Coeur d'Alene miners' dispute

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The Coeur d'Alene miners' dispute refers to two incidents: a strike in 1892, and a violent confrontation between union miners and a holdout company in 1899.

The strike of 1892 erupted in violence when union miners discovered they had been infiltrated by a Pinkerton agent who had routinely provided union information to the mine owners. The response to that violence, disastrous for the local miners' union, became the primary motivation for the formation of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) the following year.

The confrontation of 1899 resulted from the miners' frustrations with mine operators that paid lower wages; hired Pinkerton operatives to infiltrate the union; and routinely fired any miner who held a union card.

Contents

[edit] Coeur d'Alene strike of 1892

In 1891, gold ore worth nine million dollars had been shipped out of the Coeur d’Alene, Idaho mining district, plus a quarter million dollars worth of gold bullion. Mine owners were making fortunes, but hardrock miners and common laborers were not.

Then mine operators got into a dispute with the railroads which had raised rates for hauling ore. Mine operators also introduced hole-boring machines into the mines. Mine operators found a reduction in wages the easiest way to mitigate increased costs. After the machines were installed, the mine owners were going to pay the mine workers $3.00 to $3.50 per day, depending upon their specific jobs.[1] The operators also increased miners' work hours from nine to ten hours per day, with no corresponding increase in pay. The work week would be seven days long, with an occasional Sunday off for those who didn't have pumping duty. The miners had other grievances — for example, high payments for room and board in company lodging, and check cashing fees at company saloons.[2]

In 1892, the miners declared a strike against the reduction of wages and the increase in work hours. The miners demanded that a "living wage"[3] of $3.50 per day[4] be paid to every man working underground—the common laborer as well as the skilled. In an era when many unions were AFL craft unions, in which skilled workers frequently looked after their own kind, this was an unusual circumstance—approximately three thousand higher-paid miners standing up for five hundred[5] lower-paid, in this case common laborers. This principle was the inspiration for the industrial unionism that for more than a decade would animate hardrock miners throughout the region.

When the union miners walked out of the mines, the companies advertised in the midwest for workers to come and take the places of the striking miners. Soon every inbound train was filled with replacement workers. But groups of armed, striking miners would frequently meet them, and often persuaded the workers not to take the jobs during a strike.[6]

The silver-mine owners responded by hiring Pinkertons and the Thiel Detective Agency agents to infiltrate the union and suppress strike activity.[7] Pinkertons and strong-arm agents went into the district in large numbers.[8]

Soon there was a significant private army available to protect new workers coming into the mines. Fora time the struggle manifested as a war of words in the local newspapers, with mine owners and mine workers denouncing each other. There were incidents of brawling, and arrests for carrying weapons. Two mines settled and opened with union men, and these mine operators were ostracized by other mine owners who didn't want the union. But two large mines, the Gem mine and the Frisco mine in Burke-Canyon, were operating full scale.[9]

The tension between strikers and strike breakers grew. An undercover Pinkerton agent, soon-to-be well-known lawman Charlie Siringo, had worked in the Gem mine. Siringo used the alias C. Leon Allison to join the union, ingratiating himself by buying drinks and loaning money to his fellow miners. Siringo had been installed early enough to have been elected Recording Secretary, a key position for a labor spy, providing him with access to all of the union's books and records.

Siringo promptly began to report all union business to his employers, allowing the mine owners to outmaneuver the miners on a number of occasions. Strikers planned to intercept a train of incoming strike breakers, so the mine owners dropped off the replacement workers in an unexpected location. When the local union president, Oliver Hughes, ordered Siringo to remove a page from the union record book that recorded a conversation about possibly flooding the mines, the agent mailed that page to the Mine Owners' Association. Siringo also "told his employer's clients what they wanted to hear," referring to union officials such as George Pettibone as "dangerous anarchists."[10]

Siringo was suspected as a spy when the MOA's newspaper, the Coeur d'Alene Barbarian, began publishing union secrets. Although the union had advised the miners against violence,[11] their anger at discovering the infiltration prompted them to seek a confrontation with the companies.

On Sunday night, July 10, armed union miners gathered on the hills above the Frisco mine. More union miners were arriving from surrounding communities, and a showdown was inevitable. At five in the morning, shots rang out, and the firing became continuous. The miners claimed the guards fired first, the guards accused the miners. The union miners, exposed on the logged-off hillside, hadn't positioned themselves for a gunfight, while mine guards were able to shelter in buildings. The union men circled above the mill, and got into a position where they could send a box of black powder down the flume into one of the mine buildings. The building exploded, killing one company man and injuring several others. The union miners fired into a remaining structure where the guards had taken shelter. A second company man was killed, and sixty or so guards surrendered. Union men marched their prisoners to the union hall.[12]

Minutes after the explosion at the Frisco mine, hundreds of miners converged on Siringo's boarding house. But Siringo sawed a hole in the floor,[13] dropped through and covered the hole with a trunk, then crawled for half a block under a wooden boardwalk. Above him, he could hear union men talking about the spy in their midst.[14] Siringo escaped, and fled to the wooded hills above Burke-Canyon Creek.[15]

Meanwhile, a more deadly fight broke out at the nearby Gem mine. Guards at the mine had thrown up barricades from which they could pour deadly fire into buildings in the town of Gem, including Daxon's saloon, which was a union hangout.

