buttons from clothing items before they
discarded them. The only evidence for the disposal of whole clothing items with
matched button sets was suggested by 15 matched, shell buttons and an additional
set of 15 matched, ferrous alloy buttons, both recovered from feature 2.
Locus B: Post-strike Occupation
The 1998 and 1999 field seasons resulted in 171 clothing related artifacts and 12
functional categories from the post-strike area, locus B (Table 1; Chicone 2006,
p. 235). These artifacts yielded a pattern similar to the analysis of pre-strike locus K.
Approximately 77% of the entire clothing artifact assemblage from locus B (feature
3 midden) is shoe related and 13% are buttons; further analysis determined that
shoes made up 44% of the records and buttons made up 28%.
Textile preservation at the site of Berwind was poor, whole-clothing items did not
survive, instead, the “hard parts” of clothing (Voss 2008, p. 419) like buttons and
fasteners were discovered. A similar pattern to pre-strike Berwind emerged from the
post-strike context; each button record from the post-strike excavations contained an
average of 1.2 individual buttons. There were no large button sets like those
recovered at locus K, further suggesting that miners and their families discarded
clothing as scraps or rags with few if any matched sets.
The difference between artifact frequencies within the functional categories of
buttons and shoes is interesting to note. The quality of available shoes may account
for the high frequency of shoe-related artifacts, 45% of the records, while buttons
only accounted for an average of 29%. Rathje and Thompson (1981, pp. 30–31)
allude to this patterning in their Milwaukee Garbage project as a potential
explanation of refuse patterns across middle- and low-income neighborhoods. They
discovered that there was a higher number of discarded clothing items from lower-
income households when compared to middle income, they suggest that middle-
income households buy more of their clothing new and turn in their used clothing to
thrift shops, Salvation Army stores, and similar outlets. It is likely that lower income
Table 1 Locus B: feature

3 (post-strike midden) artifact Function Raw Count Record
frequencies
Bead 2 2
Button 22 18
Cufflink 1 1
Medal 1 1
Medallion 1 1
Pipe 1 1
Safety-Pin 1 1
Shoe 131 28
Tag 1 1
Thimble 1 1
Unrecognizable 6 6
Watch 3 3
Totals 171 64
households purchase more second-hand clothing that is later discarded when no

longer salvageable. The artifact patterning emerging from the Berwind excavations
suggests this to be the case. There would have been an abundance of cheaper quality
and/or second hand shoes, which would have resulted in a higher turnover.
What emerge from my analysis of both contexts (locus K and locus B) are similar
patterns of clothing refuse both before and after the strike. Limited income and the
isolation of the coal camps restricted miners’ wives and encouraged the salvage of
buttons for re-use in the home manufacture of clothing. The high number of
discarded shoes in both contexts also indicates continued deprivation following the
strike. Miners and their families may have purchased cheaper quality or second hand
shoes, which did not last as long.
In addition to buttons and shoe-related artifacts, the category of clothing related
artifacts contains the “material culture of needlework and sewing” (Beaudry 2006,
p. 8). This includes pins, needles, thimbles, and scissors as suggested by Beaudry
(2006, p. 8). As mentioned previously I have included said items in the analytical
category of clothing. Two pins, a safety pin, and a pair of scissors were excavated
from feature 1 in locus K and one thimble was excavated from locus B. The lack of
sewing related artifacts despite the evidence of the intentional salvage of buttons
might suggest that these items were well cared for and did not make their way into
the “trash.” Beaudry (2006, p. 41) also suggests, that a lack of pins may be a
consequence of excavation techniques, as they are invariably considered “small
finds.”
Nothing but the Clothes on their Backs: Artifact Analysis of the Ludlow Tent
Colony
“I had very little clothes on. A thin skirt and a mother-hubbard apron and my
oldest shoes. Everything that I had in this world was lost.” [Mrs. Ed Tonner,
Commission on Industrial Relations 1916, p. 7385]
On April 21, 1914, the ruins of the United Mine Workers’ temporary tent colony
at Ludlow, Colorado lay smoldering. In their attempts to flee the chaos that unfolded
the day before, miners and their families fled with the few belongings they could
grab. They had little aside from the clothes on their backs. Nearly 1,200 striking
miners and their families lost everything they owned in the course of one day.
Because of the circumstances surrounding the colony’s destruction—namely, that
residents were unaware of the impending devastation and were forced to flee with
few if any personal belongings—certain artifacts were recovered in situ. The
following analysis includes artifacts from a privy, feature 70; a tent cellar, feature 73;
and a community midden, the arroyo at locus 7.
Feature 70
Feature 70, a privy or trash deposit in use during the occupation of the colony, was
excavated over two field seasons, 1998 and 1999. The stratigraphy is not consistent
with a single cleanup episode, as occurred after the destruction of the colony, and the
assemblage is overwhelmingly “trash,” such as tin cans and bottles. The clothing
that made its way into the privy included such items as shoes, belts, buckles, and
watch parts.
Feature 73
Feature 73, was a deep buried cellar, located beneath a former residential tent.
Artifacts from this feature are attributable to a single-family occupation and include
such items as buttons, cufflinks, and shoe parts. Forty percent of the entire clothing
assemblage from feature 73 is comprised of buttons while only 21% of the
assemblage is shoe related. This is opposite than all other contexts reviewed in this
work, including feature 70, and the arroyo at locus 7 in Ludlow, and all features at
loci K and B in Berwind, where shoe-related artifacts outnumbered buttons. The
events that led to the destruction of the Ludlow tent colony would have precluded
any wide-scale salvage. As such, buttons that given other circumstances would have
been recovered for later use remained in situ, accounting for the higher frequency.
Forty-five of the 101 buttons discovered in feature 73 were associated with a single
tobacco tin, likely their former container. These mostly shell buttons further point to
the archaeological evidence of home needlecraft.
Locus 7: Arroyo Midden
The arroyo at locus 7 served as a community midden. Artifacts discarded in this

