The Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, labor riot of 1899 was the second of two major labor-management confrontations in the Coeur d'Alene mining district of northernIdaho in the 1890s. Like the first incident seven years earlier, the 1899 confrontation was an attempt by union miners, led by the Western Federation of Miners to unionize non-union mines, and have them pay the higher union wage scale. As with the 1892 strike, the 1899 incident culminated in a dynamite attack that destroyed a non-union mining facility, the burning of multiple homes and outbuildings and two murders, followed by military occupation of the district.
The riot of 1899 resulted from the miners' frustrations with mine operators that paid lower wages, hired Pinkerton or Thiel operatives to infiltrate the union, and the refusal of non-union miners to join or strike.
Angered by wage cuts, Coeur d'Alene area miners conducted a strike in 1892. The strike 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. After several deaths, the U.S. army occupied the area and forced an end to the strike. 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 second military occupation, 1894
Pro-union sentiment remained strong in the area, and by 1894, most of the mines were unionized, represented by the Knights of Labor.
Violence erupted in the Coeur d'Alene district during the national Pullman railroad strike of 1894. Union members attacked non-union mines and workers. Forty masked men shot to death John Kneebone, who had testified against union miners in 1892. Others kidnapped a mine superintendent, and tried to blow up the powder house at the Bunker Hill mine.
Urged by the mine owners, the Idaho governor requested federal troops, supposedly to prevent interruptions in railroad service along the Northern Pacific route through the Coeur d'Alene area. PresidentGrover Cleveland sent about 700 troops in July 1894. Major General John Schofield, determined to avoid embroiling his troops in a local labor dispute as they were in 1892, directed that the Army confine its mission to keeping the railroads running, and not take orders from state or local officials. The Army patrolled the railroad lines, and reported no disturbances or local opposition. The union members, wanting to avoid another military occupation, stopped the attacks on non-union targets.
The Army repeatedly reported that there were no disturbances of rail transport, and requested permission to withdraw the troops. The mine owners pressured the Cleveland administration to keep the troops in place. The mine owners eventually realized that the Army would not expand its mission beyond protecting the railroad, and dropped their opposition to withdrawal of the troops. The Army units left the Coeur d'Alene in September 1894.[1]p.163-165
In December 1894, the Bunker Hill and Sullivan mine shut down rather than agree to the union demand of a uniform wage of $3.50 (~$123.00 in 2023) per day. The mine reopened in June 1895, with nonunion labor paying $3.00 per day to miners and $2.50 to surface employees and unskilled underground labor. The company said that whenever the combined prices of lead and silver rose again to a certain point, they would restore the old wage rate.[2]
Leading up to the 1899 clash
The Bunker Hill Mining Company at Wardner was profitable, having paid more than $600,000 in dividends.[3] Miners working in the Bunker Hill and Sullivan mines were receiving fifty cents to a dollar less per day than other miners,[4] which at that time represented a significant percentage of the paycheck. The properties were the only mines in the district that were not entirely unionized.
In April 1899, as the union was launching an organizing drive of the few locations not yet unionized, superintendent Albert Burch declared that the company would rather "shut down and remain closed twenty years" than to recognize the union. He then fired seventeen workers that he believed to be union members and demanded that all other union men collect their back pay and quit.[3]
Dynamite Express
The strike by the union local at Wardner was not succeeding, and the nearby WFM locals, at Gem, Burke, and Mullan, feared that the other mine owners would cut wages to match those paid at the Bunker Hill mine. During the trial, these proved to be only rumors. The other WFM locals agreed to support the strike at Wardner. The officers of the WFM locals met and planned a massive show of force for April 29.