A man crossing a footbridge was killed, probably by union fire. Company guards and non-union workers fired into the saloon where fifty or so union men were sheltering.

Three union men had been killed, and the union sought a ceasefire and surrender of the men in the Gem mine. After company forces evacuated the Gem mine, hundreds of union men converged on the Bunker Hill mine at Wardner. This mine was also evacuated, meaning that the union miners had closed down three major mining facilities that had been using replacement workers. About 130 non-union miners were disarmed and expelled from the area. While these men waited to board a boat at Coeur d’Alene Lake, there was another incident of gunfire, and at least seventeen were wounded. More than a hundred of the men decided not to wait for the boat, and they hiked out of the area.[16]

The miners considered the battle over and the union issued a statement deploring "the unfortunate affair at Gem and Frisco."[17] Funerals were Wednesday afternoon, July 13. Three union men and two company men were buried.[18]

The violence provided the mine owners and the governor with an excuse to bring in six companies of the Idaho National Guard to "suppress insurrection and violence." Federal troops also arrived, and they confined six hundred miners in bullpens without any hearings or formal charges. Some were later "sent up" for violating injunctions, others for obstructing the United States mail.[19]

After the Guard and federal troops secured the area, Siringo came out of the mountains to finger union leaders, and those who had participated in the attacks on the Gem and Frisco mines. He wrote that for days he was busy "putting unruly cattle in the bull pen." Siringo then returned to Denver, and the following year the miners formed the Western Federation of Miners because of the disastrous events in Coeur d'Alene in 1892. The WFM immediately called for outlawing the hiring of labor spies, but their demand was ignored.[20]

One of the leaders, George Pettibone, was convicted of contempt of court and criminal conspiracy. Pettibone was sent to Detroit and held until a decision of the Supreme Court released him. The Court concluded that the prisoners were held illegally. Union members held in jail in Boise, Idaho were also released[21] under the court decision.

The Coeur d'Alene strike of 1892 resulted in the birth of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) in Butte, Montana, on May 15, 1893. The WFM embraced the tradition that their organization was born in the Boise, Idaho, jail. Many years later, WFM Secretary-Treasurer Bill Haywood stated at a convention of the United Mine Workers of America that the Western Federation of Miners:

...are not ashamed of having been born in jail, because many great things and many good things have emanated from prison cells.

Soon after the founding of the Western Federation of Miners, the organization was involved in a significant strike in the Cripple Creek district in Colorado. The miners called it "The Bull Hill War."[22]

[edit] Coeur d'Alene confrontation of 1899

Miners working in the Bunker Hill and Sullivan mines at Wardner, Idaho, were receiving fifty cents to a dollar less per day than other miners,[23] which at that time represented a significant percentage of the paycheck. The properties were the only mines in the district that were not unionized. The company had employed Pinkerton labor spies to identify and fire union members. In April of 1899 the company fired seventeen union members and demanded that all other union men collect their back pay and quit.

On April 29, angry union members seized a train in Burke, and loaded it with explosives. They steered it to the site of a $250,000 mill of the Bunker Hill Mining Company. After carrying three thousand pounds of dynamite into the mill, they set their charges and scattered. Two company men were killed.[24]

At the Idaho governor's request, President William McKinley sent black soldiers from Brownsville, Texas, veterans of the Spanish-American war, to round up 1,000 men and put them into bullpens. Emma Langdon, a union sympathizer, charged in a 1908 book that Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg, who had been "considered a poor man," deposited $35,000 into his bank account within a week after troops arrived in the Coeur d'Alene district, implying that there may have been a bribe from the mine operators.[25]

In his autobiography, WFM Secretary-Treasurer Bill Haywood described Idaho miners held for "...months of imprisonment in the 'bull-pen' — a structure unfit to house cattle — enclosed in a high barbed-wire fence."[26] Peter Carlson wrote in his book Roughneck,

Haywood traveled to the town of Mullan, where he met a man who had escaped from the 'bullpen'. The makeshift prison was an old grain warehouse that reeked of excrement and crawled with vermin. Overcrowding was so severe that some two hundred prisoners had been removed from the warehouse and quartered in railroad boxcars.[27]

The miners were held in their crude prisons for a year or more. Union leader Paul Corcoran was sentenced to seventeen years in prison. Meanwhile, Governor Steunenberg's representative, state auditor Bartlett Sinclair, developed a permit system which would prevent mines from hiring any miner who belonged to a union. The plan was designed to destroy the unions in the Coeur d'Alene district.