location are attributable to the broader tent community. Similar to feature 70’s
frequency pattern, buttons and shoes accounted for the highest number of clothing-
related artifacts recovered from the locus 7: arroyo midden.
In addition to the clothing-related items, artifacts that point to the home
manufacture and repair of clothing were also recovered, including nine sewing
machine parts, two straight pins and five safety pins from feature 73, the tent cellar
(Fig. 12). Parts of individually-and-family owned sewing machines amid the ruins of
Ludlow confirms their existence in poor working-class communities.
Fig. 12 Sewing machine part

recovered from Ludlow feature
73 (Photograph courtesy of
Paul Reckner)
Together with the evidence of the home manufacture and repair of clothing, there
is also indication of the home repair of shoes. A shoe anvil was recovered from
feature 73. Shoes seem to occupy an important place in the lives of southern
Colorado’s working poor (Fig. 13). Shoes are listed as a separate category in the
UMW records of relief disbursements during the strike, alongside such larger items
as rent, medical supplies, and relief payments. This indicates the immediate need that
miners and their families faced when they answered the UMW call to strike. Miners’
had inadequate shoes to weather a winter in the tent camps.
The UMW used the deteriorated state of miners and their families’ shoes in order
to garner sympathy and continued national support for the strike. The archaeolog-
ically recovered materiality compliments this ideological emphasis on shoes. Shoe-
related artifacts made up 37% of all clothing-related artifacts (based on artifact
count) recovered from the tent colony at Ludlow. This is only second to buttons as a
category, which accounted for 29% of all clothing artifacts.
In addition to the high frequency of buttons and shoe-related artifacts, the
CCFWAP recovered a number of adornment items (see Table 2). Archaeologically
recovered artifacts include such items as beads, medallions and watch parts. Feature
73 yielded the greatest number of functional categories of clothing related artifacts;
this is consistent with the depositional context of the feature. The Commission on
Industrial Relations’ investigation into the events of the 1913–14 strike includes
individual items lost in the Ludlow massacre. These held both personal and
economic value as suggested in the following affidavit taken from Mrs. Ed Tonner, a
former resident of the Ludlow tent colony: “I lost a $35 watch, $8 chain of my own;
gold watch of my husbands, worth about $25; and then I had a hair chain of my own
hair, worth $5; watch charm of my children’s hair, worth $5; $16 pair of glasses;
bracelets of my little girl’s, worth $5; opal ring $7; $10 in money. Not a thing left in
the world” (Commission on Industrial Relations 1916, p. 7385]. This quote suggests
Mrs. Tonner lost $106 worth of personal effects that would not fall into a category of
necessities. Ideologies that placed particular belongings outside the realm of basic
Fig. 13 Partial shoe recovered

form Ludlow excavations
(Photograph courtesy of Paul
Reckner)
Table 2 Feature 73 adornment-