On April 29, 250 union members seized a train in Burke, northeast of Wallace; the engineer, Levi "Al" Hutton, later claimed at gunpoint.[5] At each stop through Burke Canyon, more miners climbed aboard. In Mace, a hundred men climbed aboard. At Frisco, the train stopped to load eighty wooden boxes, each containing fifty pounds (23kg) of dynamite. At Gem, 150 to 200 more miners climbed onto three freight cars which had been added to the train. In Wallace, 200 miners were waiting, having walked seven miles (11km) from Mullan. About a thousand men rode the train to Wardner,[6] the site of a $250,000 mill of the Bunker Hill mine. Witnesses later testified that the majority of those on the train knew nothing of any planned violence when they started out; they thought that it would be just a massive demonstration to intimidate the mine owners into recognizing the union. However, the union had distributed masks and firearms to between 100 and 200 of the men, who acted as if under military discipline.[7] The pro-union Idaho State Tribune in Wallace wrote:
"At no time did the demonstration assume the appearance of a disorganized mob. All the details were managed with the discipline and precision of a perfectly trained military organization."[8]
County sheriff James D. Young, who had been elected with union support, had ridden to Wardner on the train with the union miners. At Wardner, Young climbed atop a rail car, and ordered the group to disperse. His order was ignored, and he later said that any further attempt to restrain the miners would have been suicidal. State prosecutors claimed that Young had been paid off by the WFM.
Bunker Hill and Sullivan Mill after the 1899 Coeur d'Alene explosion.
Word had reached Wardner by telephone that the union miners were on their way, and most of the mine and mill workers had fled. The crowd ordered the remaining workers out of the Bunker Hill mine and mill. Once out, they were ordered to run, and some shots fired at them as they ran. James Cheyne was shot in the hip, then union miners shot more bullets into him as he lay on the ground; he died shortly after. One union man, John Smith, also called Schmidt, was mistakenly shot to death by other union men.[7]
After carrying three thousand pounds (1,400kg) of dynamite into the mill, the blast completely destroyed the mill.[9] The crowd also burned down the company office, the boarding house, and the home of the mine manager. The miners re-boarded the "Dynamite Express" and returned the way they came.[10] Working men gathered along the track, and according to the pro-union Idaho State Tribune, "cheered the [union] men lustily as they passed."."[3]
Arrests
The temporary wooden prison built in Wardner, Idaho, popularly called "the bullpen."Prisoners drill with wooden rifles in the "bullpen," Wardner, Idaho, 1899.
At the Idaho governor's request, President William McKinley sent in the Army. The majority of army troops sent to the Coeur d'Alene were African American soldiers of the 24th Infantry Regiment, stationed in Spokane, Salt Lake City, and other western posts. The 24th had distinguished itself in combat during the Spanish–American War, and was seen as one of the most disciplined Army units not then serving overseas.[11]Bill Haywood criticized the U.S. government's attempts to turn whites against blacks. Haywood wrote: "it was a deliberate attempt to add race prejudice ... race prejudice had been unknown among the miners."[12] Nevertheless, he wrote that the government's efforts weren't all that successful, as the miners' turn against the army outweighed any racial dispute.[12]
State authorities used the troops to round up 1,000 men and put them into "the bullpen." The arrests were indiscriminate; Governor Steunenberg's representative, state auditor Bartlett Sinclair believed that all the people of Canyon Creek had a "criminal history," and "the entire community, or the male portion of it, ought to be arrested." The soldiers searched every house, breaking down the door if no one answered.[13]
Mass arrests began on May 4, when 128 were arrested. More than two hundred were arrested the following day, and the arrests continued until about a thousand men had been arrested.[14]p.31
As Sinclair had ordered, they arrested every male: miners, bartenders, a doctor, a preacher, even the postmaster and school superintendent. … Cooks and waiters [were] arrested in kitchens, diners at their supper tables. … For desperate criminals, the men of Burke went quietly, the only gunshot was aimed at a "vicious watch dog."[13]
What was called "the bullpen" was actually a number of structures. The first 150 prisoners were kept in an old barn, a two-story frame structure 120 by 40 feet (37 by 12m) and filled with hay. It was "still very cold in those altitudes" and the men, having been arrested with no opportunity to bring along blankets, "suffered some from the weather." As the barn became overcrowded, new prisoners were put in railroad boxcars. When both these became overcrowded, the prisoners were then forced to build a pine board prison for themselves, and it was surrounded by a six-foot barbed wire fence patrolled by armed soldiers. Conditions remained primitive, and three prisoners died.[15][1]p.171
The U.S. Army followed escaping miners into Montana and arrested them, returning them to Idaho, and failed to comply with jurisdictional or extradition laws. One man arrested and transported was a Montana citizen who had no connection to the Wardner events.[16]
Two of the three county commissioners had been caught in the roundup, as had the local sheriff. These, too, were held prisoner. Later, a district court removed all of the county commissioners and the sheriff from office, charging that they'd neglected their official duties.[17]
Most of those arrested were freed within two weeks. By May 12, 450 prisoners remained; by May 30, the number was 194. Releases slowed, and 65 remained incarcerated on October 10;[18]p.148-149[14]p.37,40,73 the last prisoners in the bullpen were released in early December 1899.[19]
Aftermath
Arrangements with replacement officials installed by Sinclair demonstrated "a pattern."
