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Follow the Fire in the
Hole script and accompanying images to examine the violence
that flared as troops are called out when Idaho labor relations exploded in
1892.
Narrator:
In 1890 the federal government formally declared the frontier of the American West closed. Rugged landscapes like the northern panhandle of Idaho were dotted with silver mines, and the Coeur d'Alene region was giving birth to thriving boomtowns. Each day thousands of men trooped underground to blast free the silver ore, and shovel it into cars.
"It was incredibly difficult, dangerous work. You never know when there might be a cave in or some other kind of accident. . .You are also mining in places where you may hit powder and explode yourself."
Narrator:
The pay books from the era show how earnings were eroded by the miners' relationship to the company. Each miner was docked one dollar for medical care every month . . . lost or broken equipment was deducted. . . as was room and board. A miner could work 250 hours in a month, and end up with the equivalent of ten cents an hour in his pocket. Underground workers banded together in a rough form of union and won a fifty cent-per-day raise in 1891. . .but several events tumbled together to make the Coeur d'Alene region explode in 1892. First, the miners became convinced their medical care dollars were disappearing into the company's pockets.
Aiken:
"And the hospital was
incredibly important to miners because there are lots of accidents, and miners
were convinced the company was taking that dollar and not spending it all
on getting them the best hospital care that was available."
Narrator:
Then the mine owners shutdown the mines in a battle with railroads over the cost of shipping ore.
Aiken:
"The longer the mines are closed, the more desperate the miners become and they also begin to suspect that its more than just the railroad rate increase that is at play here."
Mine Owners Protective Association:
"Believing most earnestly that the advance of wages which was forced upon the mine owners during the past year was unreasonable and unjust, the association begs leave to announce the following scale of wages: for carmen and shovelers, $3.00 per day of ten working hours..." -- The Mine Owners Protective Association
Narrator:
The fifty-cent cut was a loss of almost twenty percent. Most of the miners refused to return to work.
Aiken:
"Mine owners attempt to deal with that as traditionally companies try to deal with it in a lot of instances. They attempt to hire scabs or strike breakers, depending upon your perspective. And simply, if you were a scab or strike breaker coming into the Coeur d'Alene and you started to get off the train and you looked down on the platform and here were a group of miners, perhaps holding picks or sticks or shovels, you might rethink your situation about whether or not you were really willing to get off the train and work through that group of miners and go into the mine."
Narrator:
Many of the strikebreakers were job-seeking immigrants. . .confused to find themselves in the middle of an escalating battle. The suspicion was fanned when mine owners hired the Pinkerton detective agency to slip undercover spies among the striking miners. One of the best was Charles Siringo.
Aiken:
"Charles Siringo is a very famous Pinkerton detective. He was one of their best operatives. When they sent him, they knew they were sending somebody that had the requisite skills to do the job. . .He was able to do the labor that miners did and so they trusted him so much they elected him an officer in their local."
Narrator:
In his position as secretary of the miners union, Siringo filed a steady stream of reports to the mine owners. But, eventually his reputation caught up with him. . .and the miners discovered that Siringo was a spy. On July 11th, 1892, the miners armed themselves and went searching for siringo in the mining town of gem. Their rage grew as Siringo crawled under the boardwalks to avoid capture, then slipped out of town. Determined to strike back, the miners took to the hills and started shooting at strikebreakers on the roads and working in the Helena-Frisco mill. When the strikebreakers refused to surrender, the union miners lit the fuse on an enormous load of dynamite, and lowered it into the mill.
The explosion leveled the four-story mill, killing a nonunion miner. The remaining
strikebreakers were marched off as temporary prisoners of the union. Mine
owners viewed the bombing as an act of war, and dashed off a series of telegrams
to idaho governor norman willey, telling him the Coeur d'Alene region was
under attack by a wild mob.
Aiken:
"Well Governor Willey
sides with mine owners which is fairly typical of state government at the
time. Mining was one of the key elements of Idaho's economy and the state
really could ill afford to make mine owners unhappy. . . He declares martial
law."
Narrator:
Governor Willey immediately telegraphed the white house for military force to back up his order.
Governor Willey:
"This morning riot and bloodshed by the striking miners of the Coeur d'Alene commenced. I therefore request that a sufficient force be detailed to act in concert with state authorities to maintain public order."
Narrator:
The governor dispatched a special investigator to the region. . .backed by the National Guard and federal troops who turned the mining towns into armed camps. The order was simple. . .don't let the law get in the way, restore order:
Willey:
"You are hereby authorized to arrest and hold until further orders such principal offenders as may be pointed out to you. . . without process."
Narrator:
Using the information gathered by spies like Charles Siringo. . .and authorized to seize virtually anyone they deemed a troublemaker. . .the military arrested over six hundred suspects.
Aiken: 
"Lets face it. When you round up 500 or so people and you have no sanitary facilities really to accommodate them. You have no way to feed them. There is little shelter when the weather is inclement. . . its just a very unsavory and unpleasant place to be. So you see the I think with animosity towards the people who you think are responsible for putting you in that position."
Narrator:
Weeks would pass as state and military authorities slowly whittled down the prisoner's list to two dozen ring leaders. Eventually they would be taken to the penitentiary in Boise to face trial, with Charles Siringo the key witness. But if martial law was designed to stamp the life out of the union movement in the Coeur d'Alene, the crackdown actually served as the genesis of an even more determined labor movement. In the holding cells of the idaho prison, the Western Federation of Miners was born.
Aiken:
"So, that in fact has
its origin as a direct result of the 1892 situation. And when they get out
of prison, they then take that idea to Butte and elsewhere and into the Coeur
d'Alene and it becomes very central to the union experience."
Narrator:
Rather than an end, the explosion of violence in the Coeur d'Alene region of Idaho was only a beginning. The Western Federation of Miners used the Idaho crackdown as a means of recruiting new union members throughout the West for what they viewed as self-defense against mine owners and their allies in government. Mine owners would view the federation as a vicious attempt to uproot the natural order of business. . .and would band together to unearth and destroy union organizers. The peace won in Idaho through martial law in 1892 would not last long. The subsequent battles would rage in the West for the next twenty-five years.