related clothing artifact Function Count
frequencies
Bead 2
Chain 1
Cufflink 3
Locket 1
Medallion 3
Pin 2
Ring 1
Watch 7
Total 20
needs, labeled them as inappropriate for the working poor. Their presence signaled
undeserving poverty. They indicated either that miners had enough disposable
income to purchase extravagant items, so they were not poor, or the miners wasted
their income on these items and did not deserve assistance.
The reality was much more complicated; miners and their families had very little
disposable income. The company often located camp banks in their stores and post
offices. This coupled with encouraged indebtedness to the company meant that many
miners never realized cash wages. Due to the instability of mining in southern
Colorado, families often found themselves in immediate need of resources. As
Melanie Tebbutt (1984, p. 12) suggests “the problems of low income were
compounded by irregularity which also led to an inevitable reliance on loan
agencies to bridge the gap between payment.” Miners and their families could
reasonably pawn valuable items if the company evicted them from their homes or
the work dried up. They could then repurchase said items when they resettled with
renewed employment. As such, these items are not anomalies to a consistent
“poverty” assemblage, but rather are as constitutive of that assemblage as are well
worn and frequently repaired shoes. In fact, Tebbutt (1984, p. 16) suggests that
“families had a qualitatively different view of material resources, which they
regarded as tangible assets to be drawn on in periods of financial difficulty.”
Clothing and Strike Relief
Beyond weekly relief payments during the strike of $3 for union members, $1 for
women, and $.50 for each child of members living with their parents (Box:1 FF:45,
Edward Lawrence Doyle Papers, WH126, Western History Collection, The Denver
Public Library), the union provided money for a range of additional services. Among
other things, these services fulfilled the union’s promise that miners and their
families would be “provided with ample clothing” (Box:1 FF:9 p.3, John R. Lawson
Collection, WH215, Western History Collection, The Denver Public Library). The
emphasis on clothing is certainly indicative of the need faced by miners and their
families given the harsh winter of 1913–14, and its apparent inadequacy leading into
the strike. It is also indicative of significant poverty, as far as someone cannot meet
his or her basic necessities.
Table 3 compares total disbursements with relief expense and those monies spent
on shoes. The far right hand column shows the percentage of disbursements made up
by shoe expenses. Where I list 0%, the total percentage is a negligible amount.
During the 18 weeks recorded in the table, the union spent an average of 2% of total
relief disbursements specifically on shoes. The need for adequate clothing faced by
miners at the onset of the strike was real.
The Power of Imagery: Inadequate Clothing and Union Sympathies
Even though the strike “officially” ended in December 1914, the destitution faced by
those still out of work became all the more desperate after the New Year. Members
of the UMW locals, in their efforts to maintain financial support from the National
Office, evoked images of poor and inadequate clothing. It was significant that miners
and their families did not even have the resources to meet their basic needs. They
were painting a picture of a desperate yet deserving poor. Examples of
disadvantaged children were particularly effective in eliciting sympathies. In a
special sub-district convention held in late February 1915, Edward Doyle announced
Table 3 UMW strike relief disbursements
Week Ending Date Total Funds Relief Shoes % of disbursements