The new regime's principal [sic] patronage—the fat contract for supplying food and drink to the bullpen's prisoners—had gone to Tony Tubbs, the former manager of Bunker Hill's boardinghouse, destroyed on April 29. Likewise, most of the thirty men Sinclair hired as special "state deputies" were either employees and former employees of the Bunker Hill Company or contractors for it. Among the most prominent was a saloonkeeper named W.C. "Convict" Murphy, who'd served time for horse stealing and cattle rustling. When Convict Murphy broke down people's doors, he was sometimes asked for a search warrant or other authority, at which he would draw a pair of six-shooters and say, "These are my warrants."[20]
Emma F. 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.[21] Subsequent research appears to have uncovered the apparent source of this assertion. J. Anthony Lukas recorded in his book Big Trouble,
In 1899, when the state needed money for the Coeur d'Alene prosecutions, the Mine Owners' Association had come up with $32,000—about a third of it from Bunker Hill and Sullivan—handing $25,000 over to Governor Steunenberg for use at his discretion in the prosecution. Some of this money went to pay [attorneys].[22]
Steunenberg was later assassinated[23] by Harry Orchard who claimed to have been hired by the WFM.[24]
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."[25] Haywood concluded 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.[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.[27]
Thirty-four-year-old Paul Corcoran was the financial secretary of the Burke Miners Union and a member of the Central Mining Union. The State pursued charges against him. While he had not been at the scene of the riot, Corcoran had been seen on the roof of a boxcar on the Dynamite Express, and at multiple union halls along the route, rallying men on to Wardner. He additionally told the Burke mine manager Mr. Culbertson that his employees had left for the day and were on their way to Wardner, but would return in time for the night shift.[28] The prosecution, whose salaries were paid by a $32,000 grant from the mine owners, argued that Corcoran should take part of the blame for planning the attack on the Bunker Hill mill and Sullivan mine. Corcoran was sentenced to seventeen years at hard labor. Eight more miners and union leaders accused of leading the attack were scheduled for trial on charges of murder and/or arson, but bribed an army sergeant to allow them to escape. Hundreds more remained in the makeshift prison without charges.[29]
Meanwhile, 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 after the violence and lawlessness of the last 7 years. General Henry C. Merriam of the U.S. Army endorsed the permit system verbally and in writing, resulting in considerable consternation at the McKinley White House.[30]
The editor of one local newspaper, Wilbur H. Stewart of the Mullan Mirror, dared to criticize the bullpen and its keepers. Sinclair appeared at his door alongside a major and several soldiers with unsheathed bayonets. Sinclair declared,
I find that you have been publishing a seditious newspaper, inciting riot and insurrection, and we have concluded that publication of your paper must cease.[31]
Stewart was taken to the bullpen, where he was assigned to garbage and latrine duty. However, the paper did not stop publication; Stewart's young wife, Maggie, continued to publish the weekly.[32] Sinclair impounded her type, and she contracted with another sympathetic publisher to continue the news. Eventually Stewart was released under instructions to end the criticism. He sold the newspaper instead.[31]
Many populist elected officials in Shoshone County were rounded up for their support of the miners. The town sheriff of Mullan, Idaho was arrested and sent to the bullpen.[33]
May Arkwright Hutton, whose husband was the engineer on the dynamite express, wrote a book, The coeur d' alenes: or, A Tale of the Modern Inquisition in Idaho, about the treatment of the miners, and her husband, at the hands of the mine owners and the sheriff.
