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 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, disastr ...

, and the

Coeur d'Alene, Idaho labor confrontation of 1899 The Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, labor riot of 1899 was the second of two major labor-management confrontations in the Silver Valley (Idaho), Coeur d'Alene mining district of Idaho Panhandle, northern Idaho in the 1890s. Like the first incident 1892 C ...

. This article is a brief overview of both events. The strike of 1892 had its roots in the first pay cut by the Bunker Hill Mining Company in 1887. Immediately after the reduction in wages miners organized the first union at Wardner on November 3, 1887.
The response to that violence, disastrous for the local miners' union, became the primary motivation for the formation of the

Western Federation of Miners 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 ...

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

Coeur d'Alene strike of 1892

Coeur d'Alene, Idaho Coeur d'Alene ( ; ) is a city and the county seat of Kootenai County, Idaho, United States. It is the most populous city in North Idaho and the principal city of the Coeur d'Alene Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 54,628 at th ...

area miners organized into several local unions during the 1880s. Mine owners responded by forming a Mine Owners' Association. Mine operators found a reduction in wages the easiest way to mitigate increased costs. The operators also increased miners' work hours from nine to ten hours per day, with no corresponding increase in pay. In 1892, the miners declared a strike against the reduction of wages and an increase in work hours. 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."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. The silver-mine owners responded by hiring

Pinkertons Pinkerton is an American private investigation and security company established around 1850 in the United States by Scottish-born American cooper Allan Pinkerton and Chicago attorney Edward Rucker as the North-Western Police Agency, which l ...

and the Thiel Detective Agency agents to infiltrate the union and suppress strike activity. 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 nonunion mines, the Gem mine and the Frisco mine in Burke-Canyon, were operating full scale. An undercover Pinkerton agent, soon-to-be well-known lawman

Charlie Siringo Charles Angelo Siringo (February 7, 1855 – October 18, 1928) was an American lawman, detective, bounty hunter, and agent for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Early life Siringo was born o ...

, had worked in the Gem mine. Siringo began to report all union business to his employers. Siringo was suspected as a spy when the MOA's newspaper, the ''Coeur d'Alene Barbarian'', began publishing union secrets. On Sunday night, July 10, there was gunfire at the Frisco mine. The miners claimed the guards fired first, the guards accused the miners. The union men eventually sent a box of

black powder Gunpowder, also commonly known as black powder to distinguish it from modern smokeless powder, is the earliest known chemical explosive. It consists of a mixture of sulfur, charcoal (which is mostly carbon), and potassium nitrate, potassium ni ...

down the

flume A flume is a human-made channel for water, in the form of an open declined gravity chute whose walls are raised above the surrounding terrain, in contrast to a trench or ditch. Flumes are not to be confused with aqueducts, which are built to t ...

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. Minutes after the explosion at the Frisco mine, miners searched for Siringo, but didn't find him.From Blackjacks To Briefcases — A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States, Robert Michael Smith, 2003, pages 78-79. Meanwhile, a more deadly fight broke out at the nearby Gem mine. A man crossing a footbridge was killed, probably by union fire. Company forces evacuated the Gem mine, and hundreds of union men converged on the Bunker Hill mine at Wardner. This mine was also evacuated. About 130 non-union miners were disarmed and expelled from the area. The violence caused the governor to declare martial law,Mark Wyman, Hard Rock Epic, Western Miners and the Industrial Revolution, 1860-1910, 1979, page 170. and send in six companies of the

Idaho National Guard The Idaho Military Department consists of the Idaho Army National Guard, the Idaho Air National Guard, the Idaho Bureau of Homeland Security, and formerly the Idaho State Guard. Its headquarters are located in Boise, Idaho, Boise. The main goal ...

to "suppress insurrection and violence." Federal troops also arrived, and they confined six hundred miners in

bullpen In baseball, the bullpen (or simply the pen) is the area where relief pitchers warm up before entering a game. A team's roster of relief pitchers is also metonymically referred to as "the bullpen". These pitchers usually wait in the bullpen if ...

s without any hearings or formal charges. Some were later "sent up" for violating injunctions, others for obstructing the United States mail. Military rule lasted for four months. On May 15, 1893, in Butte, Montana, the miners formed the

(WFM) as a direct result of their experiences in Coeur d'Alene.

Coeur d'Alene confrontation of 1899

The profitable

Bunker Hill Mining Company The Bunker Hill Mining Company is a mining company with facilities in Kellogg and Wardner, Idaho. Early history Simeon Reed bought the Bunker Hill Mine and Mill, and incorporated the Bunker Hill and Sullivan Mining and Concentrating Company o ...

at Wardner, Idaho had employed Pinkerton labor spies to identify union members. The company fired seventeen union members. On April 29, 250 angry union members seized a train in

Burke Burke (; ) is a Normans in Ireland, Norman-Irish surname, deriving from the ancient Anglo-Norman and Hiberno-Norman noble dynasty, the House of Burgh. In Ireland, the descendants of William de Burgh (''circa'' 1160–1206) had the surname'' de B ...

and rode it to Wardner, and dynamited a $250,000 mill of the Bunker Hill mine. A non-union miner and a union miner were killed. At the Idaho governor's request, President

William McKinley William McKinley (January 29, 1843September 14, 1901) was the 25th president of the United States, serving from 1897 until Assassination of William McKinley, his assassination in 1901. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Repub ...

sent the U.S. army. One thousand men were herded into an old barn. Conditions remained primitive, and three prisoners died. Emma Langdon, a union sympathizer, charged in a 1908 book that Idaho Governor

Frank Steunenberg Frank Steunenberg (August 8, 1861December 30, 1905) was the fourth governor of the State of Idaho, serving from 1897 until 1901. He was assassinated in 1905 by onetime union member Harry Orchard, who was also a paid informant for the Cripple ...

received $35,000 from the mine operators.

J. Anthony Lukas Jay Anthony Lukas (April 25, 1933 – June 5, 1997) was an American journalist and author, best known for his 1985 book ''Common Ground (Lukas book), Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families''. ''Common Ground'' i ...

later recorded in the 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 ttorneys

Some of the miners, never having been charged with any crime, were eventually allowed to go free, while others were prosecuted. The mine owners developed a permit system aimed at excluding union miners from employment.J. Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble, 1997, pages 146-148.

Coeur d'Alene strike of 1892

Coeur d'Alene confrontation of 1899

See also

References

Further reading