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Journey with us to the ghost town of Ludlow, Colorado, where history, rebellion, and ruthless PR collide! From Rockefeller’s coal empire to Amazon’s modern-day spin, see how power shapes work and image. You won’t believe the wild connections! Hit subscribe for more deep dives and tell us in the comments what shocked you most! #history #Amazon #labor #Rockefeller #PR
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@kramola_online
0:00 - Ludlow: A Company Town and Its Harsh Realities
1:13 - Exploitation, Abuse, and Mother Jones
2:50 - The Ludlow Strike and Escalating Conflict
4:30 - Aftermath and the Rise of Public Relations
5:26 - Legacy: PR, Philanthropy, and Modern Business
7:13 - Amazon: Echoes of Ludlow in Modern Labor
8:23 - PR Tactics and Employee Advocacy
11:30 - Control, Free Will, and a Warning for the Future
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@kramola_online
0:00 - Ludlow: A Company Town and Its Harsh Realities
1:13 - Exploitation, Abuse, and Mother Jones
2:50 - The Ludlow Strike and Escalating Conflict
4:30 - Aftermath and the Rise of Public Relations
5:26 - Legacy: PR, Philanthropy, and Modern Business
7:13 - Amazon: Echoes of Ludlow in Modern Labor
8:23 - PR Tactics and Employee Advocacy
11:30 - Control, Free Will, and a Warning for the Future
Category
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NewsTranscript
00:00The long-abandoned ghost town of Ludlow in southern Colorado was the scene of bloody events more than a hundred
00:06years ago,
00:07and it will be very instructive to take a closer look at this story.
00:13At the beginning of the 20th century, the entire town of Ludlow belonged to John Rockefeller Jr. and his company,
00:20the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.
00:23Rockefeller Jr. received the company from his father as a birthday present.
00:27Thousands of coal miners, including children, worked for pennies, most of which ended up back in the Rockefeller safes.
00:35Their families crowded into barracks built by the company and bought groceries at its stores.
00:40Many of them were recent immigrants, mostly Greeks and Italians.
00:45Working in the mines was hellish, and the miners' mortality rate was very high.
00:50Accidents with many casualties often happened in the vicinity of Ludlow.
00:54For example, an explosion at the Primero mine in January 1910 claimed the lives of 75 miners,
01:01and in October of the same year, 56 people died at the Starkville mine.
01:06There was no workplace safety measures at the Rockefeller mines,
01:09and the state government was practically under their complete control.
01:12Not only were all the workers, including immigrants, registered as voters,
01:17but believe it or not, even the company's donkeys were registered.
01:21Although, of course, that's not true.
01:23There were no donkey voters.
01:25There were mule voters, meaning hybrids of a donkey and a mare,
01:28which are more resilient and less demanding for hard mining work.
01:31Both people and animals voted the way their owners told them to.
01:35More precisely, their votes were simply recorded for them in the desired column.
01:39The Rockefellers were supporters of managerial capitalism,
01:43meaning they left the resolution of all issues to managers,
01:46who were required to achieve maximum profit at any cost.
01:50This led to a lot of abuses.
01:52Miners and their families were essentially kept in a state of slavery.
01:56In September 1913, about 10,000 miners went on strike,
02:01demanding workplace safety and higher wages.
02:05The protest was led by representatives of the miners' union,
02:08which was promoted by the famous activist Mary Jones, known as Mother Jones.
02:13Mary Jones' family came to the United States from Ireland,
02:17fleeing famine, and during an epidemic in the U.S.,
02:20she lost her minor husband and three children.
02:23When she was already over 70,
02:25she organized a March of Workers' Children from Pennsylvania to New York
02:29and led them straight to the home of then-President Theodore Roosevelt.
02:33The slogans were,
02:35We want to go to school, not to the mine.
02:38By the time of the Ludlow strike, Mother Jones was already 83 years old,
02:42but she hadn't lost her passion.
02:44She came to the miners and inspired them to take action,
02:47for which she was once again sent to jail.
02:49By the way, to this day,
02:51a fairly popular left-wing magazine in the U.S.
02:54is named after her Mother Jones.
02:56As soon as the strike began,
02:57the company managers immediately threw the workers' families
03:00out onto the street in pouring rain.
03:01The Union gave them tents,
03:04and around Ludlow and the neighboring mining settlements,
03:07entire tent cities sprang up,
03:08the largest of which housed about 1,200 workers.
03:12The company had a private army at its disposal,
03:15and additional fighters were hired.
03:18The Rockefellers rightly believed that the state authorities were at their service,
03:22and they requested the National Guard to be sent in,
03:25which also sided with the owners.
03:28The guards terrorized the population,
03:30but the National Guard turned a blind eye to it,
03:33while at the same time not allowing the strikers to stop the strikebreakers hired by the company.
03:38The strike dragged on for many months,
03:40but on April 19, 1914, the climax came.