Both Huttons and Ed Boyce, head of the Western Federation of Miners, had invested in the Hercules silver mine before the 1899 war. After they had become wealthy mine owners, May Hutton sought to buy back all copies of her book. Ed Boyce quit the miners union to manage a hotel in Portland.[34]
The Western Federation of Miners (WFM) was a labor union that gained a reputation for militancy in the mines of the western United States and British Columbia. Its efforts to organize both hard rock miners and smelter workers brought it into sharp conflicts – and often pitched battles – with both employers and governmental authorities. One of the most dramatic of these struggles occurred in the Cripple Creek district of Colorado in 1903–1904; the conflicts were thus dubbed the Colorado Labor Wars. The WFM also played a key role in the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905 but left that organization several years later.
William Dudley Haywood, nicknamed "Big Bill", was an American labor organizer and founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and a member of the executive committee of the Socialist Party of America. During the first two decades of the 20th century, Haywood was involved in several important labor battles, including the Colorado Labor Wars, the Lawrence Textile Strike, and other textile strikes in Massachusetts and New Jersey.
Frank Steunenberg was the fourth governor of the State of Idaho, serving from 1897 until 1901. He was assassinated in 1905 by one-time union member Harry Orchard, who was also a paid informant for the Cripple Creek Mine Owners' Association. Orchard attempted to implicate leaders of the radical Western Federation of Miners in the assassination. The labor leaders were found not guilty in two trials, but Orchard spent the rest of his life in prison.
Albert Edward Horsley, best known by the pseudonym Harry Orchard, was a miner convicted of the 1905 political assassination of former Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg. The case was one of the most sensational and widely reported of the first decade of the 20th century, involving three prominent leaders of the radical Western Federation of Miners as co-defendants in an alleged conspiracy to commit murder.
There were two related incidents between miners and mine owners in the Coeur d'Alene Mining District of North Idaho: the Coeur d'Alene, Idaho labor strike of 1892, and the Coeur d'Alene, Idaho labor confrontation of 1899. This article is a brief overview of both events.
Frank Robert Gooding was a Republican United States Senator and the seventh governor of Idaho. The city of Gooding and Gooding County, both in southern Idaho, are named for him.
George A. Pettibone was an Idaho miner. Pettibone was best known as a defendant in trial of three leaders of the Western Federation of Miners for the 1905 assassination by bombing of Frank Steunenberg, former governor of Idaho.
The Hercules Mine was one of the richest lead/silver mines in the Coeur d'Alene Mountains in Burke, Idaho. It was discovered by Harry L. Day, a bookkeeper and clerk, and Fred Harper, a local prospector. In 1923 the mine owners founded the Day Mines, Inc. company. Other investors in the mine include August Paulsen, Levi Hutton, and May Arkwright Hutton. It eventually became the primary mine of the Hecla Mining Corporation.
Edward Boyce was president of the Western Federation of Miners, a radical American labor organizer, socialist and hard rock mine owner.
James Henry Hawley was an American attorney and politician from Idaho. He was state's ninth governor from 1911 to 1913, and the mayor of Boise from 1903 to 1905. He also acted as prosecutor or defense attorney for a substantial number of criminal cases. Outside of criminal law, he specialized in irrigation and mining cases.
