Panic of 1873
The Panic of 1873 played a large role in the lead up to the so-called "Battle of Como" in 1879. The panic lasted from 1873-1878, during which time the country saw bank closures,[1] rampant unemployment, and railroad failures, the last of which impacted coal mining and coal miners in Colorado. Although Colorado was protected from the worst of the depression, the coal companies were heavily impacted and, under financial duress, looked for ways to cut their costs. One solution was by lowering miners' wages. Because of the high unemployment rates, cheap labor was easy to come by and experienced miners lost any kind of leverage to lobby for fair pay.[2] According to Wolff, Chinese coal miners weren't all too prevalent in the Rocky Mountains until after 1875;[3] they were probably busily engaged in placer mining at Fairplay and Tarryall.
In 1879, when the country had officially placed the Panic behind them, Chinese miners started entering the coal mines and white workers immediately resisted their presence. However inexcusable the behavior, it is not surprising that, after five years of living under the threat of unemployment and competing for pitiful wages that would not have been tolerated before 1873, the white coal miners in the Rocky Mountains (and specifically at Como), would have felt immediately threatened by new workers who reportedly worked for less. This may have felt like the Panic starting to happen all over again. Having just worked their way back up to a living wage (Evans places the Italian workers at $2.50 a day),[4] the white miners might have panicked out of fear of losing what ground they'd just gained. These exacerbated fears set the stage for the resulting conflict that was dubbed the "Battle of Como."
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[1] David A. Wolff, Industrializing the Rockies: Growth, Competition, and Turmoil in the Coalfields of Colorado and Wyoming, 1868-1914 (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2003), 31.
[2] Wolff, 31, 35, 39.
[3] Wolff, 47.
[4] “’Chinese Cheap Labor,’” Fairplay Flume, (Fairplay, CO), Dec. 3, 1879, Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection, https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/.