Distributed Funds spent on shoes
8-Dec-13 $16,566.22 $12,477.50 $23.65 0

13-Dec-13 $15,380.48 $12,385.50 $618.40 4
20-Dec-13 $16,697.15 $12,874.00 $400.00 3
27-Dec-13 $17,584.62 $12,624.50 $1,896.11 15
3-Jan-14 $16,796.10 $12,527.50 $1,625.70 13
10-Jan-14 $17,784.20 $12,769.00 $397.61 3
17-Jan-14 $15,394.82 $12,453.50 NA
24-Jan $14,907.53 $12,427.50 $16.85 0
31-Jan-14 $17,598.00 $12,332.00 $431.45 3
7-Feb-14 $15,866.85 $12,293.00 $2.75 0
14-Feb-14 $15,366.49 $12,284.00 NA
21-Feb-14 $15,049.78 $12,235.50 $2.70 0
28-Feb-14 $15,275.64 $12,123.00 NA
7-Mar-14 $15,897.05 $12,173.00 $6.10 0
14-Mar-14 $14,756.02 $12,177.50 NA
21-Mar-14 $15,292.13 $12,308.50 NA
28-Mar-14 $15,447.90 $12,144.50 NA
30-Mar-14 $1,872.45 $1,468.50 $45.20 3
Totals for 18-week period from $273,533.43 $5,466.52 2
December 8, 1913- March 30, 1914
Source: UMW Financial Report, Box:1 FF:27, Edward Lawrence Doyle Papers, WH126, Western History
Collection, The Denver Public Library.
that a lack of clothing even compelled some children to stay home from school
(Box:4 FF:1, Priscilla Long Papers, WH1138, Western History Collection, The
Denver Public Library). Charles Crook and R. Stevens, a committee from Local
Union #1668, used images of barefoot children to underscore their desperate
appeals. “We have people hungry he said and children barefoot and no one to appeal
to.... We have got to have relief from some source” (Special meeting of the District
Executive Board, District 15, March 11 and 12, 1915 original in Edward L. Doyle
Papers envelope 10, Box:4 FF:1 p.4, Priscilla Long Papers, WH1138, Western
History Collection, The Denver Public Library; emphasis in original).
During the special meeting of the UMW District #15 Executive Board in March
1915, board member J.W. Morton used the condition of his clothing to demonstrate
the desperate plight of those who remained unemployed: “Taking off his rubber he
showed a very poor shoe underneath and added: ‘I am not wearing this for style’”
(Special meeting of the District Executive Board, District 15, March 11 and 12, 1915
original in Edward L. Doyle Papers envelope 10, Box:4 FF:1 p.4, Priscilla Long
Papers, WH1138, Western History Collection, The Denver Public Library). The
union used clothing as a powerful symbol of destitution.
Even though still-unemployed miners and their families faced increasingly
desperate circumstances during the winter of 1914–15, both the UMW and CF&I
exploited their plight. “Union leader Bolton has refused continually to give Clark
any infprmation [r] regarding destitution, claiming that our company wanted to help
these people so as to win them away from union” (Correspondence Weitzel to
Rockefeller care of Welborn 2/24/1915, Box:1 FF:14, Jesse Floyd Welborn
Collection (MSS #1218), Colorado Historical Society, Denver, Colorado).
A lack of adequate clothing was not merely a strike tactic; it was also the harsh
reality. Before the strike had ended, the Miners Advocate, February 17, 1914 claimed
that the union “received $500 of clothing for our members and their families and a
lot more coming.” G.A. Hoehn in the St. Louis Socialist, January 17, 1914, also
solicited clothing for striking miners from its readers (St. Louis Labor Socialist,
Box:1F:F9, John R. Lawson Collection, WH215, Western History Collection, The
Denver Public Library). Clothing had been donated throughout the strike as
suggested by July 16, 1914, correspondence between Mr. William Diamond and
Edward Doyle (Box1: FF:3, Edward Lawrence Doyle Papers, WH126, Western
History Collection, The Denver Public Library).
Dependence on donated clothing also contributed to ideological constructions of
working-class poverty. Strikers and their families, like Mrs. Mary Toner, a miner’s
daughter during the 1913–14 conflict, were cognizant of their relationship to
available relief. Mrs. Toner recalled: “For instance…there was no food, clothes. All
we got was things that people donated to us. You know like you do to a Goodwill
store and Salvation Army” (quoted in Fogel 1975, p. 45). Such a statement implies
that second hand clothing carried a stigma, an ideological construction that
constituted a power differential both socially and economically, between the giver
and the receiver. The giver was able to make the initial purchase of clothing,
presumably in the style, design, and color of choice; the receiver, on the other hand,
by necessity was forced to accept the choices of the giver.
There was also an underlying current of personal responsibility associated with
the increased destitution faced during the strike, this tied to the public framing of an
undeserving poor. CF&I extolled an ideology of the open shop and the free will of
the worker. A choice to strike consequently had ramifications that one brought about
by their own doing. Increased poverty was subsequently an unanticipated outcome
of one’s decision to strike, and hence the company could not be held directly
responsible. Strikers were undeserving, under the pretense that their own actions had
led to their dire circumstances.
In a telegram to Rockefeller, E. H. Weitzel anticipated the aftermath of the union’s
permanent suspension of relief: “Union has notified men that all relief is stopped,
would advise against indiscriminate help however action of Union cutting off relief
will no doubt cause more distress than has hitherto existed” (Correspondence
Weitzel to Rockefeller care of Welborn 2/24/1915, Box:4 FF:1, Jesse Floyd Welborn
Collection (MSS #1218), Colorado Historical Society, Denver, Colorado). Despite
the fervent attempts by the locals, the national office suspended strike relief in March
1915 (Priscilla Long Papers, WH1138, Western History Collection, The Denver
Public Library).
The termination of relief payments did not mark the end to the region’s
destitution. Instead, it marked the end of the union’s financial assistance, however
nominal it may have been at that time. The need and increased poverty caused by the
strike continued even after national support was suspended. Between April and
August 1915, the Reverend Roderick McEachen (the little priest of Baton) and his
sister Mary distributed 100 carloads of clothing including over 800 baby outfits in
the region still reeling from the strike (Denver Public Library, John R. Lawson
Collection). In the end many of the miners and their families returned to coal camps
they had left only months earlier, still poor.
Conclusion
This work did not set out to establish miners’ poverty by pointing to a lack of
economically significant artifacts in the archaeological assemblage (as in an object-
centered approach); or for that matter discount their poverty by pointing to the
number of artifact anomalies given contemporary ideologies of that poverty (as in a
representational approach). The materiality manifested in the archaeological deposits
is not a reflection of, but co-constitutive of, the production of working-class poverty
in southern Colorado. Whether it was the ready-made work clothes worn by working
miners and co-opted by John D. Rockefeller during CF&I’s big public relations
campaign following the strike, or the home-made dresses and “mother Hubbard
aprons” that fashioned the daily uniform of women in coal camps, clothing did more
than just signal a person’s identity, or in this case his or her poverty. It also
contributed to its construction by contributing to its materiality.
The dominant historical narrative holds that the strike, the federal labor relations
hearings that followed, and the implementation of Rockefeller’s Industrial
Representation Plan “focused attention on conditions in company towns and led to
significant reforms in living conditions throughout the US” (Allen 1966; Crawford
1995; Gitelman 1988; Roth 1992 referenced in CCFWAP, 2005, p. 7). My work,
however, demonstrates that the reforms that followed the strike did little to alleviate
the production of working-class poverty characteristic of southern Colorado’s
coalfields. Initial changes embodied in Rockefeller’s plan only served to mask

