Representation and Rebellion: The Rockefeller Plan at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1914–1942 (review)

The blood spilled during the notorious Ludlow Massacre, nadir of the 1913–14 Great Coalfield War in Colorado, is well remembered. The state’s National Guard, functioning as gun thugs for the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (cf&i), consigned eleven women and children to fiery deaths as they cowered in makeshift tent encampment. Even by the troubled standards of early 20th century industrial relations, such incidents of raw class warfare amounted to a black mark on cf&i primary shareholder the Rockefeller family. Given that these events occurred less than a decade after the Rockefellers found need to rehabilitate their public stature following Ida Tarbell’s scathing investigation of corporate malfeasance, published in 1904 as The History of the Standard Oil Company, the deaths in the Colorado demanded a new approach.

John D. Rockefeller Jr., scion of the family’s vast empire, took up the task with considerable vigour and introduced the nation’s first employee representation plan. The Colorado Industrial Plan, more commonly the ‘Rockefeller Plan,’ functioning between 1915 and 1942, became widely influential as North American businesses looked to secure the cooperation, rather the animosity, of their workers. Jonathan H. Rees sets out to analyze the Rockefeller Plan, and, in effect, rehabilitate our general perceptions of what many scholars perceive as the problematic alternative of company unions to bona fide trade union representation. For this, Rees draws upon a colossal stash of 21,000 linear feet of cf&i records abandoned when the company declared bankruptcy and liquidated its remaining assets in 1993. The study that results from this inquiry raises a worthwhile set of questions regarding the efficacy of employee representation plans. cf&i merits scrutiny as it was Colorado’s largest employer by the 1920s and comprised coal mines, lime and calcite quarries, a major steel mill, and a railroad.

In Representation and Rebellion, John D. Rockefeller Jr. emerges as a stubborn paternalist determined to assuage inherent class tensions brought on by monopoly capitalism. This proved something of a quixotic endeavour as the gap between employer and miners remained. In the end, Junior may not have enriched the bottom line as much as restored some lustre to the Rockefeller name tarnished by his father’s ruthless business actions. Understandably, as this is not the focus of the book, Rees offers perfunctory coverage of the Ludlow Massacre itself. In order to grasp the sheer brutality of the Great Coalfield War, and why cf&i turned away from carnage to negotiation, Representation and Rebellion should be read in conjunction with the useful analysis of either Thomas G. Andrews, Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War (2008) or Scott Martelle, Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West (2007).

Many are aware of the Canadian element to this history as a young William Lyon Mackenzie King was retained by the Rockefellers to draft the language of employee representation. While King’s formative experiences with Jane Addams, Thorstein Veblen, and the British Fabians is noted, it is surprising that Rees did not consult Industry and Humanity (1918) for additional clues into the mind of the advisor who so influenced Junior on industrial relations. Mackenzie King’s peculiar amalgam of organic societal unity, managerial coercion, mysticism, and Venn diagrams affords insight into the prescription offered to mitigate the cf&i dilemma.

Rees states his goal was to offer a nuanced appraisal of the Rockefeller scheme as the model for employee representation plans, while avoiding the conventional endorsements of business scholars or the predictable dismissals of most labour historians. Indeed, with the advent of right-to-work legislation in the 1940s and decades of decline in union American density, many might now endorse a Rockefeller Plan in their workplace. To a large extent, the book is successful and the historical role of erps is better appreciated. Notably, the thoughts of the cf&i workers are included and this...