He conducted normal employment, but for one act: he quit a job as a Telluride, Colorado mine guard during a labor dispute without letting anyone know that he was doing so.
Their walkout was a protest of a new method of payment, called "contracting," or "fathoms," which could sometimes result in a miner doing thirty days worth of digging, and getting underpaid for the work.
Bulkeley Wells, a Telluride mining company president and manager who, according to writer MaryJoy Martin, was "born to privilege... [and was] convinced laborers were beneath him,"[2] was intent upon hanging Vincent St. John, the head of the local miners union.
McParland, who decades earlier had been the special agent assigned to infiltrate the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania, contributed his belief that an "Inner Circle" within the Western Federation of Miners was responsible for widespread assassinations.
Wells placed a skull in a shop window, adorned with a sign decrying the "Grewsome Work" of the Telluride Miners' Union.