continued deprivation. The strike was not about raising a particular group above a
quantitatively predefined rung. Adding trees, landscaping, and new housing did not
pull miners out of their poverty. The removal of poverty’s symbols did not mean the
removal of poverty, just as Manny Lucas’s name brand clothing does not mean he
“could not possibly be poor” (Lucas 2000).
The work done at Ludlow and Berwind moves historical archaeology beyond
misapplied theories of socioeconomic status indicators, and begins a dialogue with
substantive issues related to class position embodied in the experiences of America’s
working poor. Poverty is not a thing but a process. In southern Colorado during the
1910’s it was a mechanism used by corporations to minimize costs at the expense of
their workers’ welfare and successful participation in the political dynamics of
industrial capitalism.
The company maintained a project of locating responsibility for personal well
being within the individual, this despite very open attempts at public welfare. By
providing employees with what they framed as the “proper” tools, the company
maintained that it was up to the individual to embrace these lessons and better his/
her social and material circumstances. This is consistent with the principle of free
labor adhered to by CF&I. They maintained that their employees were independently
free to do as they wished, as opposed to being restricted by a broader union agenda.
Benevolent programs were a way for the company to dodge responsibility for the
working poor they employed in their camps. Further, this allowed the company to
reframe their workers as undeserving, as soon as they sought to exert collective
power within the political dynamics of the system.
Yes the miners were poor; in fact, both the union and the company recognized the
complexity of this process in the unfolding class struggle. Even though success or
failure could not be measured quantitatively, by playing on the ideological
constructions of poverty CF&I was able to reposition itself following the conflict
with physical improvements to miners’ lives. Because working-class poverty is not a
thing, however, changes in materiality alone did not fundamentally alter the reality
of its lived experience.
The union used clothing to fulfill a two-fold agenda, on the one hand to
emphasize the miners’ respectability (a deserving poor) and on the other to affirm
the poverty faced by the strikers. Inadequate clothing marked the inability of families
to meet their basic needs. “They get very poor food and some of the children are
dressed in clothes made of gunny-sacks and their fathers are working every day”
(UMW delegate Lamont from Cokedale quoted in Wood 2002, p. 226). Conversely,
the companies used clothing to frame strikers as undeserving; they don’t have to live
like that—they chose to live like that, no wonder they are poor they are buying
things they can not afford). It is the same project and same rhetoric we see levied
today.
So where does this conversation leave us? Were the miners deserving poor or
undeserving? Was their poverty a result of individual shortcomings or corporate
neglect? Can we measure their poverty by the materiality of their possession? My
work demonstrates the futility and danger of simple dichotomous explanations.
Designations of deserving and undeserving confuse the issue; those in a position to
enact effective aid become entangled in the discourse on worthiness, losing sight of
the forest for the trees. The focus shifts, policies concentrate on reestablishing merit
instead of addressing poverty. We become increasingly concerned with managing the
working poor’s spending habits instead of addressing their meager salaries. Why
would we help Manny Lucas if he does not spend his money “appropriately?” We
need to look past Manny’s Timberlands and Nautica sweater and realize the
complexity of social relations involved in poverty’s production.
Against a backdrop of increasing economic inequality in the Unites States, I
would like to underline the need to move the archaeological analysis of poverty
beyond the urban slums of the big coastal cities to include the persistent segment of
America’s working poor. We need to realize the very real consequences of poverty
on an historical level. Even with the recent increases in the Federal minimum wage,
a single parent household working forty-hours a week at minimum wage, has a
yearly income below the poverty line. America’s laboring poor continue the struggle
forged nearly a hundred years ago by striking miners and their families. A successful
archaeological study of working-class poverty demands the reanalysis of recycled
prejudices that continually manifest themselves in paternalistic public and corporate
policies. This research is the first step towards building a new framework for an
archaeological analysis of poverty. Archaeology has much to offer the emergent
discourse on poverty as it challenges the homogenizing effects of static definitions
and teases out the social relations that make certain people subject to its effects
(O’Connor 2001, p. 15, in Green 2006, p. 1112).
Acknowledgments This work would not have been possible without the cooperative efforts of the
Colorado Coalfield War Archaeology Project. Thank you to project participants from Binghamton
University, Fort Lewis College, and the University of Denver. A special thank you to the staff of the
Western History and Genealogy Department at the Denver Public Library, the Colorado Historical Society,
and the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company archives at the Bessemer Historical Society. I would also like to
thank Christopher Mathews, Randy McGuire, Charles Orser, Susan Pollock, and Ann Stahl for their
comments on various iterations of this work. And to my family, Vincent, Ella, and Loretta thank you for
your patience and continued support.
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Int J Histor Archaeol (2011) 15:51–81