03:45The National Guard surrounded the strikers' tent camp,
03:48and a machine gun was set up on a nearby cliff.
03:51The authorities demanded that the miners hand over one of the ringleaders,
03:55but they refused,
03:56and the National Guard opened fire on the camp.
04:00Several miners' leaders were killed,
04:02many strikers fled and hid in the surrounding area,
04:04and their families took shelter in cellars that had been dug under the tents back in the fall.
04:09In the evening, the National Guardsmen poured kerosene on the deserted tents and set them on fire.
04:14As a result, many children and several women were burned alive or suffocated in the smoke.
04:19When they learned about what had happened,
04:21the miners attacked the town,
04:23assaulted officials, strikebreakers, and company managers,
04:26and seized the mines and an area of 250 square miles.
04:30News of the uprising made it into the newspapers,
04:33mainly thanks to Mother Jones and other union members,
04:35and President Woodrow Wilson sent the army to Ludlow.
04:38The troops separated the strikebreakers from the strikers,
04:41but the strike continued almost until the end of 1914.
04:45The workers achieved almost nothing,
04:48but several thousand new members joined the union.
04:51World War I began,
04:53and with it came the growth of American industry,
04:56which needed coal.
04:57In 1915, John Rockefeller met with Mother Jones,
05:01and working conditions in the mines began to improve.
05:04But after the whole country started talking about the Ludlow Massacre,
05:08the Rockefeller family took further action.
05:12They hired two sharp PR experts, Ivy Lee and Mackenzie King,
05:15to somehow shore up their badly damaged image.
05:19In fact, Ivy Lee founded modern public relations,
05:22and Mackenzie King later became the Prime Minister of Canada.
05:26Lee convinced John Rockefeller Jr. to go to Colorado,
05:29meet with the miners, their wives, and children,
05:31inspect the working and living conditions,
05:34talk to ordinary people,
05:35and listen to all their complaints.
05:37All this time, a photographer followed Rockefeller.
05:41Press releases about his interactions with the people
05:43started to appear in newspapers,
05:44and the billionaire appeared to the public in a more humane light.
05:48Since then, the Rockefellers realized how important it is,
05:51if not to be,
05:52then at least to appear,
05:53and that good PR is just as important for running a big business
05:57as squeezing everything out of workers,
05:59pushing out competitors,
06:00or dealing with politicians.
06:02After all,
06:03the army of a bourgeois state might save you once or twice,
06:05but you can't stay in power on bayonets for long.
06:08One of the consequences of the Ludlow Massacre
06:10was a sudden surge of interest,
06:12not only among the Rockefellers,
06:14but also among other American billionaire families,
06:17in anything that could secure positive newspaper headlines.
06:20Supporting the arts and education
06:22was a guaranteed way to get great publicity,
06:24because what could be better than a captain of industry
06:27caring about your children's future
06:28and high moral principles?
06:31This approach can already be called old school today,
06:34because the world has changed,
06:36and tech entrepreneurs are less and less eager to appear kind.
06:40If good publicity is of any interest to them,
06:43it's only in countries where they make their profits and pay taxes,
06:47and the rest of the world can go to hell.
06:49You can, like Bill Gates,
06:51get involved in charity,
06:52charity work in the third world,
06:54but only as long as it brings good headlines in the New York Times,
06:57and in any case,
06:58you need to know exactly what specific profit
07:01your investment in charity will bring.
07:03After all,
07:03every dollar spent on poor children in Zimbabwe
07:06has to work and bring back a thousand.
07:07For example, investments in the WHO
07:10should turn into a trillion-dollar vaccination market.
07:13The story of the Ludlow Massacre continues to this day.
07:16For Jeff Bezos,
07:17just as for Rockefeller a hundred years ago,
07:19they came up with an even more cunning scheme.
07:23After all,
07:24Amazon uses a sweatshop system in its warehouses,
07:26where workers are paid minimum wage,
07:28they are under constant surveillance,
07:30and are mercilessly fined for any infraction.
07:32For example,
07:34for an unscheduled bathroom break.
07:35So many employees work like COVID doctors in diapers.
07:39Logistics has been automated.
07:40Anyone who can be replaced by a machine has been replaced,
07:43and those who haven't been replaced
07:45have been turned into robots themselves.
07:48The work that Amazon employees do is monotonous
07:51and offers absolutely no prospects for their personal development.
07:54It's just that robots can't place items as precisely yet,
07:58and they're more expensive to maintain than people.
08:00But as soon as that changes,
08:02humans will be instantly replaced by machines.
08:04Moreover,
08:06Amazon's profit growth against the backdrop
08:08of thousands of small businesses going bankrupt across the country
08:11and the overall sharp decline of the U.S. economy
08:13began to be seen as a feast in a time of plague.
08:16All of this required an unconventional move.
08:18And the PR people came up with something for Amazon
08:21that Rockefeller could only envy.
08:24They suggested that Bezos use the company's own employees
08:27to create a positive image for the company.
