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 "Big Bill" Haywood 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.
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 history of Idaho is an examination of the human history and social activity within the state of Idaho, one of the United States of America located in the Pacific Northwest area near the west coast of the United States and Canada. Other associated areas include southern Alaska, all of British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, western Montana and northern California and Nevada.
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.
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.
Morris Friedman was, until 1905, the private stenographer for Pinkerton detective James McParland. Friedman came to the attention of the public when he published an exposé of anti-union actions by the private detective industry which was called The Pinkerton Labor Spy. The book focused in particular on how mining and ore milling companies used spies during the Colorado Labor Wars.
Steve Adams, sometimes known as Stephen Adams, was a 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.
Labor spying in the United States had involved people recruited or employed for the purpose of gathering intelligence, committing sabotage, sowing dissent, or engaging in other similar activities, in the context of an employer/labor organization relationship. Spying by companies on union activities has been illegal in the United States since the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. However, non-union monitoring of employee activities while at work is perfectly legal and, according to the American Management Association, nearly 80% of major US companies actively monitor their employees.
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 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 northern Idaho 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 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 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.
