Leadville miners' strike
The strike lasted from 19 June 1896 to 9 March 1897, and resulted in a major defeat for the union, largely due to the unified opposition of the mine owners.
[1]: 5–6 Although the federation was birthed as the result of a violent struggle and had engaged in a militant action in the Cripple Creek District in which miners used gunfire and dynamite, the organization's disposition and its Preamble envisioned a future of arbitration and conciliation with employers.
[1]: 23, 26 After the Leadville strike, WFM leaders and their followers adopted radical politics and were open to more militant policies, breaking with the conservative, craft union based American Federation of Labor in the East.
[1]: 48, 91 Coming just two years after the Federation's victory at Cripple Creek, the Leadville strike represented a significant hope that the mineworkers could solidify their power and continue their dramatic growth.
[4]: 177 Some miners had the shorter hours, and public employees and building trades workers in Denver had won the eight-hour day as early as 1890.
[1]: 63 But the employers had the upper hand, and only a "remarkably resilient and cohesive" union could withstand and defeat such a formidable array of enemies.
[1]: 47 On June 22, in addition to agreeing to the lockout, the mine owners signed a secret written agreement to maintain a unified front against the union.
[1]: 32–33 In 1896 the Western Federation of Miners was already thought by contemporaries to be radical and militant, but was in fact dedicated to essentially conservative goals: decent wages paid in legal tender rather than scrip, health care for miners, restrictions on cheap immigrant labor, the disarming of detectives, and friendly relationships with employers.
There was distrust of the union leadership, as well as suspicion and jealousy over outside federation staff who were paid a salary higher than the strike allowance received by miners.
[1]: 47 Spies supplied thousands of pages of daily reports on the internal workings of the CCMU; its divisions, its plans, its weaknesses.
On August 13, the mine owners offered to raise the minimum daily wage to $3 for any month in which the price of silver was $0.75 or more per troy ounce.
Striking miners armed with the rifles organized into paramilitary squads of "regulators," and patrolled the train depot and arriving stagecoaches, to expel any potential strikebreakers by threats, and by force if needed.
The attackers then moved on to the Emmett mine, about half a mile away and outside of town, where in addition to dynamite and gunfire, they used a home-made cannon to fire shrapnel at the shaft house.
The cannon blew a hole in the defensive wall, and the attackers tried to rush through the breach, but were driven back by gunfire from the strikebreakers.
[11] On the morning of the Coronado mine attack, pro-union sheriff M. H. Newman telegraphed Governor McIntire asking for the immediate dispatch of the Colorado National Guard to prevent further violence.
With even the pro-union law enforcement officials of Lake County telling him that the situation was out of control, and that troops were needed, the governor had no choice.
Governor McIntire admonished Brigadier General E. J. Brooks in a private telegram to be impartial, not to take sides, and "Protect all parties alike from violence."
[1]: 4–5 In addition to the national guard, on the day after the attack on the Coronado mine, pro-owner mayor of Leadville Samuel Nicholson announced that he would hire more policemen to assure peace.
But with the guard preventing violence and intimidation on the part of the union, the owners brought in unopposed the non-union miners that they had recruited in southwest Missouri.
Patrick Carney, a union miner, was accosted in front of his house in the early hours of 26 December 1896, by four strikebreakers from Missouri.
[13] In January 1897, a Leadville policeman named Guyton shot and killed striking miner Frank Douherty outside a saloon.
[15] Dougherty was the last of six union men who died during the strike, either at the hands of city policemen, strikebreakers, or under mysterious circumstances.
Even WFM president Ed Boyce and labor activist Eugene Debs advised the CCMU to take what terms they could get.
But its experiences going up against Mine Owners' Associations and their allies convinced the WFM that acting in a non-threatening manner wasn't going to accomplish anything worthwhile.
[1]: 81 During the Leadville strike, WFM President Boyce went east to ask for help in person from Samuel Gompers of the AFL, but was rebuffed.
[4]: 170 However, the fear of union militancy, and particularly a negative reaction to the WFM's successful Cripple Creek strike, helped to sweep Populists from power.
[1]: 85 While the rank and file of the WFM did not specifically endorse socialism, they did pass resolutions which gave them a reputation for radical and revolutionary sentiments.
Many of the WFM members were moving beyond reformist sentiments, to a realization that if they were to obtain the just solution that they sought, the system needed to be overturned.
[1]: 92–93 In a document called the November 1897 proclamation, the union miners and their allies vowed to launch a new federation which would reflect their growing class consciousness.
The result was a "climactic disaster", as "the WFM suffered the total destruction of its most stalwart local and the arrest of its most prominent leaders.