08:29They were supposed to use Twitter and other social networks for this.
08:33But above all,
08:35Twitter.
08:35The shorter, the better.
08:37Short messages are easier to remember.
08:40Employees should write something like workers' letters
08:42about how good it is to work at the warehouse,
08:45what wonderful colleagues they have,
08:47and how good life is overall,
08:49and how good it is to live.
08:51First of all,
08:52people will believe such stories more than posts
08:54by highly paid blogger influencers
08:56whose job is to promote new products.
08:59Secondly,
09:00these posts will reach exactly those
09:02they are intended for ordinary people,
09:04among whom there are many future Amazon employees.
09:07After all,
09:08if current trends continue
09:09and small and medium-sized businesses finally go under,
09:12everyone will end up working in Amazon warehouses sooner or later.
09:15And finally,
09:16it's much cheaper.
09:17Not only is it cheaper than giving students
09:19charitable scholarships or scientists grants,
09:22but it's even cheaper than maintaining a team of bloggers.
09:25After all,
09:26you can simply announce a contest among Amazon employees
09:28for the best tweet about their magical life
09:30and send the winner on a week-long vacation
09:32to the Caribbean or Disneyland.
09:34And the other participants can be offered work bonuses,
09:38an assignment at a warehouse closer to home,
09:40an extra bathroom break,
09:41or permission to talk at the workplace.
09:45Thousands of employees get involved in the project.
09:48They become fulfillment center ambassadors,
09:50and they are given free sprinkler software for media professionals,
09:53which allows ordinary warehouse workers
09:55to easily manage their posts and see the results.
09:59The calculations of Amazon's PR specialists paid off brilliantly.
10:03Teams of ambassadors began actively posting on Twitter
10:06about how well the work was going.
10:08As soon as the sprinkler notified them
10:10that someone was discussing the grueling working conditions
10:12in the company's warehouses,
10:14writing about the persecution of union members
10:16and the firing of activists,
10:17or generally expressing any negativity towards Amazon,
10:20right away, one of the ambassadors would write
10:23in the relevant chat.
10:24Guys, here you are discussing how bad it is
10:26to work at Amazon.
10:27I work at this company myself.
10:29Let me tell you firsthand,
10:31and I'll even send you some photos.
10:32One of the ambassadors, a girl named Hannah,
10:35wrote a post in the thread
10:36where a negative article about the company
10:38was being discussed.
10:39The post immediately went viral.
10:41It started like this.
10:42I also suffer from depression,
10:44and there was a moment when I wanted to quit Amazon.
10:47But then I realized that it's not about Amazon.
10:49It's about me.
10:51I'm allowed to talk to people,
10:52but sometimes I just don't want to.
10:54Right now I have wonderful co-workers,
10:57and it's so great to spend night shifts with them.
10:59As a result of the Twitter campaign,
11:01according to social surveys,
11:03the level of trust in the company rose so much
11:05that it surpassed trust in the local police,
11:07elected officials, and even the church.
11:10This approach was immediately adopted.
11:12Other companies took it up as well,
11:14and they started teaching their employees
11:15how to write proper posts
11:17about their wonderful workplace.
11:19A term even appeared for those involved in this activity.
11:22Employee advocates.
11:24PR specialists consider this kind of activity
11:26the best alternative to highly paid blogger influencers.
11:30Do Amazon employees have an opinion on this topic?
11:33The company's management is no more interested
11:35in their opinion than in the opinion of the mules in Colorado
11:38that the Rockefellers used to register for local elections.
11:41And if right now employees are asked for their consent
11:44to participate in such activities,
11:45and in some places they might even get paid for it,
11:48in the near future projecting a positive image of the company
11:50through personal social media accounts
11:52will be considered part of their job responsibilities.
11:56If a miner a hundred years ago finished his shift in the mine
11:59and after that his life didn't interest the employer,
12:02except maybe as a way to make extra profit
12:04by selling him soap or rope from the company store,
12:07now the worker belongs to the owner.
12:0824 hours a day?
12:107 days a week?
12:12Not only the body is exploited,
12:14but also the soul,
12:15or rather, the cognitive part of a person,
12:17because his owners don't believe in any soul.
12:19It turns out that the massacre at Ludlow
12:21is not only an example of how the owners behaved
12:24when they didn't consider the workers to be human.
12:27This is also a forecast for the future,
12:29an example of how they will inevitably behave again
12:32when people are once again considered animals,
12:33when not only philosophers and scientists,
12:36but also ordinary people reject the concept of free will and consciousness,
12:39and even the very concept of a human being.
12:42But the outcome of this battle, strangely enough,
12:45depends in part on each of us.
12:46To begin with,
12:47it's worth at least thinking about these questions.
12:50That's already significant.
12:51And the fact that you watched this episode to the end
12:53also means a lot.
12:55Thank you for rating the video,
12:56and see you again on the Krammala channel.
13:05We'll see you again on the Krammala channel.