Respectable Rags: Working-Class Poverty

Published online: 3 November 2010

Keywords Poverty . Working-class poor . Ludlow Massacre . Clothing

by those in a position to administer relief, for example, those whose poverty is a

Poverty as Process: Rethinking our Approach

Before we approach poverty analytically, there needs to be some general agreement

Socioeconomic Indicators and an Object-Centered Approach

social status with archaeologically defined economic indicators. Archaeologists set

Representational: An Ideological Approach to Poverty

A representational approach reconciles many of the inadequacies raised by the

p. 421). However, by upholding the middle-class ideological construction of the

imagined slum on contemporary populations. Poverty is not reducible to a single

Respectable Rags: Poverty in the Coalfields

In September 1913, plagued by poor working conditions, substandard pay, and

By analyzing artifacts recovered from pre- and post-strike occupational contexts

Blue Collar and the Miners’ Uniform

Blue-collar is an adjective derived from the physical description of working-class

Fig. 1 Coal miners in typical

coal miners at least as early as 1902, as suggested by advertisements in CF&I’s

Fig. 2 Underhill Brand

Fig. 3 John D. Rockefeller

Labor Conflict and Working-Class Dress: The Red Bandana

Photographs: Visual Representations of Working-Class Clothing

Fig. 5 Photograph from the

Fig. 6 Photograph of coal camp

Fig. 7 Union photograph of a

Fig. 8 The daughter of a

The three images taken collectively demonstrate diverse ideologies of working-

Fig. 9 Women protesting

Clothing Berwind: CF&I and the Working Poor

Fig. 10 Members of the

Fig. 11 View of home

Artifact Analysis: Berwind Before and After the Strike

Locus K: Pre-strike Occupation

Locus B: Post-strike Occupation

Table 1 Locus B: feature

households purchase more second-hand clothing that is later discarded when no

Locus 7: Arroyo Midden

The arroyo at locus 7 served as a community midden. Artifacts discarded in this

Fig. 12 Sewing machine part

Fig. 13 Partial shoe recovered

Table 2 Feature 73 adornment-

Clothing and Strike Relief

The Power of Imagery: Inadequate Clothing and Union Sympathies

Table 3 UMW strike relief disbursements

Week Ending Date Total Funds Relief Shoes % of disbursements

8-Dec-13 $16,566.22 $12,477.50 $23.65 0

coalfields. Initial changes embodied in Rockefeller’s plan only served to mask

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