“From my first experience in the Ludlow tent colony the gunmen would come there and would try in everyway to provoke trouble. They were trying to cause a battle between the miners and the gunmen, but we knew that and we did not want to have any trouble. At one time the gunmen came to the Ludlow tent colony, just as near as they could get, fired two shots into the tent colony. Our men took their rifles and went to the hills, thinking by so doing they would lead the fire that way and keep them from firing on the colony, where the women and children were. There was no way to protect the women and children. After that our men took and dug pits under the tents, so that if the same thing should happen again there would be some means of escape for those women and children.”

Pearl Jolly testimony to the United States Commission on Industrial Relations