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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 strike in 1899. The strike of 1892 was the primary reason for the formation of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM); the WFM called the strike in 1899.

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] covered it with a trunk, and 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 hills above Coeur d'Alene.[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]

Coeur d'Alene strike of 1899

On April 29, 1899 members of the Western Federation of Miners dynamited the $250,000 mill of the Bunker Hill Mining Company at Wardner, Idaho. President William McKinley sent black soldiers from Brownsville, Texas, veterans of the Spanish-American war, to roundup 1,000 men into bullpens.


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.

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

See also



    

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