MikeDunnAuthor

Today in labor history April 29, 1899: Members of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) seized a train, loaded it with 3,000 pounds of dynamite, and drove it into the Bunker Hill mine in Wardner, Idaho because the mine owners refused to respect their demand to hire only union men. They completely destroyed the $250,000 colliery. President McKinley responded by sending in black soldiers from Brownsville, Texas. He ordered them to round up the miners and imprison them in specially built "bullpens." From 1899 to 1901, the U.S. Army occupied most of the Coeur d'Alene mining region in Idaho. The WFM was led by Big Bill Haywood, who would go on to cofound the more radical IWW, in 1905, along with Mother Jones, Lucy Parsons, Eugene Debs, and others.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #mining #union #strike #sabotage #dynamite #prison #racism #IWW #bigbillhaywood #motherjones #lucyparsons #eugenedebs #socialism #anarchism

4:40pmWeb
Show threadGrumble 🇺🇸 🇺🇦41m ago

@MikeDunnAuthor North Idaho, folks. A few years after this unpleasantness, the WFM assassinated the former governor with a bomb in his mailbox.

A decade later, even norther Idaho and a lot of Washington was joining the IWW because of awful living conditions and pay fuckery in the logging camps. This led to the various free speech fights in Spokane and Butte. In the 1912 presidential election, Bonner County Idaho went for Eugene Debs.

By the time the mines were closed in the 1970s, the nation's largest Superfund site was the silver valley and the Coeur d'Alene lake from all of the lead and other heavy metal runoff from the mines and smelters. My mom told me that in the 1950s, Silver Valley folks were told not to eat anything from their gardens.

Don't forget our history! Learn it, share it! I can tell you that none of this was ever mentioned in schools up here.