The 1921 battle of Blair Mountain

The Blair Mountain battle was a labor vs coal mine owner conflict that occurred August 25 to September 2, 1921 in West Virginia. It was the largest labor uprising in US history. About 100 miners were murdered and many more were arrested. Local law enforcement, mine owner mercenaries and federal troops crushed the miners fighting for decent work conditions. The United Mine Workers union saw major declines in membership, but long-term publicity led to some improvements in working conditions. 

What enraged and scared the bejesus out of capitalist mine owners was the union of poor whites, blacks and immigrants who rose together to protest barbaric work conditions.

Because the miners lost, the historical story was told by the victors. The winner's story was a pack of lies told by coal companies and the co-opted, craven mainstream media of the time. The winners portrayed the uprising as a caused by miners who were portrayed as products of an ignorant, moonshine-drunken culture, not the vicious capitalist industrial autocracy of the time. 

A 17-minute NPR broadcast discussed this toxic capitalist-inspired and capitalist lied-about event. 

A Blair Mountain miner with his gun 

Wikipedia comments: 

In the short term the battle was an overwhelming victory for coal industry owners and management. UMW [United Mine Workers] membership plummeted from more than 50,000 miners to approximately 10,000 over the next several years, and it was not until 1935 – following the Great Depression and the beginning of the New Deal under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt – that the UMW fully organized in southern West Virginia.

This union defeat had major implications for the UMWA as a whole. After World War I, as the coal industry began to collapse, union mining was no longer financially sustainable. Because of the defeat in West Virginia, the union was also undermined in Pennsylvania and Kentucky. By the end of 1925, Illinois was the only remaining unionized state that could compete with them in terms of soft coal production.

Once union mining became financially unsustainable, non-union mining had to replace it. In the old days, workers always got the shaft when economic forces and capitalism dictated it. That is just how raw capitalism run by human beings worked and still works to the extent modern society will tolerate it.

Question: What is best, unregulated, brass knuckles capitalism backed by force imposed by private and public armies, reasonably regulated capitalism, socialism, or some combination of two or more of those, e.g., significantly or mostly socialized medicine with a reasonably regulated electronics sector?

Armed Blair Mountain miners surrendering to federal troops