Emma Langdon is not like other women who are profiled as “pioneers.” Others were involved in women’s rights, suffrage, or independence, but Langdon wasn’t a pioneer for any of those reasons. She simply believed that gender was not a barrier to what a person could do. It wasn’t about “equal rights for women,” it was about everyone doing what they were capable of, gender notwithstanding. Her focus was more on “equal pay for equal work” since she was a major advocate of unionized labor.
Langdon and her husband moved to Cripple Creek, Colorado in 1903 and joined the staff of the Victor Daily Record, where she functioned as an apprentice linotype operator. The Daily Record was one of eight newspapers currently running in Victor and Cripple Creek at the turn of the century. It was a pro-union paper that advocated for a safer, more equitable work environment for all stages of the mining process. At that time, the mines were very unsafe and unregulated; miners knew that taking a job inside a mine was at the risk of death. They also didn’t get paid much, and that’s where the labor union focused its efforts. I wrote about this in my series on Winfield Scott Stratton. From Winfield Scott Stratton: $10 Million Man Part 2:
“Labor tensions were brewing in Cripple Creek and Victor over fair wages. The miners’ union insisted that miners’ pay should be standardized at $3.00 a day for eight hours of work, but the owners said that if the workers wanted $3.00 per day, they would work 10 hours and eat on their own time. Mines all over the area required armed protection and hired “scabs” to replace striking miners. A sheriff’s deputy got shot as he stood outside a hotel, which spurred an all-out war. Somebody even brought in a cannon, and the two sides opened fire in what has become known as the Colorado Labor Wars. The State Militia and eventually the National Guard had to come in to settle things.”
As a result of these events, several people were arrested, including the entire staff of the Daily Record. Convinced that they had quelled the publicity and negative image of the mine owners that the Record projected, representatives of the mine owners threw the staff into a bullpen they had constructed in the heart of Cripple Creek.
Unbeknownst to their captors, one of the Record’s staff members escaped: Emma. Barring the door to the building and working alone all through the night, Emma Langdon single-handedly printed a four-page edition of the next day’s Daily Record with the headline, “Somewhat Disfigured but Still in the Ring.” But she wasn’t finished yet. She showed up bright and early the next morning to the bullpen in Cripple Creek with an armload of papers to give to her co-workers. In her 1908 book, Labor’s Greatest Conflicts, she said the National Guard officers were “discussing with glee the ‘great victory in suppressing the paper.’ Their laughter was soon changed to oaths when they were dramatically presented the papers that were intended for the imprisoned printers.” The Associated Press picked up the story, granting her national acclaim.
The Western Federation of Miners presented Emma Langdon with a gold medal for her actions. She was made an honorary member of the union in 1904. One would think she would capitalize on her notoriety and channel it into women’s rights, but she was a private person who eschewed such ideas. Nevertheless, she is a superior example of a woman ignoring gender roles for what she saw was a higher purpose. In 1905, she published The Cripple Creek Strike: A History of Industrial Wars in Colorado, which remains one of the best historical books about Colorado. She later became a publicist for the Western Federation of Miners.
Langdon is a pioneer not just because she succeeded as a woman in a man’s world, but because she did what she had to do, regardless of the social strictures women faced at the time. Many people don’t know that Langdon was the originator of the phrase, “The woman’s place is in the home,” touted as a misogynistic phrase for many years afterward. However, the phrase is incomplete: Langdon’s original statement is, “The woman’s place is in the home, and not in public life,” which gives it a wholly different connotation. Taken in a historical context, the whole phrase seems in character with Langdon, since she faded from public life by the mid-1900’s. Taken in a modern context, the phrase seems much less sexist and much more about avoiding celebrity. What would Emma Langdon have thought of Twitter?
