Labor unions today: "we'll help you organize and take the legal steps to get fair treatment."
Labor unions in 1912: "take this rifle. If your boss doesn't comply with our demands, shoot him and blow up his mansion."
One of these two approaches gets immediate results.
My great grandfather actually was a coal mine who took up arms around the time of the ludlow massacre, and fought the Colorado national guard. It's kind of a wild family story and even more wild that the next two generations of his descendents were almost entirely composed of libs lol