Ensuring a Workplace of Their Own, 1893–1903

Abstract This chapter examines the roots and evolution of labor radicalism in Colorado between 1893 and 1903, revealing the distinctive ideological foundation that set western miners apart from national labor movements. Rather than adopting the Marxist ideal of centralized state control over industry, Colorado’s miners—especially those affiliated with the Western Federation of Miners—embraced a paradoxical form of radicalism grounded in local property rights and community autonomy. Drawing on traditions of labor republicanism and “local producerism,” these miners viewed control over the mines where they worked as a defense of propertied independence. Colorado miners resisted external ownership and management, relying on ethnic solidarity, geographic isolation, and labor scarcity to exercise substantial control over local institutions. This fiercely localist ideology led them to embrace confrontational labor tactics in defense of traditional ownership ideals rooted in American free labor and artisan republicanism.