The Silver Valley is a region in the northwest United States, in the Coeur d'Alene Mountains in northern Idaho. It is noted for its mining heritage, dating back to the 1880s.
James McParland was an American private detective and Pinkerton agent.
Steve Adams, sometimes known as Stephen Adams, was an American miner and member of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) in the early 1900s. Adams was named as an accomplice in several murders by Harry Orchard, who said that the murders were done at the orders of the WFM leadership. Adams was tried three times for murder, but was never convicted.
The Colorado Labor Wars were a series of labor strikes in 1903 and 1904 in the U.S. state of Colorado, by gold and silver miners and mill workers represented by the Western Federation of Miners (WFM). Opposing the WFM were associations of mine owners and businessmen at each location, supported by the Colorado state government. The strikes were notable and controversial for the accompanying violence, and the imposition of martial law by the Colorado National Guard in order to put down the strikes.
Burke Canyon is the canyon of the Burke-Canyon Creek, which runs through the northernmost part of Shoshone County, Idaho, U.S., within the northeastern Silver Valley. A hotbed for mining in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Burke Canyon now contains several ghost towns and remnants of former communities along Idaho State Highway 4, which runs northeast through the narrow canyon to the Montana border.
In the United States, a Mine Owners' Association (MOA), also sometimes referred to as a Mine Operators' Association or a Mine Owners' Protective Association, is the combination of individual mining companies, or groups of mining companies, into an association, established for the purpose of promoting the collective interests of the group. Such associations are sometimes referred to as MOAs, however, in some cases they may be designated by the state, district, or locale, such as the Cripple Creek District Mine Owners' Association (CCDMOA).
The Bunker Hill Mining Company is a mining company with facilities in Kellogg and Wardner, Idaho.
The 1892 Coeur d'Alene labor strike erupted in violence when labor union miners discovered they had been infiltrated by a Pinkerton agent who had routinely provided union information to the mine owners. The response to the labor 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 incident marked the first violent confrontation between the workers of the mines and their owners. Labor unrest continued after the 1892 strike, and surfaced again in the labor confrontation of 1899.
The Butte, Montana labor riots of 1914 were a series of violent clashes between copper miners at Butte, Montana. The opposing factions were the miners dissatisfied with the Western Federation of Miners local at Butte, on the one hand, and those loyal to the union local on the other. The dissident miners formed a new union, and demanded that all miners must join the new union, or be subject to beatings or forced expulsion from the area. Sources disagree whether the dissidents were a majority of the miners, or a militant minority. The leadership of the new union contained many who were members of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.), or agreed with the I.W.W.'s methods and objectives. The result of the dispute between rival unions was that the copper mines of Butte, which had long been a union stronghold for the WFM, became open shop employers, and recognized no union from 1914 until 1934.
The Goldfield, Nevada labor troubles of 1906–1907 were a series of strikes and a lockout which pitted gold miners and other laborers, represented by the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), against mine owners and businessmen.
References
1 2 Clayton D. Laurie and Ronald H. Cole, The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders 1877-1945(Washington: US Army Center of Military History, 1997).
↑ Frederick Leslie Ransome, and Frank Cathcart Calkins, 1908, The Geology and Ore Deposits of the Coeur D’Alene District, Idaho, US Geological Survey, Professional Paper 62, p.81.
1 2 US Department of Labor, 1900, Report of the Industrial Commission on the Relations and Conditions of Labor and Capital employed in the Mining Industry, v.12 p.LXXXVIII-LXXXIX.
↑ Annual Report of the Major-General Commanding the Army, Part 1, p.43
↑ Roughneck—The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983, pages 53-54.
↑ J. Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble, 1997, pages 113-114.
↑ Roughneck: The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983, page 54.
↑ Borah, William E. (1899). The Closing Argument of W. E. Borah for the Prosecution, in the Great Coeur d'Alene Riot-Murder Trial, Delivered July 27, 1899, Wallace, Idaho. Harvard Law Library. pp.1–26.
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