Surveying the situation, with hundreds of union miners locked up by the militia for a year or more — some never having been charged with any crime — Bill Haywood came to one conclusion. He believed that the companies and their supporters in government — intent upon forcing wage cuts and employers' freedom to fire union miners — were conducting class warfare against the working class.[28]

[edit] Aftermath

At their 1901 convention the WFM miners agreed to the proclamation that a "complete revolution of social and economic conditions" was "the only salvation of the working classes."[29] WFM leaders openly called for the abolition of the wage system. By the spring of 1903 the WFM was the most militant labor organization in the country.[30]

In 1906, George Pettibone was implicated in the 1905 assassination of Frank Steunenberg, ex-governor of Idaho, on the testimony of Harry Orchard. While Orchard was found to have committed the crime, Pinkerton Detective James McParland persuaded him that he could avoid the gallows if he testified that an "inner circle" of Western Federation of Miners leaders had ordered the crime.

Pettibone, Bill Haywood, and Charles Moyer were found not guilty of conspiracy in the killing.[31] Orchard was convicted, and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted, and he spent the rest of his life in an Idaho prison.


[edit] References

  1. ^ Labor's Greatest Conflicts, Emma F. Langdon, 1908, page 12.
  2. ^ "Shoot-Out In Burke Canyon," American Heritage Magazine, Earl Clark, August 1971, Volume 22, Issue 5, http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1971/5/1971_5_44.shtml Retrieved March 28, 2007.
  3. ^ Labor's Greatest Conflicts, Emma F. Langdon, 1908, page 12.
  4. ^ "Shoot-Out In Burke Canyon," American Heritage Magazine, Earl Clark, August 1971, Volume 22, Issue 5, http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1971/5/1971_5_44.shtml Retrieved March 28, 2007.
  5. ^ "Shoot-Out In Burke Canyon," American Heritage Magazine, Earl Clark, August 1971, Volume 22, Issue 5, http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1971/5/1971_5_44.shtml Retrieved March 28, 2007.
  6. ^ "Shoot-Out In Burke Canyon," American Heritage Magazine, Earl Clark, August 1971, Volume 22, Issue 5, http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1971/5/1971_5_44.shtml Retrieved March 28, 2007.
  7. ^ From Blackjacks To Briefcases — A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States, Robert Michael Smith, 2003, page 21.
  8. ^ Labor's Greatest Conflicts, Emma F. Langdon, 1908, page 12.
  9. ^ "Shoot-Out In Burke Canyon," American Heritage Magazine, Earl Clark, August 1971, Volume 22, Issue 5, http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1971/5/1971_5_44.shtml Retrieved March 28, 2007.
  10. ^ From Blackjacks To Briefcases — A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States, Robert Michael Smith, 2003, pages 77-78.
  11. ^ From Blackjacks To Briefcases — A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States, Robert Michael Smith, 2003, page 78.
  12. ^ "Shoot-Out In Burke Canyon," American Heritage Magazine, Earl Clark, August 1971, Volume 22, Issue 5, http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1971/5/1971_5_44.shtml Retrieved March 28, 2007.
  13. ^ From Blackjacks To Briefcases — A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States, Robert Michael Smith, 2003, pages 78-79.
  14. ^ "Shoot-Out In Burke Canyon," American Heritage Magazine, Earl Clark, August 1971, Volume 22, Issue 5, http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1971/5/1971_5_44.shtml Retrieved March 28, 2007.
  15. ^ From Blackjacks To Briefcases — A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States, Robert Michael Smith, 2003, pages 78-79.
  16. ^ "Shoot-Out In Burke Canyon," American Heritage Magazine, Earl Clark, August 1971, Volume 22, Issue 5, http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1971/5/1971_5_44.shtml Retrieved March 28, 2007.
  17. ^ From Blackjacks To Briefcases — A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States, Robert Michael Smith, 2003, pages 78-79.
  18. ^ "Shoot-Out In Burke Canyon," American Heritage Magazine, Earl Clark, August 1971, Volume 22, Issue 5, http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1971/5/1971_5_44.shtml Retrieved March 28, 2007.
  19. ^ Labor's Greatest Conflicts, Emma F. Langdon, 1908, page 13.
  20. ^ From Blackjacks To Briefcases — A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States, Robert Michael Smith, 2003, pages 78-79.
  21. ^ Labor's Greatest Conflicts, Emma F. Langdon, 1908, page 13.
  22. ^ Labor's Greatest Conflicts, Emma F. Langdon, 1908, page 13.
  23. ^ Labor's Greatest Conflicts, Emma F. Langdon, 1908, page 16.
  24. ^ Roughneck—The Life aand Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983, pages 53-54.
  25. ^ Labor's Greatest Conflicts, Emma F. Langdon, 1908, page 17.
  26. ^ The Autobiography of Big Bill Haywood, William D. Haywood, 1929, page 81.
  27. ^ Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983, page 54.
  28. ^ Roughneck—The Life aand Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983, page 55.
  29. ^ All That Glitters—Class, Conflict, and Community in Cripple Creek, Elizabeth Jameson, 1998, page 179.
  30. ^ Colorado's War on Militant Unionism, James H. Peabody and the Western Federation of Miners, George G. Suggs, Jr., 1972, page 15.
  31. ^ The Autobiography of Big Bill Haywood, William Dudley Haywood, 1929, page 224 ppbk.

[edit] Additional references

  • New Politics, vol. 7, no. 1 (new series), whole no. 25, Summer 1998 by Steve Early [1]
  • Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America by J. Anthony Lukas

[edit] See also

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