They hoped the strike would help secure higher wages, an eight-hour day, and end the use of the rustling card, a system that allowed employers to blacklist employees involved in union organizing, among other goals.
Three years before the strike, an IWW organizer named Frank Little was beaten and hanged from a railroad trestle by unknown assailants.
The same day, a local newspaper called the Butte Daily Bulletin reported that the head of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company had suggested killings and hangings to help end the strike.
Cross-examination of witnesses by union attorneys suggested that the Anaconda employees had received coaching to make their stories align.
[3] The strike and massacre were the last major labor conflict in the area until the 1934 passage of the National Recovery Act allowed outside support to help rebuild the weakened Butte Miners Union.
[1] Dashiell Hammett, once a Pinkerton agent stationed in Butte, Montana—where he (allegedly) turned down an offer to assassinate Little—used some historical background on union troubles and corporate corruption in his novel Red Harvest.
"[6] Elihu justifies the violence with, "Son, if I hadn't been a pirate I'd still be working for the Anaconda for wages, and there'd be no Personville Mining Corporation.