1914 Butte, Montana, labor riots
Daly later sold out to the Amalgamated Copper Company, which was backed by Standard Oil directors William Rockefeller and Henry H. Rogers, but the feud continued.
Leaders of the Western Federation of Miners such as Bill Haywood and Vincent St. John were instrumental in forming the I.W.W.
When three WFM officers, Haywood, Pettibone and Moyer were accused of conspiracy in the murder of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg, the IWW took it up as a cause celebre, held public rallies, and funded the legal defense.
Bill Haywood and Vincent St. John left the WFM to spend their time organizing the I.W.W.
The dissatisfied miners accused the leadership of the WFM local of stuffing ballot boxes in union elections, and of being in the pay of the Amalgamated Copper Company, which controlled all the important Butte mines.
The Butte miners complained of special assessments imposed on them for strike funds in other districts.
On June 12, 1914, two shifts of miners at the Speculator mine refused to show their cards, and staged an impromptu march to downtown Butte.
The crowd of dissidents left the parade and attacked the WFM local's headquarters, hauling away a safe, which they later blew open; they said that they were looking for evidence of corruption of union officials.
When alderman and acting mayor Frank Curran went to the union hall and tried to calm the crowd, he was thrown out a second-story window.
The dissidents visited the three Butte newspaper offices, and demanded that the papers not use the words "mob" or "rioters" in describing the events.
Street-corner agitators urged the looting of stores and the destruction of public buildings with dynamite.
The Chamber of Commerce called for a mass meeting to discuss ways of dealing with the violence, and for appealing to the city council to remove Mayor Duncan.
A union miner walking up the steps to attend the meeting was shot dead by someone inside the building.
While the crowd prevented the WFM members from leaving, some of the insurgents stole dynamite from a nearby copper mine, and placed a charge of 27 sticks next to the building, and set it off.
They then systematically set other dynamite explosions, until the WFM union hall building was destroyed, but the people inside had managed to escape out the back down a fire escape, when those guarding the back had run around to the front.
WFM president Moyer hid from the mob all day and night, until he finally snuck out of town in an automobile at 5 am the next morning, and headed to Helena, Montana.
In Helena, WFM President Charles Moyer asked the governor to provide him protection.
In addition, 200 miners signed a petition telling the governor that there was no need to send troops.
The strikers marched in mass to various Butte copper mines, threatening the miners if they did not quit the WFM and join the new union.
[7] Contrary to the express wishes of the mayor of Butte and the county sheriff, Governor Stewart declared martial law and sent in about 500 National Guardsmen, who arrived on 1 September 1914.
On 6 October, the district court ordered that Butte Mayor Lewis Duncan and the county sheriff be removed from office for not performing their duties.
In December, the national board of the Western Federation of Miners belatedly charged the local officers in Butte with various failures to perform their duties, and asked for their resignation; they refused.
