The Archaeology of Class War: The Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1913-1914

5. From Shacks to Shanties: Working-Class Poverty and the 1913–1914 Southern Colorado Coalfield Strike

161 5 5 The Ludlow Massacre thrust the brutalities of labor conflict and the realities of working-class poverty into the American consciousness. The well-publicized reforms that followed the strike successfully focused national attention on “improvements” made to miners’ lives and the new relationship forged between management and labor in the early twentieth century but did little to change the lived experience of southern Colorado coal miners. Framed as a measurable outcome and objectified as a generalized condition , poverty in the United States has relied on a consistent recycling of prejudices , characterized by shifting blame and ensuing responsibility. Whose fault is it, and who is responsible for correcting the problem? Blame oscillates between the poor themselves and the structures of the system; public policies routinely outline poverty as either a cultural (Lewis 1968) or an economic challenge and the poor as either deserving victims of the “system” or undeserving drains on society. These rotating dichotomies contribute to the ineffective and normalizing effects of public policies that systematically neglect the interests and conditions of America’s working families. Contemporary Western definitions define poverty based on a measure of its materiality, whether absolute, as in the poverty line, or relative, rooted in Working-Class Poverty and the 1913–1914 Southern Colorado Coalfield Strike From Shacks to Shanties Sarah J. ChiCone S a r a h J . C h i C o n e 162 comparative disadvantage (Iceland 2003:5). This falls short and objectifies the social relationships involved in poverty’s production. As anthropologist Maia Green (2006:1124) has suggested, “[T]he quantification of poverty permits [its] homogenization . . . across time and space.” Strict quantification limits the historicity of specific social relations, events, and circumstances that contribute to poverty’s production. In short, these approaches characterize poverty as a discrete category; but as Maia Green (2006:1124) further contends, “poverty is not a ‘thing’ to be attacked.” We need to move past current definitions and focus on the multiple social relations and ideological influences that create poverty as a project of difference. Poverty is a process. As such, it is a series of dialectically related influences, actions, and outcomes—defined in this case by the changing relationship between associated ideologies and materiality. Poverty is not limited to a theoretical project or defined by a specific materiality; instead, it is socially, economically, and historically contingent. Despite its connection and susceptibility to ideological influence, I do not mean to suggest that poverty is an exclusively conceptual paradigm; it is also grounded in materiality. Poverty results in real material consequences outside the social relations that use it to define the other. Reliance on solely materialist definitions, however, runs the risk of denying poverty’s existence. If, for example , we recovered all this “stuff” and the dominant ideology holds that those designated as poor by social norms were not supposed to have had a lot of “stuff,” then archaeologists have traditionally had one of two conclusions. Either these folks were not as poor as we had first thought, or no wonder they were poor— they were spending money on all this stuff they did not need. Archaeology needs to move beyond a direct comparison of material culture against historically established ideologies (Karskens 2001; Mayne and Murray 2001; Yamin 1998, 2000, 2001) and beyond the demonstration of socioeconomic indicators based on a structural view of class (Beaudry et al. 1988; Bragdon 1988; Miller 1980, 1991; Potter 1992; Schmitt and Zeier 1993; Spencer-Wood 1987). Archaeological sources inform on material conditions. By its nature, archaeology looks at the materiality of the working poor, 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 working poor or denying their existence. Instead of comparing materiality against itself or against a dominant ideology of poverty, we should seek to account for the influence of materiality on ideology and of ideology on materiality. We need to allow for multiple negotiations by competing interest groups. Within the circumstances of the 1913–1914 southern Colorado Coalfield Strike, this explains how reconfigured relationships between labor and capital following the strike altered popular constructions of working-class poverty without effecting lasting change. From Shacks to Shanties 163 The ways different interest groups frame, act upon, and exploit poverty are as essential to its production as is its associated materiality. This illuminates poverty’s role as a...